Of Bonds Forged

Note: This story takes place after, "A Price Paid."

Note: This is a story chapter with no sex.

Chapter One

Rian watched helplessly, angry over what was happening to his child, and angrier still over the fact that to feel helplessness seemed to be all there was to do. He was her father. From the moment he first held her, he loved her. He never quite believed others when they told him that this deep, boundless well appeared within them the moment they held theirs. Maybe that was true of women, he'd thought. They carried it and felt it grow within so, for them, the child was, literally, always a part of them. For the man, though, he was certain love came, but it came with time. It came with watching them grow, explore, and change. He thought it came with days and years of building moments.

The moment he'd held her all those years ago after two children that never lived to see their birth, he laughed and he'd never shared with anyone why. But he'd laughed because he realized how completely, utterly, absurdly wrong he was. The moment he held that slightly bloated bundle of pink, she had burrowed herself into his soul never to be unseated. All those moments that he thought built love just deepened it in ways that he hadn't anticipated. At first she was special because she was his. As the years passed, he came to realize how special she just

was.

She wasn't just smart, she was clever; able to think on her feet and get things done with the little she had and an innate ability to make things she might need with other things. She seemed to know how the pieces of the world fit in ways he never taught her. She was kind and sweet when she believed no one saw, and aside from some stubbornness that came with thirteen years in the world as it seemed to for all children at thirteen years, she was a joy. Indeed, he was grateful for that stubbornness today because it was probably the only thing keeping her alive.

He stood there while his wife, Tiana, placed another cold compress on Ara's forehead. The darkness under her eyes, the paleness under her skin and her wildly unkempt hair painted the picture of a mother who hadn't slept in the days since Ara became so tired that she didn't have it in her to leave bed. Falen knew he didn't look much better, taking up for her, insisting that she sleep, but she never quite did. She would close her eyes and doze lightly, ears still open for any sound from the young one, instantly awake at the sound of her voice or if the wet, hacking cough went on longer than expected.

Now, that's almost all there was for the girl; wet coughs, fitful sleep, a raw throat and whispered words and the two she just spoke were like daggers through his heart.

"I'm sorry."

Her mother tried to keep her tone playful, so it sounded a bit dismissive, "Oh, for what?"

"Being a bother," she rasped, her glassy eyes glancing from her to him, speaking of them both as she spoke to her mother. "You look tired." Whether she believed, hoped it, or was trying to remain hopeful, she added, "I really feel like I'm starting to feel better. You can go to sleep if you want to."

She waved a hand. "Eh. That's not something you have to worry about. Your father and I sleep too much anyway."

Ara tried to laugh and two chuckles turned into that wet, hacking cough. Her mother put a cloth to mouth as the girl leaned to her side to absorb what came up from the cough, then rubbed Ara's sternum with the palm of her hand, trying to ease her pain after she'd collapsed back onto the bed. She kept rubbing gently, as it seemed to help after the fact and it lulled her into another restless sleep.

Her mother kept rubbing even after, hoping that that little bit that she could do helped her rest better. She didn't want to stop being that comfort when he tapped her shoulder to let it be known he wanted to talk to her, but she stood up and followed him the few steps to the far corner of the house next to the dining table. He was the one that spoke first, looking her in the eye, knowing she looked like he looked and felt. "She's not getting any better."

Tiana latched onto her daughters words like a lifeline, raising her whisper, "She is. She says she is and, look, she hasn't even brought much of anything up all day. She's getting better."

"You look, Tiana. Her cough is as wet as it ever was and worse. She's not bringing anything up because she doesn't have the strength to anymore. The medicines aren't enough. We need to get her to a healer now."

"Where, Felen? Two days away. More?" Her anger flashed in her dark eyes. "And in which direction?" In more remote stretches, such as the place they called home, away from even collections of homes too small to be called a village, were served by independent, sometimes random healers doing wide circuits in those areas, selling and trading their services as they went. To say that there was not a regular healer to be had was something of an understatement because, for even those healers that decided to take it up, there wasn't much of a living in it.

