With a heartless grin, Ylandra twisted the blade, digging it even deeper, and Elayne dropped like a stone, gasping. Without pause, Ylandra drove straight at Jeren.
The sword felt cold in her hands. The world slowed around her as a million thoughts rushed through her head. Thoughts of Shan, enslaved by the Fell, of Elayne’s face, and Vertigern’s as he tore across the space between them, stricken, bloodless, just like Shan’s had been at the moment of Anala’s death, a mirror of the event.
Even with all the people gathered around her, all of them were far too slow to hope to save her. A presence touched her mind, a brief moment of contact, of kinship. Jeren opened her mouth and screamed a single word.
“Kiah!”
Her owl plummeted from above, talons tearing through the Sect Mother’s face even as Ylandra threw up her arms to protect herself. She slashed at the bird with her remaining knife, but the owl was unrelenting, as enraged as the woman it battled. It drove down on her until the other Shistra-Phail could finally secure her ragged and bloody form.
The white-hilted Sect Knife lay on the grass between them. Kiah, the snowy owl, took wing again, circling the group as if to ensure that danger was past before flying back to Jeren and landing on the rocks beside her head, a bristling ball of feathers and fury, far from placated.
Warily, Jeren held out her arm, hoping her sleeve would be thick enough to act like a falconer’s glove. But the owl perched there gently enough, the great talons never harming her.
Ariah, still clad in her white gown, stepped between them, bent and retrieved the Sect Knife, the symbol of Ylandra’s responsibility and authority. She turned it over in her hands. Jeren’s blood smeared her pale fingers.
“Ylandra, you have attacked one of our own and spilled blood on holy ground. What is the meaning of this?” It was the way she said it that chilled the most, without a trace of anger in her voice, but only confused disappointment.
Tears stung Jeren’s eyes. Indarin took her other arm, steadying her. It as only then she realised she was swaying on her feet. Her teacher studied her with the same wary gaze as the owl.
“Jeren of River Holt isn’t one of us,” Ylandra was sobbing now. “She doesn’t deserve to be.”
“But she is,” Ariah continued, patient as the mountain they stood on. “And she is most deserving, both of being Shistra-Phail and of being Shan’s mate. You cannot force a change in what must be, Ylandra.”
“No.” Ylandra wept, broken and empty. “She isn’t, she doesn’t deserve to be. She isn’t,” she repeated. “She doesn’t deserve to be.” On and on, her voice went, sinking into incoherence.
“Take her back to the camp,” Ariah commanded, her brow furrowed with concern. “I’ll see what I can do for her in a moment.” Her guards obeyed, Seer and Shistra-Phail edging warily around the raving captive. Ariah turned her back on Ylandra now and her demeanour softened when she beheld Jeren. “Are you hurt?” When Jeren shook her head, Ariah smiled in genuine relief. “But your arm…”
“It’s just a scratch.”
“A little more than that,” Indarin said gruffly. “It needs attention.”
But another voice broke through the air. Shaken and afraid, Vertigern’s voice lost the veneer of cultured eloquence Jeren had grown to expect.
“Please, you have to help her. Please!” He cradled Elayne against him, his handsome features gaunt as he stared into her pale face. Her armoured side glistened red over the polished metal.
Jeren lifted her arm and Kiah took wing, crying out reproachfully. She hurried to them, her own aches and pains forgotten.
“Call a Seer,” Ariah said.
But Fethan was already by her side. He folded his arms before him. “The Seers are trying to help Ylandra. Besides, we do not heal Holters.”
Jeren’s jaw sagged and she snapped her gaze around to Ariah in disbelief.
“Is this your final word?” Ariah’s voice was thin as a blade and just as dangerous.
Fethan narrowed his eyes in defiance. “Unless Ariah will command me to break my sacred vow to heal my people.”
“But not to the exclusion of others, Fethan.”
His cold gaze passed over the Holters. “I see no one here in need of my aid.”
“I shall not forget this, Seer,” Ariah replied in her dangerously calm voice. “None of this. She was your choice as Sect Mother, wasn’t she?”
They were going to do nothing, Jeren realised. Nothing to help Elayne, because she was a human, a Holter and not worthy of the help of a Seer. Something shook deep inside her. The castes of the Feyna operated autonomously, and all Ariah could offer was guidance.
But this was wrong. Worse. This was evil.
“Please,” Vertigern whispered, smoothing his hand over Elayne’s brow, trying to hold her with him by force of will alone. But the chance was slipping away, and so was Elayne.
“Oh gods, get out of my way,” Jeren snapped and pushed through to them. She dropped to her knees. “How do I get this metal shell off? I need to see the damage.”
Indarin helped her, his hands gentle. Where Torvin had got to Jeren had no idea and Vertigern was beside himself with grief, next to useless.
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Indarin asked warily.
“I know healing. It’s one thing I am good at.”
“I mean you’re about to put on a display of magic that few Shistra-Phail will be able to accept. You’re as good as announcing yourself as a Seer.”
“A Seer?” She looked up towards the nonchalant Fethan and scowled. Had he hoped for something like this? Something to put her in just such a position? “I wouldn’t be a Seer if it was my only hope for survival. And maybe I’m not meant to be a Shistra-Phail after all. Not if it costs anyone’s life.”
They managed to loosen the piece of plate above the wound, enough to give Jeren access. When her finger brushed the ragged flesh, Elayne cried out.
“Shh,” Jeren murmured, focusing her power within her mind. “It’ll be fine, Elayne. He’s here with you, holding you. Can’t you feel him? Think of that, only of that.” And then she spoke directly to Vertigern, her voice firm with command. “You hold her tight, because this is going to hurt her a lot. Indarin, you may have to help him. She’s strong. And that means she’s going to recover. Believe that, Vertigern and then make up for all this lost time.”
Jeren closed her eyes, and bent her will to the injured woman. Light filled Elayne, light fired by love and made all the brighter by lying in the arms of the man she loved, who loved her in return. It would help, more than help. It would do most of the work for her. Steeling herself for the painful backlash that would surely follow, Jeren released her magic into Elayne.
To tell the truth, Jeren had healed far worse wounds, but now, on top of everything that had happened and knowing Shan might be lost forever—No, don’t think that! Don’t ever think that!—when she opened her eyes to see Vertigern’s lips brush Elayne’s, to see the warrior woman’s eyelashes flutter against the top of her cheeks and her skin flush, it seemed like the hardest thing she had ever done in her life.
And one of the best.
Her side ached from the ghost of Elayne’s wound, as if her own wound had returned to haunt her. Her head swam and the world blurred in and out of focus.
“Here,” Indarin told her. “This will help.”
Her hands closed around her sword. Her sword. Gods, how strange that sounded. She hated the thing, yet she would never let it go. Her breath calmed as she touched it and the pain faded, an advantage of the way it drained off her magic.
“Thank you,” she murmured.