Of Bonds Forged Ch. 02

Almost immediately after the pair set out on the path, Sylanna chose to let her horse manage the path and allowed herself to slip beneath the power of a resting spell and Vale found it best for both of them in that it allowed Sylanna to recover from a long, admittedly difficult night and it allowed Vale to temper some of her anger and frustration. Sylanna was a gifted healer and, no doubt one of the best Vale had ever seen. She could count on one hand with a finger or two left to spare the number of healers good enough to mend Ara basically on their own. She's worked multiple layers of tissue at a time. She'd worked two organs at a time. Even though Vale knew healers that were capable of it, she'd never seen it done.

Her skill was something to respect and Vale did. It was everything else about her that rankled. In the days since she had been changed, she had gone from one who fawned over Deres for having done it to respecting his power and seeing it as an opportunity to learn from him whatever he would teach. When she saw the two of them together as they compared various botanical notes she gave him every deference, and the same with Mistress Lia. To everyone else, Vale imagined that she was much the same as she'd always been. Deres had remarked that every person was different in how they would 'settle' into themselves after the new directives had been placed within. It was always his thought that they should remain who they had always been as much as could be allowed because that was part of the tapestry of the universe as it should be, too.

Though, Vale thought, one or two additional changes wouldn't have hurt.

They rode for nearly an hour before Vale noticed that Sylanna had awoken, her now blue eyes focused on the road ahead. "Rested?"

Sylanna gave her a look, "Yes," speaking as though she wanted to hurry up and be done with her part of the conversation as quickly as possible.

Vale ignored that aspect of things because that was essentially normal for the other. "You did wonderful work with Ara. Not too many others could have managed that."

"I expect that's true."

"There's that Sylanna Seren humility" she said dryly.

"Why should I have humility over facts? Am I wrong?"

"Would you ever admit it if you were?"

"Of course," Sylanna answered as though she were schooling one on the obvious. "On those rare occasions, when I'm wrong, to not admit it only compounds the error."

"You were wrong back there. You made my job harder back there, so what do you have to say to that?"

Sylanna snorted. "I made your job harder. How exactly did I do that, Denna? I saved a young girl's life from the idiocy of her parents. The child needed saving and I did it. After that, they would have cut their own hands off with a spoon in gratitude and all you asked for from them was to take packages and messages now and then."

Her ire grew. "Right there. Do you hear that coming from your own mouth? Do you think that helped me in there?

"What? Calling the girl's mother an idiot? She was an idiot. You know it and I know it."

"She's not an idiot, Sylanna."

Her response was an incredulous snort. "Really? She's not. So you advocate just shoving whatever random thing you might find in a cabinet or a tool shed down your child's throat if they're ill because why not?"

Vale had no tolerance for the absurdity, "Of course not. But you probably weren't wrong that she got it from her mother who got it from back, and back, and back. She saw it happen, no one died, so maybe it helped. She was just trying to help her baby. She wasn't trying to be malicious. We don't even know if she can read. We can't all know of every root, flower, tree, and bit of pollen in the world like you do."

She slid into a slightly condescending teaching tone. "I didn't say she was being malicious. I'm saying she was a fool. No one has to be learned in everything...or even anything to know that you shouldn't take in unadulterated toxins when you have no idea, apparently, how anything works. What should I have done? Taken her aside, patted her hand, and asked her to please stop killing her child?"

"Yes," she said, as though Vale was excited that the other had stumbled on the truth. "You take her aside and you explain to her why what she was doing was wrong. You can be firm and you should be so it doesn't happen again. But you take into account that she's a mother that loves her child, and she has feelings, Sylanna, and that matters. I know that you don't seem to put much stock in them, especially when expressed by other people, but they matter."

"If you say so, but I leave the nuance of emotion to you, Vale," Sylanna announced before turning bitter. "Indeed, I hope to emulate the same example of kindness and forgiveness as you and all the others of your guild have shown me. You all act as though I have no feelings, so why should I bare myself? So you can wound me more deeply with coldness and reminders. Show me civility and perhaps I'd feel in a better place to not be the person you see every day."

