Chapter 160: Do not stand yet

The four of them stepped through onto the rug of the inn suite, and the portal winked shut behind them. Leo let out a breath he'd apparently been holding. Corinne turned in a slow circle, taking in the sitting room she'd never quite gotten inside on her first visit, and stopped with her back to the balcony doors.

"Okay," she said. "New problem."

"I know," Cal replied.

"Two people walked up these stairs."

"I know."

"And four of us are about to walk down them, one in a wheelchair—"

"Corinne, I—"

"—and the innkeeper is going to remember that for the rest of his life—"

"I have—"

"—and then he's going to tell the story to every regular in the common room—"

"Corinne."

"—and one of them is going to be a talker, they always are, and by second dusk half of Mirathra's going to hear about it."

Mira looked up from her lap, almost smiling at Cal. "The great planner. Undone by a staircase."

"I'm not—"

"The mastermind."

"Even you, Mira?"

"Foiled by the burden of his own cleverness."

Corinne clapped her hands. "Yes, thank you, Mira! This is what I'm saying!"

"I have," Cal said, louder, "already thought about this."

Three faces looked at him with different flavors of skepticism.

"It is why I picked this suite, and this inn." He walked past them to the shuttered glass doors on the side wall and pulled them open. Mirathrian air rolled in, carrying a mixture of pleasant and not so pleasant smells from the alley two stories down. "See? A balcony? Over a side alley? Nobody uses it after the breakfast delivery."

Leo peered over the rail and jerked back. "Oh no."

"I spent a week testing the lift capacity on one of my Spells. Both of you will go down that way, while Corinne and I walk back out the front like the ordinary guests we are."

"Cal, I am—I don't like heights, I have never liked heights, I—"

"It's only two stories, buddy. I've moved heavier than you across a longer drop." Cal smirked at his friend. "Besides, the worst thing that happens is you fall and break a bone or two. I've got plenty of healing potions that'll patch you right up."

"That is not the reassurance you think it is."

Mira wheeled herself to the balcony and looked down. The token in her hand vanished into a pocket, and both her hands started to pat her armrests impatiently as she looked up at Cal with excitement.

"I'd like to go first, please."

"Mira, no, I should go first."

"You'll spend the whole descent looking at the ground and then it'll be worse. You'll be scared. If I go first, you can look at me instead."

Leo could only blush at that.

"Cal."

He didn't miss his cue from the young woman, drawing Mana up and casting [Air Hand] half a dozen times in rapid succession and sliding the nearly invisible palms under the wheelchair's frame. It was hard. He couldn't control them all simultaneously, so it was a matter of moving them a couple at a time and then locking them into place. Grabbing hold of them all at once was easier when they only needed to move in one direction together.

Mira went up and over the rail slowly, with the chair lifting beneath her, and her laugh—the same startled laugh from the first push through Deadfall's snow—floated back up the alley. She landed with the softest thump of wheel on stone and clapped both hands in delight. Cal turned to his friend.

"See Leo? Easy. Now it's your turn."

"I hate this," Leo announced to anyone who was listening. "I hate this, I hate this…"

Cal cast the Spell a couple more times and tried to position the hands evenly around his friend's body. It worked better once he got Leo to kind of… sit down into the hands and lean back, giving Cal more surface area to push against gravity with. Once secure, it was a simple thing to lift him up and over, gently setting him down on the ground below as if he were a crate of eggs.

Leo's mantra had changed halfway through from "I hate this," to "I hate you," but Cal didn't take any offense. It was all part of the plan. The baker landed white-knuckled and unmoving, so Cal used the Spells to manhandle him to the back of Mira's chair.

Not waiting for Leo to recover further, Cal released his Spells and called, "Down the alley to the western corner. Wait for us there."

Corinne shut the balcony doors behind him and rolled her shoulders back. "Time for the walk of shame."

"It is not—"

"It is so."

"Corinne, so help me…"

They came down the stairs at a leisurely pace, and the man at the desk glanced up. One of the regulars in the common room, a beefy caravan guard nursing a mug of ale, smirked at Cal in exactly the way Cal had been dreading. Corinne, walking two steps ahead with her chin high, gave the guard a curt nod as she passed by.

Cal did not dignify any of it. He grabbed the door for her and followed out into the Mirathrian morning without looking back.

"Only thirty percent forgiven," Corinne muttered under her breath as they turned toward the alley.

"What? I thought you said forty?"

"Call it a smirk tax."

The Healer's Guild's white marble facade was less ostentatious than the neighbors. Leo pushed the wheelchair, while Mira watched Mirathra go by, quietly cataloguing every building and face she passed. Corinne kept up a running commentary on the buildings for their benefit.