As such, people, if they were able, headed to the nearest real village or traded what actual medicine they'd gotten left over from the last time a neighbor hours or more away, had a healer in their home. Or they just made do with what they had. "We'll head to the farmers by the lake. Healers seem to make their way there fairly often, so there might be one there now."

"So, two days?"

"Two days," he agreed. "But she needs help."

She asked the obvious. "What if there's no one there?"

"Then it's another two days to Esker, but she can't stay here."

Her emotions were on the razor's edge and it showed in the open mockery. "So she's too sick to stay here, but let's bundle her up for,

maybe

a week's ride to

maybe

find a healer."

He held his breath before speaking. "If we don't actually

see

better by morning, we're going because otherwise our daughter is going to

die

in this house, and, Goddess, help me, I'm not just going to sit here and let it happen."

Rage and fear welled within her and she shook her hands because she didn't trust herself if she started shaking him. "Ara is not going to die and you're not going to take her in the middle of winter to..."

Before she could finish venting that desperation onto him, there were three sharp knocks at the door, resonating as though the person on the other side was using the side of their fist in order to make certain they were heard. The argument was forgotten as the two exchanged wondering looks as to who might be knocking on their door at this time of day, and, to a lesser extent, at all.

He went to the door with his wife half a step behind and he opened it, letting the cold in as the sun was about to set to see two women before him, cloaked well against the elements. One was tall and lean with short, auburn hair and eyes of piercing gray. The other was a good bit shorter with eyes an attractive light green that seemed to catch a little of the light by themselves and naturally curly hair of a lighter brown.

Their obvious differences in appearance weren't the only ones to be seen. The shorter one, with her full cheeks and pleasant smile looked like someone versed in meeting people and making friends while the other one, while not openly disdainful, seemed just as cool as the weather outside. It was the shorter one that spoke.

"Hello, my name is Vale, and this my associate Sylanna," she said with a slight gesture with the other dipping her head slightly in acknowledgment. "We're new to this area and looking for opportunities of all kinds. As we've made our way along, one of your neighbors said that you had a sick child here. My associate is well-versed in the healing arts and we thought perhaps there still might be a need, though neither of us will be disappointed if she's well."

They looked at one another, mother and father mirroring speechless shock for a time before Tiana steeped her hands against her face, doing the best she could not to break down entirely and being only partially successful at holding back the release of days worth of pain and despair. "The Goddess is real. Praise Her, the Goddess is real." No one seemed to notice the brief, pained look on Sylanna's face at the notion. "Our daughter needs and She sends a healer to our door." She reached for Sylanna as though grabbing for the last lifeline while Sylanna resigned herself to being dragged in that way and led to the girl.

Rian was just as relieved and hopeful as she, but expressed it in more quiet excitement. "Yes. Please. Please come in."

Vale accepted the invitation and looked around. It was a small, clean, comfortable looking home that looked just big enough for three. "This is a lovely place you have. My own home as a child wasn't much different."

"Fond memories, I hope."

She smiled and kept it on even as her remembrances turned more sad. "Mostly." She focused her attention back on him, keeping her good nature. "But I imagine that's true of many children, don't you? I'm sure yours will look back fondly as well."

He glanced at the floor, hoping that Ara got the chance to look back fondly...or at all. "I'd like to think so."

Sylanna called out loudly enough so that perhaps the father would answer, as the girl's mother was still so overwhelmed with hope and gratitude that she was blubbering over this, that, and the Goddess. "What's the young one's name?"

"Ara," her father said, coming to the doorway of her little room to see her frail form limp in her bed. "Her name is Ara. Can you help her?"

"Oh, please," Tiana whimpered. "Please help."

"Ara?" Sylanna's touch down her cheek was gentleness itself. "Can you hear me, Ara?"

There was no response beyond a moment's attempt to lift her head at the sound of her name, but she was just too tired and it was just too hard. After her best attempt, her brow smoothed and she slipped back a bit until all that could be heard beyond her mother's sadness was the crackling and popping sounds from her chest.

