The Sign of a Healer
This one is for Kyle, who asked for more of 'Unspoken Words' (currently in Uncollected Fantasy, but will be updated with the series tag soon). Thank you so much for your support, darling. I hope you like it!
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Edion watched as the strange woman, still clad in what could only be night-clothes, stood and washed her hands. His ribs ached, all of him ached, but it was all considerably better than it had been before. Whoever she was, and his money was on a mastermage or a goddess for the grandeur of her glass-walled summer palace, she was a deft touch at the healing arts.
“You’re very good at this,” he told her, although it was clear that the language barrier between them would have to wait for time and patience to wear it away. Hopefully they could manage along with gestures and smiles to ease the way. “Thank you.”
Her cheeks were still colored from his kiss to her hand, and Edion wondered if it was the custom to greet a lady that way in her land. There was no question that he was Elsewhere. The castle around them, built like a summer palace all of wood and plaster, was like nothing he had ever seen before. Wide glass windows were everywhere, and the lights above them, the product of a casual hand-wave over a white panel, spoke of more magic than he could imagine in a single place. The air was warm and comfortably humid in this spectacular glass-house room.
“Will you help with my armor?” he tried, and gestured to the pates that still covered his shoulders and legs. Fortunately, his gambeson laced together at the chest, or they would have had to take all of it off just for her to see to his ribs. All the same, it was heavy and he wanted to be rid of it. “I cannot twist to untie it.”
He accompanied the request with a telling yank at the laces holding his shoulder armor on, and she brightened with understanding. It was clear that, although she knew what armor was, she had never handled it before. Her hands were quick and clever, but unsure.
It made sense, if she was a mastermage, or even a mage-student. Magic-users rarely bothered with armor of any kind.
And she looked delicate, only as tall as his shoulder, and built lightly. Still, there was real muscle in her legs, and calluses across her hands. She walked like someone who rode well, which reassured him. Anyone who liked horses was someone he could stand to be around.
She said something he didn’t understand when they finally got his armor off. He promised himself that he would go over it when it was dry. The breastplate was halfway caved in from that last blow before the portal opened under him, but the rest was salvageable. It wouldn’t do to let it rust.
“I wish I understood you,” Edion told her when she stood and gestured for him to follow her. “I don’t know where this is. I don’t even know how I got here. I was drowning, and then there was a portal.”
She looked over her shoulder, long dark braid messy and nearly to the back of her knees. Her eyes were dark as well, he noticed, but her skin was light. Unlike the women of his own court, this lady did not shun the light, and her skin was tanned from hours outside. Her garb was scandalously revealing, only a long shirt, with trews that cut off well above the knee under it.
He couldn’t deny that the appearance of a beautiful, half-naked woman really did help to ease the battle-frenzy back from his mind. Also, it was extremely unlikely that she had a weapon hidden under so little fabric. That helped too.
The room she took him to was a marvel of tile and glass, but it was unmistakably a bathing chamber. An empty bath dominated one side of the room. The system of pipes was not unlike the Dwarvish contraptions of home, and Edion watched intently as she slowly demonstrated how they worked. He mimicked her and was delighted to discover the water to be both fresh, and so hot it almost burned to the touch. A second knob cooled it somewhat, but she laughed when he turned that one back down.
“I’ll need to wrap my ribs again if I bathe,” he told her, and pointed at his ribs when she cocked her head at him curiously, bright intelligence in her eyes. “You will help?”
She paused, trying to understand, and then went for a washing basin, and the cabinet under it. From there, she produced a long roll of fine-woven gauze, and a bag with a bright red cross on it. She pointed at the bath, and then at him, and then at the bag. The message was clear enough. When he was clean, she could help him better.
Her bag downstairs had the same marking. He assumed it was a Healer’s sign, and nodded. She understood. He waited when she held up a single finger, and made a gesture that seemed to mean ‘stay’.
Obedient, although curious, he waited as she stepped out of the room again.
The bathtub was almost full, and he turned it off while he waited, impressed by the smooth mechanics, and the dawning sunrise outside the magnificent windows. Outside had the look of a farm. He could see several sprawling barns, and an orchard beyond them. A rich, green garden surrounded the building he was in, but it had the look of a kitchen garden, all vegetables and herbs.
“I wonder if this is the realm of the gods,’ he said into the steaming air. “I might be dead.”
He hoped he wasn’t dead, but it was possible. The rebellion, particularly messy and entirely his mad grandfather’s fault, had been dragging on for three years now. Edion only wished he had a way to check on his mother, who was heavily pregnant. His father was an early casualty of the rebellion, and he wished he regretted that death more than he did. But his mother, his kind, gentle mother who refused to kill a single spider, deserved safety.
The woman, her name was Reinette if he understood right, returned. There was a pile of soft fabric in her arms, and Edion sighed in true appreciation. Clothing. Clean, dry clothing that looked like it might even fit him. It was an odd fabric, and an unusual cut, but at least it was clean.
“Thank you,” he said sincerely, and kissed her hand again after she set the fabric aside where he could reach it easily. “I don’t know who you are, or where this is, but thank you. Perhaps we can find a few words between us, after this.”
Smiling now, she patted his shoulder, pointed at the bath, and exited, closing the door behind her with a click that seemed almost prim.
“Alright,” Edion said into the empty room as he began to shed his wet, filthy clothing. He could feel the panic still chewing at the edges of his mind, and crushed it down ruthlessly. He might not know where here was, but anywhere that greeted him with a healer’s care, a bath, and clean clothing couldn’t be all bad. “Bath, clothes, and then, perhaps, we can find a few words in common.”
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Sent Beyond:
Her farm is at stake His country is at war. Their worlds couldn’t be more different, until a mysterious portal drops him into her bedroom, and changes their lives for good.
Unspoken Words
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More Stories!
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