“What is it?” Karril demanded.
Damien raised up his veil a bit, braced himself, and drew in a deep breath. Nothing happened. Reassured that they were now above the level of Shaitan’s poisons, he freed Tarrant from his silken cocoon and watched as the man drew in short breaths, too quick and too shallow. He didn’t have to hear the faint wheezing sound at the end of each one to know what was wrong, or see the fear in Tarrant’s eyes to know just how wrong it was. The Prophet’s color—and his medical history-made that all too clear.
“Damn,” he whispered. “Not now, God. Couldn’t you let us get home first?”
“What is it?”
“Heart attack.” He could see Tarrant flinch as he spoke the words. “Or heart failure, more likely. He had the first incident right before he died, we know that." And it drove him over the brink of sanity, so that he murdered his family and ransomed his own soul to the Unnamed. Must this end the same way, God? Have you no better purpose for him than that? “Where’s the cause?” he demanded of Tarrant. “Do you know? Did you try to fix it?”
The Hunter shook his head weakly. “Doesn’t matter,” he whispered. “You can’t Heal here.”
“Just tell me, damn you!”
He shut his eyes and trembled: it was clear that every word took effort. “Congenital damage to the arterial wall,” he whispered. “Mitral valve ...” He was struggling for each breath now, and Damien could hear the rasping wheeze behind each one. “Acquired. I tried....”
When it was clear that he had lost the strength for further speech, Karril dared, “Can you do something?”
What was he supposed to say? That there was nothing harder than Healing a beating heart, because if your every effort wasn’t perfectly attuned to that muscle’s natural rhythm, you could bring it to a halt altogether? That was all irrelevant anyway, wasn’t it? Damien couldn’t Heal here. The currents would fry him alive before he even got started.
Think man, think. There had to be a way. He hadn’t come this far to give up now. What tools were available to him? Tarrant was too weak to Work. He couldn’t do it with this much fae around. The Iezu— He drew in a sharp breath as it all came together. “Karril. Your kind can work with the fae, can’t it?”
The Iezu hesitated. “Not as you do. We can’t Work—”
“I know that! Sorcery’s not what I meant.” He struggled to find the proper words. “You can mold it, can’t you? Like you did to make a body.” He looked pointedly at the flesh Karril now wore, which he had used to support Gerald Tarrant. “I mean as a purely physical force. Can’t you do that?”
The Iezu nodded.
“Can you block it off? Divert its flow, maybe?” The
Iezu looked dubious. “Anything, Karril! The currents here are too strong for me to Heal with. Is there any way you can help? If not-” and he nodded toward Tarrant, "-he’ll die.”
The Iezu drew in a deep breath, deliberately melodramatic. “I can try,” he said at last. “Although I can’t promise—”
“Just do it!” Damien snapped. The Hunter’s lips were faintly blue: a bad, bad sign. “And hurry!”
The Iezu disappeared. Not fading slowly, as he normally did, but snuffed out like a candle flame in a wind. Apparently to manipulate the fae he had to be in his natural form ... whatever the hell that was. Doesn’t matter, Damien thought grimly. Whatever works. He sat down by Tarrant’s side and gripped the man’s shoulder in reassurance. “You’re not going to die,” he whispered. “Not after all I went through to bring you here. You’re going home, dammit.” And then he saw the Hunter’s eyes widen in surprise, and he knew by that sign that the currents had changed. For the better, he prayed, as he prepared himself for Working. If not, they would both be dead soon enough.
With a deep breath for courage he reached down into the currents, grasping hold of Shaitan’s power—
Or rather, tried to. But there was nothing there. Had Karril failed him? Again he reached out with his mind, in the manner he had been taught, and again he utterly failed to make contact. But this time there was something there. A faint slithering of power, just enough to confirm that the currents were active. There was enough fae coursing around Tarrant’s body to Heal him, but Damien couldn’t seem to access it.
What the hell was wrong?
