Harbinger: Fate's Forsaken: Book One (6 page)

She was alive!

He dropped on
his knees and drove the torch into the dirt next to him. “Miss? Can you hear
me?” He placed his fingers on her neck and felt her pulse. It was weak, just
barely thrumming. She needed Amos’s help — he had to get her to the
hospital.

He looped one of
her arms around his shoulder and got his legs beneath him. Great mountains, she
was heavy. He pushed and strained until he was out of breath, but there wasn’t
enough meat on his legs to get her off the ground. Perhaps he could run back to
the village, get some of the hunters to help —

Thunder roared
over his head, and then rain started to fall. Drops that were more ice than
water lashed his skin. They came down in blinding sheets, billowing up as the
wind ripped through them.

He tore his
shirt off and stretched it over the brambles above them. He couldn’t move fast
enough to save the torch: it sputtered out, leaving them in darkness. He knew
his shirt could only keep them dry for a few minutes before the rain would leak
through. When that happened, it would only be a matter of time before the cold
took them.

He pulled the
brambles tighter overhead and tried to fashion some sort of roof by tying them
together. “It’s going to be okay,” he said to the girl while he worked. “We’re
probably not going to freeze to death … but we might. I’m not going to lie to
you, we might.”

Amos was always
better at comforting people. Kael had a tendency to read the story the way it
was written.

Water started
leaking through their roof and he shielded her with his body. He put an arm and
a leg around her, forming a sort of lean-to over her wound.

A few minutes later, his lips
were in danger of freezing shut. He tried to keep them moving.

“You know, I
don’t think I’ve ever really talked to a girl before — especially not one
as pretty as you. But I don’t suppose this counts, does it? You aren’t exactly
talking back.”

Thunder clapped
— he jumped.

“— ael!”

Someone yelled
his name, right at the end of the peal. “Here! I’m over here!” he shouted,
forcing the words through his chattering teeth. A long moment passed and no one
replied. Maybe the ice in his ears was making him hear things.

“Kael!”

Now he was
certain he heard it. Someone was looking for him. He crawled out of the shelter
and stood in the middle of the path. “Here! Over here!” he said, as loud as his
voice would carry.

“I hear him!”
someone bellowed.

He shouted until
his throat went hoarse. He waved his arms and jumped up and down. His bare
chest burned from the cold and he couldn’t feel his nose. Just when he thought
he might be stuck as a frozen, waving statue forever, a lantern bobbed up the
path.

“I found him!”
His hood shadowed his worried face, but Kael recognized Roland’s stiff gait as
he limped forward. “What were you thinking, boy? We all know Marc is given to
tell tales, why didn’t you stand for yourself?”

Before the light
could touch him, Kael quickly crossed his arms over his chest. He forced
himself to meet Roland’s eyes. “Because he was right. I broke my bow and I
tried to hide it.”

Roland’s smile
was kind, even in the eerie glow of the lantern. “Well, I can’t say I wouldn’t
have done the same myself. The good news is that the elders have agreed to meet
with you tomorrow. And don’t you worry,” he clapped a hand on Kael’s shoulder,
“we’ll think of something. In the meantime, you’d better put this on.”

He took the
oilskin cloak Roland handed him and immediately tossed it over the brambles.
“There’s a girl, and she’s wounded pretty badly,” he said in answer to the
question on Roland’s face. “We have to get her down to the hospital.”

“A girl? Are you
sure the cold hasn’t got to your head?” He stuck his lantern into the shelter,
and his mouth dropped open. “Well my beard, there’s a girl under there. Amos!
Hurry those old legs along — we’ve found a wounded woman!”

Now it was
Kael’s turn to be shocked. What was Amos doing out in a storm? He was going to
kill him.

It wasn’t long
before Amos hobbled up the path, a handful of hunters close behind. “What did
you say? Kael’s wounded?”

“No, Kael’s fine
—”

“Not for long, he
isn’t!” Amos roared as he caught sight of them. “What are you thinking, dancing
out in the rain without a shirt on? You aren’t a wood sprite —”

“And you aren’t
young,” Kael lashed back. “What were
you
thinking, running out into the forest in the middle of a storm?”

