Keeping the Fire: Breathe

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A thick and angry shaft buzzed within a hand's breadth of Polena's ear and struck Coralm in the shoulder, struck him down to the floor with the force of it's impact. Polena twisted back to look to the alcoves above her. She could just see the sight of a cowled figure between the edge of a statue and the wall, firing through the narrow gap. Then she was thrown to the ground by one of the Knights. A bedlam of screams, panic, shouted orders, crashing armor and running feet echoed off the high vaulted ceiling. It was dark almost at once as the knights, moving faster than their pained march suggested they could, closed around her and Coralm. Shields were thrust above them, a protective shell proof against any arrow. Polena thought she heard the crash of second bolt, perhaps two more against the shield wall but the Knights of the Rose knew their arms as well as their duty. Nothing could touch her here, not even several attackers or one armed with a repeater. As more warriors flooded the Way and cries to give chase could be heard, Polena crawled to Coralm's side. He lay on the gray stone floor, his breathing ragged. The bolt, a shaft of yew, strong and perfectly fletched, was lodged where his right shoulder met his chest. She prayed that it was not a deadly spot.

“Comae, I am here. I am here. They have driven them off. They will call the finest healer the Fortress has.”

Coralm said nothing. He showed such discipline as she had never seen not to cry out in pain. It was as if the act of doing so meant something to him, as if it were an act of defiance or control not to scream. He was trying to stay conscious. She remembered a fear like this one, she had it once as a child when she had fallen from a window and lay broken on the cobble stone streets. Then, though her life was not in danger, she felt certain that if she passed out she would die. Coralm was of the same mind and breathing was his way to stay awake, his Will's way to exert itself. She moved to meet it. Clasping his hand tightly, moving her head to catch his eye, the brought the Knight Luminary's own words back to him.

“Be here. Be now. Breathe.” She repeated it, then again, forming a mantra of them until Coralm's breathing met her rhythm. Quickly she was lost in that rhythm, the connection between them. It is the highest ideal of a Luminary to become that connection, to be the manifestation of Will, or Creace, as they say it, a word inseparable from the land itself. Together they breathed, together they waited, together they were taken to safe haven by the healers of the Fortress. They moved with more coordination without words than ever they had encumbered by the rules, posturing, and bluster of speech.

Before the evening had fully set in word came to Polena that the Djaught's meeting had been canceled, that the King had ordered all Ministers to their quarters after the assassins had escaped, that she would have to give account to the King herself when she was ready. None of that seemed to matter. For Polena had also been told that the bolt had been poisoned, that the healers were doing all they could against it's fever, and that she would best be served praying for Coralm. She gave no word to the King, only to her Comae. It was only in the latest and darkest hour of that night, when Coralm was fully unconscious from the fever burning within him, that she had time to ruminate. And she could not help but think: “There, but for the difference of a hand's breadth, lay I”

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