"Can you..."

Sylanna cut her off more calmly than her inner feelings wanted to. "I'm trying."

Vale took that as her cue and hurriedly moved in, taking Tiana's hand and guiding her with her other hand on her shoulder, turning her toward the doorway, "Why don't we step clear and let my associate work. What's your name?"

She tried to twist her head all the way around to keep an eye on her young one as she let herself be moved. "What? Oh? Tiana. My name is Tiana."

"Rian," her husband said quickly. "I apologize for our rudeness."

Vale shook her head, refusing to hear any of it. "You do not have to apologize for forgetting pleasantries when you have much more important things on your mind." She kept Tiana close because the likelihood that, in her current state, she might rush in at the slightest unknown sound from her daughter, seemed more likely than not. "Are you a healer, too?"

"No, Tiana. While I have other skills of value, it's Sylanna that has a depth of knowledge of the body."

No one needed the details of that depth. It was enough that she knew what she was doing. Vale watched as Sylanna's fingers twitched and moved along over her patient's body, gathering the power she needed to see within. As the power coalesced between her hands and Ara's body, part of Vale was elsewhere, for it was in a house not unlike this one where a little girl watched a similar scene with her once strong father now frail in his bed.

At first, it was nothing to begin with and he refused to bother. Then he had to work and take care of his family, so there just wasn't time for all that nonsense. Then, the medicines were fine and they were helping. And they did for a while, long enough to where his family deluded themselves into thinking he was just getting better slowly. When those stopped helping, but before the descent began again, he added, "Healers are just too expensive. Do you realize how long I'll have to work to get that money back?"

By the time his wife swallowed her deference, put her foot down and demanded a real healer come, it was too late, his body was shutting down and wouldn't respond to magic. It happened because, as powerful as magic was in healing, sometimes, when the body began to end, it simply decided it was time, and no one truly understood why. For a long time after that, particularly in the face of the hardships that befell that little girl and her family after her father's death, she hated him for giving up even as she loved him for every day that he was her father.

When, after she learned more about magic and understood that it wasn't like what she'd told herself as a girl, she carried shame at having had those thoughts, but it brought her peace to understand magic enough to know that that idea was simply wrong, even if it would never end the pain of watching him drift away looking not unlike that girl before her.

Losing focus on everything else, Sylanna followed the infection through the body. It wasn't unusual in and of itself unless the sufferer was a very old, very young, or already sick when it found them. What was unusual was the flesh around it. It looked weaker than it should for a girl in her place in life.

"Is she a sickly child? Does she get this or anything like it a lot?"

"No," Rian said firmly. "No, not at all. She's always been strong and almost never sick, and never like this. If she didn't get better by morning we were planning on taking her in search of a healer."

Tiana gave him a glance at the notion of that conversation having been resolved, but said nothing of it. "Even then, it was just a stuffy nose and sore throat for a few days," Tiana added, eager to be helpful to her.

"All, right, though I expect she wouldn't have lived beyond another day or so. She's barely taking air."

She ignored their looks of horror and Vale's expression of shock and annoyance as she placed herself on the bed over the girl, pressing her hands firmly on each side of her torso over her ribs, fingers wide apart and pressing into the flesh enough so she could feel the crackle of the fluid that came with every breath. She could see the colors of the infection. She could look deeper and see it clustered into the fine passages of her lungs. The flesh was raw, irritated, and weak. And her blood. She could see the colors of the sickness in the veins, but when she looked beyond it, she could see something else, but it was hard to define amidst the wounded flesh.

"So this is her first serious illness?"

"It is," he told her.

What Sylanna saw flowed through the girl along with the infection, hidden by it. But it had none of the tells of life so it wasn't an opportunistic secondary infection either. "When," she began, delicately exploring her lungs and the damage done, "when she started getting sick and you realized it was something beyond minor, what did you do? Have you given her medicines?"