Again and again he tried, until a hot sweat broke out across his skin from the strain of his efforts. But the fae was like a wriggling eel, that slithered out of his mental grasp each time he tried to close in on it. Beside him Tarrant was gasping for breath, and his lips and eyes were shadowed with a deathly blue tint; he clearly didn’t have much time left. Again Damien tried to tackle the elusive earth-power, pouring everything he had into the effort. And for an instant he seemed to make real contact with it. For an instant he could taste what was wrong, and though he didn’t know its cause, the result was all too clear. The fae could be Worked, all right, but at a terrible price to the Worker. Was Damien Vryce willing to risk death to do this Healing, or was his own survival too precious for him to make such a commitment? He looked down at Tarrant, so very close to the gateway of death himself that his skin had taken on the color of a corpse, and felt an up-welling of cold determination in that place where the heat of fear might have taken root. You were willing to give up your life on Shaitan to save mankind from Calesta. You were willing to face Hell for that. I can’t let you die now, at the very threshold of salvation. I can’t rob you of the chance to make your peace with God at last ... not even to save my own skin.
—And the fae roared into him, currents ten times more hot than any he had Worked before. For a moment it was all he could do not to drown in it, not to lose himself in the raging flow. Then, at last, he managed to take hold of it with his will and give it form. A Seeing. A Knowing. The tools he needed to see into Tarrant’s flesh, to analyze it, to alter.
The Hunter’s heart took shape before him-no, about him—red muscle pounding out a feverish rhythm, a living sea that throbbed about his head as the spasms that drove it pulsed more and more desperately. He struggled to concentrate on the task at hand, and not let the hot sea sweep him away. Mitral valve, Tarrant had said. Damien searched for it, found it, and Knew it. The thin flap of tissue had thickened across most of its surface, and as he watched it struggle to close time and time again, he could see how the damage crippled it, how its failure to seal completely allowed blood to flow back the way it had come. That was his immediate target, clearly. He focused in his Knowing until he could see the individual cells of the valve itself, trying to judge the extent of the damage. It was indeed acquired, as Tarrant had said, which was a promising sign; beneath the thick layer of scar tissue was a valve that might do its work properly, if given half a chance.
Aware that every second counted, that even as he Worked in this scarlet realm its owner was dying, Damien nonetheless took a few precious moments to acquaint himself with the rhythm of the laboring heart muscle. Slowly, with a surgeon’s fine precision, h^ began to pry away the damaged cells. Not too quickly, lest a bit of coherent flesh tear loose and provide deadly blockage in some lesser vein ... but not too slowly either, lest the Hunter expire even as he Worked. Carefully but quickly he struggled to establish a middle ground, knowing that his every move had to be perfectly attuned to the heart’s own rhythm or deadly fibrillations would set in. One clump of cells dissolved into the bloodstream, then another, then another. He struggled to break up the scar tissue into manageable bits, while all the while riding the motion of the valve as if he were part of it. Thank God the tissue underneath was sound, he thought. He could see it swaying in the red sea as he freed it up, graceful and fluid in its natural motion. And it was almost free now. He reached out with his Healing to dissolve the last piece of scar tissue, saw its cells swept away by the hot scarlet tide ... and it was done. The valve was closing properly once more, and the heart was slowly calming. He allowed himself a moment of pure relief, knowing the worst was over. But there was still the congenital damage to be dealt with, which had caused the buildup in the first place. What had Tarrant said, something about an arterial wall? He searched for the damage and found it, a segment of muscle malformed in its making, whose thickened bulk cut short the flow of blood to vital areas. Unlike the scar tissue on the mitral valve, this was intrinsic to the muscle itself, and its removal would leave a gaping hole in a very dangerous place. Briefly he wished for a companion Healer with whom he could coordinate his efforts. And then, that futile prayer voiced, he plunged himself into the damaged flesh. Not just cutting loose this time but healing as well, forcing the surrounding cells to regenerate—and to do so properly—even as he cut the mutated part away. Shaving down the damaged tissue into small enough bits that the body could dispose of it safely, even as he forced its replacement. It seemed to take him forever, but at last that, too, was done.