AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Kalen and I both turned toward it immediately, scouring the formations of Guardians for the source. Then, from the very edge of the canyon, three men stepped forward. Rather, two stepped, the third hung between them, his legs limp above the ground.
They were all Guardians, that was clear from their dress, but they hadn’t been among the ones training with us moments before, they added to my count. And they were dirty, their faces splotched with dry mud and…not blood, but a dark substance that was as black as the ink in a book.
“Help,” the man on the right screamed, but no one rushed forward. All of the Guardians in the training yard seemed frozen. Silence blanketed them completely. Some had dropped their weapons altogether. Others had stepped back into fighting stances, on instinct, I guessed, protecting themselves from their own. “Help!” he said again, his voice nearly giving out. “He’s been scarred for Light’s sake. Someone!”
At that proclamation, the stoppage of time ceased. Kalen sprinted off into the center of the courtyard, joined by a throng of Guardians who’d finally come to, and traded their weapons for the legs of the injured man. The Guardians took over carrying the man, while his companions clung to his arms, not wanting to let go. Kalen took the lead at the front, walking hurriedly back to where I stood. I stepped to the side, allowing the group to pass before taking up pace behind them.
“To the infirmary,” someone yelled, and the Guardians all turned in one direction. Nothing more was said as we walked through the Well, passed the landing and through anothersection of the labyrinth I’d never been before.
We arrived quickly to a room lined with plain beds, each only big enough for one singular person to lay. It was dark and damp, lit by a lonely sconce on the furthest wall. There was a large hearth to our left and a stove with burbling pots sitting in wait. The Guardians laid the injured man gently on one of the cots, and without instruction, began to leave the room.
“Dalwin,” Kalen called out, and one of the men who had been carrying the injured man held back at the entrance to the infirmary. “Stay. He needs someone he recognizes. Help me talk him through this, and his chance to survive will be that much more.”
Dalwin gave a curt nod and closed the door to give us all the privacy. On his way to the cot where his friend lay, he stumbled and knocked into me. I held in my gasp, praying the poor man was too in shock at the image of his friend, mauled, to know that he’d stumbled into a solid hunk of nothing.
Curiously, Dalwin turned and looked me straight on.
“I’m so sorry ma’am,” he said, rubbing his eyes, and then gasped, “Oh thank the Mother, you must be a nurse,”
I jerked my head around to look at Kalen, but he was already looking at me, his eyes wide with panic. Dalwin could see me. He could see me. A slight flinch in Kalen’s expression told me he had no idea how. It was then I noticed that there was no Light around me whatsoever, and I couldn’t remember it being there since we had left the courtyard.
“She’s not a nurse,” Kalen recovered, turning to Dalwin. “She’s a handmaid. New,” he added, along with a strange look in my direction. “And she’s going to go get those clean linens from the corner and bring them to me.”
I did as Kalen instructed, trying not to trip on my way over to the stacked crate of cloth that was sitting next to a stove of heated water. I grabbed a handful of the linen and returnedto the two men without a word. Kalen took a deep, reassuring breath as Dalwin sat next to his friend without further incident.
Rolling his shirtsleeves up past his elbows, Kalen started to work on the man. He was focused, assessing the would with featherlight touches. The man’s upper thigh looked as if it had been mauled by some sort of animal, but instead of blood glistening in the deep scars, black liquid filled the space. As Kalen pulled a thread of the man’s pants near the bend in his leg, the black poured onto the table and its clean cloth below, soaking it in a matter of a second. Kalen cursed.
“None of it is healing,” I said, keeping my voice low so I wouldn’t alarm Dalwin. This wound had to have occurred a while ago if the group of them had projected in from somewhere else after they’d been attacked. The cut Kalen had made on my hand had been shallow but healed within seconds.
“He’s not immortal,” Kalen answered, kneeling to grab a dagger from his boot. “Most of them aren’t.”
He walked over to the stove and dipped the dagger’s blade into water that was boiling in a pot. He held the blade there for a few moments and then walked back over to the injured man, and began cutting his trousers.
“Look at me, Jason,” Dalwin said suddenly and reached for his friend’s hand on the bed. His fingers fluttered over the back of Jason’s wrist, and then he seized him hard, strangling him in his grasp as if he could feel the open wound, too. As if he was bracing himself for what was to come.
Kalen gave a fleeting glance to Dalwin.
“Tell me how,” he ordered him, directing his focus back onto cutting the strapping and cloth from Jason’s skin, peeling it backward slowly, and sloughing it onto the floor.
Dalwin sat up straighter.
“We were crossing into Grovsney for the day, sir, for provisions,” he said. “After we’d met with the suppliers, wedecided to stop in at a tavern that was across the village. We didn’t even see the Shadowfaders step across the threshold.”
“They shouldn’t have been there to begin with,” Kalen replied angrily, gritting his teeth. Then, he pulled his arms across his chest, his wrists connecting and breaking until a stream of Light, as bright as the one on the beach days before, sat between his hands. Dalwin grabbed Jason’s face, forcing his gaze away from his own sizzling flesh. Shoving his palms outward, Kalen sent the Light pouring onto the Shadow wound. Jason bowed off the bed and screamed, the first sound he’d made since we’d entered the infirmary.
“We drew on the Light immediately,” Dalwin continued, raising his voice over Jason’s agony. “There were children, sir, in the tavern. It was midday, and they’d come in from playing in the village…” Dalwin faltered, his chin dipping down as he tried to recollect himself. “The Shadowfaders didn’t care. Jason tried to hold the Light, but…”
Dalwin put his free hand up to his mouth, choking as he relived the horror.
“It wasn’t enough.” Kalen finished for him. The Light that was working on Jason’s wound began to slow out of Kalen’s palms. Jason’s screams turned to whimpers. For a moment, I thought, it was working. Kalen was healing him. Jason would live to help finish his friend’s recount of the day. But then Kalen dropped his hands and the Light banked, left the room entirely. He said, “It isn’t going to be enough here, either.”
Kalen walked to the back of the room and slammed his fist down onto the work table, the crates of cloth going topside on the floor.
“Dammit!” He shouted, and Dalwin began to shake with emotion.
We all feel silent. All but Jason, whose shallow breathing became even more elongated and weak. I watched his chest fallheavier and heavier as the moments passed.
Kalen had said the war hadn’t started yet, not really. Then what was this? And why,whywas I here in this room, and not in my grove counting stars. I couldn’t tell if it was the stench of black blood and burning flesh that was making my stomach roil, or the prospect that anything this awful had something to do with me.