Cal walked half a step behind the chair with his eyes on the streets and the clock in his head. They made the appointment door with a quarter hour to spare, and Mira presented the wooden token at the intake desk. The clerk turned it over, matched the number against a slate, looked them over a final time, and gestured them into a long waiting room lit by soft runelights.

Leo lasted about ninety seconds before he started babbling nervously.

"The flour bin, I'm thinking, has to sit against the east wall because of morning light, but then you've got the proofing station too close to the oven wall, which—Mira, are you listening?"

"I'm listening."

"—which means the dough's going to over-proof on hot days unless I put a partition in, but a partition eats floor space, and if I lose floor space I lose the second oven, and without the second oven I can't do bread and pastries in the same shift, and—"

Mira wheeled her chair around until her knees were touching his. She put one hand flat on his chest.

"Leo."

"—and the venting, don't get me started on the venting—"

"Leo Tanner."

He stopped, looking down at her hand.

"You're going to figure it out."

"I—"

"You're going to figure out the partition and the venting. And the ovens. Because you always do." She searched his eyes. "I'm going to be fine. You trust Cal, right?"

He hesitated for longer than Cal would have liked, but eventually nodded. The stress seemed to deflate out of him. A door at the far end of the room opened, and a young man in white and silver stepped through with a slate under one arm.

"Mira Jain, Master Innes will see you now. You are allowed one guest to accompany you."

Mira looked up at Cal, who stepped in behind the chair.

"I've got her," he said to Leo. "Let me take it from here."

Master Innes was compact and tidy and older than her face suggested, with grey braided into black hair and a composure Cal had learned to read as very expensive. She wore white and silver like the apprentice, but her collar was pinned with a small enamel sigil. On her right hand, which Cal clocked before she'd finished her first sentence, sat a void ring of clearly superior make, its band chased with delicate silverwork.

And for the second time since coming to this world, Cal couldn't feel someone's aura at all. The first time he'd encountered that phenomenon had been Macarious.

"Hello Mira. I hear you have had some spinal trauma, correct?" She glanced up from the slate the apprentice held out. "Onto the table, please."

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Cal lifted Mira onto the examination table himself. Innes gave him one quick assessing glance and returned her attention to the slate she'd taken.

The apprentice, sixteen or so, stood at his master's elbow. Cal watched the young man's eyes track his own right hand where the dark iron band of Cillian's void ring sat plain against his finger. A hungry smile flashed across the apprentice's mouth before it disappeared.

Innes cast a diagnostic Spell without external runes and Cal opened his senses, watching her Mana spool out from her palms in a fine mesh that settled over Mira's back. It was… exquisite. The Mana was light-based, just like the Spells Specialist Spinova used, and the minute threads were controlled more delicately than he'd ever seen magic used before.

The mesh was only active for around ten seconds before Innes cut the flow and the magic dissipated.

"She has a complete severing of the lumen column between her fifth and sixth vertebrae. Regeneration alone will not restore function, and the entire strand-bundle will need to be reconnected." She looked at Mira for the first time, smiling slightly. "Luckily, I am a master with the ability to perform this task."

"Oh, thank goodness," Mira replied.

Cal spoke to Innes. "That's great news! By the way, do you mind answering a question? I've been wondering why the spine needs a master at all."

Innes raised an eyebrow towards him.

"Excuse me?"

"I've seen a potion regrow fingers and mend broken bones and damaged organs. Heck, a Legion healer regrew my entire hand after I managed to blow it up. Why is the spine different?"

Innes set the slate down on a nearby counter and leaned back, crossing her legs and looking at him with a fresh kind of attention.

"That is not a question I typically field from a patient's relatives."

"I'm just a friend, but I'm also interested in the study of magic."

"Ah."

"Your diagnostic Spell. The way you held the spellwork and shifted the Mana intensity between threads without collapsing the shape… I've never seen control like that."

The apprentice's mouth opened.

"Nothing further," Innes said, without looking at her aid. To Cal, she said, "Give me a demonstration."

Cal built the twelve runes of an [Air Hand] in front of himself and used it to pick up her slate off the counter. He held it steady in the air for a slow three-count, twirled it once, and set it back down exactly where it had been.

Innes almost smiled.

"Impressive." She nodded to herself. "The spine is different because bulk regeneration like potions follow simple patterns the body remembers. A severed lumen column, however, needs manual intervention to ever have a chance of recovering. Usually, the strands will heal but rejoin incorrectly. Proper repair requires simultaneous parallel Intent across dozens of live junctions. That is my art, and it is not cheap."

"Thanks for the explanation, that makes sense. As for the price, I can offer two thousand gold for your services."

Innes let a beat pass, then said, "Today, I will do the work for that ring on your right hand."

The apprentice flashed a smile once more.

"The ring is worth ten times that amount, at the very least."

"The ring is worth exactly what someone will pay for it. I am offering to heal your friend's spine so that she may walk again. Is she worth so little to you?"

