Ever so slowly, it came. Distant and feeble at first, warmth built at those locations, comforting, inviting, suffusing. After gathering moments it withdrew, drawing his injuries along with it, and it left in its void a cool and bracing sense of revitalization. Before Amric’s wondering eyes, the angry welt on his forearm faded, and its twin appeared in the same place on the Half-Ork’s arm. There he saw the grey flesh knit over it and close, and within seconds the injury had vanished. Halthak’s hand fell away and he sagged, leaning on his staff as he gulped in one lungful of air after another.
“I have never felt the like,” he gasped at last.
“Were my injuries so different than Valkarr’s, so much harder to heal?” Amric asked, perplexed.
“No, it was as if I was walled away from them. It was like trying to pierce the city wall with a dagger. In the end, as I reached the limits of my endurance, it felt for all the world as if something finally allowed me in. I can find no better words to describe it.”
Amric faced Bellimar. “Did your Sight reveal what happened there?” he asked.
“Not with any certainty,” Bellimar replied. “I saw Halthak’s healing energies gather and finally begin trickling across to you, then grow into a flood as it did with Valkarr. Halthak’s aura became vibrant with the exertion, while yours was as absent as ever. There was a bright flash as the transfer began, but it was very brief, and might readily be explained by the healer’s forces being pent up as they were. I may have been given a piece of the puzzle, however, if I can but deduce its place in the larger theory.”
“Ponder as we ride, then,” Valkarr said. “We have tarried here too long, and more things will be drawn to the commotion, may already be coming. We should put some distance between us and this site.”
Amric nodded as he stared down at the animate head. “After,” he amended quietly, “we ensure none of these things still stir to greet us on the return trip.”
He reached over his shoulder to draw forth one gleaming sword, and behind him, a metallic whisper told him Valkarr had done the same. Amric’s grey eyes were like thunderclouds as he took a resolute step forward.
Halthak rode through a twilight world of deepening shadows, his hand absently patting the neck of his chestnut mare as his restless eyes roved all about. The setting sun drew lingering crimson talons across the heavens and transformed the canopy above to a blood-red blaze. The fiery display did not reach the ground far below, however, where the riders followed a frail, ephemeral path through the ever thickening murk. Halthak’s nerves had been clamoring since they entered this accursed forest, and at a near fever pitch since the encounter with the unnatural black creatures in the morning, but to his immense gratitude they had managed to avoid any further conflicts since then. There had been more moments of acute tension, to be sure, as they led their frightened mounts through the thick, tangling undergrowth, but the preternaturally keen senses of the warriors had allowed the riders to steal through this hellish jungle undetected like so many wraiths.
Bellimar rode ahead of him, slouching relaxed in his saddle as if he traveled through a scenic country estate. Halthak had no idea how the old man could be so serene in the midst of this place, but he envied the man his composure, whether real of affected. Behind Halthak rode Amric, cool as ice on the surface, but the healer knew he was tense as a coiled spring beneath. He had yet to see the warrior truly caught by surprise, even when faced with the blinding rush of the attack earlier; his whirlwind response, the speed and ferocity with which he had cut his way through that tangled mass of jet-black bodies, had stricken Halthak speechless in wonder. At the head of the column, no less fearsome in dealing death earlier, rode Valkarr. His thick scaly tail extended back over both the saddle and his blue dun’s rump to mingle there with the horse’s black tail. A part of Halthak’s mind, hungry for distraction, wondered if the Sil’ath sitting a horse was as uncomfortable for horse and rider as it appeared to an observer.
Valkarr twisted around in his saddle, made a short, chopping motion with his left hand and looked a question at Amric. Halthak looked back in time to see Amric nod in return, and then Valkarr put heels to his horse and sped ahead down the trail to vanish into the gloom. Bellimar glanced back over his shoulder at Amric with one delicate eyebrow arched, and then he lounged forward once more. Halthak slowed his mare and fell into step alongside Amric.
“It is getting dark,” Halthak said in a low tone, feeling foolish even as he stated the obvious. “Will we halt soon?”
Amric gave a tight nod, his flint-grey eyes flicking from side to side. “We are looking for a suitable place to stop.”
“I–I apologize for the difficulty in healing you this morning,” the Half-Ork said. “I have spent much of the day considering its cause, and how I might prevent it in the future.”
“Do not fret over it,” Amric chuckled. “I am not the most cooperative of patients, given my aversion to magic.”
Halthak shook his head. “Valkarr shares that aversion, and administering to him felt no different than a thousand times before. No, your case was somehow different.”
“Have you any theories on the matter?” Amric said, craning his neck to search the vegetation enclosing the trail behind them.
“At first I suspected your lack of aura, in which our friend Bellimar shows so much interest, as if you have an unnaturally low affinity for magic in general. No matter how much I mull it over, however, it does not quite fit.”
“How so?” Amric asked, sparing him a quick look askance.
Halthak frowned, pensive. “Well, I have treated many people with no inherent ability to speak of, and it has never affected the application of my magic on them. I suspect those individuals had very weak auras, if what Bellimar says is true.”
“Bellimar did not say I had a weak aura,” Amric reminded him. “He said I had no aura whatsoever, unlike any person he has encountered before. You should not be troubled that your talent cannot easily reach someone forsaken by magic.”
“I have been turning that over in my mind as well, but it does not explain what I felt when it occurred. I could accept it if my magic had seemed to have nowhere to go, as if no vessel existed on the other side of our contact, or even if I had faced a consistent level of resistance. Instead, I was blocked, turned aside as if my best efforts were feeble scratches against a wall of marble. Furthermore, I had the disturbing sense I was being watched, and that I did not break through but rather was allowed in after meeting some obscure approval. After that, it felt as it always has. It is beyond my reckoning, but I am glad it succeeded at last.”
“And I am grateful for your efforts, Halthak,” Amric returned. “This is no place to fall ill, and having faced those mindless things, I dread the thought of where the infections they carry might lead.”
Halthak shuddered, for the same thought had occurred to him. They rode on in silence for several minutes, navigating the trail as much by feel as by sight now, in the pressing dusk. Valkarr reappeared on the path ahead, shaking his head at Amric, then tapping a finger below one eye and pointing ahead. He then wheeled his blue dun gelding about and resumed his head position. Halthak turned toward Amric.
“What did-?” he began, but the swordsman interrupted smoothly.
“Healer, I saw a spasm of discomfort cross your face each time when you healed us earlier. Do you feel the full pain of the victim’s injury when you draw it into yourself in that manner?”
Halthak paused, confused. “I cannot know for certain, but it seems so, or as nearly as I can judge. Though it is quick to fade once I absorb it, for the wound itself never lasts long. Why do you ask?”