Veilbinder - Chapter 20
[First]
A curious tune echoed off the stone walls of the guest wing of the historic keep which served as the Silverlight Order’s headquarters. It didn’t have a name and they hadn’t been inclined to give it one, but parts of it were older than Estyra itself. The foundation near the lake had been placed well before the first settlers of the modern city even set foot within the crater and it had been rebuilt time and time again as the city evolved over the centuries. There was no doubt it would still be there for centuries yet.
Sydira quirked her ears as she made her way towards the common room and the source of the music. She was fairly confident she knew from who it originated. It sounded like a sephra, though not played in any manner she was familiar with. The tuning was wrong, though the chords sounded pleasing enough as the player plucked their way through different progressions one after another in a constant and monotonous rhythm.
Reaching the top of the circular staircase, she could see past the archway and into the commons. Seated in front of the central fire pit, silhouetted against the flames with their back to the entrance, she spotted the outline of a familiar head and shoulders. She padded up silently to reveal Xander indeed plucking away at a sephra. It took its design from a similar elven instrument, resembling a cross between a lute and a sitar, though with a tailpiece which extended well past the body. It was meant to be played vertically, resting on the end pin, but Xander had it resting across his lap like a guitar as he played. He was slouched halfway down the seat, more laying down than actually sitting. He had his head tilted back, propped against the backrest with his eyes closed. His feet were splayed out in front of him. She watched him play for a few seconds before he caught her off guard.
“Hey, Syd.” he muttered almost sleepily, keeping his eyes shut.
“How did you know?” She asked, a little surprised and genuinely intrigued.
“Been practicing my aethersight.” he said and she could see the near imperceptible movements of his eyes behind their lids. He started plucking more lightly while cracking open an eye and looking at her. “It’s getting easier. I could see you from a span away.”
A span was a little over six feet. It seemed a little strange at first, but he supposed it was no less odd than the use of feet or yards in the more rural areas back home. Regardless, he was still getting used to using the local measurements as the practice that hadn’t really been enforced back in Aestrahd.
“That’s good!” she said injecting some enthusiasm into her voice but he could hear how awkward it was for her.
They had been like this for the past few days. Ever since his outburst had been mentioned in the weekly report back to Captain Sinclair, it had been suggested he see a dreamseer. Part fortune teller, part psychologist, part relaxation therapist, they had grown in popularity since the Styllani had caused the Forum to restrict their borders.
Both Sydira and Rasklin had been quick to accept him since his meeting with the Keepers, but now they were walking on eggshells around him. It had started to irk him especially since his thoughts kept drifting back to how they were when they first met almost a month ago and now he’d had enough. Before she could continue, he loudly inhaled through his nose before puffing his cheeks out and exhaling, shimmying back up into a sitting position as he did so.
“Look,” he said, setting the stringed instrument down and looking up at her, “I appreciate the sympathy. I do. Where’s Ras?”
“He awaits downstairs.” she replied, subdued.
“Right, well, a lot’s happened and I had a lot to process. The dreamseers have helped. I’m alright now, so can you and Ras please stop treating me like I’m about to fall apart?”
She didn’t appear convinced.
He sighed, “Just humor me alright? If I lose it then you and Rasklin can go right back to doing… whatever this is… again, I appreciate it, but I’m fine. I swear.” She continued to study him for a few more seconds before reluctantly nodding and deciding to change the subject.
“I didn’t know you played the sephra.” She said, looking at the instrument leaning against the armrest.
“I don’t,” he said, breaking eye contact, “but it’s close enough to a [guitar] that it wasn’t too hard to figure out.”
“An instrument from your world?”
“Yeah, kinda like this but a little shorter and boxier and the strings stop about here.” he said gesturing to a spot just past the holes in the instrument’s body.
“How long have you been playing?” She asked as she plonked down onto the lip of the fire pit across from him, still well away from the flames.
He buzzed his lips as he thought, “About a year? Well, Earth year, so what, maybe nine-ish months?” he said, rocking his hand back and forth for emphasis.
“Really? You sound good.”
“Thanks. I had plenty of time to learn, there wasn’t much to do at my old posting.” he said.
Back on Earth, he had been deployed to the Pacific Defense Perimeter three times in a row. Established following increased tensions with the east and the formalization of the North American Union decades prior, the three-month deployments had been served on mobile oil rigs that had been repurposed and retrofitted as naval checkpoints. The stated objective was to protect the shipping lanes from foreign privateering but the reality of life aboard was much less exciting.
The deployments themselves were supposed to have been a peaceful bookend to his military service, but the it had gotten boring within the first two weeks and so most of his unit, himself included, had taken up small hobbies to pass the time.