Roland stepped
between them. “We all need to stop thinking, and start doing.” He nodded to
Amos. “There’s a girl in the brambles, and she’s hurt pretty bad.”

Amos shoved past
them and held his lantern up. He blanched when he saw her, and Kael knew her
wound must have been more serious than he’d thought.

“What do we need
to do?” Roland said, but Amos didn’t respond. “Amos?”

He tore his eyes
away from the girl. “Eh? What was that?”

“I asked what we
needed to do.”

He squinted
through the rain at the hunters. “I’ll need a litter — quick as you can.
And if one of you boys has an extra oilskin, give it to Kael.”

Someone threw a
cloak at him and he fastened it around his shoulders, pulling the hood over his
head. He made sure the folds of the cloak covered his chest.

They placed the
girl gently on their makeshift litter and started the climb back down the
mountain. The rain made the rocks even more slippery, the cold even meaner.
While the hunters did the brunt of the work, Kael and Amos walked sideways with
the litter between them — keeping the spare oilskin stretched over her
like a roof. Roland led the way, lantern in hand.

It was slow,
dangerous work, but they eventually made it back to the hospital. The beds were
empty that night — which meant they would be able to work in peace.

“Stoke the
fire,” Amos said.

Kael didn’t need
to be told twice: he was surprised he had any teeth left, after all the
chattering.

With the hearth
blazing, Amos chased the curious hunters out the door. “I’ll let you know how
she’s doing in the morning,” he said, shooing Roland away.

“Fair enough.
And Kael,” he looked up to see Roland pulling on his hood, his face serious
beneath it, “don’t run off just yet. The storm comes, but the grass is all the
greener for it.” His smile was reassuring as he ducked out into the violent
night.

With the hunters
gone, Amos went straight to work. “Fetch a pail of water, will you?”

In the time it
took Kael to get the water, Amos had removed the girl’s filthy clothing and
placed a thick wool blanket over her body, up to her chin. He handed Kael her
clothes and placed the sword on top of the pile. “Set these in my office. I’ll
clean them later.”

“What sort of
armor is it?”

“Armor? Why do
you think it’s armor?” Amos said, rather snappily. “What could a girl want with
armor?”

“I don’t know
—”

“That’s right,
you don’t. So let’s just see if we can keep her heart beating through the
night.”

Kael tossed her
clothes in the floor of the office and set the sword on the cluttered table
Amos used for a desk. He took off his cloak and fished a patient’s shirt out of
the pile that had just been cleaned. While he pulled the itchy tunic over his
head, he got a strange feeling. He swore someone was watching him.

He spun around,
not sure what he expected to see. The only things in the room besides Amos’s
clutter were the armor … and that sword. He wondered what the blade looked
like. He wanted to draw it and hold it in his hand. He took a step closer.

“A bowl of warm
water and a fresh cloth!” Amos barked from the main room.

Kael tore his
eyes away from the sword and as he left, shut the door on it. All the while he
worked, he tried to shake the odd feeling from his toes. He warmed the pail of
water over the fire and stirred in a few herbs for numbing. The dried leaves
slowly melted, turning the water a smoky blue. He poured some into a bowl and
left the rest over the fire.

Amos dipped a
cloth into the mixture and dabbed the girl’s wound, his brow bent in
concentration. “It’s going to take some time to get this mess fixed. She didn’t
even
try
to staunch the bleeding.”

Under the grime,
the skin around her wound was red and inflamed. A huge scab had formed over the
top of it — mixed with strands of hair and bits of debris from the
forest. But the herb water did its job well: after only a few minutes of
scrubbing, the wound was nearly clean.

Amos set the
now-filthy cloth to the side and scratched at the top of his head. His eyes
flicked from the gash to different corners of the room, and back again. Kael
knew he was trying to decide on how to seal it.

“Do you want me
to get the needle?”

Amos shook his
head, and his eyes went to the door. “I think I may try the other,” he finally
said, and Kael understood.

