Ice - Part 18

Lucia, silently urging her fingers to cease their mutinous trembling all the while, had spent long torturous minutes stitching Soren's wounds. As she worked, and as much for her peace of mind as for Soren's, she continued conversing with him and, to keep him from slipping beyond the mortal coil, had pressed him for comments and opinions on nary every word out of her mouth.

When one of those comments had been "Do you always talk this much?" she had come perilously close to laughing.

Yet, though he still drew breath, she feared that he was still slipping through her shaky fingers. He still replied with his customary tartness, but his words became fewer and far between, and his crimson eyes had become unfocussed and glazed over.

Soren was clearly growing weaker, and what borrowed time his was now living on might very well be slipping away. After a stretching second of fearful indecision, Lucia decided that the best she could do was to get the stricken mage to his bedchambers so that he could rest, be tended by the healers and, hopefully, where his supposedly aborted research into Hviskra Murthre might yield the cure he'd been so insistent that they find...

...though, those chambers were a fair distance away, and time was short.

Still, there seemed to be little choice in the matter, so Lucia gingerly lifted Soren off the ground and began the long trek.

Soren was not nearly as heavy as she might have expected, but in the dress she had worn while playing Elincia’s role, carrying him was still a struggle. It had been challenge enough to stitch and bind the wound – she’d had to use the hem of his cloak as gauze, because it had been one of the few items she’d neglected to grab from the supply room. The blood-soaked robes which Soren wore now served no purpose other than to slow her down, and when time was most precious. So, and cursing the blood coloring her cheeks as she did so, she stripped the mage down to his trousers. This probably had helped in making her load lighter, but she found herself wondering how much lighter he was when taking the amount of blood that he’d lost into account… He was so pale, and for a moment, she was stricken with the wonder at how someone so small and fragile looking could be, normally, so tough and calculative.

But his weight was not really the problem. She did not know how much strain twenty-one wire ties could take before they unraveled, especially considering that she had been less than rational as she placed them, so transporting Soren from the granary, up the stairs, and to his room was no easy feat. She wanted to hurry so that he could be allowed to rest properly, but at the same time she knew she had to go slowly, or the wound would rip open again. Inwardly insisting that she was far calmer than she truly was, she forced herself to take steady, measured strides. She arduously forced away any thought of how far she had to go, lest the anxiety bubbling in her breast goad her into a mad dash, and focused solely on putting one foot in front of the other.

She carried him in her arms as opposed to on her back, for though her burden would be lighter, she wanted to see his face as he drifted in and out of consciousness. His eyes opened again, and she forced her drawn features into a, hopefully convincing, imitation of a smile.

“Can you hear me, Soren?”

Worry crossed Lucia's features when the only reply to her question had been the echoing of her own voice. Her mouth set into a grim line, and she looked up to see that she had reached the stairs that ascended to the main floor and hallways; at the end of one of those halls stood Soren’s room. She steeled herself for the long walk ahead, and began her way up the steps.

“Soren,” she called his name again, then again in an almost musical voice, if only so that something, anything might break the terrible, funereal silence. “Soren.”

She heard him moan softly as she neared the top step, and it took her only a moment to realize that the soft sound had been a word.

“…wh…what?”

So startled was she by the response that she broke concentration on walking, and tripped on the last stair. She fell to the ground, her left kneecap glancing off the top step. The hand she’d been using to support under Soren’s knees moved to catch her. Her grip tightened around his arms, though, and she twisted around so that she landed on her rear, the mage ending up halfway in her lap, his head lolling against her shoulder. She tilted her head and pressed her cheek against his forehead as she caught her breath, and felt heat radiating from his skin. She closed her eyes and mentally cursed her past decision in deeming the assassin’s capture more pressing than researching the poison. Then, she nearly laughed at the irony. The fact that Soren, the person who knew the most of the assassin’s chosen poison, its effects, and its cure, had fallen prey to the toxin left her with a deep, bitter loathing in her stomach. And this loathing was directed to herself, and herself only.

“Why didn’t I listen to you?” she murmured, running her fingers once against his burning cheek before lifting him again and continuing down the hall. The corridor seemed to stretch on for eternity, and she could not bear this silence, with this burden in her arms.

“Can you hear me still?” she asked.

“What happened?”

She saw his lips form the words, but no sound came. He took a deeper breath, and she knew that his intention was to repeat the words aloud, but she answered before he could voice them.