Vale was in defensive mode now. "I've been perfectly civil to you, though Goddess knows you haven't made it easy. You bark orders at people like we're all just beneath you or at your beck and call. We have all been civil to you."

"Only because Mistress Lia has asked it of you," Sylanna said, as though that proved her argument.

Vale, for her part, had no interest in conceding. "Of course because she asked it of us. And we tolerate your barking, and your bitter cold detachment from everything but, seemingly, yourself, and Deres because she has asked it of us. You harm her by seeking to harm the child that's hers in her heart if not by blood and yes, you were taken and changed so that it would never happen again, but even, Deres, the girl's own father, showed you more mercy than you deserved and..."

"To lead him to the others, not because I mattered beyond that."

"I don't care why and you shouldn't care either. Most others would have gotten what they needed from you and then exacted their vengeance. But he left you with your life and basically as the, pardon my language, but I doubt you've never heard the description before, bitch you always seem to have been that could do what you did in the first place. You do what you did to her and still she gives you a place near her and asks that we give you a place as well."

"Yet you still act like the person that could have done that and everything else you've probably done in your life and then you wonder how you're still treated as that person." Much of her frustration spent, Vale turned more contemplative. "Perhaps for me, part of it is that I simply do not understand how you could have done what you have done? I don't understand how you could come up with the plot you did, and then the mechanism, and watch the southern quarter burn and watched all those people suffer. I don't understand it and I don't want to."

"That was just one of my...greater accomplishments," she told Vale in a harsh, quiet voice, unwilling now to look at her. There were many others."

Vale ignored it, as the last thing she desired was a tour of the woman's past. It would make it just that much harder to see anything else "You have a chance at a new life. You have a chance to turn a page. Of course no one wants to show you kindness or offer forgiveness. You don't show kindness or allow them to see things that would warrant forgiveness for whatever else you've done. All they see, Sylanna, is a woman who acts exactly like the type of person that could do what they know you did. How can they see that from you and respond in any other way?"

There was a long silence before she spoke again with nothing between them but the breathing of the horses and their footfalls. "Hopefully none of you will have to endure me much longer. Once this task is complete, I intend to ask Deres to allow me to go elsewhere."

Sylanna expected no response at all, much less some melodramatic attempt at concern or social niceties like, 'Oh, please don't go, so she wasn't upset at getting no response at all. Honestly, she was pleased to just focus on the road.

The day proceeded mostly as a silent one from that point on and, as the sun began to peek through the clouds for minutes at a time before bleeding into an orange, a red, and finally a darkening violet. They found a pleasant space to camp and did so, not speaking much beyond the basics of where they would go next. There was a village they'd arrive at early the next day, so there was no reason to push on into the night only to arrive when everyone there would be asleep anyway.

They ate and watched the fire in silence, with Vale firmly believing that that was how the night would go, and, all things considered, it wouldn't have been the worst way for the evening have gone, but she couldn't make herself remain silent. Perhaps it was because she believed it was what Mistress Lia wanted because Sylanna was there to begin with. Perhaps her own pragmatism didn't allow someone to go off and do a stupid thing for a stupid reason without attempting to say something so she could salve her conscience with being able to tell herself that she tried to do something about it. "Are you serious about running away?"

"Not running away. Leaving. And It does seem to be for the best."

Vale watched how, with her ability to see the magic when she chose, the veil around her could play with the light. "It seems to me to be pointless."

"Explain."

"Simply enough, it won't solve your problem."

"Which is?"

"You, Sylanna You are your biggest problem. Everyone else is an obstacle or something for you to use. No one else understands you, and they don't want to. They couldn't understand you anyway, so, of course, that's why they don't try. You don't need to understand them beyond obstacles or something to use, so to the void with them otherwise."

Sylanna studied her in return before returning her gaze to the fire, "So you believe you understand me now?"

