Chapter 110 A Healer’s Measure
Chapter 110 A Healer’s Measure
Lyanna
Asha did not waste time once the door closed behind us.
She cleared one end of the long table, pushing aside a mortar and two bundles of dried leaves before pointing toward a narrow examination bed near the hearth.
“Lie down.”
I obeyed.
Elias remained near the door, quieter than he had been before we went outside. The colour had returned to his face, and his hands were steady again, but I could still remember them trembling on the stone wall.
I could still hear everything Asha had told him.
People I had never met were suffering because of a decision that had carried me out of Drakovia alive.
The thought sat heavily beneath my ribs.
Asha pulled a stool closer.
“When did you last feel the baby move?”
“This morning.”
“Strongly?”
“Yes.”
“And since then?”
I placed a hand against the side of my stomach.
“Several times.”
As though summoned by the discussion, something pressed firmly beneath my palm.
Asha noticed.
“Good.”
She warmed her hands near the fire before taking my wrist. Her fingers remained against my pulse longer than I expected.
“Do you get dizzy when you stand?”
“Sometimes.”
“Have you fainted?”
“No.”
“Headaches?”
“Occasionally.”
“Spots or lights in your vision?”
“No.”
She moved on to my eyes, gums and the inside of my lower eyelids before frowning.
“You need more food.”
“I eat.”
“Not enough,” Elias said from behind her.
Asha and I both looked at him.
He closed his mouth.
Asha turned back to me with the faintest hint of satisfaction.
“How is your appetite?”
“Better than it was.”
“How often are you eating?”
I hesitated.
“Whenever we can.”
“That is not an amount.”
My throat was already beginning to scratch from speaking, so I lifted my hands.
Usually three times. Sometimes less.
Asha watched my fingers closely. She understood enough from context, while Elias quietly interpreted the parts she missed.
“Keep signing if that is easier,” she said.
I did.
She asked about sleep, including how often I woke, whether pain disturbed me, whether I could breathe comfortably lying down and whether the baby became more active at night. From there, she moved through questions about abdominal tightening, pressure low in my pelvis, changes in discharge, bleeding, swelling and whether I had fallen since our last examination.
I answered until my hands were doing almost all the work.
Asha examined my ankles and pressed a thumb into the slight swelling there before measuring my stomach with a marked strip of cloth. Then she placed both hands carefully along either side of it.
“Tell me if anything hurts.”
Nothing did.
The baby apparently objected to the intrusion and kicked hard beneath her palm.
Asha’s expression eased.
“Active.”
Elias moved a little closer.
She glanced at him but said nothing.
Asha took a small wooden listening horn from a shelf, warmed the wide end between her hands and pressed it gently against my stomach. She shifted it twice while I watched her face for any change.
After several seconds, she smiled.
“There.”
Elias came nearer despite himself.
“Strong?”
Asha lifted one finger.
He stopped.
“Strong,” she said.
Something inside me loosened.
She let him listen afterward.
Elias bent over me with one hand braced against the edge of the bed. His expression changed the moment he found the heartbeat, and he stayed there long enough that Asha eventually looked at him.
I looked away first.
The guilt returned before I could stop it.
Serena, Darian and Korel had suffered because of choices that had carried me out of Drakovia alive, and thinking of them brought Sira and old Bina back into my mind as well.
I had tried not to think about them too often because there had never been anything I could do from the road. Sira had risked punishment for me, while Bina had risked far more. They had helped me survive the capital and, eventually, escape it.
If the Triune had traced anything back to them, I had no way of knowing.
That uncertainty was its own kind of cruelty.
I had no proof that anything had happened to either of them. Elias had spent the last hour trying to separate what he knew from everything fear could invent in the empty spaces, and I could do the same.
I hoped Sira was safe.
I hoped Bina was still somewhere complaining that everyone around her lacked sense.
For now, hope was all I had.
Asha finally sat back.
“The baby sounds well, the movement is good, and I don't see anything that suggests labour has started.”
Some of the tension left Elias’s shoulders.
“But you are too thin,” Asha continued. “You are exhausted, and you have been asking your body to do more than it should for too long.”
I watched her.
“The mountains themselves are not the problem. Pregnant women walk, ride and travel. What concerns me is everything you are piling on top of each other.”
She counted them off on her fingers.
“Not enough food or water, poor sleep, cold, illness, falls and days when you keep moving because stopping somewhere unsafe is worse.”
Her gaze settled on me.
“Any one of those can be manageable. Enough of them together can become dangerous.”
I signed, Premature labour?
“Yes.”
Elias stepped closer.
“If that happened out here?”
“Our options would be very bad.”
The answer silenced the room.
Asha turned back to me.
“You are nearly seven months along now. That is far enough for your body to be carrying a considerable strain and early enough that I do not want this child deciding to arrive in the mountains.”
I nodded.
“You need shorter travel days whenever possible, more food, more water and proper rest. If you find shelter that is reasonably safe, use it instead of sleeping outside simply to gain another few miles.”
She began gathering the things she wanted us to take.
“If the tightening becomes regular, if there is bleeding, leaking fluid, severe pressure, fever, reduced movement or pain that does not ease when you rest, you stop travelling and find help.”
Elias asked how long I should ride at once, then moved on to walking, cold weather and how much water I should be drinking.
By his fifth question, Asha stared at him.
“Do you intend to interrogate the child personally when it arrives?”
Elias did not appear remotely embarrassed.
“If necessary.”
A laugh escaped me before I could stop it.
It disappeared almost as quickly as it came, but for a moment the cottage felt lighter.
Asha gave me several small packets of herbs, clean cloth, a jar of salve and instructions for each. She added dried fruit and two dense cakes from her pantry without asking whether we wanted them.
By the time she finished, afternoon light had shifted across the floor.
I sat near the hearth while Asha returned things to their shelves, and Elias began helping without being asked.
That was when I started noticing how little they needed to say to each other.
Asha handed him a jar without looking, and he put it on the correct shelf. When he reached toward a bowl of dried pears, she told him not to touch them because he had hated them since childhood.
“They still deserve hatred,” he said.
Later, she caught sight of the pale scar near his wrist and asked whether it still stiffened in winter.
“Sometimes.”
“You never did the exercises I gave you.”
“I did them.”
“For how long?”
Elias did not answer.
Asha gave him a look and went back to folding linen.
I watched them.
There was an entire version of Elias in this cottage that I had never met. Asha knew the boy who hated dried pears and the man whose old injuries still bothered him in winter. She knew where things belonged before he asked and remembered habits old enough that neither of them seemed to consider them worth explaining.
I did not resent her for knowing him. That would have been ridiculous.
Still, something uncomfortable settled beneath my breastbone.
Elias looked across the room at me.
Our eyes met.
Asha noticed.
Her hands slowed over the linen as she followed his gaze from me back to him.
For a moment, she simply watched him.
Then she murmured, “You did this with Mireya too.”
Every trace of softness disappeared from Elias’s face.
His shoulders went rigid, and whatever had been in his eyes when he looked at me vanished behind something I could not read.
I looked from him to Asha.
I had never heard the name Mireya before.