Chapter 19: Healing

The stop at the resupply hamlet was brief—and distinctly unsatisfying. After a week on bedrolls, I’d been hoping for a real bed, rustic food, maybe a crackling hearth and warm mead. I’d tried mead back on Earth. It was good. The inn I pictured had simple comforts, kind-hearted folk, and jovial company.

What we found was distinctly lacking all those things.

We’d set off in the morning after my argument with Laura. The previous night had been... tense. We’d all slept separately and taken our watches. After Asha had spoken with Erica, the two had come back to the camp and you could have cut the air with a knife. Erica went straight to get her bow and then left to hunt and she didn’t say a word to me at all. I guess it was the best I could have hoped for, but it still stung.

Asha informed me that she had taken it about as well as we had feared. ‘Devastated’ was the word that Asha had used. Laura put a hand on my shoulder and assured me that she would come around. Then the knight went after Erica to make sure she didn’t bump into any bandit that might have been hanging about to cause trouble.

Asha had given me a small kiss on the cheek and thanked me for letting her handle it. She believed that Erica understood my reasoning, even accepted it, but was still angry that I didn’t feel as confident in the purity of our love as she did. And if I had ever felt old in comparison to youthful naiveté, it was then. As much as I felt love for these girls, and even needed their company, I knew true love grew out of shared experiences, not attraction. It would take many years of arguments and apologies, of shared pain and joy, of periods of separation, longing and reuniting before our love matched what she thought we already had. But she had no frame of reference for that. She’d never experienced what I had with Sasha on Earth.

Sasha. She had told me not to let her memory get in the way. But I had just blown full steam ahead with Asha and Erica. Had I forgotten about her so quickly? Hadn’t I disgraced what we had by pursuing not one, but two girls half her age? Maybe. But I had to move on. What I’d found now wasn’t better—just different. And, in its own way, definitely worth pursuing. And the more I thought about the dream I had of my late wife, the more I believed it was truly her speaking to me.

So, I had a path. Let Erica and Asha heal, find a way to reduce the power imbalance in our relationship, and then pursue our happiness.

We’d slept that night with our bedrolls apart, at compass points around the fire. Erica still hadn’t spoken to me all that afternoon and the way we set up our watches, I didn’t speak to her during the night either.

All that day whilst we had been travelling, I had been feeling hollow inside. The mood was sombre and there was definite tension. Laura tried to engage me in conversation, but my thoughts were elsewhere. I felt like I was just giving her single-word answers. Asha was speaking with her sister and getting much the same responses. Then the two women swapped and I had Asha trying to lift my mood whilst the knight tried to make Erica understand.

And the day’s energy spent worrying and brooding meant that the four of us were emotionally exhausted by the time we made it to the hamlet.

“James Brook,” as it was known, was an ugly collection of buildings that radiated around a walled yard and an inn. The trading outlet was closing up as we arrived upon sunset and, as tired as we were, we had no interest in resupply anyway. We all just wanted a bed and a good night’s rest. Had we known what we were going to get, we would have kept walking.

The inn was a shambles of mismatched furniture, half of it broken, and all of it filthy. The clientele weren’t much different, a combination of rough-looking men and women who sat hunched over their drinks and bowls of food. If it could be called that. A cauldron of something foul was simmering over the fire and whilst it didn’t smell noxious, as a man who prided himself on having a few cooking skills, I could instantly tell it was a pot of overcooked root vegetables, boiled to death into a thick sludge.

The twins were staring and being stared at in turn. Their perfectly clean skin stood out a mile in this den of filth and cut corners. Whilst we didn’t provoke that movie-style reaction you see in old westerns where the whole place freezes the minute you walk in, people’s conversations slowly ceased as they noticed the four of us, obviously out of place. There were only about 15 to 20 people in the place, but in the small inn, it seemed very crowded.

Approaching the bar, Laura whispered to me, “They won’t have more than two rooms, if that. They might only have one. We might have to sleep in the common room. We’ll need to make some decisions about how tempted you are to break your new arrangement.”

I shot her a look. “Maybe I’ll sleep outside with the pigs,” to which Laura chuckled. “In this fine establishment? I doubt you could afford such luxury.”

The innkeeper rounded the bar from delivering ale and started pouring another round. “What can I get you?” he asked, harried.

“What rooms do you have?” Laura inquired.

“Common room is two silver each in a shared bed. Five for a bed of your own. Private rooms are two gold upfront plus a gold for each additional person after the second,” he said.