"Of course," Tiana told her quickly, anxious to make sure that Sylanna knew that she wasn't a neglectful mother or one who believed that whatever would happen was up to the Goddess. Healer's and medicines were in the world as expressions of Her will and they were meant to be used. "As soon as the cough started getting worse I went to our neighbors east, the Sabines, and got some of the Hynt oil they had left from when their sons were sick that they knew was still good and to our neighbor Myra to the north. She had some Ginweed extract that she got from a potion master the last time one came through."

"Reputable?"

Rian was certain of his answer. "He's been coming through for years. No one has ever had cause to complain."

'Other than the oil and the extract all I've done is all the normal things you do for sickness like this: broth, tea with honey..."

There was nothing wrong with either of those, but something clicked in her mind, "Other home remedies?"

Tiana paused, "Well, yes. Everything my mother taught me how to do."

She closed her eyes and counted slowly. Even so, her reply was not sarcasm free as she released Ara and stepped from the bed. "Show me all the things your mother taught you to use."

Tiana rushed to the small cabinet near and above the cookstove and put the various glass bottles, small and some slightly larger atop it, with the harsh sound of glass on metal and the clinking of glass on glass. Vale watched Sylanna begin to take each in turn before the last of the five came down, lifting the stopper and scenting each in turn.

Spicy so that your nose burned? Hynt. A scent not unlike a grain meal? Ginweed. She took the largest bottle next and when the stopper popped free she didn't need to work to identify it. Her jaw tightened as she felt compelled to ask the rhetorical question in hopes that hearing the answer aloud might make the insanity even slightly more bearable, "You gave her this?"

Tiana nodded. "To break up the wet in her lungs, two spoons a day."

It failed to make the stupid more bearable. "This is

toxic

."

She began to shrink away from the glare, it alone beginning to impart upon her the magnitude of the disdain the woman had for what she'd done. "I was...careful not to give her too much." Her pitch was raised ever so slightly as though she decided at the last moment that making it a question might be better.

"Too much?" She snorted at the very notion, her anger growing with each word. "So, because your mother or your grandmother feeds you some old wives' tale about how this and that is just fine, in complete, open mockery of common sense, and, just because you didn't die from it or watch someone die from it, oh, mother must be right and I'll use it, too. People

strip paint with this."

Sylanna put her finger in the bottle and angled it sideways enough to wet her finger with the contents. She put the bottle down, muttered, "Damn fool," loudly enough to be heard and headed back to Ara's room. Her left hand focused and manipulated her sight while she put the solvent to the young girl's tongue. She watched carefully. She watched the solvent slip through the tissues of her tongue her and, now that she knew what she was looking for, saw the flesh flare more brightly as it came under attack.

Sylanna's anger gave way to open mockery as she turned back to her, using her full, imposing height to maximum effect as she approached. "Surprise, dear lady, toxins are always toxic. In this case, this is a toxin your daughter has a particular sensitivity to. The toxin attacked her organs, masked by the infection, and, in turn, the infection ran roughshod through her weakened body."

Tiana's eyes were wide as the enormity of it turned her skin pale as death. "So I was...making her worse?"

"I find the phrase, 'killing her,' more appropriate, because, yes, that is the result. Or it would have been had 'the Goddess not sent me to your door.' You may wish to consider the probability that, in addition to that, she may have sent me to tell you to stop feeding your daughter poison."

So, and listen carefully so you don't miss anything,

stop feeding your daughter poison, you fool.

Would you also feed her lamp oil if she had trouble seeing? Who knows, it might work. It might make her eyes take in more light because lamp oil is used in lamps and lamps make rooms brighter."

"Sylanna!" Vale's tone had a volume and harshness she so seldom used it felt uncomfortable even to her own ear. "That's enough. It's

not

helpful."

Vale had resisted Mistress Lia's insistence that she pair with the woman on this task or any other. As a matter of fact, she would have been happy to never see the woman who had attacked her, Mistress Lia herself, or the kingdom, again. Sylanna and her two compatriots were hired by Etan Strannix, a powerful merchant disgruntled over the fact that Mistress Lia, head of Vale's mage guild, had helped his wife escape a life of his control and emotional abuse.