Once the Grand Syndar was out of earshot, Darvin turned to Eles and said, "He is too sure of himself, my lord. This plague that Rodolpho cooked up is horrific. I don't think you should place all of your trust in the Waukeenar. You need a second option."
"Of course I do," Eles answered, smiling that smile that always made Darvin's skin crawl. "You're going back to Reth to wring a solution out of Rodolpho."
Darvin sighed. "I don't know if that's possible. When he said he hadn't created one, I got the impression he was sincere. I think he somehow knew this was the last great thing he was going to do with his life, and he took great delight in thwarting you."
Eles's scowl became a glower. "Lesser opponents do not thwart me," he said. "Deal with this."
Darvin nodded in resignation. Somehow, he had known all along that it would come down to that. "All right," he said at last. "But I can't get back there on my own. Laithe will have to help me."
"Fine," Eles said. "Take your sister along."
"Half-sister," Darvin corrected, then immediately regretted it.
"Darvin," Eles said, his face a mask. "Don't think that just because you are my flesh and blood that you can fail me in this. I will have Reth."
Darvin nodded. "I know, Father. I'm on my way."
"Can you heal her?" Vambran asked.
Arbeenok shrugged, trying to imitate the human gesture. It still felt strange to him to do so, even after several years among humans. "I do not know," he said, "I can try."
"Do it," Vambran said, forcefully, but Arbeenok understood that he was asking, pleading, not ordering. The alaghi understood, and he did not object, but the man's intense drive was remarkable. There was a fire in his eyes, a fierceness to act, to succeed, burning inside him at all times.
And there was conflict.
Arbeenok could see that Vambran questioned himself with every decision he made. The soldier scrutinized all his choices, never satisfied that he had selected wisely or had done enough. Arbeenok wondered where in his life he had failed. He wondered what had convinced the man that he was not capable of choosing the wise course.
His passion is admirable, the alaghi thought, but he will burn himself up if he cannot find balance.
Arbeenok turned from the soldier and examined the woman, Elenthia. She stared back at him with wide, frightened eyes. He understood her fear, too. Hers was far more defined. She was dying, and she knew it. "Try to relax," he told her.
Then Arbeenok began to sing.
The druid sang to the wind and the stars, to the earth somewhere below, calling to the natural soil that lay beneath the carefully aligned stones, down past the unnatural layer of the garden. He sang to the ocean that he could smell but could not see. He sang to them all, asking them to restore the balance in Elenthia, to cleanse her of the perverse disease that infested her.
They could not aid him.
Arbeenok's song turned inward, seeking some energy that he could harness within himself, from the spirits of the animals that resided in harmony in him, hoping perhaps to drain away the woman's sickness into himself and dissipate it.
The sickness was too strong.
Arbeenok opened his eyes and looked at his companions. Both were watching him intently. He had seen such looks before by those who had never heard him use his magic. He paid their stares no mind. "It cannot be cleansed by my magic alone," he said. "It is too unnatural for my healing skills." Arbeenok watched Vambran's face turn stony, as though bracing for the inevitable. "I can arrest it, though," the druid said, hoping that the two of them would understand. Sometimes, finding the words to explain things to outsiders was difficult. "Slow it," he added.
"Do it," Vambran said again, once more in that forceful, demanding tone. For him, failure was a fate too horrible to contemplate. Arbeenok could see that.
"It will not cure her," Arbeenok warned, wanting the soldier to understand that it was a temporary solution and would hold for a day at most. "She will still be ill, but the sickness will not… progress."
Vambran began nodding even before Arbeenok finished speaking. "Buy us time, that's good enough," he said. "And we'll go to the bottom of the Reach, burrow into the rock if we must in order to find whatever it is we're supposed to find."
Arbeenok smiled, glad that Vambran was ready to accept the alaghi's vision, to follow their entwined fates to their logical conclusions. "Yes," he said. Then he closed his eyes and began to sing once more, a different song, one to slow the poisons in Elenthia's body rather than drive them out. He felt the contagion begin to slumber, fall dormant. Satisfied, he finished the song, locking the magic in place for as long as he was able.
When it was done, Arbeenok opened his eyes and nodded to tell his companions so. The relief on both their faces was clear. "We must rest," he said.
"There's no time," Vambran argued, his intense eyes looking away to some distant place, not just in space but also in time. He was peering toward the future, always toward the future, trying to catch up to it and yet never seeing it as it went by. "We have to go, get out of the city. People are dying."
"No," Arbeenok said. He stood, then, pulling Vambran away from the woman, off to the side where they could talk alone. "We must rest. She must rest." Vambran stared hard at the alaghi for a long moment, his eyes glittering dangerously. "I have seen you yawn many times just since we arrived in this garden," the alaghi added. "When was the last time you slept?"
Vambran looked away. "I don't remember," he said, avoiding the question. "A lifetime ago."
"You have not slept since I met you, when you were dangling from a pole by your tied hands and feet, hardly a good bed. And that was in the small hours of this morning. How long before that?"
Vambran sighed. "Not since the ship," he said. "Not since two nights ago."
"You cannot save the city if you wear yourself to exhaustion," Arbeenok said. "And she will not last long without rest. The harder you push her, the more quickly my magic will… vanish. No, fade. The more quickly it will fade. Do you understand? It can weaken if her body is not strong enough to maintain it."
Vambran sighed then, letting his shoulders slump. "All right," he agreed at last. "If she needs the rest, I could do with some as well. But we've got to find some place safe. Some place where we can defend her, you and I, without her needing to fight. Better yet, someplace where damnable zombies won't bother us at all."
Arbeenok looked toward the house. "Up there?" he asked, pointing to a second floor window that overlooked the garden. "I do not think the former owners will mind," he said.
Vambran nodded. "I'll take a look inside, just to make sure nothing is hiding in there. You stay here with her."
When the soldier was gone, Arbeenok sat beside Elenthia. She leaned against a tree, her breathing eased somewhat by the effects of Arbeenok's song, but it was still raspy. The alaghi thought it best not to discuss the sickness. "Do you love him?" he asked, thinking to begin a nice conversation.
"Vambran?" Elenthia replied, looking aghast. "Ilmater's mercy, no. He's… he's just a friend."
"But you are mates," Arbeenok said, puzzled. "I can sense it in the way you look at one another. You have shared a bed."
Elenthia blushed slightly. "Yes, we have," she admitted. "But only as friends. Our lives are much too different. He visits me from time to time, and I enjoy his company when he comes to Reth. That's all."
Arbeenok considered the woman's words for a few moments. "It must be that way between Vambran and Shinthala, too."
"Pardon me?" Elenthia said, looking sharply at the alaghi. "Who in the Nine Hells is Shinthala?"
"Shinthala Deepcrest, Grand Cabal of the Emerald Enclave. They, too, are friends."
"I see," Elenthia said, but her tone was strangely flat. "So, he's bedding a druid, is he?"