“It sounds like there’s a story there.” Sydira offered.
“Yeah, a few.” he replied. Needless to say, a bunch of bored marines in an enclosed space had led to more than a few bouts of creative stress relief and near accidents. “We still have a few hours before I’m supposed to give the demonstration, right?”
Sydira hummed an affirmative with a nod.
“Alright, let’s go get Ras” he grunted, standing up to place the sephra back in its corner before stretching, “the past few days it’s just been here, the Keepers or the dreamseer. I kinda want to look around. Think you and Ras could show me the city?” he said enthusiastically.
She looked at him, surprised at his sudden shift in demeanor, before offering him a closed lipped smile.
“Of course.”
---
Ears swiveled, and closer to the small fortress the Silverlight Order called their headquarters, heads turned as an unfamiliar sound rang out from the enclosed courtyard. There was a first, then a second, then three in quick succession, a sound like a whip cracking. The concussion spent near ten seconds reverberating off the walls of the crater which sheltered the city. Inside the training grounds, under the awning of the archery range, Xander straightened back up as he removed the magazine from his rifle and ejected the remaining round from the chamber before picking it up and dusting it off. Out in the courtyard, three hay targets had been set up at various distances ranging from no more than a few dozen meters to down by the far wall. Spare cuirasses, each already destined to be melted down and reforged, had been propped in front of each of the targets. All of them sported at least one new hole neatly drilled through a splotch of white paint that had been hastily applied more or less at the center of each breastplate.
As a part of the three-way agreement between Captain Sinclair, King Lucen, and the Forum, Xander had been asked to provide the Silverlight Order with a weapons demonstration, just like they had done in the village and just like the rest of the crew had done for the King’s army soon after Xander had departed the city.
Around him, a small gaggle of warriors from each of the Order’s three branches watched with varying levels awe, with Rasklin and Sydira being the only ones completely unaffected, having already witnessed him using his pistol to great effect. A few were grabbing their ears in discomfort, having not heeded Xander’s warning about how loud his rifle’s report would be.
“It is… quite noisy.” said the Blade Commander, massaging her ears to clear the ringing. She was an Anira’si, a minor werecat, like Mirun back in Aestrahd. Like him, her form was lithe, suited for sneaking and skirmishing. Her aqua colored eyes were accented by sandy fur.
“But precise. Look.” said Lance Commander Eramius, pointing to each of the cuirasses in turn. The other Lances in attendance, the archers especially, followed their commander’s finger, nodding approvingly when they spotted where Xander had hit.
“Yeah. We have devices that can muffle the sound a little, but it’s still loud.” Xander said, removing wads of fabric from his ears. “Generally, if we’ve started shooting, we’ve given up on stealth. Besides, that’s more a reconnaissance battalion’s job anyway. If the likes of me are working then command’s usually stopped being subtle.” he replied to various gestures of understanding.
“As you said, the bolts are of lead and copper, correct?” came the rumbling inquiry from the Shield Commander. In charge of the city guard, he was a literal bull of a man, easily towering at least a head over everyone else present.
“Bullets, and yeah, lead core with a copper jacket.”
“Shoot me.”
Most heads turned towards the minotaur in astonishment save for the other commanders. Eramius had an amused smirk on his face while the Blade Commander was pinching the bridge of her nose.
“What?” Xander spat, looking at the towering minotaur as if he’d suddenly grown a second head.
“Shoot me.” the Shield Commander repeated. “Blades and bolts and magic I understand. This isn’t magic, but it is new. I wish to gauge your weapon’s effectiveness personally.” he said, stepping out onto the range and holding his arms out to the side.
“Wh- But- No?” Xander stammered, “I’m not doing it! It goes against everything I’ve been taught! I’m not willingly shooting-”
“Your weapon does not utilize silver. So long as you shoot to wound, he shall be fine. The gifts of Lythris allow us to easily recover from wounds that would be debilitating to normal men.” Eramius interjected, still smirking.
“But-”
“Please humor him.” the Blade Commander said in a long-suffering tone, “It’s no different than how he insists his sparring partners use fully sharpened blades. If not you, he will find someone else eventually. Better now with us here to witness this idiocy.”
Xander looked around for support only to find most observing with curiosity. Sydira and Rasklin looked sympathetic, as did some that knew the Shield Commander well, though they said nothing for they were familiar with the Shield Commander’s temperament. Others that knew him observed the situation with either intrigue or amusement.
“I- Just- Fine.” Xander finally relented. “But just so you know, I’m doing this against my will. Is he left handed or right handed?” he asked, rubbing his eyes before running his hands down his face.
“He fights equally well with both.” Eramius answered.