Laura scoffed at the man, “That’s highway robbery. Are the blankets made of unicorn hair?”

The bartender screwed up his face in a scowl, then looked to me. “This ain’t no highway. We make money when we can to keep eating when we can’t. But I’ll cut you a deal. You can have the room for free if the girls sleep in the common room tonight. No charge for any of you,” he said.

My blood boiled at the implication but I quashed my rage. I stepped forward and firmly dropped four gold on the bar, “Two private rooms,” I said firmly, then tossed another down to chase it. “We have two horses outside. Do you have a stable hand?”

The man looked disappointed for a second, then nodded in the affirmative and barked some orders to a boy in his mid-teens who jumped to action and raced outside.

“I’ll show you to your rooms,” he said.

We followed the man up the stairs and down a long wing with a single door on one side. The communal sleeping area had four or five large beds which could fit multiple people, as well as space on the floor. I noticed most of the beds were already full as I passed.

The two rooms made me hesitate in disgust at the smell. The buckets beside the beds were obviously weeks past being due for cleaning and the beds themselves didn’t smell much better.

“Two gold for this?” Laura sneered.

The barkeep shrugged. “Common room is free if you girls don’t mind company,” he said.

I turned to the man and gave him a fierce stare, “I think we are fine from here. You may return to your guests. I assume that we will not be disturbed this evening?” I asked.

He shrugged again. “I can’t speak for my clientele. And these doors don’t lock. Someone might barge in. Won’t be a problem as long as you’re friendly,” he said.

Nope. Fuck this guy.

I moved forward and realised I was quite a bit taller than the barkeep.

“Are you saying that you can’t guarantee these women’s safety… or won’t?” my hands were balled in fists as I pressed forward, and the slimy creature found himself backed up against a wall as he suddenly realised our size difference. Erica and Asha were smirking slightly at the barkeep’s discomfort, or at my show of protection, or something. Laura had her hand on the pommel of her sword and was looking like murder.

“Wait, wait,” stuttered the sleazy bartender. “Listen, I know the folks out there and your elves drew attention from the moment you walked in. They are going to want you to share! And I can’t stop them.”

“We can,” I sneered coldly, then I glanced at Laura as she stared menacingly at the creep.

“Either you keep your clientele under control, or I reduce their population by half,” the knight threatened menacingly.

“No, it’s too late for that…” he said, shaking. “They’ll kill me if I stand in their way. Half of them are criminals. The other half don’t care.”

I shook my head. “We’ll be down for dinner in a moment,” I spat the words and stood aside for him to scurry down to the main room, which he did quickly.

“We tried things my way last time and I got an arrow in the shoulder for my trouble,” I moaned to Laura. My shoulder was aching, though not nearly as badly as I had thought it would. “It might be worth trying your way in this instance,” I added.

She nodded. “We could move on and camp? I honestly don’t see any benefit in staying, the beds don’t even look any more comfortable than the ground.”

I nodded. “Girls?” I asked, looking for their opinion.

Erica glanced at Asha, and I could have sworn they were speaking telepathically as twins always seem to be able to do.

“I don’t feel safe here,” Erica said quietly. The first words she’d spoken to me all day. “I’d rather camp than have to be worried about men bursting into my room.”

I turned to Laura. “Your call,” I said.

“We should leave,” she said after a moment of thought. “Even though we could barricade the doors, we could remove the threat entirely by simply making it not worth following us. If we stay, we’ll probably have company at some point in the evening. And I think we’ve all spilled enough blood in the last few days to last a lifetime.”

I nodded, agreeing. It was interesting to see Laura’s change in outlook. I imagine that, until recently, she’d have no problem barricading the door and killing any man who tried to assault them. Whether she realised it or not, Laura had just traded her comfort to save men from their own bad decisions. That change—quiet, unspoken—made me proud and I was pleasantly surprised. We went back downstairs into the common room, hoping to slip out without drawing too much attention.

I almost thought we would.

But just as we were at the door, a hand shot out and grabbed Erica’s. The offending limb belonged to a large and dirty man, sitting at a table near the door, who grinned through rotting teeth.

“Awww, I was hoping you’d stick around, cutie, let me buy you a drink,” he slurred.

Erica squealed in fear and Laura placed her hand on her sword and drew half the blade length quietly from its scabbard. I stared the man down as he undressed the girls with his eyes.

