Page 4 of The Elven Healer's Apprentice

“The previous healer was a fool. The child needs cool air, water, and rest. Go fetch a bowl of water and clean cloths.” Though it was too late to save him, it wouldn’t hurt to make the child more comfortable. Besides, it was an opportunity to teach these people something.

When the woman returned, I showed her how to soak the cloths in the water and lay them over the boy’s fevered skin. “Do you have willow bark?”

She nodded, her eager eyes never leaving my face. “Our healer brews tea from it to ease aches and pains. She showed me how.”

“Then do that. Give it to the boy when it’s cool. It will ease his discomfort and lower the heat burning through him.”

Placing and replacing the water-soaked cloths, we worked in silence for a time before she grew bold enough to speak again. “You are doing all the things our healer instructed us to do before that awful charlatan showed up. Is it really the sweating sickness?”

“Yes.”

She let out a soft moan of distress before stifling it. But I heard it. Snapping around, I pinned her with an intense assessment. “Why the distress?”

“I survived it as a child, but others will fall ill.” Fear tightened her features.

“Most likely some have already.”

“Adela…” she whispered. “She complained of the same symptoms as Henri when I brought her food after they locked her up.”

Suspicion teased at my brain. “Why did they lock her up?”

“The warlord accused her of cursing Henri, but she would never. She loves the boy more than any of us. More than his mother did. ’Tis a shame.” Her sorrowful eyes fell on the face of the child. “Do you think he will live?”

If I spoke, I had to speak the truth. It was the cost of being elven. Not that I minded it, except in moments like these. “I doubt it.”

The crushing weight of grief, the desolate barrenness of hopelessness, I knew them so well. I still carried a measure of both after my mother’s death decades before. But to my surprise, neither of these lingered for long in the woman beside me.

“Might you have saved him if you had treated him earlier?” There was a strange desperation in her voice.

“Possibly.” I didn’t want to promise too much. I was unwilling to stay and nurse the entire population through an outbreak of sweating sickness. That was why I was teaching her, so she would teach others. As a survivor of a previous wave of sweating sickness, she had a chance of not falling ill or of enduring a mild case. She was my best bet.

“You must save Adela.” She eyed me with determination.

“Who?”

“Our healer, the warlord’s baseborn daughter. He hates her. Hates that the child adores her. Hectorius has decreed that if the boy dies, they will drag Adela to death.” The woman clutched my sleeve. “Please, Adela is ill, but already recovering. She will only need minimal care.”

I doubted that.

“Please take her with you.”

“I am not a shadow elf, woman. I cannot walk the shadows as they do.” Not that I would if I had the ability. I shivered at the thought. “I have no means of transporting her.”

“I can get a small cart to pull. She can rest inside.” Her grimness sharpened. “You will need to slip out to save yourself anyway. Once the boy dies, your life will be forfeited just as Adela’s. I will help you escape if you take Adela with you.”

Warring between what I wished to do and what I should, I grimaced. It was within my ability to leave. Any who opposedme would fall beneath my clubs. Emrys would forgive violence against humans if it was that or my life. But the part of me that railed against the waste of the fragile life of the boy before me also demanded I not turn my back on an opportunity to save another. I wouldn’t leave a soul to be killed simply because a child loved her more than his father.

“I will take her with me.”

“Thank you.” The woman’s eyes brightened with hope. “If Adela survives, I will be at peace.”

I didn’t have the heart to point out I couldn’t promise that.

Chapter Two

Merlon

Tugging my hand, the woman led me through darkened corridors and down three flights of stairs before stopping at a closed door. She released my hand so she could dig into her pocket.

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