Cal smiled thinly. "I'll pay the gold, or I'll find someone else. I was referred here on written referral by Commander Cardea herself. Where she can find one healer, I'm sure she can find another."

He meant it, but he really didn't want to go that route. Innes was here. Mira was here. He wanted to cut a deal and get this done, but he wouldn't get fleeced like some sheep.

Innes narrowed her eyes.

"The healing," she said, "plus a cash rebate. Say, one thousand gold for the ring."

"No."

"Fifteen hundred."

"I won't trade a highly functional artifact for just a service and coin. I would need something equally functional in return."

The apprentice was staring at him now with open incredulity. Clearly, this wasn't the way he thought it would go.

"Teach me instead," Cal continued. "Teach me some healing magic and heal my friend. That's a fair trade to me for the ring."

The apprentice made a strangled noise, but Innes lifted one finger without looking and the noise cut off.

"Impossible. Guild knowledge is bound under oath. I could not teach a Spell of healing to an outsider if the world depended on it. I will give you five thousand—"

"Then, it seems, we are at an impasse."

Innes stared at him for thirty seconds as sweat started to prick his back, before finally saying, "There may be an… arrangement, worth discussing."

Her eyes darted once to the apprentice, and then to Mira on the table.

"But you both need to leave."

The apprentice opened his mouth. "Master, I—"

"Out. Both of you. Herman, wait in the antechamber. Miss Jain, you'll be more comfortable in the recovery room through that door. I will send for you both when we resume."

"But Master—"

"Now, Herman."

The apprentice, Herman, flushed red to the ears and turned on his heel and marched out, back rigid with indignation. Cal carried Mira down from the examination table, and she glanced back at him as he wheeled her out. A look that said I trust you, and then she was through the door and continuing on her own, until he shut the door behind her.

Innes looked up at Cal.

"Sit."

She pulled two cups and a decanter from her void ring, filling the cups with something strong and spicy before setting one on the counter in front of him. Cal didn't drink.

"You asked me why the spine."

She held out her right hand. A faint golden-white glow grew above her palm: Mana shaped into a diagram, a spinal column surrounding strands of light bundled together like cable, dozens of filaments running parallel up and down its length.

"Lumenstrands. The fine filaments that carry sensation and command through a living body. The great bundle here," she indicated the spinal cord, "is the lumen column in one's spine. Ordinary healing regrows tissue in bulk outward from healthy flesh along simple lumen lines. A finger regrows because there is not much that can go wrong. A hand can be regrown by a lesser healer because there is less complexity, and the lumenstrands are easier to manage. The body is capable of most things on its own, or with minimal magical aid."

She adjusted the diagram to remove the spine and show only the bundle of strands, severed across the middle.

"Damage the column and sever the strands… the path to reconnect the proper ends becomes unclear. Unguided healing cannot rejoin them correctly. Each severed strand must be individually tied to its exact counterpart, live, in the proper order, or the body reknits wrong and its functions fail."

Cal stared at the magical diagram. His mouth had gone dry. He had spent weeks trying to get Grubby I and Grubby II to behave independently from one another, and this lady was saying he'd need to manage that dozens of times over to heal at this level.

She let the diagram dissolve.

"Now, as for my oaths. I am bound not to teach the Spells of my Guild's healing repertoire to any outsider. I am bound not to reveal detailed rune information, combinations, sequences, or activation methodologies that constitute those Spells, or anything I've learned from the guild. Breach of these oaths damages me directly, and I will not see my spiritual foundation damaged for anyone, or anything."

Cal frowned, wondering where she was going with this.

"I have not, however, sworn to withhold the runes themselves as individual glyphs. I may draw a rune. I may speak its name. I may not tell you what it does, how to use it inside a Spell, what combinations of runes it is useful in, nor which Spells it typically belongs to. But that is a loophole. It has been walked before, and it will be walked again."

"And you're willing to walk it now? For me?"

"For the ring. And under a mutual oath, narrowly drawn between the two of us."

"What are your terms?"

"That you never claim training from the guild, or name me as your source. That you never disclose the transaction. In exchange, I likewise do not disclose that it happened and will heal your friend's spine."

Cal thought about it for a few seconds. Having a backup void ring was a rare gift, and brought him many tactical advantages… but getting access to another means of healing? Especially for things that his alchemy couldn't fix? The long-term ramifications for the Sovereign Path were too tempting to ignore.

"I… agree."

"Then swear."

Cal's reading on oath-binding had been clear: this was a binding spiritual contract, where sloppy wording would create loopholes that could be used against him. The process was legalistic for a reason.