“We’re leaving. Go back to your drinks,” I said.

The man sneered at me with a glazed expression. He was obviously drunk, but not so far gone that he was going to collapse any time soon. He didn’t release his hand on Erica.

“Fuck off. You can’t keep these fine women all to yourself. It’s not fair. We’re going to have a little fun,” he said.

Laura was about to remove the man’s arm at the sleeve when a voice called out across the bar, panicked and abnormally loud.

“Fuck! Tarvron, what the hell are you doing?” someone shouted.

A familiar looking man moved through the crowd, keeping his eyes on Laura and myself as if he was watching a coiled snake. He grabbed the man by the shoulders and pulled him back into his seat. The drunken brute, Tarvron apparently, was about to belt this newcomer for intervening until the man hissed words I only just caught, probably due to my new elvish hearing and possibly due to the fact he wasn’t nearly as quiet as he seemed to think he was.

“It’s THEM!”

“What do you mean it’s them?” the drunk responded. All eyes were on the new man now and he was frantically looking back at us as if he was terrified of us.

“WHAT?” the man yelled loudly.

I recognised him. Or to be precise, I recognised what I had done to him. It was the one I’d spared the night of the bandit raid, the one I’d deafened by boxing his ears. He was still deaf, hence his raised voice.

“THE WOMAN KILLED FIVE OF US ON HER OWN! LOOK AT HER!” he shouted.

All eyes turned to Laura with her sword half-drawn from her scabbard and a face of fury and wrath burned into the crowd of men. To be honest, in that moment she scared me a little too and I wasn’t surprised when a full third of the men present went back to studiously inspecting their drinks.

Tarvron looked at the man’s frantic face and shrugged. “Probably had too much to drink to enjoy it anyway,” he muttered as he released Erica’s arm.

The deaf man visibly relaxed and turned to me, pleading. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Can you undo what you did to me? Please, I can’t live like this,” he said. He looked haggard and pale, as if he hadn’t slept for days.

I glanced at Laura to see if her expression betrayed her opinion on his request, but the knight was staring down another brute who wasn’t as convinced of her lethality as Tarvron was. I put my hands up in a gesture of peace, wincing as my lacerated shoulder complained again, and stepped slowly towards him. Bambinae’s power flowed through me and I could feel his injury. I’d absolutely destroyed the man’s eardrum and wasn’t surprised he wasn’t hearing anything.

He looked at me pleading with his eyes to help him and I knew, despite how this man had intended to hurt us, that Bambinae expected me to show mercy.

I placed a hand on his ear and allowed a trickle of her healing energy to flow into his head. His eyes widened as he felt me slowly piece together the ruptured membranes in his inner ear. But before I was done, I took my hand away.

I spoke loudly. “You will hear better now, and better still tomorrow. If we are permitted to leave peacefully I will heal one more ailment from a person of your choice.”

The man was beside himself. He dropped to his knees crying with relief and clawed at my trousers. He was sobbing, begging and apologising all at once. I only heard the occasional words through his tears but the man had clearly been terrified by the thought that he might never hear again.

“OK… OK… It’s OK,” I said, lifting the man to his feet, embarrassed by his display. “Just… we don’t want any trouble, we just want to leave peacefully.”

The man sniffed and nodded and turned to the crowd. “I can hear again! He healed me! My name is Masian, I am in your debt.”

The mood in the crowd shifted at once. These people were poor and lived hard lives. Every one of them had ailments and things that were wrong with them, injuries or illnesses that had plagued them for years. They looked towards Masian who had been given the key to their relief.

“I’m Mathew. Pick the one who suffers the most,” I said.

Masian nodded and called forward a man who stumbled with a severe limp. I grimaced as I noticed his deformity; I felt it the moment he stepped forward, I knew something was wrong. His whole body was twisted—his spine curved, one shoulder higher than the other, and his hip looked like it had been pulled out of line years ago and never fixed. I didn’t know the name for it, but I’d seen enough to guess: his muscles had pulled his spine sideways as he grew, and that bent everything else with it. The kind of thing that doesn’t heal on its own—just gets worse, year by year. This was a severe deformity and I began to despair that I had promised more than I could deliver. But Bambinae honoured my charity, I could feel her take over and I saw what needed to be done.

