Death After Death

It was a woman. Someone motherly, perhaps twice his age. He thought she looked familiar, but he wasn’t completely sure. He’d treated so many people in… whatever city he was in, and his mind wasn’t working so well just now.

“What…” he rasped through parched lips.

“No, you just… you lay there,” she said, pushing him gently but firmly back into the mattress. “And I will fetch the healer.”

But I am the healer, Simon thought to himself. He might have laughed then, but it would have hurt too bad, and he lacked the energy to try. Something was definitely hurt badly, though. He couldn’t feel his toes, and when the woman hurried off, he tried to reach for a glass of water he\'d seen on the nearby table. That was when he found out his hands were swaddled in bandages so completely that he might as well have been tied up.

The attempt at motion made his body light up with pain in a dozen places again. He wasn’t going anywhere, and until he recuperated a bit more, he wasn’t even sure he could speak a minor word of healing. Even that insignificant effort would be too much. Instead, he lay there, trying to analyze his situation.

His body was in bad shape. He may or may not be paralyzed from the waist down, and from the taste of blood in his mouth and the uncomfortable sensations he felt when breathing, he was probably bleeding internally. All that was par for the course when falling from a great height, so none of that surprised him.

What surprised him was his surroundings. He wasn’t in his cabin as he’d first thought, but he wasn’t in his home in Ionar either. Thanks to the pungent smell of herbs, he would have been able to tell that, even in the dim light. He was somewhere nicer than either of those places. The soft bed beneath him and the faint smell of incense marked it as either the palace or else a very nice home somewhere in the upper city.

That meant he wasn’t a prisoner, of course, officially at least. He might well be one once they’d gotten him healthy enough to execute, but he really couldn’t say for certain. He had no idea what anyone saw or what they might have noticed when they found him. It was possible that his armor had been so damaged that his runes might not have…

Where is my armor? He thought with a start as he looked down. He wasn’t sure if he was naked or if there were clothes beneath some of these bandages and blankets. He supposed that it didn’t really matter, but he would have liked to see his injuries.

A few minutes later, the woman who had been minding him returned with a man whom Simon recognized, even if he couldn’t remember his name. He was the palace doctor. That answers one question, at least,

Simon thought, leaning a little closer to the idea that he was probably under arrest, just not officially yet.

“Ah, he is awake!” the doctor beamed. “This is good news! How are you feeling? Do you remember who you are? Do you know where you are?”

The first time Simon tried to speak, he caused a coughing fit that would have doubled him over in pain if he was capable of doubling over at this moment. Instead, he lay there miserably until they subsided, then he tried again, but quieter. “Water…” he moaned.

“Ah, yes, of course!” the doctor said, gesturing for the woman to handle that. The man struck Simon as more proud of whatever he’d done to save his patient than grateful the man was alive. He’d seen that type before in the years he’d spent in Abresse. “You’ve been unconscious for days, so a thirst is one more indicator of renewed health!”

“Days?” Simon rasped after his throat and tongue were moistened. His head was still fuzzy, but he wasn’t sure if that was a concussion or simply the consequences of everything else that he was suffering from. “Tell me… what happened…”

“To you? I’m not sure,” the doctor said. “There were some lurid reports about a stone giant, and I’m told they found you in some armor at the base of Mount Karkosia in rough shape. Your armor was…”

The man looked like he was about to laugh for a moment, but then he remembered his decorum. And he stopped himself. “Well, I’m not sure what it is you were up to, but even plate mail does precious little against fire, which would explain the burns you have…”

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Frostbite, Simon thought to himself. He wasn’t surprised. At no point did the fire burn him, but the cold was certainly more powerful than he’d expected on the rim of the caldera. He hoped it wasn’t too bad, but there was no way to know until he healed the worst of his hurts and started unraveling his bandages and the way he was feeling, that probably wouldn’t be today. He felt too woozy to summon the focus he needed to do a proper healing.

“No, not me…” Simon tried again. “The city… Ionar… the eruption…”

“Oh, the city is fine,” the doctor said. “Lava is still poring into the sea, I’m told, but these things happen. A few houses burned, but the Queen will handle all of that. I… no, we are much more concerned about you, Sir Simon. Can you tell me what you were doing up there?”

“I… I don’t remember,” Simon lied. “I can barely remember who I am… Don’t even recall why I came to Ionar right now…”

“Well, at least you know where you are,” the doctor nodded. “Can you tell me how long you’ve been here?”

