Aiduels sin, p.26
Aiduel's Sin, page 26
‘We’d be better to get far away from Elannis,’ Sendromm replied. ‘Northern Andar, somewhere remote.’
‘No,’ said Leanna. ‘If I leave Western Canasar, it will feel like I’m giving up on my parents after just one attempt to find them. I’m not willing to do that. I’ll need you to return to Arlais to look for them. Maybe more than once.’
‘It’s a bad idea,’ said Sendromm. ‘More chance of people recognising you here. We should go somewhere far away.’
‘To what purpose? I’ve lost everything, other than Amyss and my own life. I’ll not go to some far-flung place, then act as if my parents never existed, as if I’ve already forgotten them. I agreed to travel with you, Caddin, but I didn’t agree to be led wherever you want to go. If you want to stay in my company, then you need to accept this.’
Sendromm frowned, then shrugged as if in acceptance.
‘But what are we going to do, Lea?’ asked Amyss. ‘Just sit in a wagon all day, and a tavern room all night? Until when?’
‘It’s safer to keep moving,’ said Sendromm.
‘I understand that,’ said Leanna. ‘But Amyss is right. Doing what?’
The grey-bearded man stared at her for a number of seconds, as if he was considering something. Finally, he said, ‘Leanna, you were a healer, yes? Even without your… miracles, you’ve been taught medicine?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘I was a healer, too, once,’ Sendromm stated, with a wistful tone to his voice. ‘A long time ago. A good one, too. I journeyed to remote places, tending to people. I still have my old tools and a store of herbs in the wagon.’
Leanna and Amyss stared at him, dumbfounded, and for one of the first times he looked almost embarrassed.
Lord Aiduel, what other secrets does this man carry?
‘Perhaps we could do that?’ Sendromm added sheepishly.
–
As a result of that discussion, for the following weeks of winter, Leanna and her companions started to travel around Western Canasar.
Throughout that time, Sendromm directed them towards more remote settlements. At each location, they would offer healing services to people who otherwise had no access to a local healer, and Caddin would attempt to sell some of his accumulated wares.
For the first time since her role as an army healer, Leanna was outside of the cloistered environs of a religious establishment, and she was able to travel with relative freedom in a new country. Therefore, despite the trauma of her flight into Western Canasar, she experienced a sense of liberation. It was clear that Amyss felt the same. The petite woman appeared to be quietly rejoicing that they had both survived, and that she was still with Leanna.
They all agreed that it was too dangerous for Leanna to use her powers. They were therefore reliant on their collective medical knowledge and conventional remedies, and Leanna was soon surprised by just how experienced Caddin Sendromm was. The man’s healing knowledge surpassed her own, and she assessed that he was even close to Sister Colissa’s level of expertise.
Leanna observed that Caddin was like a different person when he lost himself in medicine and healing. One who seemed more genuine, and less reserved and curt. It was clear that Sendromm had indeed lived a life like this in the past, possibly for a long time. He was comfortably familiar with the process of arriving in a new settlement, and then encouraging people to spread the word to the surrounding areas that a healer had arrived.
He also seemed oblivious to inclement weather. This was in stark contrast to Leanna and Amyss, who would huddle together under a blanket as they journeyed.
On their travels, they aimed to stay in a single location for a handful of nights at a time, taking two bedrooms in the better taverns that they came across. Once inside these establishments, Caddin advised Leanna and Amyss to stay in their bedroom other than for meals, and to remain out of sight during the evenings.
However, Sendromm often then spent his own evenings in the main drinking room of the tavern, always with his mace by his side. In the middle of each night, Leanna would hear him stumbling up the stairs and past her room. The following morning, he would emerge bleary-eyed, reeking of sweat and alcohol.
Despite his drunken indulgences, on most mornings Sendromm would insist on finding a place outside to train with his mace, sometimes for as long as an hour. After Leanna and Amyss had witnessed this a handful of times, it renewed their speculation that he must have been a soldier. The grey-bearded man could wield the hefty weapon, either single or two-handed, with an impressive grace and strength which belied his bulk and age.
It added to their confusion about who and what he was.
–
In the early days of their wanderings, news about the Archlaw’s Proclamation of Excommunication came to the village where they were staying.
When they first heard of this, Amyss appeared to be the most upset and concerned, but Leanna found herself to be surprisingly unperturbed. The events of the last year had damaged her loyalty towards the Holy Church, and she no longer received the Archlaw’s words with blind faith.
Instead, she could fortify herself with the knowledge that The Lord Aiduel had saved her on the pyre and that she retained her abilities; if Aiduel had truly turned away from her, she would have also lost those powers. She no longer believed that the Archlaw would be able to sever her connection to The Lord and to heaven, with mere words on a piece of paper.
Caddin Sendromm shrugged, after Amyss raised the subject at dinner.
‘This proclamation doesn’t bother you then?’ Amyss asked.
‘No,’ said the burly man. ‘I’m damned by The Lord, so Paulius and his laws can’t touch me.’
‘Why do you always say that, Caddin?’ asked Leanna, wishing that just once she could sense the man’s emotions. ‘That you’re damned by The Lord. Just what happened to you?’
