Free Valor of the Healer by Angela Highland Page A

with brutal strength to her feet did she find the lantern hung from the wooden beam that ran along the center of the ceiling. From another dangled a rope. With this he bound her, lashing her wrists together above her head.
    When he pulled the riding crop out of his belt, she knew what was coming. Fear blotted out almost everything else, but didn’t hide her master’s face as he caught her chin in his hand and jerked it up. His gaze burned into her, molten gold.
    “You healed the man who tried to kill me.”
    “I didn’t mean—”
    Faanshi caught herself, nearly choking in her effort to hold back the unthinking words, and the duke snarled, “You didn’t mean what?”
    He was going to beat her. There was no escaping it, even if she said what he wished to hear. She hadn’t meant to do the healing—she never did. The magic never gave her that choice. Yet the stranger had urged her not to apologize, and by Djashtet she would not. But her master would kill her if she said as much. So she retreated into the ridah prayers, gasping them out with as much strength and defiance as she could summon.
    The duke started, surprise and fury flooding his face. As he stepped back, the riding crop lashed forward.
    Fire cut across Faanshi’s side. In angry reply her magic welled to smother the pain, setting off fire within to match that without. Light spilled down her frame like water, pale and otherworldly against the lantern’s homier glow, and its presence only seemed to further fuel the wrath in the akreshi’s eyes.
    “You’ve forgotten a basic tenet of your existence, my girl. Your father was an elf. Your very existence is a sin. Do you want me to give you to the Hawks?”
    This time she couldn’t hold back the commanded reply. “No, akreshi .”
    “Do you want me to let Father Enverly Cleanse your taint from the world and put you to death?”
    The name of her master’s priest made her thrash where she hung, for she feared him almost as much as she feared her master. Something in her cried out that anything would be better than being locked away, caught between the priest’s implacable prayers and the sick chill they sent through her blood—or letting the hungry shadow in the duke’s mind blot out her own and make his lie of her so-called madness all too bitter a truth. But Faanshi couldn’t shriek those words aloud either. Pain and fear drowned her frail gleam of defiance even as she fought to keep it alight.
    “No, akreshi .”
    “I have seen the Anreulag Herself destroy Her enemies on the field of war. Do you want to burn in Her holy fire?”
    Her terror spiked even higher. To the duke’s people, the Anreulag was the Voice of the Gods. To Faanshi, She was the name and shape of her nightmares.
    “N-no, akreshi ...”
    “Then you must be reminded of your function.” The crop lashed her arm, provoking another flare of eldritch light. “You live because I will it. Do you understand me? You heal on my command!”
    All her senses churned in revolt, overwhelmed by the blows and her power’s struggle to mend the places they struck. Tears streamed down to soak her veil, while droplets of blood, escaping before her magic closed her wounds, trickled along her skin. Bile filled her throat, almost strangling the acknowledgement her master’s rage demanded.
    “I—I understand...”
    “Say it!”
    “I heal on your command...I heal on your command...”
    With each repetition the riding crop struck home.
    * * *
    This time , Ulima thought as she stole into the cellar, the jackal has almost killed her .
    Limp as the herbs and roots once stored in the little chamber, Faanshi dangled from the hook where she was tied. Bloodied rents marred her sari and the choli and silwar beneath, but through each slash in her garments, her skin glimmered without flaw. Tears, blood and bile fouled the veil meant to shield her face from infidel eyes, and it did nothing now to hide the shimmer of the slack features behind it. The girl didn’t