Rather than as before, when I had been heavily taxed by restoring Laura, this time it seemed like Bambinae took over completely and spared me the exertion. I wondered what this was going to cost her. The man cried in pain as his body rapidly healed and his spine realigned. His bones twisted and reformed and he passed out from the breaking and reforming of his body. But then, just as the crowd was believing that I was killing the poor man, he awoke with a gasp and his eyes locked mine with surprise.

He slowly got to his feet, and took a tentative step, and then another. Then he balanced on a foot, then the other. He gazed in amazement before wrapping his arms around Masian’s middle and dancing with delight. The mood of the inn changed again and suddenly there were cheers and cries and people shaking my hand and demanding my name.

Erica shouted over the top of all of them until she brought them to a stunned silence.

“You have no idea what you have avoided here today. How LUCKY you are,” Erica’s young voice burned with an intensity that I hadn’t heard before. I’d seen her determination that day when she pledged herself to me, but since then I’d only seen a girl who resembled a long-sick puppy. This was something new, something more confident. Something I was finding very attractive.

“I have seen this man tear through armed knights. I have seen him rip men apart. I have seen him heal mortal wounds and yes, two nights ago this man helped repel an attack by local bandits who wanted to infringe my honour,” she said.

She stared at Tarvron who at least had the decency to avert his gaze.

“Do you know why we were leaving?” she demanded of them all. “Because Laura and Mathew didn’t WANT to kill you all. And make no mistake. They WOULD have killed you all if Masian had not intervened,” she said.

Masian nodded and added to her speech in awe. “Sir Mathew even took an arrow in the shoulder. The men who went in to finish him off never came out alive,” he said.

I chuckled inwardly. It seemed I had a fan. That was new.

But Erica wasn’t done. “What you have seen here is not the actions of a man, but those of a Paladin. Like the holy warriors of old! For he is chosen of Bambinae, the Healing Mother and she preaches mercy. Mercy he has shown here tonight. He has repaid your wickedness with healing. Your lust with love. He has paid for hospitality that he will not receive. And he lives her word so that others may feel her love for her people,” she said.

The crowd was staring at her, listening to her emphatic speech. Hell, I was staring at her as if seeing her in a new light. She had been eloquent, persuasive, charismatic. She was commanding. The beautiful elf continued and I was almost so lost in my admiration for her speech that I almost missed something very important…

Her eyes were beginning to glow.

“If you are at all grateful to be given your lives this night. If you are at all grateful for the gift of healing here today…” she said.

Her hands were beginning to glow, she was radiating a subtle light. Then her voice became supernaturally loud and it became acutely apparent that it was no longer Erica speaking to us. The crowd recoiled in fear.

“… THEN REPENT YOUR SINS AND GIVE YOURSELF OVER TO THE WORSHIP OF THE HEALING MOTHER. FOR SHE HAS CARED FOR ALL OF YOU YOUR ENTIRE LIVES AND WANTS TO BRING YOU BACK TO HER LOVING EMBRACE,” she proclaimed.

Erica collapsed, as did many of the patrons, and I caught her as she fell. She fluttered her eyes open and shut for a moment and then took a breath. The gorgeous elf looked up at me and suddenly she was Erica again.

“My Hero,” she said softly. “I’m OK… It’s OK, Master.”

She took her feet and the crowd backed away. Laura, horrified, moved quickly as they recovered from their shock and she ushered us out the door.

“Time to leave,” she said.

And before I could speak to Erica, before any of us could understand what had just happened, the knight had us striding across the clearing and to the stables. She rebuffed all queries, brooked no argument, simply bridled our horses and put us all into the saddle.

“Laura… what is going on? After all that we could probably stay here,” I argued as she thrust the reins of a horse into my hands.

“You are kidding me?” she spat. And there was fear in her eyes. Genuine fear. “We have to get you and her away from this place as soon as possible. When this reaches Arnias or the Iron Shield in Westfall we are done. DONE!” she said.

I thought I understood, but Laura obviously disagreed because she continued. “Bambinae just spoke THROUGH Erica. Not influenced, not inspired. Not encouraged. She manifested a GODDESS. That hasn’t happened in centuries. WHEN news spreads of this… we need to be FAR AWAY FROM HERE. We need to look different, we need to hide the completely unforgettable identical elf twins and we somehow need to keep a low profile,” she said.

I thought for a moment. Then I realised what it would be like if something like this happened during the Spanish Inquisition.

“So what, Westfall by morning?” I suggested.

But Laura shook her head. “At this point, we needed to be in Westfall yesterday,” she said.