Tears slid down Thordin's cheeks. He was crying without a sound. Gersalius patted the bigger man's shoulder.
The elf staggered. Elaine ran forward and steadied him. His good arm was solid and more muscled than it looked. His golden eyes stared at her from inches away. Lines that had not been there before etched his face.
"Thank you." He let her help him to the second body. Elaine eased him to the snow. He took a deep shuddering breath.
"You cannot do it." Gersalius stood over them in his dark robe. "I may not be a healer, but I know you are sorely wounded. You risk your own health."
The elf looked up, still half-leaning against Elaine's grip on his arm. "I am a healer of Bertog. I have no right to horde my gifts if they can help others." He believed utterly in what he said. The strength of his belief was nearly touchable. His truth was a shining, warm thing.
Thordin touched the wizard's arm. "He is a cleric, a true healer. Let him be." The tears had frozen in tracks on his face. Thordin's smile had a peaceful-ness to it that Elaine had never seen.
"He should not have been able to raise even one deadman back to life," Gersalius said. "He risks more than just his life here, and you know it."
"It is his risk."
"Not if he doesn't understand that risk."
"What does the wizard mean, Thordin, that the healer risks more than his life?" Jonathan came to stand over them. His eyes were wider than normal, a touch of wildness to them. Even the mage-finder had been impressed with this particular spell.
Gersalius shook off Thordin's grip. "The land corrupts everything that touches it. You know this, mage-finder."
"It corrupts all magic, yes."
"It will corrupt even this pure gift. Until this moment, I would have said no cleric was powerful enough to call divine aid inside Kartakass."
"If he truly can raise the dead, then surely he is proof against even this land," Thordin said.
The wizard shook his head stubbornly. "If that is true, all is well and fine, but if not, the healer must understand what he risks. If he does not fully understand, he has no real choice."
The elf leaned over the fallen man. "If I risked my very soul, I could do no less."
"And if that is exactly what you are doing?" Gersalius said.
The elf blinked up at the mage. His smile softened, and Elaine felt him straighten under her hands. "Then it is what I am risking. And it is my choice, freely made, freely given."
"You don't understand. You can't understand."
"Leave him, wizard," Jonathan said. "He has made his choice."
"If you like, mage-finder, but a few moments in Kartakass cannot prepare you for a lifetime here."
The elf pulled his arm, gently, from Elaine's grasp. "Thank you for your aid."
She gave a slight nod.
He placed his good hand over the man's chest. There was no armor here to hide what was to happen. Nothing would have drawn Elaine from her place at the elf's side.
His head slumped forward, shining hair like a curtain over his face. She fought the urge to brush the hair aside. She wanted to see his face, to watch his features as he performed this miracle. For it was nothing less. She had grown up listening to Thordin's stories of healers, but she had not truly understood. Now she did, and she hungered after this. . magic was too small a word.
It was a growing thing, like the earth itself waking to the sun's warmth. A slow filling up from some unknown source; outside power met and mingled with a spark of magic inside the elf. Elaine felt it as if it were her own body. There was simple magic to this, but it was much more.
The deadman drew a painful breath, spine bowing upward as if a string pulled him. He blinked wide brown eyes and sat up like a startled sleeper. He looked around wildly.
"Where am I?"
The elf gave a second beatific smile and slowly toppled forward onto the legs of the man he'd just resurrected.
Elaine wasn't sure, but she thought she heard Gersalius mutter, "I told you so."
«^»
TWELVE
The tent walls flapped and struggled in the wind. The two men that had so recently been dead lay on piles of furs and blankets. The elf, Silvanus, was curled in a corner, quite unconscious. He had not moved so much as a finger when they carried him to the campsite. The two deadmen had been much more lively.
The larger man, Fredric Vladislav, hugged the furs to his bare chest. "It is not right that a woman should see me like this. Especially an unmarried one." The skin of his shoulders was milk-white. Many a lady would have been proud of such skin. The jagged white scar that traced the collarbone spoiled the effect somewhat, as did his strong hand clutching desperately at the fur. His eyes were the color of storm clouds, a soft, wooly gray. The sweeping white mustache went well with his impossibly broad shoulders.
Elaine had always thought Thordin a large man, but the paladin, for that was what he called himself, made Thordin seem small. One sword-callused palm could have covered Elaine's entire face. His feet pressed perilously close to the tent walls.
"I would not have disrobed if the healer had told me a young woman was going to enter."
"She's a … nurse. Isn't that what you called her?" Randwulf asked.
Konrad spoke from the back of the tent. He was laying out his salves and bandages on a clean cloth near the unconscious elf. "Yes, she's helped me tend the wounded many times." He never looked up, all attention for his medicines.
Once Elaine had thought that commendable. Now it was vaguely irritating, just another sign that she was of no real importance to him. She was just another tool, like a medicinal herb.
"I have seen a bare chest before, Master Vladislav," Elaine said, tugging on the fur. His strong hands held on. Short of cutting his grip free, she couldn't budge him.
"You have not seen my chest. Besides, girl, that is not the only thing bare under these covers." A rush of color crept up his neck, tinting him pink from upper chest to forehead.
Elaine smiled; she couldn't help it.
"Are you so brazen as to think that is funny? Are you a healer's aid or a camp follower?"
"I don't know what a camp follower is," she said.
"I would be happy to show you," the other man said. His voice had a happy lilt that made Elaine blush.
"Oh, you mean a woman of loose morals," she said softly. Her face was scarlet, and she looked away from the large man. She had tended the wounded, but it had mostly been her own family group. Truthfully, she'd never seen a complete stranger undressed. Konrad didn't seem to remember that, or perhaps he didn't care.
"Now, girl, I did not mean to embarrass. I would not do that for anything."
"I thought you'd tended the wounded," Randwulf said.
"Mostly my own family." She glanced at him. He was naked to the waist, arms behind his head as if he were posing for effect. His well-muscled chest was crisscrossed with scars. He half sat up, causing the furs to slide alarmingly. Elaine turned away.
"Have a care, you young idiot. She's not a camp follower to be impressed with your scars," the paladin said.
"Maybe a healer would be impressed with my scars, too."
Fredric made a sound halfway between a snort and a sigh. "Perhaps, but she is no healer. She is a young woman, and you are embarrassing her."
"If you do not let Elaine look at your wounds, then I will have to do it myself," Konrad said flatly. "That will mean leaving your unconscious friend's wounds until after I see to you. After what he did for you out there, I would think you'd cooperate."