As Amos put his
hands on either side of the girl’s wound, Kael stepped around to block what he
was doing from view — because if anyone happened to walk in and catch
them, they’d have to run for their lives.

While Amos may
not have been able to capture souls, he was certainly no ordinary healer. He
was among the last of a dying race — an ancient people with extraordinary
powers. They were called the whisperers.

Unlike the mages
with their complicated language of spells, a whisperer needed no words —
only the power of his mind and the strength of his hands. An ordinary blacksmith
required the hammer and heat of the flames, but a whisperer skilled in craft
could bend iron with his fist and sharpen a blade with his thumbnail. Most
soldiers spent a lifetime honing their strengths, but a whisperer skilled in
war never grew tired, and he never missed.

And if a
whisperer skilled in healing studied long enough, there was no wound he
couldn’t mend.

Amos pushed his
fingertips against the ragged edges of the gash, and the girl’s skin became
like clay: molding obediently, softening under his touch. He worked with nimble
precision, pinching the corner of each end together and sealing them. It was a
remarkable talent, and one that could have saved countless lives … if only he
were allowed to use it.

Not so long ago,
the whisperers served the King in Midlan. A child who was born a whisperer was
accepted into the house of nobles without question, and given a room in the
King’s fortress for as long as he lived. It was the whisperers who raised the
impenetrable walls of the fortress, and kept the Kings alive long past their
years. It was they who trained the army of Midlan to be undefeatable.

Then two decades
ago, a great rebellion changed everything.

They called it
the Whispering War, and it began when Banagher — a weak-minded and idle
King — tried to turn the whisperers into his slaves. He believed they
were property of the crown, his by right, and should be given no more privilege
than the stones that paved his floors. Not surprisingly, the whisperers didn’t
take kindly to this idea, and they rebelled.

But what started
out as a show of unrest quickly became something much more sinister. As they
won victory after victory over land and sea, the whisperers began to realize
what a power they had — and they wanted more. It wasn’t long before they
marched on Midlan and tried to seize the throne for themselves.

After three long
and bloody years, the Kingdom finally won. Banagher perished in battle and
because he left no heir to succeed him, his warlord was elected to take the
throne.

The warlord’s
name was Crevan, and he was an evil man. Shortly after the war ended, he
summoned all the surviving whisperers to Midlan. He said he wanted to make
peace with them, to rebuild the Kingdom with their help. But it was all a trap.

No one knew
precisely what happened that day, but Amos said not a whisperer who walked into
the fortress was ever heard from again.

A week later
came the decree: whispering had been outlawed. Anyone caught in the act would
be executed immediately; anyone who turned a whisperer over to the crown would
receive a bounty of two hundred gold pieces. In the war-ravaged Kingdom, that
was coin enough for a man to live on for three lifetimes — and plenty
took him up on the offer.

And any
whisperer left alive fled to the mountains.

Though Amos had
lived in Tinnark for as long as anyone could remember, he never told a soul of
his abilities. “These people are superstitious enough,” he’d always say. “What
do you think would have happened if I’d gone around snapping bones back
together? They would’ve lopped off my head and buried it.”

Not telling had
ultimately saved his life.

Kael watched as
Amos sealed the gash. His fingers moved surely until he reached the middle, and
then he stopped. “Her skull is cracked. I’m going to have to mend it before I
can finish the skin,” he said with a frown. He slid his index finger gently
inside the wound. “Let’s see. I think — ouch!”

He let out a
string of curses and jerked back, slinging his fingers around like he’d
accidently stuck them to a hot cauldron. Kael grabbed the bowl of water, but
Amos shook his head.

“No, the cloth!”

“But it’s filthy
—”

“I don’t care!
Wipe!”

The shrill in
Amos’s voice startled him. He grabbed the cloth in one hand and Amos’s wrist in
another. Fresh red blood covered his fingertips, but it wasn’t the normal sort
of blood. This blood bubbled, and steam rose up from it. Amos groaned as Kael
dragged the rough surface of the cloth over his hand. His stomach flipped when
he saw how red and raw Amos’s fingers were. The blood soaked into the cloth and
cooled, hardening almost immediately.