'I told you my father could do it,' Averil said.
Elaine would have normally turned to see the woman as she spoke, common courtesy, but the body was moving. It had been dead. She had seen the walking dead, but never watched them be raised. She still did not believe in resurrection. That was impossible.
The armored figure drew a deep shuddering breath that echoed against the bare trees. The 'body' gave a sound, almost a shout, and was still. Then a gauntleted hand raised slowly toward the visor. The hand pushed at the helmet. The elf tried to help him take off the helmet, but with only one hand, it was hard to get leverage. The deadman wasn't much help.
Averil went forward and slid the helmet off. The face that was revealed was human enough. It had none of the monstrousness of the undead. The man had a sweeping mustache of purest white. Short-cropped hair that looked like it might have curled if it were not so severely cut, sat atop a square face.
'Silvanus,' the man said, his voice sounded breathy, but otherwise normal. 'You brought me back, old friend.'
The elf's too-thin face broke into a smile that transformed it. Suddenly, Elaine was not aware of the alienness but only of the love and humor in the face.
'I could not let this be our last adventure, Fredric.'
Fredric turned his head slowly to look at Averil. 'Where is our young friend?'
Averil's face crumbled. 'He was killed.'
'Beyond retrieval?' He struggled to sit, but would have fallen back to the snow if Averil had not caught him. She was stronger than she looked, holding a fully armored man upright.
'Oh, no, not the boy.' He looked ready to weep.
'He is not beyond help, Fredric,' the elf said. He got to his feet, carefully, as if it were a hard thing to do. He stumbled and nearly fell. He stood there swaying slightly, then took another step toward the second body.
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.