He shrugged again, before saying, ‘I was born, that’s what. And what happened afterwards is my own business, girl.’
After that, he refused to say any more.
–
As the weeks passed, Amyss was growing increasingly frustrated about Sendromm’s secrecy. Following one of the burly man’s mace-training sessions, after they had returned to travelling on the wagon, she challenged him again.
‘You were obviously a soldier,’ she said. ‘Why won’t you just admit it?’
‘Because my past is my concern, not yours,’ said Sendromm.
‘Which army were you in? When did you leave? Why do you own a medallion that stops Leanna’s powers? And how do you know so much about Leanna’s kind?’
The grey-bearded man gave an exasperated sigh.
‘How can you ever expect us to trust you,’ added Amyss, sounding annoyed, ‘or, ever like you, when you refuse to tell us anything meaningful about yourself?’
‘I don’t want you to trust me or like me,’ the man replied. ‘I want Leanna to allow me to protect her.’
Amyss tutted in response to this. Later that day, once she and Leanna were in the privacy of their bedroom, she again raised the question of whether they should run away from their male companion.
‘I don’t want to do that,’ said Leanna. ‘Sometime soon, I’ll need him to return to Arlais for me, if I’m to have any chance of finding my parents. And anyway, I’ve given him my oath.’
Leanna was able to persuade Amyss with this reasoning. However, she knew that her answer had not articulated all of her own motives for wanting to stay with the secretive man.
Some part of her believed that her loyalty to Sendromm was about more than just the promise that she had made. Her instinct was telling her that she had been meant to encounter the grey-bearded man, and that it was The Lord’s will that she should continue to travel with him. She did not know why she felt like this, but she wanted to trust that instinct.
Lord Aiduel, I hope you will help me to understand these feelings, and soon.
–
The recurring dream continued to trouble Leanna during these travels in Western Canasar.
She was certain now that the figure in the Gate spoke to her before the commencement of violence, but she still could not retain the memory of what was said. However, she felt sure that the words were not benevolent, and she was becoming more convinced that they were a trigger for the ensuing horror. She needed to find a way to remember.
On a couple of nights, after waking from the dream, she also believed that she could feel a faint, distant pulsing. It teased the hidden recesses of her mind, in some ways a pale imitation of what she could feel when near to Arion. It made her wonder if she was still sensing the young noble, somewhere far away.
To her surprise, sometimes the dream did not invade her sleep for several consecutive nights, which was the longest undisturbed period that she had experienced since the early days at the College of Aiduel.
This puzzled her until Amyss speculated whether the dream could be impacted by Caddin’s medallion. After that, they realised that Leanna had not been visited by the dream in any inn where her bed rested on the other side of a wall from Caddin.
Amyss suggested that they ask Caddin for the second medallion, so that she could wear it and keep Leanna free from troubled sleep, but Leanna declined. Even though she had come to fear the repeated torment of the dream, she felt that she needed to comprehend its secrets, and she did not want to be cut-off from it.
Lord Aiduel, you have given me this dream, alongside the gift of my powers. It is therefore not for me to make the choice to be rid of it.
–
One night, Leanna awoke in the darkness hours for another reason.
Amyss had gently shaken her awake. The petite priestess placed a finger on Leanna’s lips, and whispered, ‘Listen.’
At first, Leanna was confused, uncertain what she was meant to be listening for. Then she heard it. Sobbing, from Sendromm’s room on the other side of the wall.
‘He’s crying,’ whispered Amyss. ‘But listen to what he’s saying, if he speaks again.’
Leanna did as was instructed. For a number of minutes, she listened in the darkness, hearing occasional weeping noises. Her eyelids were heavy, and she was close to drifting back into sleep when she finally heard Sendromm speaking.
‘Why are you turned away from me? I thought that this might change things. What else must I do? Am I never to see them again?’
His speech was slurred and he sounded drunk. Leanna listened for a few minutes longer after that, still struggling to fight off sleep. She heard Sendromm’s last two words as she finally fell back into slumber.
‘I’m sorry.’
The next morning, after discussion with Amyss, Leanna decided to approach Caddin. She found him in an area of open ground behind their hostelry, where he looked ready to begin his martial practice. As Leanna drew close, she could see that his eyes were again bloodshot and that his expression was guarded.
‘Caddin, may we speak?’ she asked.
‘What is it?’
‘Last night… we heard…’
His brows furrowed. ‘You heard a drunken man, that’s all.’
‘We heard you say certain things. If you-’
‘I was drunk and that was private,’ he said, his tone unfriendly. ‘That’s enough.’
‘If you want to speak to us… about whatever upset you. You can, you know that don’t you?’
‘I said, that’s enough!’ he snapped. ‘Now leave me alone!’
He turned his back to her and raised the mace outwards to his right, gripped in one hand. He held it there for a number of seconds, and she could see the thick muscles in his neck, shoulder and arms straining to maintain the position.
Leanna walked away, feeling frustrated. Later that day, Amyss tried to explore the same subject, but with an equal lack of success.
–
Throughout the winter evenings, Leanna and Amyss had many hours to spend in tavern bedrooms together. They often used this time to try to train and develop Leanna’s abilities.
