CHAPTER 1060: A LONG CARRIAGE RIDE (PART TWO)

"There’s no pain," Loman said as his hand moved to the scars across the face and the silk patch that covered his left eye. "None of it hurts," he admitted, speaking softly as the wonder in his heart overtook the horror. "At least, not physically. Your miracle... Your miracle of healing is very strong."

"It isn’t a miracle," Heila said, shaking her head and refusing to let him refer to what she’d done using the terms the Church favored. She’d gotten a taste of the reverence humans looked at Lady Ashlynn with after experiencing her witchcraft, and she wanted nothing to do with that kind of misguided worship.

"You might say that," Loman disagreed. "But what Dame Sybyll did to me, only the Saint himself, or perhaps Exemplar Lyn Cattell, the Emissary of the Ascended Physician, could have healed this well. And the price for such a miracle," he said with a shudder. "Well, I suppose my curse will be revealed in time. I imagine it won’t be light."

"Curse?" Heila said, cocking her head to the side in confusion. "There’s no curse. The price of your healing isn’t borne by you, but by the trees who offered themselves up to nourish your body and mend your flesh. I, I don’t know if the grove at Dame Sybyll’s castle will recover after healing you," she admitted, hanging her head low. "But there was no other way."

"If she’d let me take you to the forest before doing that," she muttered before cutting herself off. What was done was done, and it couldn’t be taken back to be done better. Still, she felt like she owed them at least some explanation, if for no other reason than to help them understand Lady Ashlynn when they finally learned who the Mother of Trees was.

"The reason I took the people who were wounded in the battle to the forest before we left was so I could borrow the strength of the entire forest to heal them," she explained. After the battle, she’d provided what healing she could, but much of it was limited to applying salves and ointments, stitching up wounds and applying bandages.

She’d prepared several crates worth of potions in advance of the battle and used them all when the Church refused to heal the men of Hanrahan who had already been touched by her healing witchcraft during the battle. But to help the soldiers of both sides to truly recover before she left Hanrahan Town had required something greater.

"In a forest, I can borrow a little bit of strength from dozens, even hundreds of trees," she explained. "When the trees are old and strong, with deep roots and a strong connection to the power of the earth, I only need to borrow a little bit from each one in order to heal someone. It’s the same thing that I’ve been doing when we stop to rest the horses," she said, since she’d seen them watching her from the windows every time the carriages stop.

It was unlikely that they’d encounter any resistance on the trip back to the Vale of Mists. The closest village they would pass by belonged to Sir Carwyn, and he had already sworn to serve Dame Sybyll, and by extension, the Vale of Mists. But no one who had grown up in the Vale of Mists felt comfortable passing through human lands, and there were reasons beyond simple safety that prompted Heila to use witchcraft to speed them on their way back to the Vale.

"If I just ask the plants along the roadside for a little bit of their strength, I can help the horses to recover faster, the way a flower perks up with a bit of water and sun," Heila said, speaking as though it were common sense. "But when there aren’t many trees or growing things around, it takes more from each one to do the same thing. We, we don’t like to do that," she said, biting her lower lip as she remembered how frail the trees in the castle grove felt when she was done healing Loman’s injuries.

"We don’t like to draw too much on just one tree, but in times of need, to save a life, we will," she said resolutely as she looked back up at Loman, meeting his gaze directly. "I don’t know what you’ve been told about Witches, Lord Loman," she said instead. "But we don’t curse the people we heal. We aren’t monsters."

"It, it isn’t about being a monster," Diarmuid said carefully from his seat next to the diminutive witch. He’d spent half of the carriage ride lost in his own thoughts, and much of the rest of it helping to care for the blinded Sir Tommin, but he’d been looking for a way to engage the horned witch in more conversation, and this seemed like as good an opportunity as any.

"What Disciple Loman said about Exemplar Cattell is true," Diarmuid explained. "But healing wounds that would otherwise claim a man’s life means altering his destiny. For a man to live who should have died will always require a price to be paid, either by the healer or by their patient."

"Oh," Heila said, as if she didn’t entirely believe their words but didn’t want to argue about them. Inwardly, however, her mind raced as she tried to recall every scrap of conversation she could from the few times she’d spoken about sorcery with Aspakos.

He’d also talked about being cursed and paying a terrible price for using the sorcery left behind by an Oracle, but he always said that he wasn’t a healer. He and Erkembalt had needed Lady Ashlynn’s witchcraft in order to free Hauke from the curse of the Frost Walker ancestors, but perhaps there were other reasons for that as well.

After all, Aspakos was only a sorcerer, he wasn’t a member of an Oracle’s Celestial Court the way an Exemplar should be. The extent of his power should be much more limited than the greatest champions of the Church.

"When Mother A-, er, when the Mother of Trees and I met Auntie Amahle to learn witchcraft," Heila said carefully, nearly stumbling into revealing Ashlynn’s name before she caught herself. "We thought that a witch’s coven was similar to a vampire’s progeny. I grew up in the Vale of Mists, and the Mother of Trees is the Seneschal of a True Vampire," she explained, though from the confused looks Diarmuid and Loman were giving her it was clear that they were unfamiliar with some of the terms she used.

"It took time to learn that things that seem similar on the surface can be very different underneath," Heila said, pushing forward with her explanation despite their confusion. "A witch’s healing isn’t the same as an oracle’s. It doesn’t require the same sort of price. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a price to be paid," Heila added quickly, lest they misunderstand.

"It’s just that things are different for us than they are for you," she said. "I, I hope you can remember that when we get to the Vale of Mists. Whatever your Church taught you about us, we’re different from that. Even when things may look similar on the surface, and it might look like we’re defiling something you consider sacred," she added carefully as she tried to consider how Ignatious would explain it if he were here.

"We’re not trying to defile anything of yours," she said with growing confidence in her words. "Its just that we have something sacred of our own, and it looks similar to something of yours. So... so please, when we get to the Vale, please keep your hearts and your minds open. I think that, if we can learn how to share the things that are similar, we won’t... we won’t have to tear each other apart anymore," she said as her eyes fell on Loman’s missing arm and disfigured face.

It was a simple, genuine plea, and one that neither Loman or Diarmuid could easily respond to. They’d both been steeped in the traditions of their faith for almost their entire lives. But as the carriage trundled ever closer to the Vale of Mists and their meeting with the powerful Mother of Trees, both men couldn’t help but ponder Heila’s words.

After all... they’d just learned how much they didn’t know about the people they’d spent their entire lives preparing to fight, and that lesson had been filled with pain, loss, and arguably unnecessary sacrifice. No one wanted to see another battle like the one they’d just been through.

But could they really put aside hundreds of years of constant wars, just because they found a few pieces of common ground? Neither man knew... but soon, they would arrive in the Vale of Mists, and they’d learn firsthand how much they really had in common with their ancient enemies.