Vale shook her head and raised the palm of her hand against the fire and used hint of her power to make the embers plume upward and form a pattern that amused her almost as much Sylanna's self-delusion of depth. People so wrapped themselves up in what they thought they were they sometimes forgot the truth. "I know people, Sylanna. I know them and I sense them. It is a gift I seem to have been given that years of dealing with them has helped me hone. Even if I had none of that as part of me, you're not all that difficult to understand."

She seemed almost intrigued at the notion. "Is that so?"

"You have changed and you are at a complete loss because you can no longer do the things you used to do. You no longer even want to, but what are you without that? So you treat people as much as you always did as you can manage because it's comfortable. But their reactions are uncomfortable, so your solution is to leave and be alone."

"The problem with that solution, Sylanna, is that it still leaves you alone with you."

Sylanna rose, and her tone was bitter, "So I am just so overwrought with self-loathing that I choose to flee. Is that what you believe?"

"I would be if I were you." Disgust crept into her own retort. "I would be if I lived my life like you have and then I was forced to look at it and not be able to look away. I would want to flee humanity."

"Should I bow to worship your fucking pure heart, Denna?"

She groaned, "I am not pure and never pretended to be."

"Well, no one would know that there was ever a blemish on your divine aura based on how Mistress Lia simply beams with pride at your mention. Her adoration of you is obvious and more than a little gag-inducing. And the youngest of the apprentices? They follow you about like puppies as though you were Guild Mistress, too."

"Because they see in me that I am closer to what they are than the likes of Lian or Mistress Lia. And I certainly don't tell them that I abandoned my mother. I don't tell them that after father died there was so much hardship and misery in life and misery from her that when I learned there was a world of magic that was not living with a mother that died inside after my father did, I ran to it and have not looked back."

"So if you need something to tarnish my aura or to temper your apparent jealousy at the fact that I treat other people like people and they respond to that, then use that. I'm not perfect. My leaving hurt her more, but I wasn't strong enough to be there, so we all have regrets and shame. The guilds gave me the chance to become something stronger, and sort of turn that page on the book of life that's mine."

She rose now, stepping to her bedroll "You have that chance to do that like few others do. Maybe you do belong alone and would be a better person that way, but you should at least try living with others and tried living in the world before you head for a mountain cave somewhere nowhere. Let's take a step," she began, her voice oozing sarcasm. "Can you pay a compliment? I haven't heard one since I've met you directed towards anyone at all. Is it in you?"

"When it's warranted," she said haughtily.

"Is it ever?"

"Occasionally." She chose not to bring up the fact that the last time she paid one was when she complimented a fellow mage as he directed the pollen she created to the southern quarter of the city of Erette that set the people against one another and set the city to burning.

"You can't do it," Vale said, her eyes a mix of resignation and humor. "You can't even do that. You can't bring yourself to pay a compliment to anyone because it would say that other people can do things that might impress you and put them on par with you in even the smallest ways. Do it. Pay a compliment. It doesn't even have to be about me. It just has to be a heartfelt and sincere."

"You did well last night," Sylanna said quickly, partly to prove that she could do it, and partly to put an end to Vale's incessant pecking. "With Ara. You were an excellent assistant for one without formal training as a healer."

Vale blinked, somewhat shocked at the admission, and not even sure she believed it, seeing it as possibly just a ploy to get Vale to shut up. "That's news to me, what with the two hours of sniping over virtually everything I did and how I did it."

She looked at her with the incredulity of one somewhat shocked that she should have to explain the obvious. "Why do you think I stopped when I did? There was no longer reason to direct you, or snipe, as you put it. You made it clear that you could be trusted to perform the tasks asked of you."

Sylanna blew out what was left of her emotion and looked toward her own bedroll. "Well, now that I've proven I can engage in basic social contrivances designed to prop up soft people who should already know their abilities and not need such validation, I believe I'll go to bed."

She slid into her own bed without another word.

Vale blinked again, somewhat proud of herself for not screaming, yet confused as to how exactly she managed it.

