Healer of Sakkara

Chapter 5 - Darkness

Pain dragged Galen back to consciousness with red hot claws. His head ached as if it were about to split in two and fire licked at his leg and side with molten tongues.

Blinking open crusted eyes, pure blackness met his vision. He sucked in a breath of cold air and coughed, groaning weakly as the sharp motion stabbed fresh agony through his ribs.

"Galen?"

A whisper like the flutter of moth wings in the dark.

"Sev?"

The name rose unbidden to his lips, even as his brain struggled to arrange the shards of disjointed memories into a coherent whole.

"Thank the gods. Are you hurt?"

Galen winced. He remembered falling, the icy ground giving way beneath his feet, and Sev clasping him tight as they plunged into the depths of a narrow-sided crevasse; but after that initial moment of terror, there was nothing until he had awakened a moment before.

Experimentally, he attempted to lift himself, gasping as pain seared his leg and side. He still wore his pack, which had likely cushioned his fall a little, and after a moment the white hot agony faded to an ache, accompanied by a strange buzzing and tingling, as when a limb has fallen asleep, like a swarm of bees beneath his skin. He did not seem to be badly injured, and the worst pain remained in his head.

"Only a little," he said at last. "Are you?"

"My leg is broken," Sev answered matter-of-factly. "And I am very cold."

Galen pushed himself up into a sitting position, hissing as his body protested with a fresh wave of pain. He felt about himself experimentally, finding a smooth surface littered with the debris of their fall. He could not tell if it consisted of rock or ice, but either way it was bitterly cold. Then his hand encountered open air instead of ground, and he gasped as his stomach lurched with fear. Catching himself, he explored more carefully and discovered that he lay upon a narrow ledge.

"Sev? Where are you?"

"Lower down. Be careful."

"What happened?"

Sev's sigh rose on a whisper. "You fell unconscious almost immediately. I think you hit your head. I aimed us for a ledge but lost my hold on you and... fell a bit further."

Struck by a sudden fear, Galen waved his hand before his face, but could not even make out the shape of it in the dark. He had heard tales of people who lost their sight after a blow to the head.

"Can you see?" he asked.

"No," Sev replied. "The lantern broke, and the barrowlings did something. Sealed over the spot where we fell. At least they didn't follow us."

Galen was grateful for this, but it stirred a new unease to life in his mind. "Why? I thought they never passed up an easy meal."

"I don't know. Perhaps they dislike the cold."

Galen pondered this but found it an unsatisfying explanation, and shivered at the thought that perhaps it was not cold, but fear that deterred them, and of what might frighten even barrowlings.

"Galen... do you remember when Zenír taught you to meditate, that day in the forest, when your magic... became visible as light?" Sev asked, interrupting his unpleasant ponderings. His voice was not quite a whisper, but had the weak, strained quality of one fighting to conceal pain.

"Yes, of course."

"Could you... do that again, do you think? If I had a bit of light, perhaps I could repair the lantern, if there is any oil left."