Free Valor of the Healer by Angela Highland Page B

rouse as Ulima cut her down and laid her gently upon her pallet. She scarcely breathed. Only the faintest pulse within her throat told Ulima that Faanshi lived at all.
    “Forgive me, child.” She stripped the damaged raiment away, voicing the words only because the girl couldn’t hear her. Ulima never had disputed the law that proclaimed the product of an unhallowed union out-of-caste, even if she carried noble blood, even if she were the daughter of one’s own clan. But no one, not even a casteless orphan born of sin, deserved to be beaten worse than any beast.
    Beneath the girl’s garments Ulima found the direr wounds, the ones Faanshi’s magic still fought to erase. They’d stopped bleeding, but livid bruises still darkened her flesh. At the touch of the clean, damp cloth Ulima drew to those bruised places, the young slave’s body shook.
    Then, barely audibly, she sobbed.
    “I can’t bear it anymore, okinya ...how did I sin? Why does Djashtet hate me?”
    There was little Ulima could say to that. Thus in silence she cradled Faanshi to her breast, until the convulsions subsided and the fitful sparks of light along her limbs died away, taking the bruises with them. In silence she washed her, clothing her once more in garments cast aside by the akresha Duchess Khamsin’s Tantiu-born handmaiden. There were no castes in the cellar’s gloom. There was only a girl thrashed to within a hair’s breadth of her next life. The sacred ridahs bid Ulima to succor her, and in silence she prayed to the Lady of Time that she could keep the girl alive long enough for Her holy will to be fulfilled.
    To her surprise, the goddess bestowed upon her an answer.
    Ulima had visions sometimes, a gift of Djashtet. One had guided her northward with the household of Yamineh, newly made an Adalon duke’s wife. Another had prompted her to save Yamineh’s life when Kilmerredes would have killed her, with her claim that if he let her carry her child to term, then it would grow up to save his life in turn. More than once, in her heart of hearts, she’d regretted that vision’s coming true a scant handful of months after Faanshi’s power had blossomed—but no, the virulent fever that had overrun the province that year had not stood against the girl’s magic.
    This newest vision flared up now without warning, fragmented images and happenings uniting in a clarion whole, so swiftly that they overwhelmed her sight both without and within.
    A battered dove feathered in fire and earth , pinned beneath a lion’s paws —
    A one - eyed raven harrying the lion , darting up and away from mighty claws before the lion can strike —
    Hawks circling high overhead , their shadows falling upon the dove but unable to dampen the starlight gleaming along her form . One hawk breaking ranks to plunge lower , with a hunting call that melds in unexpected harmony with the dove’s cries —
    And an ancient snow - white owl diving into the lion’s eyes , making him lift his paws from the dove — even though the dove’s only path of flight is straight up to the host of hawks .
    It might have taken a moment or an hour for the vision to coalesce. Once it was gone, Ulima stared down at Yamineh’s daughter.
    “Great Lady of Time, you can’t mean this?”
    Sweat beaded the old woman’s brow, and she pressed a gnarled hand to her chest, fighting to steady her breathing and her thoughts. It was the simplest of meditation exercises, practiced over decades, yet it brought her no peace now. Nor did it bring any answer to the question she whispered, save the one she already knew. That was no answer at all, for it meant taking Faanshi from the lord who would destroy her—and yielding her to the Church who would do no less.
    The girl moaned, shattering the old woman’s indecision. Vision or no, there was need before her now, and that at least she couldn’t deny. Laying her fingers along Faanshi’s brow, meeting anguished young eyes, she said, “Djashtet doesn’t