Flux

lifting his hand to the level of her face. She used her left hand to keep his arm upright and placed her right hand over the splint, wrapping her fingers around it. She closed her eyes and mumbled some words Miner couldn’t catch. A spark passed between them, much like the shock that sometimes happened when the air was very dry and you touched another person, but stronger. As Ennek looked on anxiously, she said another few words, and then Miner cried out as his hand and entire arm were engulfed in wrenching pain.
    “What did you do?” Ennek growled threateningly.
    But she let go of Miner and took a nonchalant step back. “It is mended.”
    Ennek lifted Miner’s arm and examined it. “Miner?”
    By then the pain had faded away. Experimentally, Miner wriggled his fingers. They moved as well as the splint permitted, and the wrist didn’t hurt at all. “I…I think it’s fine,” he said.
    Ennek took a few minutes to unwrap the splint and they both looked at the limb carefully. The skin was especially pale where it had been covered, but there was no swelling and the bones looked straight and true. Miner twisted his hand this way and that, then grabbed Ennek’s hand in a grip strong enough to make Ennek grunt. “It’s all better,” Miner announced. He looked at Akilina. “Thank you.”
    She gave him a look of regal disregard and didn’t answer.
    “I need to learn how to heal people,” Ennek said, still inspecting Miner’s wrist. “The blood I could manage easily, I expect—it’s mostly water, after all. But the rest—bones, muscle, tendons, skin, nerves—I’m not sure about that.”
    “You mended yourself.”
    “I know. But that was…it was instinctive. I was dying and I didn’t even think about what to do. I don’t think I could do it intentionally, not without experimenting a bit first. And I’m certainly not going to experiment on you!”
    “Enough,” Akilina interrupted. “I’ve no time for this idle chatter.”
    The three of them descended to the ground floor, where she handed Ennek a small scroll. He tucked it carefully into his bag. “Am I just supposed to show up at the palace and expect to be brought straight to the king?” he asked.
    “No. You shall show them this.” And she handed him another item, a thin metal chain with a gold pendant in the shape of a feather attached to it. “Show them my sign and they will permit you an audience with the king. But I do not know if he speaks your tongue.”
    “I speak his, at least a little. I can make myself understood.”
    “Good. After you have completed your task, return my sign to me and I shall consider your service complete.”
    Ennek and Miner glanced at each other. Clearly, neither of them relished the idea of returning. But there was no reason to argue about it at that point, so Ennek slipped the necklace over his head and gave her another quick nod.
    She walked to her bookshelf and returned with a thin book bound in blue-dyed leather. “This contains a spell you can use to create the wave.”
    Ennek didn’t take the book. “I don’t need a spell.”
    She narrowed her eyes at him. “You have promised me that—”
    “I know what I promised. But I don’t need a spell to do it.”
    Now she cocked her head at him. “Why? Do you already possess one?”
    “No.” He lifted his chin a bit. “I don’t need spells to work magic.”
    “Nonsense!”
    “They’re only words. They focus energy, I expect. But I can focus without them.”
    “I have read of a wizard who could do such a thing. But that was many centuries ago and I believed it to be only a fairy tale. I have also heard rumors of portents, of a prophecy concerning a wizard who could do his works through force of will alone.”
    “I don’t know anything about that.”
    She continued to eye him speculatively for a few moments before she returned the book to the shelf. Miner wished that Ennek hadn’t shared that particular bit of information about his abilities but it was too late to do anything about that now.
    She didn’t give them any food before they started on their way. Instead, she pointed over at the bird that was perched on the ground outside her front door: their old friend, the Bhujanga. “I will guide you as far as the main road,” she said. “From there you will simply walk north. Donghe is four days away, if you do not dawdle.”
    They left without another word to her.
    The residents of Jiangbei stared at them again as they passed the fields.