"Let's be precise," Cal said. He had learned enough to know this was non-negotiable. "We agree to the exact wording first. My oath: I, Cal Valorn, will never claim training from the Healer's Guild for the runes you share. I will never name you, Master Innes, as my source for any knowledge of healing. I will never reveal, by word or by deed, the nature of this transaction or any details related to it."

Innes nodded once. "Acceptable. My oath: I, Master Innes, will not reveal the nature or details of this transaction, by word or by deed. Further, I will, in this session, restore full sensory and motor function to Mira Jain's spine, after demonstrating and naming all of the runes I use for healing."

"And the nullification clause," Cal pressed. "My oath becomes binding only upon the successful completion of your stated duties. Should you fail to restore Mira Jain's spine or provide the runes as promised, my oath is rendered permanently null and void."

"That is standard for a contract of this nature," she said, a hint of respect in her eyes. "The same applies to you, of course. My obligations are void should you break your silence, or fail to hand over the ring. Are you ready?"

He nodded, and she set both hands on the desk between them, palms up. Cal set his over hers. He gathered his three spiritual energies to seal the pact, bending his Intent and wrapping it around the sentences he had just agreed to. He pushed the energy forward. Innes's own met his in the space between their hands, and they both recited their respective oaths out loud.

He felt a simultaneous tug and sting in his spirit that told him the oath had bound true. Innes withdrew her hands.

"The ring."

Cal opened both of his void rings with a chunk of Mana and transferred contents into the silver ring on his left hand. The dark iron band came off his right finger, and he set it on the desk. Then he asked for his payment.

"The runes."

Innes lifted one hand, and Mana extended above the desk in a controlled, golden-white pulse. She drew the first glyph slow enough for a student to follow.

"Lumen."

A simple upward-arcing curve with a single point above it, like a candle-flame stylized into a line. It stayed for a few seconds before she let it dissolve.

"Vitae."

Three short strokes rising from a common base, like a wavering flame.

"Mend."

"Aqua."

"Flow."

"Oros."

Each glyph appeared, held for a few breaths, and dissolved. Cal took every one into [Perfect Memory] the moment it completed. He recorded the shape, and beyond that, the feel: the exact Mana signature Innes gave to each rune, the differences in density and spiritual weight from one to the next.

She drew and named dozens after those. Simple ones and stranger ones, whose names Cal had never heard before. Some Mana types he'd never felt before. She said not one word about what any of them did, and Cal knew not to ask.

When she was done, she let the last one dissolve and looked at him.

"That is what I can give you inside the letter of my oaths. It should be enough to occupy a serious student for years. Decades, even."

"Yeah… wow. I consider that part of the agreement fulfilled. Thanks."

She dropped the dark iron ring into a drawer under the desk and clicked the drawer shut.

"Herman," she called out. "Miss Jain."

The apprentice reentered subdued, and Cal left to retrieve his friend. Mira glanced askance at Cal, and he gave her a wink in reply, to which she smiled.

"Never had a doubt."

Cal lifted Mira back onto the operating table and helped her lie prone. Then Innes set both hands on the small of Mira's back. Cal stepped to the side of the table where he could see and would not be in the way while Herman stood opposite, staring.

Innes began to work her magic, and to an ordinary observer she was simply standing with her hands on a patient's body, breathing steadily.

To Cal, with his senses fully open, her Mana came alive outside her spirit only faintly: a fine golden-white presence under her palms, so densely controlled it hardly leaked at all. It ran down into Mira's lumen column and fanned there, splitting and splitting and splitting, threads of light so fine he could barely sense them. Each one moved independently of the others, all of them held simultaneously.

He reached into the fresh memory of the runes she'd shown him and felt for their signatures against the living Mana passing through Innes. Some of them he found, like tiny fingerholds. Fragments. Enough to give him an idea of where to start.

Across the table, Herman was doing the same thing. The work took eleven minutes by the small chronometer on the wall and when it was done, Innes drew her Mana back into herself and lifted her hands from Mira's back, stepping away.

"Miss Jain, you may sit up now. Slowly. Feet to the floor, but do not stand yet."

Mira sat up. She moved her feet, one after the other, and looked at them as if they were extremely interesting new acquaintances. Then she promptly ignored the healer and slid off the table to stand on them.

"Well, what do I know. I'm only the—"

Mira walked out, interrupting Innes. Cal gave the healer a quick thanks and followed his friend into the waiting area beyond. Leo was on his feet before the door fully swung open. He had, from the look of him, been a nervous wreck for the last half hour. When he saw Mira in the doorway on her own, he broke out into a brilliant smile of relief.

She crossed the waiting room to him and he met her halfway, folding around her. They stood in the middle of the room embracing and ignoring the world around them, his face in her hair and her hands fisted in the back of his shirt.

Cal turned his eyes away out of private courtesy, and realized Corinne had come up beside him. She slid one arm through his and leaned her shoulder briefly against him. Nothing more needed to be said.