“You were attacked in the granary,” she said, starting with what she knew was – or, had appeared to be, true. "He stabbed you with a poisoned dagger. Mist and I found you sometime later, but the assassin was already gone." She related the tale a bit confusedly, for the weight of the recent events still shook her. "Mist healed you as best she could, but it seems the poison wasn't affected. Ike was with us but, after you gave your warning, he went off to stop the assassin."

She almost let slip that everyone believed Soren to be dead, but decided that would probably not be wise under the circumstances.

"You might've just saved the Queen's life by warning us," she remarked, forcing out a shaky laugh. "Who knows? Maybe you can talk Elincia into giving you a bigger castle?"

She's half-hoped that Soren would offer some tart dismissal of the idea, but his only response was to furrow his brow in deep perplexity.

"...don't you remember this at all?" Lucia asked, her feigned humor evaporating.

His lips formed a single, round syllable. “No.”

Her brow creased, and she pushed for further information.

“Do you know where you are?”

“…no.”

Worried that the poison's fever might be sending him into a delirium, she fell back to a more basic line of questioning. “What is your name?”

He struggled to speak. “S…Soren.”

A small breath of relief passed through her – he was not gone entirely. “Soren, you’re in Melior,” she attempted to aid him. “Do you know who I am?”

His reply was a long time in coming. His eyes searched her face, and she wondered if he could see again – which would be a good sign, but even better would be recognition.

“…Ike.”

Her hopes fell, and she took a deep breath. Of course he would assume that he was in the Commander’s arms, and not hers – in fact, she was probably the last person that would come to his mind. After all, considering her treatment of him in the past few days, why would he think that she would aid him? Perhaps in the name of Crimea or for the fact that the mage was so avid a benefactor to their country in the war, but if he had known that Ike was nearby… certainly, this was an easy mistake to make.

Nonetheless, she opened her mouth to correct him, and tell him that she was not Ike.

But he spoke again.

“No, no,” and his words were audible this time, “No. Lucia.”

She sighed a smile. “That’s right. I’m Lucia.”

As the mage showed the last tones of coherency, Lucia searched for something – a question, anything – that would keep him from fading entirely. After all, Whispering Death, from what little she knew, dulled the senses, but not the mind. If he was conscious, he was fully aware of what was going on, and could perhaps steel himself against the poison.

However, if he fell victim to unconsciousness…

She needed to keep him awake, until they could find the –

“Soren,” she began, suddenly realizing, “Do you know the cure to Hviskra Murthre?”

A soft, affirmative noise came from the back of the mage’s throat. She gasped, feeling her heart begin to race with anticipation. “Can you tell me how I can get it? Can you tell me how I can help you?” she asked.

“N…o—” exhaustion was beginning to take him, and he could not speak more. She understood his words, however, but not the meaning behind them.

“No?” she repeated, “Why not?” she shook him slightly as his eyelids began to close.

“Answer me!”

“You… you’re not…” he murmured. He was going to say more, but she cut him off.

“I am, Soren! Let me help you!” she stressed. “Where is the cure?”

“… I…” his eyes closed, and his body loosened – and, he was unconscious.
Lucia huffed in exasperation; once again, the answer she sought remained hidden just beyond her grasp. But if Soren could not help her, maybe she could still find the solution herself.

She had finally reached his room, and found the door characteristically shut. She shifted the mage’s weight around and struggled with the doorknob for a moment before the portal opened and allowed her inside. After resting Soren on his bed, she paused to take in his condition. His face was pale and streaked with sweat, his expression drawn in a drained look of subdued pain. A ghost of empathy haunted her, tightening the knot in her throat and causing her heart to give a throb of unease. She tore her gaze from his face to study the cause of his torture, finding that the ichor of the poison, Whispering Death, was visible in his veins through his skin, creating harsh, dark lines that branched over his chest and up to his left shoulder, and slowly spreading. It alarmed her that the toxin had already touched his heart, and she grasped his wrist for a moment in search of his pulse. Holding her breath in the hopes that her silence would help her fingers hear, she sensed the weak, dull rhythm of his thudding heart. She released the breath slowly, and then turned from him and to his writing desk.

Soren had a resolve of steel, Lucia knew, and the wherewithal to always do what he felt was best, whether it was required of him or not. It was with this thought in mind, as well as the recollection that the mage had insisted so heavily on researching Hviskra Murthre, that she set to tearing thought the papers on his desk for any trace of information on the poison. She strained to keep her hopes from rising, a task that grew easier and easier as each paper consistently gave no indication of the information she sought.