“Good to know.” Xander sighed.
Reluctantly, without inserting the magazine, Xander opened the bolt and inserted the round that he had previously ejected before hitting the bolt release. It traveled home with a solid clack that punctuated the ridiculous situation. It took him a couple tries to work up the nerve to raise the rifle to his shoulder and sight in on the Shield Commander. Centering the sights on his left bicep, Xander sighed, shaking his head in disbelief.
Wishing with all his might that it would misfire, he pulled the trigger.
---
“Alright, here you are. He’s to take one red and one green once you reach home, one more of each in a few hours, say around sunset, then the same every morning with his morning meals for the next week.” Jana Davidson said, she wore an apprentice apothecary’s robes over her usual uniform.
She wasn’t a doctor, not really, but she had been one of the forty or so of the Bornholm’s contingent that had volunteered for the medical training courses. She and others had first tutored under the ship’s doctor before she now found herself under the guidance of one of the city’s apothecaries. It was all a part of Captain Sinclair’s efforts to both integrate the members of the crew with the city’s populace and generate income for the ship. Some, like her, pursued medical practices, others apprenticed under smiths and armorers and other specialized professions, and still most others sold their services as extra farmhands and laborers. Of the members of the crew, those of the last group had been who she had seen most often frequenting the small clinic she now worked at in one of the many hamlets near the city.
“T-that’s it? He’ll be better?” the elven mother’s voice was still a little shaky.
“That’s it.” Jana confirmed, smiling at her before glancing down at the sleepy, sickly looking boy who somehow retained enough energy to stare skeptically at the waxed paper parcel. “The red tablets contain nightberry extract and the green are vilroot, to keep fever down and help his body fight the sickness. It’d be better if he let them slowly dissolve under his tongue to avoid upsetting his stomach, but they’re still quite bitter even with the small amount of sugar in them. He should start feeling better by the end of this week and back to full strength by the end of the next.”
By far, the most grueling task of her ongoing education had been memorizing the long list of herbs, both common and uncommon, provided by Apothecary Reun. The book also listed their their effects and extraction methods and it had taken her a couple weeks to get it fully memorized before Reun had let her handle low-risk cases by herself. This, in turn, had left the then-frazzled orc free to focus on her house calls.
The mother breathed a sigh of relief as Jana visibly saw her shoulders relax, “I- thank you. H-here, it’s not much but I hope it’s enough.” she said, producing a small cloth pouch and placing it on the desk amidst the clinking of the coins within.
Jana carefully reached for the pouch and opened it, so far, this had been her favorite part of the job. Within was a handful of silver and copper crowns and she made a deliberate show of reaching in and looking like she was counting them out before plucking out a single silver coin, taking the mother’s hand, and placing the pouch back into it along with the parcel of tablets. The mother had a look of confused disbelief as Jana closed her fingers around the coin pouch.
“I- what? I don’t- How is this-” she stammered as her son looked up at her in confusion.
Jana simply hooked a finger around the neck of her robes and pulled down to reveal the mottled camouflage pattern of her uniform collar. The fabric was programmable. The color changed using heat and steam and a special fitting mannequin back in the ship’s armory and was stable at temperatures below 100° Celsius. For those participating in the integration program, they had settled on a monochrome gray-blue variation of their normal pattern. Lacking any formal patches, they instead altered the color to display their professions on the left shoulder, in her case a red cross inside a white band. Their right shoulders sported the Bornholm's crest, a cartoon bald eagle lugging heavy wooden crates over its shoulder set inside a circle, emblazoned in the Alvarian bronze and blue, though in this case the bronze was more a ruddy orange.
There it is. Jana thought, smiling inwardly as the mother’s face morphed from confusion to realization.
“Y-you’re one of-”
“Yes, ma’am” Jana grinned.
“But I don’t- How?”
Jana let out an amused sigh through her nose. “I can’t say too much about it, but what I can say that it’s a result of us working with the Academy.”
Jana spent the next few minutes answering what questions she could and trying her best to awkwardly acknowledge the mother’s repeated thanks. After finally seeing them off, she returned and inelegantly slumped back onto the stool. She closed here eyes for a minute with her head tilted back and a placid smile on her face before explosively rocking back onto her feet with an almighty sigh, reinvigorated. Poking her head back into the front room she saw that it was empty. With Apothecary Reun still out she decided to tidy up.
Moving into the back room, she produced a small crystal from one of her pockets and touched it to the crystal sconce on the wall until it brightened the room with a warm light. She couldn’t help but be a little jealous that she wasn’t one of the crew that was sensitive to magic, but there were enough small accommodations that it ultimately didn’t matter too much.