Now that she was no longer using her powers to heal the sick at the College of Aiduel, by the end of each day Leanna was brimming with energy. In the privacy of their room, once Caddin’s medallions were downstairs in the bar area and out of range, Leanna would practise.
She would use her ability to lift a range of objects selected by Amyss, and would then manipulate each item in the air. Most nights, they would start small, with Amyss placing a selected object in front of Leanna. Amyss would then gradually increase the level of challenge.
Leanna could sense that her strength and stamina were building, the more that she used this power. One night, after a succession of ever-larger objects, Amyss pointed towards Leanna’s bed and said, ‘Go on. Lift that.’
Leanna concentrated on the heavy wooden construction. She could feel herself straining, pushing invisible, ethereal fingers through and around the object. Focusing all of her will towards moving it. Unconsciously, she raised her arm outwards and upwards, lifting her limb in a mirror of the movement that she wanted the inanimate object to make.
The bed started moving. Gradually shifting, and raising from the ground. Its slow ascent was marked by a whirl of dust and the scurrying of a spider away from a shadowed area which had become exposed. Leanna could feel herself straining, as the bed continued to lift upwards. Two inches. Four.
‘Go on, Lea!’ exclaimed Amyss, laughing as she watched. This laughter was matched by emotions of wonder and love which were radiating outwards from the petite woman. ‘You’re glowing!’
Leanna realised that she was, and that her golden aura had returned. She gently lowered the wooden bed back down to the floor, in the exact same spot where it had been moments earlier. As this happened, Amyss clapped her hands together and made a cheering noise. This sound was accompanied by more emotions of unreserved love, which were cascading towards Leanna.
Lord Aiduel, thank you for the gift of her love.
‘You’re amazing, Lea,’ Amyss said more softly, as her emotions continued to flow between them.
LOVE. WONDER. LOVE. DESIRE. LOVE.
Leanna’s reaction was instinctive, and the same ethereal fingers which had been encircling the bed just moments before now reached out towards Amyss. This was the first time that Leanna had consciously tried this with another person. The fingers swirled around the red-headed woman, reaching beneath her clothes and caressing her skin with feather-soft touches.
Leanna heard Amyss gasp, at the same moment that a more intense and raw emotion was emitted by her companion, to accompany the wonder. Arousal. It was then such a simple matter to manipulate the invisible fingers. To envelop Amyss’s entire body, and to gently raise the petite woman until her feet were several inches from the floor. Leanna then floated Amyss across the short distance which separated the two of them.
Leanna grinned as she heard her companion giggle in response to this sensation of flying, and she watched Amyss’s arms opening wide as the power brought her close. The small priestess was still elevated as she entered the golden aura surrounding Leanna, and as her arms closed around Leanna’s neck in a soft embrace.
Amyss’s excitement was then matched only by her love and desire, as the two priestesses started to kiss.
–
Leanna and her companions spent the frostier winter weeks in the most southerly parts of Western Canasar. As strange as their life was, Leanna was beginning to savour an element of routine within it. She felt a peacefulness that she was no longer the Angel of Arlais, and had returned to being just Leanna.
However, as the weather improved and as spring approached, she was becoming increasingly restless for news about her parents. She told Caddin that she wanted him to make another journey into Arlais, to spend more time searching for her mother and father.
‘I’ll do it,’ said Sendromm, his face solemn. ‘And you have my word that if I can bring them back, I will. But after that, I want us to go to northern Andar.’
They therefore travelled back towards the first tavern that they had stayed in, to the south of the Ninth Bridge. By the time that they returned there, it felt like they had been living in exile in Western Canasar for a long time.
Shortly afterwards, Caddin departed alone on horseback in the direction of Arlais. Leanna and Amyss were left to wait at the tavern, feeling both hope and fear for the news that Sendromm might bring. While they waited, Amyss returned to the question of what their future might hold.
‘You agreed that we’d travel with him for six months, Lea,’ said Amyss. ‘What do you intend after that time has passed?’
‘I don’t know,’ Leanna replied. ‘I can’t decide that until we find out about my parents. But, if there’s no news this time, perhaps we could go north? We could carry on healing people, at least for a while. I’m learning a lot, and I can see that you’re learning, too. Perhaps we could have a life here, in Andar, in obscurity? And then, I can try to understand more about the purpose that Aiduel has for me.’
‘And would we stay with Caddin after six months has passed?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Leanna. ‘Perhaps only if he tells us everything about who he is and what he knows.’
‘He’s done something, Lea, in the past. Something bad, that he’s ashamed of. He knew of those assassins, so he’s clearly dealt with some bad people. And he’s proved he’s a killer, too. I think that’s why he won’t tell us anything, because he’s so ashamed of his past.’
Leanna only nodded in return.
Lord Aiduel, if that’s the case, please give him the courage to speak the truth, and to ask for forgiveness.
–
After just over two days had passed since his departure, Caddin returned from Elannis. When he arrived back at the tavern, his presence was alerted to Leanna and Amyss by the sound of heavy feet clomping up the stairs. After a hurried knock on their door, he entered their room, clutching a rolled parchment in his hand.