“It has to be here,” she murmured to herself, eyes flying over the scattered pieces of parchment. “There has to be something!”

Despair clawed up her spine as her search came up fruitless. She bit down hard on her lip, trying to fight off her feeling of powerlessness. Turning from his desk to face the mage again, she went to his side and grasped his hand.

“Tell me what to do,” she whispered to his unconscious form. “Soren…”

Looking at him caused within her an ache that she was unable to describe. The mage, who’d had to endure so much, she was sure, as a mercenary, and during the war, and, most recently, at her hands, had somehow always seemed so strong despite the situation he’d been placed in. Her eyes gazed at the bandaged wound on his torso, but as she felt staring only made her feel more ill, she looked away. As she shifted her gaze, something out of the ordinary caught her attention.

Many things out of the ordinary.

Soren’s body was riddled with scars, of varying shapes and sizes. She could see healed-over marks from wounds that ranged from a minor scrape that was perhaps allowed to scab over instead of treated to ones that appeared severe, and had perhaps even been life-threatening at one point. She could not identify what many of them had been from, but it was true that she did not know all the ins-and-outs of mercenary life. She wondered if it was truly as hard as the mage’s body attested, or if he’d just had more than his fair share of… misfortunes.

That thought caused a memory to stir within her. When she closed her eyes, it became more vivid… as though she had only had the conversation with Ike moments ago.

“Soren has lived a very hard life. He's received a lot of hate, practically since he was born. And, since a lot of it was because people realized...what his Mark meant. …The possibility that someone besides myself knows… probably has him scared to death."

She sighed, staring at the peculiar red mark that branded the mage’s forehead, screaming his secret, hated bloodline to all that gazed upon it. When she’d first looked into seeing what that mark truly meant, all those weeks ago after the ball, her first instinct had been to label him as a spirit charmer. The mage's prowess in the arcane arts certainly made that misconception quite believable, as did his demeanor. He certainly seemed the sort who would trade his soul for power.

Yet, the unanswered question spurred her on as it sat in the corner of her mind, and when she’d gone to look up the shape of the mark in the archives, she’d found a charmer’s brand that was close…

Yet not identical.

However, she could not be sure that the mage was, at least, by the standards of the past, of a cursed bloodline. At least, not without his confirmation; and asking him was out of the question. So she’d dismissed the thought for a while, but when the mage had come to her after sighting the assassin, it had suddenly returned, and her suspicion had slipped from her mouth before she’d confirmed it.

Of course, the mage’s reaction to her guess had more than cemented the truth in her mind.

As she gazed at the scars, she wondered if any of them were the cause of the fear that had taken root in Soren’s very being.

Unconsciously, her eyes had wandered back to the fresh wound in his side.

If he survived this, he’d have yet another scar.

…if he survived this.

Her despairing thoughts were interrupted by a voice at the door.

“Ashera. Ashera, is he still alive?”

Ike’s voice was soft, most of it choked away by shock. Behind him stood his fiancée and his sister – all three peered into the room with stunned faces, having been led to believe that the mage was dead.

Lucia could only give them a grim nod. “He is… yes… so far.” She exhaled deeply. “…so far. He’s… he’s been poisoned.”

“No. …no!” the general suddenly became demonstrative, banging his fist against the doorframe. “Goddess, if he is to die, why torture him?”

The Queen grabbed hold of her fiancé’s arm. “Ike!”

His sister, meanwhile, let out an exclamation of her own. “We just have to find the cure! Certainly it must be in some book, somewhere? Ike, you have to help us look!” she said, turning a pleading gaze onto her brother. The expression was not really needed, though, for as soon as the hope for the mage had been brought to Ike’s attention, he turned, already halfway to the royal library by the time Mist had looked to him. She watched him rush off, the Queen quickly following, before turning to Lucia.

“…aren’t you going to come?” she asked.

The swordswoman looked impossibly torn. On one hand, she could be the extra set of eyes they needed to find the cure. On the other… if Soren were to wake again, he’d be alone.

She took a half-step to the door, glanced back at the mage, and sighed.

“I’ll… I’ll sit with him for a while. If you find nothing in an hour… send for me. I will help you then,” she said, returning to the mage’s side and lifting his thin hand. Mist answered her in some fashion before leaving the doorway, but Lucia was not really listening. Carefully, she once again brushed her fingers against Soren’s sweltering forehead, and then let her hand rest on his shoulder.

“Don’t worry,” she murmured. “You’re not alone.”