Milkeila’s heart skipped a beat. She thought it must be Chapel Isle-perhaps a lantern at the top of their evergrowing tower. But no, she realized, it could not be. The light was not far enough away.
A boat, perhaps, she silently cautioned, and she stood perfectly still and tried to not allow the movement of the small waves to distort her perception. After many heart-wrenching moments, she realized that the light was not moving. It was on the sandbar.
Milkeila had to consciously breathe and steady herself. She started for the boats immediately, but her swift stride slowed as it occurred to her that the light could be a trap. Perhaps Cormack had been discovered as a traitor and had been tortured into revealing all! Perhaps a group of monks had lit her and Cormack’s private signal beacon to lure her to the sandbar and capture her.
Those thoughts continued to swirl in Milkeila’s head even after she had appropriated one of the smallest Yossunfier boats and had started quietly paddling out from the shore.
Her heart raced as she came to confirm that the light was indeed coming from the sandbar, or near to it, but she was a bit concerned that Cormack would burn such a light for so long on so clear a night. Certainly it could be seen from Red Cap or Chapel Isle, and after so many minutes, perhaps even some of Milkeila’s own people would decide to go and investigate. Of course, all of this was based on the presumption that it was indeed Cormack.
Milkeila gave one long and powerful pull with her paddle, then put it up and bent low in the small boat so that her silhouette wouldn’t stand out against the horizon as she glided toward the sandbar. Peering through the thin mist, she saw a form, and the way the tall man paced left no doubt in her that it was indeed her beloved Cormack. She started to sit up, even to call out, but she bit back the call as she noted another form on the sandbar, short and thick. A powrie.
Milkeila sat up and speared her paddle into the water to create drag and slow the boat. She was still drifting, the current and her momentum bringing her very slowly toward the sandbar. She didn’t know what to do! She wanted to see Cormack-more than anything in the world, Milkeila wanted to be certain that her lover was all right, wanted to feel his strong arms about her again.
But what was this? Why would Cormack bring a bloody-cap dwarf to their private place? A groan from the far side of the sandbar made her realize that there were others, as well, and soon she was close enough to see another powrie over there, kneeling over something-a man, perhaps?
Despite her caution, Milkeila couldn’t turn away from this. Cormack’s movements showed her that she had been seen, and the man rushed to the point on the sandbar nearest to her and softly called out her name, waving frantically for her to come ashore. And she did, and Cormack wrapped her in as tight a hug as she had ever known.
“Powries,” she said, her voice as shaken as her sensibilities.
“Quickly, here,” Cormack said, taking her by the wrist and dragging her along to the back side of the sandbar, where an injured man lay on the ground, a second powrie beside him. As if that wasn’t distressing enough, a third powrie sat in their boat, just a short distance away.
“Cormack, what are you doing?” Milkeila asked, and when the monk didn’t answer, she just stated, rather severely, “Cormack!”
He stopped and swung about to face her. “We found him. You have the gemstones? He will die.”
“Who?”
Cormack dragged her over. “This man.”
“Who is he?”
Cormack shook his head. “We found him at the base of the glacier, half-buried in the mud.”
“We? You and the powries?”
“Yes.”
“Cormack?”
The monk paused and took a deep breath. “I was expelled from Chapel Isle, beaten and left for dead. This powrie-”
“Mcwigik’s the name,” the dwarf interjected.
“Mcwigik saved my life,” Cormack explained. “They’ve taken me in.”
“Every dwarf needs a dog,” Mcwigik mumbled.
“We were going to come and get you,” Cormack continued. “We’re leaving the lake.”
“You and the powries?”
“A few, yes. But we found this man, and he will surely die…” As he finished, Cormack reached for Milkeila’s tooth-and-claw necklace, and twisted it out of the way to reveal the string of gemstones he had given to her. “Help me, I beg,” he said, and reached to remove the magical necklace.
Milkeila instinctively bent and helped him do so, following Cormack as he rushed to the supine man, fumbling with the gems to find the powerful soul stone. He went to work immediately, pressing the stone against one egregious wound, where the man’s leg was swollen and possibly broken. Milkeila put her hand atop Cormack’s and began a prayer of her own, using the soul stone connection to the wounded man to impart her energy into the gem to heighten Cormack’s work. The man groaned and stirred a bit.
They went to the next wound and then the next after that, and with each application of gemstone magic their bond tightened. They shared smiles after every victory, though they had no idea of whether or not these little bits of mending would win the largest battle of all and keep this stranger alive.
“He’s wearing your cap,” Milkeila remarked.
“Magic in a powrie beret,” Mcwigik said from the side.
If either Milkeila or Cormack heard the dwarf, neither showed it, for they had locked stares and hearts and to them at that moment, the outside world didn’t exist.
“He fell from the glacier?”
“And somehow he is not dead,” Cormack answered. “The mud, I guess, for the ground at the glacier’s base is soft.”
“It is a long fall,” the woman replied, obviously doubting.
“And yet he lives,” said Cormack with a shrug, as if nothing else really mattered.
They had worked their way up over the most obvious wounds by that point, and Cormack put the soul stone on top of an area of swelling on the battered man’s forehead. Again he sent the gemstone’s magical energy flowing into the stranger, and again Milkeila put her hand atop his to help.
But then the supine man did likewise, his hand snapping up to grab Cormack by the wrist. His eyes popped open wide and Cormack instinctively tugged away.
“No!” the stranger started to say, but the monk and Milkeila had moved too forcefully for him to prevent them from pulling the stone from his forehead, and as soon as that happened, he lost all strength and the two healers fell back, staring at him.
“Gemmm… gem… ge… ge… ge,” the wounded man pleaded, his jaw shaking and drool sliding from the side of his mouth.
“I think ye forgot to put his brains back in,” Mcwigik quipped, seeming very amused by the man’s sudden and pathetic attempts to sit up or even to communicate.
“Ge… Ge… Gemmmm,” the man cried, reaching out at the recoiling duo.
“I’m thinking he lived by landing on his head,” Mcwigik said, and his two powrie companions chuckled.
“He wants the soul stone,” Cormack surmised.
“The poor man,” said Milkeila.
The stranger kept stuttering and drooling and shaking so badly that he seemed as if he would just collapse.
“Give it to him,” Milkeila said.
Cormack looked at her incredulously.
“He cannot run away with it,” the woman reminded.
Cormack reached out and put his fist, clenched over the soul stone, in the stranger’s shaking palm. As soon as the man tightened his grip about Cormack’s fist, Cormack relaxed his grasp and let the gemstone fall to the wounded man.
Shaking fingers immediately stilled and closed over the gemstone, and with a great and collected exhale, the wounded man lay easily on the sandbar. Many heartbeats passed.