Lamps now glowing, Lin returned to the table and her cold cup of karak. There were, of course, still passages she didn’t understand, so she planned to bring the book to the Black Mansion tomorrow; surely among the forgers and thieves Andreyen employed, someone must be able to translate Callatian. She suspected Kel could do it, if it came to that.
There were many passages in the book about how magic was used for healing. The first of them followed what she had learned about Source-Stones: Magicians in the past had been able to use their powers to heal, but were limited by the power they could themselves expend without dying. Those able to store energy in stones were able to do more. When Suleman （the betrayer, the traitor） created stones that could hold limitless energy, the ability to heal became, also, nearly limitless. A man would fall dying on the field of battle, Qasmuna wrote, and the sorcerer-healer would come and raise him up to fight on; even if his wounds could not be healed, he would still fight.
It was a chilling image, and gave Lin pause. She even had to rise to her feet, and make a circuit of her room, before returning to the book. Every power can be used for evil, she reminded herself. But she would not do so. She wanted only to heal Mariam. But her stone seemed dead, and had since she had used it to heal Conor. And while she had known that there was a way to put her own power into the stone, to imbue it again with strength, she had not known how to do it.
According to Qasmuna, as Lin read painstakingly on, the issue was one of binding. A Source-Stone needed to be bound to its user via a series of steps. Some seemed simple, while others involved words that, even with her dictionary, Lin could not yet understand. There were also places in the manuscript that Lin found blank—sections, she guessed, where the Word itself had once been written, and had vanished when the Goddess removed it from the world.
Still. There was enough for her to try binding herself to her stone, and why not now? Why wait?
Her eyes fixed on the page in front of her, she took the stone, embedded in its silver setting, in her hand. She laid her hand against her chest—as the book bade her to do, and as she had done instinctively when she healed Prince Conor—and closed her eyes.
Against the darkness of her lids, she imagined the stone as her heart. Imagined it set into her chest like a jewel that was also a living part of her. That pulsed with light in time to her heartbeats.
For a moment, she felt wind in her hair, and smelled the scent of smoke. She saw the top of the tower in Aram, and Suleman, rising to his feet, his stone pulsing at his chest—
Her eyes flew open. Her heart was hammering almost painfully, as if she had run flat-out until she could run no more and must crouch down, gasping for breath.
Her hand ached. She opened it, stared down at the stone in her palm. It was still pale, milky as a blind eye, but was there something moving in it now? A swirl, down in its depths, like the first rise of smoke from a fire . . . a whisper, in the back of her mind.
Use me.
A sharp rap on her front door. Lin jumped to her feet, flipping the tablecloth across Qasmuna’s book to hide it.
“Lin!” A familiar voice. “It’s Chana. Mariam—”
Lin flung the door open. Chana Dorin stood at her threshold, her broad face creased with worry.
“It’s bad, Lin,” she said, in answer to Lin’s silent question. “She’s been coughing up blood. And her fever—”
“I’m coming.” Lin slipped the stone into the pocket of her tunic, caught up her satchel, and stuffed her bare feet into a pair of embroidered slippers Josit had brought her from Hind. She followed Chana out into the night, her heart hammering as they raced through the dark streets of the Sault.
She found Mariam in her bed at the Etse Kebeth, racked with uncontrollable coughing. She held a bloody rag to her mouth, and more rags were littered on the bedspread. She was pale as starched linen, drenched in sweat, but she still managed to glare at Chana.
“You shouldn’t—have bothered Lin—I’m fine,” she gasped. “I’ll be—fine.”
Lin clambered onto Mariam’s bed, already unbuckling her satchel. “Hush, darling. Don’t talk. Chana—tea, with feverfew and willowbark. Quickly.”
Once Chana had left, Lin wrapped a shawl around Mariam’s shoulders, despite Mariam’s coughing protests that she wasn’t cold. There were streaks of blood on Mariam’s chin and neck, blackish red.
“It’s always worse at night,” Mariam said, hoarsely. “It . . . goes away.”
Lin wanted to scream in anger, though she knew it wasn’t Mariam she was angry at. It was the disease. The blood on the rags was flecked with foam: It was coming from deep within Mariam’s lungs, carrying air inside it.
“Mari,” she said. “How many nights? How long?”
Mariam looked away. Sweat shimmered on the sharp divide of her collarbones. The room smelled of blood and sickness. “Just make me well enough to go to the Festival,” she said. “After that . . .”
Lin caught Mariam’s thin wrist. Squeezed it gently. “Let me try something,” she whispered. “I know I keep saying that. But I think there’s a real chance this time.”
Some part of her knew it was a terrible thing to keep asking—to keep raising Mariam’s hopes and then dashing them. But the voice in her head was louder: You have the book now. You’re so close. She cannot die now.
Mariam managed a weak smile. “Of course. Anything for you, Linnet.”
Lin reached into her pocket and drew out the stone.
Use me.
Holding it lightly in one hand, she placed her other palm over Mariam’s heart. She could feel Mariam watching her as she let her mind spin away into that space of smoke and words, where letters and numbers hung shining against the sky like the tails of comets.
Heal, she thought, picturing the word in all its separate components, and then in its completeness, the pieces of gematry flying together to form the concept, uncovering the truth of what language had been formed to hide. Heal, Mariam.
“Oh!” Mariam’s gasp broke the silence, and the shadowy world fled from Lin’s vision. Mariam had a hand on Lin’s shoulder, and her huge dark eyes were wide. “Lin—it feels different.”
“Is the pain gone?” Lin demanded, not daring to hope.
“Not entirely—but it’s much less.” Mariam took a breath—still a shallow one, but less ragged than before.
Lin reached for her satchel. “Let me examine you.”
Mariam nodded. Lin retrieved her auscultor and listened to Mariam’s chest—the terrifying clicking and bubbling noises had faded. Lin could still hear a faint wheezing when her friend inhaled deeply, but at least she could inhale deeply. Some color had come back to her pale face, too, and the beds of her nails were no longer blue.
“I’m better,” Mariam said, when Lin straightened up. “Aren’t I? Not healed, but better.”
“It really seems like it,” Lin whispered. “If I try again, or try differently—I need to look at the books again, but Mari, I think—”
Mariam caught at Lin’s hand. “I’m well enough to go to the Tevath, aren’t I? However long this lasts?”
Lin bit back an assurance that of course this would last. She could not be sure, and knew she should not raise Mariam’s hopes unreasonably. But her own hope felt as if it were pressing against the inside of her chest like a bubble of air. For so long, nothing had worked to help Mariam—to have helped her at all, even just a bit, seemed a reason for optimism.