Chapter 2

The guards at the southern gate barely glanced at me as I passed through, offering nods that were polite, but brief. Most of them knew me by now, by either sight or reputation. As a wandering herbalist who tended to the minor ills of the lower class my reputation was widespread, but boring. No miracle cures from this healer, just teas to reduce a fever or soothe a cough. No reattaching severed extremities like a sorcerer-surgeon, just poultices to prevent infection. Exactly how I wanted things. Today, more than any other day, I was grateful for the lack of regard. My simple enclosed cart hadn’t been searched in years, and no one thought twice as I brought my goats up to a casual trot once I was beyond the city walls.

It was early afternoon, and I would normally have kept traveling for the rest of the day. Unfortunately I needed to maintain constant concentration to keep my mana from rushing into my companion. She hadn’t so much as shifted after being bundled into my cart, and she was clearly in critical condition. Again, something about this itched at the back of my mind. If Myta had been in such dire straits, why had her aunt not spoken to me sooner? But with my anima strained, and my mana depleted, I had no energy to spare for the question. Perhaps half an hour later, I spotted the side road I had been waiting for, and drove down that for another hour. Last year I’d spent a week in spring on a small ranch out this way, tending to the ailing owner. Well, he has been poisoned, in point of fact. I never learned all the details, but when he’d found out what happened my patient had sold off his livestock, and willed all his remaining assets to Kuru’deka. The city’s lord was apparently an old friend. Then he’d evicted his children, and retired to live in the lord’s manor. Intrigue, either familial or political, did not concern me deeply. What mattered now was that the estate was empty, and the city guards paid an occasional visit to ensure it remained so.

When I pulled up to the estate, I released my goats to forage for themselves. They were ornery beasts who looked out for one another and smelled of humans, so most predators would leave them be. Then I opened my cart and extracted my passenger, laying her out in the thickest stand of trees I could find. The most immediate threat to her health was the contagion, which I had already been treating for months. I was a well practiced hand at it now, so this should be easy as long as I didn’t give in to the strain.

Allowing my spiritual eye to open, I set to work without delay. The viridian contagion was not a really a physical disease, but an infection of mana. I didn’t know its origin, but when the corrupt mana entered a victim’s spirit body, it spread and corrupted their own. The contagion was greedy, and hungry, and it clumped up. Anywhere that it prevented or sapped the flow of regular mana, the victim’s body became highly susceptible to even the mildest mundane sickness. Where it clumped, it also warped their anima into those green tumors. Sucking abscesses, like foul leeches of the soul.

Other healers could treat the physical side effects, but only someone with my particular abilities could cure the underlying problem. Either fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your perspective, soul sorcerers were rare. Those who were able to directly manipulate anima, and touch another’s mana, were regarded as something akin to demons across the shattered lands. Pure monks hunted them in other lands, and though the Pure were not welcome in the kingdom of Ramana, sorcerer-king Ramana preferred to keep all soul sorcerers under his own thumb.

From my spirit body, I extended my lancet. It was sharp as a razor, and whisper thin, but forged of the densest anima I could make. Years of will, and mindful intention had layered it thickly. Nearly every illness of the body fed back into the soul in some fashion. Draining that poison was one of my greatest advantages over a mundane healer, perhaps the single greatest. When this spiritual plague had struck, I already knew exactly how to treat it. One careful incision, and green vitriol spilled from Myta’s form. I pulled it out of the wound forcibly, her soul was so mana starved it sought desperately to retain even this poison. I let a trickle of my own mana flow into her from the bond, as I pulled the corruption into my reservoir. Then I healed the incision, and moved on to make another.

With my previous patients, my mundane ones, a single incision was often enough. I could keep that single wound open, pulling the corruption steadily out of their meridians. If an abscess did not begin to dissolve, I could slip my own mana carefully through their systems to break up the blockage. The spirit touched woman was different, however. Her anima was very dense, which made her mana much more potent, and yet that mana was moving sluggishly. There was no chance of the corruption dispersing on its own, and she was so mana starved her spirit soaked up any that I gave her. If that weren’t the case, I could have healed her solely through our bond.

And so I proceeded, one slow incision at a time. Filtering her mana, giving her more of my own, condensing the corruption in my reservoir well past the point where my own soul ached with the strain. Finally, the last tumor was opened, the last blockage dissolved. I fell away from her, and brought my mind into a deep meditation, as quickly as I could. Myta’s spirit still bore the stain of the disease, but with the work I had done she would be stable enough for a time. Now, I needed to ensure my own safety.

My inner world took the form of a quiet forest glade. At least, it was normally quiet. Just now the sky was filled with stormclouds, lightning crawling across the nearly black dome above me. Those clouds represented the poisonous mana I had taken in. It wasn’t just the sickness from my companion. I could have handled that alone fairly handily. But I had been in Kuru for weeks, healing as many as I could, and gathering tainted mana from all of them. And each night I meditated like this, trying to calm the storm slowly building within me. I reached for the clouds, feeling that unending hunger churning above me. I knew this was only in my mind, a way to visualize my goal, focus my will. Even so, I could feel the presence of the cloud, the sticky humidity that clung to my skin. I could feel its longing to devour me. With enough time, I could calm the storm. But I didn’t have the time, I didn’t have the strength to deny this much hunger for so long.

Raising my hand, I set my will against the storm, inviting its wrath. It lashed me with its hunger, a bolt of ravenous white, that tried to tear the flesh from my bones. Instead, I gave it to the earth, and the earth was unimpressed. Had I tried this inside the city, the results would have been disastrous. The contagion would have jumped to every nearby person, infecting them all, and only growing in strength. But out here, among the trees and animals, mana flowed more freely, spread more broadly. It would vanish into the forested hills, like a bit of ink spilled into the ocean. I called the lightning again, and then again and it wracked me with pain each time. But after that third strike the rain began to fall, clean mana separating from the tainted, flowing from my reservoir to sustain me. That small feeling of accomplishment steeled my resolve, and I lost track of the number of times I taunted the sky. When the clouds had lightened to a twilight grey, and rain was coming down in a pervasive drizzle, I abandoned my meditation for real rest.