“Years? Maybe?” Simon said, unable to remember if it had been three or four years at this point. He’d have to check the case notes in his shop to say for sure.

“Long time.” he sighed. “Healing. Quiet life.”

“Good, that’s very good,” the doctor said. “I can’t promise that you’ll make a full recovery, but at least your mind is intact, and that counts for something.”

“How bad?” Simon asked. The room went quiet for several seconds then, which was all the answer Simon really needed. It was pretty bad.

“Well…” the doctor said finally, “Your injuries are severe. I won’t lie to you about that, but I’m confident that they look worse than they really are, and in a week or perhaps two, we will know much more.”

A week was too long, though. Simon knew that. Bones that had been broken were already set wrong. The right time was now, not later. He didn’t say any of that, though. Instead, he let the doctor lead the conversation while he talked about herbs that might help and treatments that could speed recovery. Simon didn’t entirely disagree with the suggested course of treatment, but before he could ask questions or argue about anything, he drifted back off to sleep once more. Even staying awake was too hard for him in his present state.

When he woke sometime later, it was lighter, which meant it was daytime, but probably not the next day. The doctor was gone, but the woman was there, doing needlepoint in a chair by his bead. When he stirred, she immediately stirred, but when she went to fetch the doctor again, he said, “No… I want to ask you… not him…”

“Ask me what?” she asked, confused. “I’m just a housemaid; I know nothin’ of medicine like Doctor Nolanth.”

“Not medicine…” Simon breathed. “The volcano… the stone giant…”

“Oh, well, I don’t know much about that either… I—” she started to say.

“Servants talk,” he said with just as much volume as he dared. “What… do they say?”

“Well…” she said, looking at him hesitantly. “They say that an ancient evil woke up in the eruption a fortnight ago and that someone slew it and saved the city. According to some rumors, that hero died, and according to others, he’s recuperating at the palace even now… But I really can’t say.”

“I guess you can’t,” Simon said. The two of them exchanged smiles at the unspoken agreement.

She gave him water this time, and in the light of day, he could see the heavy splints that had been applied to his numb legs. The woman told him a little more gossip now and then. She mentioned that the Queen had tried to visit him twice, but Simon had been unconscious both times. He considered asking her if anyone has seen anyone else that looked like him, but that was too crazy. Honestly, just thinking about it again made him feel crazy, but that was a problem for later.

Later, his nursemaid brought him a thin broth after the doctor checked in on him again, and he ate some even though he wasn’t hungry. A rising fever had robbed him of his appetite. The one thing she wouldn’t do, though, was loosen his bandages so he could see what the problems were.

That had to wait until he was left alone the following night. Then, when he was by himself, he whispered a word of lesser healing to heal his throat and clear his mind. Then he got to work, attacking the bandages on his arm that hurt less with his teeth. Working by moonlight, he slowly unraveled the dense weave to reveal patchy burns and torn flesh where his armor removal had taken the skin with it on his upper arm.

Simon ignored those because none of them looked infected and kept unwinding the thing. His lower arm was much the same, and none of the major bones looked broken. When he finally unwrapped his hand, he found that two of his fingers were splinted, but that wasn’t what concerned him. He held his hand up in the moonlight and saw that all of his fingertips that still remained were blackened from frostbite and probably necrotic. Some of them were missing, though. While he was unconscious, someone had taken the liberty of removing his pinky entirely and the last joint of his ring finger.

He didn’t like it, but they had probably saved his life. “Well, it’s not the worst you’ve been hurt,” he told himself before whispering another word of lesser cure. When he healed his hand, he was careful not to try to restore the missing finger or any of the superficial burns. That would be too suspicious. Instead, he just healed his broken bones and all the damage from the frostbite.

When it was done, it looked and felt right as far as he could tell. Simon didn’t try to take off the splints. Instead, he used his hand and his teeth to get at his other arm. This one had a splint across the forearm and what felt like a fractured radius. He healed that without any trouble, and when he got to his other hand, he was pleased to see he’d only lost a join of his pointer finger, along with three more fractured fingers.

Simon healed all of that, looking at the wreck his arms had become. Then he looked down at his blanket-swaddled body and said, “Do I even want to know?” Part of him argued he could just kill himself and come back the old-fashioned way, but he didn’t listen to it. He wasn’t feeling very suicidal these days unless it was absolutely necessary; he had a lot more work to do.