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The first time she heals him, she seems irritated.
Shadowheart, she calls herself, a cleric of an as-yet-unnamed god. She crouches, frowning at his wound, or at him, as if he chose to take a dagger to the shoulder. “Hold still.”
Despite the pain, and the pounding in his chest, he feels her proximity like heat. (Gods above, he has been out of the world for some time, hasn’t he?) But the spell she casts burns cold, biting like frost, all the way through the wound. He can feel the skin and muscle fiber knit together again, faintly painful, like an echo of the injury, and he hisses—very ungracious of him—before her magic numbs the rest.
She’s already pulled her gauntleted hand away. “There.”
He nods, avoiding her eye by studying the blood that’s run down the front of his robe. That symbol on her circlet, like a dark moon, sticks in his mind’s eye—not immediately familiar but quite suggestive. Nearby, the githyanki woman stands over a bandit corpse, as their pale companion investigates its pockets. What a strange company he’s found himself in.
But it doesn’t do to be impolite, so he manages a tight smile as he picks himself up off the ruin floor. “Thank you.”
Shadowheart’s look suggests he’s been measured and found wanting.
“Watch yourself next time.”
+ + +
He quickly becomes all too familiar with her healing magic.
After so long in pain and isolation, Gale is slower than he once was, more easily winded, and what skills of his haven’t been dulled by disuse, the orb and tadpole between them have drained to dregs. When he pulls at the threads of the Weave, he feels clumsy as an apprentice, slow to shield himself or strike back. And for all that pain has become his familiar associate, adventuring life sets forth new and exciting discomforts hitherto unconsidered: goblin arrows, vine abrasions, gnoll whips, exploding gas traps, sleeping on uneven ground.
Shadowheart’s magic mends and numbs but does not soothe. Gale has been healed by divine magic before, but has never felt anything quite like it. Aid from the clerics of the House of Wonder has always braced him; the touch of other gods’ power has warmed, or lulled, or eased pain. Even on the memorable occasion when he’d been treated by a doomguide of Kelemvor, not something he’d like to repeat, the feeling of the spell at work in his body had calmed and assured him. Sharran healing, it seems, offers no such comfort.
But what an odd Sharran she is. She is guarded, to be sure, though it doesn’t take too long to learn her secret; sometimes callous, but not cruel. By the end of the first tenday, she begins to soften, not quite to friendliness, but to a tolerant sort of camaraderie, at least.
+ + +
Within a month—hard to believe they’ve been traveling that long—they’ve become… well. Not close, not truly. But he seems to amuse her a little.
“What did I say about taking blows to your face?” Shadowheart asks, after they’ve put down a pack of gnolls on the road. He’d say the fight was no great challenge, but the blood in his mouth might undermine the sentiment. He’s pretty sure his nose is broken; it’s bleeding enough that he has to pinch it shut.
Gale swallows—mustn’t spit blood on one’s friends—and ventures, “Something about avoiding it in the future.” But of course his nose is stopped, so it sounds ridiculous.
“So you were listening, at least. Here, Let me see it.”
More blood drips down his face when he withdraws his hand. Very little of the gore on his robe is his this time, at least. She tilts her head and leans in close to examine his injury; his eyes are drawn to her face, her flush and sweat from the heat and effort of battle. When she looks up again, his gaze seems to startle her, just for a moment.
Then she looks down to strip off her gauntlet, and when she looks back, her expression is closed off and cool. “This will hurt.”
“Of course.”
She grips the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb, quite hard, and the spell itself briefly spikes like a lance in the wound as bone bends and knits back into place. Then his face is numb. He can barely feel the blood still dripping down his upper lip.
She steps back to pull her gauntlet on again, while his hand goes back to his nose, now chill to the touch despite early summer sun.
“Well—that’s a relief.” He’ll be blowing blood from his nose for day or two, of course, but at least it’s set straight. “You have my thanks again.”
“You should take a potion, too,” she says, and for a moment she seems about to say something else, but she turns on her heel instead.
+ + +
Gale feels it as soon as he wakes, before all the others and yet too tired. His heart, or the orb, squirms in his chest, sore as a fresh bruise, demanding. His fingers fumble with one of the items they’ve passed him for such occasions—a locket, a delicate thing, he can’t think where it’s from—and the orb shreds the enchantment within it like ragged teeth, draws in the rich strands of the Weave, and yet—
The hunger is never truly sated now. He never seems to be able to get enough air; each beat of his aching heart works splinters of ice deeper into his veins. At the end of each day, his muscles ache with the effort of holding his failing body together. In the mornings, such as they are here in the Underdark, he tries to wake before the others, ostensibly to build up the cookfire for breakfast but truthfully to sit and warm his trembling hands till he can use them. Gale grits his teeth, trying to think of sun on water, amber light, home, trying to draw some strength or resolve from the flame as he flexes weak fingers. But with each waking he grows more certain he’ll never see home again. If he can, he’ll see the others to their goal, to the exit back to the surface world, and then find his way back down to meet his end.
“Here.”
Shadowheart’s sudden presence at the fireside startles him. She steps closer and kneels beside him, then reaches, palms up, as if waiting for him to hand her something. He frowns in confusion.
“I…”
“Give me your hands,” she says, softly, so as not to disturb the others. The elves, at least, will be up soon.
He reaches forward. Her hands are cool, when she takes his in hers. When she speaks a word of healing over them, the power that flows from her chills his skin and dulls the pain in his knuckles—a relief for a moment, but the opposite of what needs, when he requires all his dexterity for the somatic components of—
Then she releases his left hand and takes the other in hers, and begins to massage. It isn’t gentle; her fingers knead harshly into his palm, then begin to work at his aching knuckles and press his numb fingertips between hers, till the blood flowing back brings sensation with it, and the burning awareness of her touch. Her head is bowed, focused on her task, but he suspects he could no more read her face than the crown of her head.
It’s only when she releases his hand, but before he’s withdrawn it, that her divine wound flares. Shadowheart swallows a cry and draws a swift breath through her nose, pulling away to clutch at her own palm instead. Perhaps her Dark Lady found this a kindness too far.
By now, he knows better than to ask if she’s alright.
Instead, Gale massages his own left hand with his right, more limber now for her attention, more chill in the absence of her touch, until she looks up again. She’s schooled her expression back to a sort of defiant equanimity.
“Thank you for that,” he says.
She lifts her chin. “Think nothing of it.” For a moment, he thinks she’s going to leave, but instead, she sits back on her heels and turns to the fire. “Can’t have you fumbling over spells when we need you.”
“Quite right.” For an instant he considers taking her hand in his own, returning her kind gesture, before he lets go of the thought. He can’t even work out the numbness from his own joints, let alone soothe the sting of an angry goddess.
The ache in his chest is a weight that keeps him rooted there a while longer; Shadowheart seems no more inclined to go than he does. Gale hopes she at least takes some comfort in the company. They sit side by side, each holding their own hands, till the others stir.