The light revealed a few products of the cooperation between the Academy and the ship’s crew. The first was a brand new pill press and small extraction still turned out by the ship’s machine shop. The second was a leather tome. It was heavily annotated, with errant pages sticking out at odd angles and one of her duties was to get caught up on the latest research every week or so.
Jana recalled that magic could be used to heal the body, but it required both an extreme acuity to the aether flowing through a body and years of study to get right if it was anything more specific than just accelerating a body’s natural healing. Moreover, arcane methods were naturally better at healing ailments of a more physical nature like cuts, sprains, broken bones and the like. Conversely, potions and tinctures, while also accelerating a body’s natural healing, had always been the preferred method of curing ailments like diseases and poisons. Magic could be used for these purposes of course, but it required concentration and decades of practice. After all, as Reum had said, it would be extremely unfortunate if a healer accidentally purified someone’s blood into water in an attempt to neutralize a poison.
This paradigm had led to a natural rift between the thinking of healers and apothecaries despite how closely they worked together. All of this had been undone by a single seemingly innocuous question by one of the Bornholm’s ensigns. Was there anything actually stopping the two practices from working together?
Aestrahd’s brightest debated and hunted through records for days while personnel from the ship looked on in befuddled amusement. It wasn’t taboo or particularly dangerous, nor was anyone actually enforcing the rift. It was simply a centuries old assumption born of an old observation and practicality. And with that one question, an entirely new medical discipline was born and already new theories and procedures were being drafted. Still, it would be years before they were developed enough to present to the wider world but the Academy had shown their thanks by allowing access to some of their facilities. In turn, the Bjornholm’s engineers had begun drafting designs for improving the Academy's existing equipment.
Engrossed in her thoughts, she had mostly finished organizing the shelves of powders and extracts when the bell attached to the front door rang out.
“Jana? Are you here?” Apothecary Reum’s voice rang out, her speech tinged with a Balmiran accent. Something in her tone put Jana on edge as she quickly finished placing the bottle she was holding and poked her head out the preparation room door.
“In here, ma’am. Is something wr- whoa, what happened to him?”
Reum had an unconscious man cradled in her arms. He was full grown and his face was decorated with weeks of miskept stubble, but compared to the orcish apothecary’s near seven foot frame, he looked like a teenager. He wore the armor of a cavalryman.
Jana started moving even as she spoke, shouldering open the door and moving in to the examination room ahead of Reum to make sure the single cot was clear. Reum followed close behind, laying the man down on the leather-lined cot as soon as Jana had parted the curtain.
“Exposure, exhaustion, malnutrition, dehydration.” the apothecary listed off the man’s ailments as she worked. She lifted an eyelid with a thumb to examine the man’s bloodshot eyes before moving to quickly unbuckle his bracers and greaves. “Minor cuts, bruises, wintervine rash, possible riding sores” she doffed the man’s boots, “and a severe case of marcher’s blisters.” she finished. The soles of his feet were scabbed over with ragged raw circles where blisters had formed, torn open, and formed again.
“Treatment?” Reum asked.
“What?”
“Your apprenticeship is still ongoing. Treatment?” she repeated.
It took Jana less than a second to collect her thoughts before she shook her head, straightened up, and moved towards the medicine cabinet.
“Treatment, right. We need the funnel and feeding tube first. Water with a pinch of salt and a spoonful of davaris nectar and davaris seed oil for dehydration and malnutrition.” she started as she reached for the ingredients, placing them on a wooden tray. “Mix in a pinch of tupalo pollen to aid in absorption. Minor healing potion to take care of everything else with a few drops of tincture of ironbark and vilroot to drive out any poisons and fight off infection for good measure. He should be healing well within a day, awake in two, walking again in three.” she finished, carrying the tray over to the cot.
Reum flashed her an orc’s signature rictus smile. “Very good.”
Before long, and despite a little difficulty with the feeding tube, they had administered treatment, removed the man’s armor, cleaned and bandaged him up, and sent a runner to the city to notify the southern garrison. With no other patients at the present, the two watched from the front porch as the messenger’s horse disappeared into the city gates off in the distance.
“Our patient, he was wearing riding gear. What happened to his horse?” Jana asked.
“Nowhere to be seen.” Reum answered. “He didn’t arrive with one. Last I heard the watch was still looking for it.”
A/N: Just a reminder, orc in this universe aren't big, burly, and green-skinned, instead they're more ghoulish and more closely resemble the monsters from The Quarry.
A/N2: With this, the horizon is in sight for the end of the first book, with between 10-20 planned chapters left. I hope my writing has and continues to improve. Thank you all for the encouragement to keep this story going!
[First]
Posted Dec 30, 2024, 5:34 AM UTC