Healer
He placed a hand on her shoulder and found her shaking. He looked ahead to try and figure out what had shaken her, but he saw nothing. The priests of Arawn walk in their usual unorganized procession. Someone walked up the steps carrying bread and flowers to the altar inside the gazebo.
She slowly started to relax as the worshipper left the gazebo and kept walking.
“What is that?” Sirona asked, “That place the man went into?”
“It’s an altar temple,” Druid said. “To the god Arawn. People leave offerings and prayers there.”
Sirona frowned, walking towards it to peer inside. It wasn’t a full building. It was just big enough to house a wide stone altar that was covered in bouquets of fresh flowers, loaves of bread, and burning incense. There was the scent of sugar and spices in the air as well.
She glanced as the priests stopped and placed new incense in the vases carved into the pillars on either side of the stairs before leaving.
“I don’t understand.”
“What is there to understand?” Druid asked, “Is it strange to offer offerings to a god where you are from?”
“It’s just an altar? Where is the temple?”
“These are the temples. There are several across the city.”
“The priests aren’t preaching?”
Druid laughed, “The priests of Arawn do no preaching. It is not the way of Arawn.”
Sirona shook her head, “I don’t understand.”
He hummed, “The tenants of Arawn hold that all that will be is. There is no way to pray your way into better circumstances.”
Sirona frowned listening to him. Arawn was worshipped primarily in thanks and hope. He was not a god that gives, but he also didn’t expect much more than living morally and living well.
It was strange to encounter a religion so different than the cult of Anu. Anu was a jealous god and quick to anger. The people prayed to Anu out of fear and desperation. Even the gods of other countries were more demanding than the following of Arawn.
Sirona titled her head and looked up at Druid, “You speak of the religion as if you do not believe in it.”
“I respect the religion and the god, but no, I do not follow it.” He chuckled, “I am far too attached to the most mundane parts of life to adhere to Arawn’s tenants of life.”
Druid chuckled again. Arawn was a god without demands and gifts. Druid believed too much in giving to the people to ever be considered a devout follower of Arawn.
“Glory to Berth! Our warrior queen will conquer the continent!”
A rallying cry filled the air and Druid sighed.
“It seems that the queen has gotten another victory in the south.”
They walked towards the crowd as they cheered. She approached one of the women nearby.
“Hello, could you tell me what’s going on?”
The woman laughed, “Queen Fedelm has conquered Riden. If she keeps this up, Berth will stretch from coast to coast.”
Druid hummed, “She expanding south rather aggressively.”
“What of Conna?” Sirona asked the woman. “Have you heard anything about Gunning?”
The woman frowned, “I’ve never heard of such a place. Is it on the continent? Gunning is a rather strange name.”
Sirona winced and went to someone else, “Have you heard anything about Conna?”
The man shook his head. Every person she asked looked at her strangely. She didn’t press the questions and allowed them to go back to their celebration. She and Druid drifted away from the crowd towards the docks as Sirona sighed. She shouldn’t have gotten her hopes up.
Just because she’d crossed the Tara River and ended up in Berth didn’t mean that others had made the journey. Who knew how far away Berth was from Conna?
Druid placed a hand on her shoulder, “This place called Conna must be very far. Maybe you will have more luck with merchants than townspeople.”
She smiled thinly at him and nodded, “You are right. Thanks.”
They walked on towards the southern roads leading out of town when a familiar flash of blue-green fabric caught her eye. She turned and her heart leaped with joy as she broke away from Druid.
“Sirona?”
She hurried towards the group of people who looked bewildered and overwhelmed at the hustling crowd who looked at them strangely. They were dressed in the blue-green cotton of Chera, a country just west of Conna. She had never visited the place, but her father had brought her back a dress made of the fabric when she was a little girl.
They had crossed the Tara River somehow. They had to know something.
“Please help us,” they said. “Where are we?”
Sirona stopped near them and cleared her throat, “You’re from Chera, aren’t you?”
The man’s eyes brightened and the group turned towards her. A woman clasped her hands with tears in her eyes.
“Blessed we truly are. You speak our language! Please help us. Several of our group are injured. We haven’t had food in days. Can you tell us where we can find a doctor?”
Sirona didn’t know the answer, but she didn’t have to answer as Druid came up behind her.
“I’m a healer,” Druid said, “I am willing to aid them.”
Sirona grinned and looked at the woman, “He’s a doctor. Show us the way.”
The woman looked at Druid apprehensively but nodded and led them back towards their boat. There were more people than Sirona expected on the boat. Some of them were moaning in pain and curled up on the deck.
Druid kneeled beside one of the worst-looking ones and turned him over.
“How can I help?” Sirona asked.
“I could use a translator and an extra set of hands,” Druid said as he reached into his bag and started passing herbs and things to her to grind.
The woman who was in the market kneeled and spoke softly to Sirona, “Is he really a doctor? He doesn’t look anything like a doctor. He looks more like a thing of the forest or something.”
Sirona chuckled as she ground the herbs together in a thick paste, “Druid is a great healer.”
The boat gasped around them. Sirona turned back as brilliant sparking red light jumped between Druid’s hands and the man on the floor. The man groaned and slowly started to regain some color.
Druid reached for a handful of the past Sirona was making and spread it into the festering gash in his leg before starting to wrap his leg.
“Keep grinding. We’ll need more of it.”
Sirona nodded as the woman stared in shock.
“By the gods…”
“How did you come to be here?” Sirona asked, adding more herbs to the mortar.
The man sighed, “Conna invaded Chera. We thought to escape before they reached the shore and head south to Durin, but….”
“It was horrible,” a woman wailed. “Durin was taken. The port city was burning as we got near it. We thought we’d be able to dock for a bit there, but we bet so many boats on the water fleeing from Durin hoping to escape Conna’s forces for far-off lands.”
The man shook his head, “We didn’t have enough provisions to make it more than a week at sea. We thought to stop in Gunning, knowing that the duke has always been kind, but the people we met at sea told us that Gunning had fallen.”
The woman shuddered, “We were told that the duke was killed. Haron’s taken over the duchy and set the priests loose against the populace.”
Sirona winced at the thought. She could hear the fearful wailing of her people and almost smell the smoke of the pyres at the thought.
“What about the duchess? The heir?”
The man shook his head, “We didn’t hear anything about them, but I can only guess that they were killed by the cult. We didn’t even get a chance to dock before we came here.”
Sirona frowned, “What do you mean?”
“We learned from them that Gunning had fallen.”
Sirona frowned, shaking her head. It didn’t make sense. How had they ended up here?
“How then did you get here?”
“We were trapped in the southern Taran Storm,” she shuddered. “We weren’t the only ones to try to brave the storm system, but we didn’t see any other boats when we saw this coast.”
“How long were you on the water?” Sirona asked.
A man shook his head, “Maybe a week, no longer than a week and a half.”
Sirona grit her teeth. Her plan to escape to Durin would have been a catastrophe. It had been lucky that she’d jumped into the river intending to die rather than being caught in Durin. She shuddered, continuing to make the paste and whatever else Druid needed her to do as he worked his way through the people on the boat.
“How can we ever repay you?” the man said with a grimace, “I don’t suppose that our coinage would be any good in this place?”
Sirona relayed the message to Druid who shook his head. Sirona smiled, warmed by his selflessness as she looked at the man.
“He says that he wants no payment.”
The man looked troubled, “Surely, there’s something we can offer him?”
“Druid?” Sirona asked, “Is there nothing they could offer you?”
Druid chuckled, wiping his hands and packing up his bag, “Live well. That is all I ask.”