Page 35 of Healer to the Ash King
Springing along on small light feet, Khloe takes a final leap and reaches her volunteer. She can’t lift him, but they both grip the rope and manage to fly across the muck to the finalist’s platform. Sabre grabs her volunteer around the waist and swings one-handed to the landing point.
Screams erupt from the crowd, and I glance to my right.
Teagan has just fallen, and an iron spike has impaled her neck. Blood pumps from the wound. Her eyes are wide, glassy, her mouth opening and closing like a fish.
I’m already unfurling my magic, gold light streaking toward the injury. But I can’t heal her unless I can get her off that spike first.
Without thinking twice, I leap off my platform and into the gauntlet.
Idyllic though my home may look, it has its dangers. Volcanoes, of course, and the ash-burrowers—giant spiked snakes that like to nest near the mountains’ roots. Between the smooth green fields there are ravines and rockfalls, poisonous plants and toxic insects.
I’ve done my share of running from danger.
But nothing I’ve experienced compares to the wild, heart-throbbing rush of racing through peril toward someone who is dying.
I don’t even know how I make it through. Years of dashing across fields and working long hours have strengthened my legs—years of wielding water and harvesting plants have toned my arms—it all coalesces somehow, and I fly through the obstacles, ducking and darting, sprinting along a beam until I reach Teagan.
She’s dying. I have mere seconds in which to save her.
I lift her off the spike, gritting my teeth against the horrific squelch of her flesh. Immediately I send my magic into the wound, sealing up the damage. The more energy I push into a healing, the faster it is, and I pour everything I have into Teagan. The platform under my knees is slick with blood, saturating my white pants. I don’t care.
She’s sealed up now, and the torn parts inside are fixed. I take a moment to replenish a bit of her blood, but the rest will have to wait.
Teagan sits up, blood-soaked hair sticking to her shoulders. “Thank you,” she whispers.
“Go,” I say.
She struggles to her feet, her dress hanging ragged from her body, and she leaps back into the fray.
I hesitate on the platform, gazing around. Nearly all the contestants have reached their marks now. One pair falls from their rope into the sludge and gets lacerated by the monsters—but they manage to haul themselves onto the finisher’s walkway. They’re screaming, bleeding, but not dying.
The girl who refused to participate is still back at the starting platform. All the volunteers except hers have been rescued, yet she stays put, sobbing. I feel sorry for her, but I’m angry, too. Her volunteer’s pillar is almost submerged in the ooze—only a little of it is sticking out. The man atop the pillar has peed himself; urine soaks the front of his pants in a dark splotch, and suddenly I realize why he’s so frightened.
Every toothy, razor-backed creature in the ooze has congregated around his post. When it sinks, he will be attacked by all of them. They will tear him apart, suck him under, drown him and devour him. I won’t be able to fix him after that.
He is going to die.
I’m close enough to the end of the course that I can see the Ash King’s cold, haughty features more clearly. “Do something!” I scream at him. “Stop this!”
I know he hears me, but he only stares, implacable.
With a frustrated shriek, I leap forward, grabbing onto a net of thorny chains and clambering across it while the tiny spikes stab my palms. Just like the diawen vines in the palm groves back home. I can do this.
Another jump, and I wobble, landing unsteadily on one of several stepping stones. The crowd’s collective inhale gives me courage; they want me to do this. They want me to save that final man.
Six more steps, and a quick dance across a floor of whirling gears—my flimsy shoes are shredded and the gears slash my feet, but I push magic through the wounds as I run, healing my flesh and skin. The hems of my pants are tattered and bloodstained, and the material across my chest has shifted—I’m probably showing too much of my breasts. None of it matters.
All that matters is the life of the man whose feet are nearly in the sludge now. The monsters surge forward, snapping and slashing, as I gather my strength and fling myself across the final gap, landing on the pillar with the volunteer.
He’s babbling, crying in pain as teeth and spines lacerate his ankles. But the pillar has stopped moving, and the rope has lowered.
“You have to hold onto the rope,” I shout at the man. “I can’t hold both of us, I’m not strong enough!”
Still gibbering, he grips the rope. My legs explode with pain as the monsters attack—I’m positive my left tendon has been cut, and the agony is so intense I can hardly think past it. I press magic to that spot while I snatch the rope and shove both of us off the pillar.
We’re swinging too low. We’re not going to make it.
Mentally I jerk water from the nearest drinking barrel and I shove it against our bodies, a powerful wave propelling us faster, higher, until we crash onto the finalists’ platform in a mess of oily ooze and torn flesh and leaking blood.