* * *

The two followed the road that was really little more than a trail of half-frozen mud that wound reasonably close collection of homes, which was as close to a village as this area could manage. They veered left from that path towards the first house they saw. It was simple, as most of the places around this area were. Utilitarianism was the order of things in places where there was wasn't much civilization to be had four walls and roof was enough. One benefit of these trips, aside from expanding various guild networks, making rounds like this lessened fear of mages among the people and it built goodwill, to help, especially if nothing was asked of the person in return. Even if no one needed or would have understood the turns magic could take, sometimes all they needed was a pair of strong hands or a listening ear.

Vale knocked on the door and smiled while Sylanna gave her a sidelong glance and a moment's wonder at the fact that the smile was real. As someone who spent years practicing her expressions and learning which expressions her clients and others wanted and needed to see, she'd long ago learned to lie effectively and spot one often before they'd opened their mouths to do it, so she knew Vale wasn't putting on a guise for anyone's benefit. She liked people. She liked meeting them, knowing them and forming relationships.

And people usually took to her, probably because they could sense that sincerity in spite of her generally quiet nature. The young apprentices did indeed follow her about already because she was a warm, welcoming presence during those awkward and often frightening first steps into a life of secrecy and danger on several fronts. And Sylanna had already witnessed her show patience with them enough for ten mentors. For Sylanna to witness, it almost seemed like a mage specialty of hers.

The door opened to a man of middle age. He was a somewhat squat, but not unappealing. Vale saw that, not so many years ago, he probably had no shortage of women he could court. That vibrancy and charm were still there and all he'd done was open the door and give them a friendly smile. "Oh, my. Two lovely ladies at my door without invitation leaves me to wonder what good deed I might have done that the Goddess would reward me so. What can I do for you this day?"

Vale reflected his warmth as she introduced herself, "I'm Vale and this is my companion Sylanna. We're healers by trade and have other technical skills people sometimes find useful and represent our guild of men and women who are hoping to extend those services to remote areas like this one. Might you or someone in your family have need of a healer or a tradesman of some sort? Or might you know someone that does?"

He laughed and patted his heart, "So much for my reward from the Goddess. I'm Nic and I'm still pleased to meet you." He looked around the floor as if to search around them for someone as he searched his mind. "I'm afraid that I can't think of anyone that might need someone with your skills just now."

Vale looked just a touch disappointed before brightening again. "That's quite all right. Actually, it's good news when one doesn't need a healer for anything. Perhaps your wife might know of someone. Is she here to ask?"

Confusion flashed across his features for an instant and he gently corrected her, "My dear lady, I'm afraid I don't have a wife." His voice carried a touch of lament and humorous resignation. "I never found the right one to settle down with who was agreeable to a quiet, simple life once I'd had enough of burning both ends of the candle."

Vale's smile faded just a touch as she looked around the home. There was nothing obvious in the man's manner or his words that suggested to her that he was lying, but she knew that something was off. She could feel it in her belly and on the back of her neck just looking around the house. It was in the touches of lace in the simple curtains. It was in the trinkets over the fireplace. It was in a dozen little hints all around the room that she could see. A woman's touch was in this house, and it just felt recent. This man didn't lose someone and keep her belongings enshrined while he struggled to pretend she was never there to begin with so he could pretend there was no loss. A woman lived in this house.

"No wife?" Vale was playfully incredulous as Sylanna looked on, wondering why she wanted to continue to engage this man. "How can that be? I can't imagine there wouldn't be a lovely blonde anxious to follow you home to a quiet life in a lovely little home like this that seems to have just so many things in it that would make a woman feel at home."

He sighed, but the humor was still there, "Even as a strapping buck I never tended toward blondes," his mind wandered, "though there was a blacksmith's sister in Volis that caught my eye. That was a lovely, lovely little thing." He eyed Vale and she noticed how his eyes darted for half an instant, up and to the left again, "I always tended toward darker-haired young women, not unlike yourselves as a matter of fact."