[Bêthberry]

All of Pashtia, all of the Royal City, reeled under the terrible conditions brought to the people by the horrid alliance with the Emissary and his dark lord while the nobles and the wealthy dallied with how to meet the situation and save their skin. They fiddled while Pashia burned.

The war with Alanzia had done much to destroy the wealth of the farmlands, most of which lay in decay without proper planting and strewn with the detritus of war, blades, axes, poleyards, broken wagons, rotting corpses, dead horses. So great was the horror of death and the stench that even the well springs of the water were turned foul and harboured unseen the founts of disease and pestilence, which weakened and brought down vast numbers of people.

Then the orcs did their worst, butchering citizens and elves indiscriminantly, terrorising the populace with their blood thirsty slaughter and cruel bullying, destroying hope wherever it might raise its head. Jarult would have died a slow wasting death of despair, forgotten in his small corner of a room, mummified in the dry heat, had he not had Daliyah to cheer his spirits and keep up his strength despite his physical decline. And she, she would have been unable to bear the indignities and repulsive events she was called upon to fulfil had she not been able to speak with him from time to time.

Yes, the Healer had been recognized by the invading hoard. When orcs had been wounded in skirmish, in putting down rebellion, in forcing themselves upon the populace, she had been called in to minister to their hurts. Such care was loathsome to her. To be in the same room with them brought vile odours to her nose; to be brought into close proximity with their stinking bodies nearly made her faint with revulsion. And to touch them was the vilest form of desecration known to her art. Yet somehow Daliyah found the strength of character to control the turmoil in her stomach which would have rebelled and spoken unwillingly of her disgust, spewing its contents over the orcs as they spread their filth among her people. And she willed her hands to hold steady as they sutured wounds and cleansed the pustulence which she was sure flowed through the orcish veins. And her face she held rigid as a stone mask carved on the new temple to the usurping god, not risking a quiver of nostril nor a quirk of muscle nor a blanch of horrified countenance.

Was she a traitor? Each time she was called upon to heal an orc’s hurts she shuddered inside, asking herself that question. Was she simply saving a cruel beast to go out and perform greater harms upon her people? Yet if she had refused, and been despoiled and beaten and tortured cruelly to the death , would her people have benefited? Would others have stepped into her absence and healed her people? It was this possibility which hardened her spirit into a morose stone automaton so she was able to go forth again and again amongst her people. In fact, Daliyeh won a small victory of sorts, for by her ministrations amongst the orcs and the Emissary’s army she became known and accepted to the invaders. Soon, her venturing forth on the streets and alleys and byways became invisible to them and her ways were no longer scrutinized as were those of the ordinary citizen. From being first an object of ridicule and derision, she became a sort of ghost, walking forth where others could not and no longer noticed. And so she reached more of her people and so she passed beyond the ken of the evil which sullied her land.

This day she came to the house of Korak to see his ailing mother the Lady Hababa, for servants had sent whispered words that the old lady was tired and ill and needed solace and herbs to ease her pain. Daliyeh brought with her oils to soothe the paper-thin flesh, flavoured liquids to coat the dry mouth and cracked lips, herbs to strengthen faith and bitter berries pounded with honey to sweeten pain. If she found any of the wasting fever, she would be forced to require the ancient Lady to withdraw to the Hospice where the chance of spread of disease would be lessened. Few followed her into the Hospice for there those with the Black Fever spent their final days, their tongues rolling out of their mouths in delirium, their eyes rolling back into their heads, and their skin bursting with pustules and black splotches. No one followed Daliyeh as she brought those patients to their final bed of rest. Would Hababa be one of those, Dalieyeh wondered? She hoped not, for she remembered the old woman fondly and bore some friendship for her.