Page 116 of Suffer No Fools
"Keep healing her," Vadim said through clenched teeth.
"Why? She's fucking dead, Vadim!"
"I can hear her, that's why." Vadim glanced up at a spot above her body, seeing something Stan was grateful he could not. "She's not ready to leave us yet."
"There's so much damage!" Yvette sighed. "It's spreading faster than it did with Jasmine."
The tree. Fuck. Stan didn't want to look back at it, knowing he'd see a rotting hulk.
Vadim and Yvette linked hands, and Stan could almost see the glow of their weaves as they circled around Fanidra.
Several moments later, Fanidra sat up, gasping for air and laughing. "Wow. You two really care about me."
Vadim and Yvette both grabbed a shoulder and hugged her.
"Enough, enough. Get off me." She swallowed hard. "You've healed more than my body." She held out her hand toward the tree. Where her blast hit, the rot faded and bark reformed.
"You're ... balanced?" Yvette asked.
"Martiz stole it from me," she said. "Asshole did a lot of damage in one lifetime."
"He's the reason Coryn is the way she is, mostly," Vadim conceded.
"No," Fanidra said. "Don't you take that from her. She's a horrible person because she chose to be."
"She has a point." Stan helped the three healers to their feet. "Can we heal the tree?"
"The tree?" Vadim stared up at the blackened branches. The giant willow was sheltered from the elements in the courtyard, and had yet to lose its leaves, but they were now falling to the ground like black worms.
"It's a sentinel tree." Stan explained the message they'd received from the tree on Stony Eel Island.
"It is ancient," Yvette said as they approached. "I can feel its roots beneath us. The way the palace and the tunnels are configured, I would say the tree was here before any of it."
Stan nodded. He sensed the tree below and above them. He could also feel it dying. It felt like Embertide would die with it.
"You've got healing magic, too," Hugo whispered as he took Stan's hand.
Tovey approached him on the other side and wrapped his arm around Stan's waist. "We'll help, if we can."
"I don't have healing magic."
"You healed Aquarion," Hugo insisted. "Renald awakened the tree, but you helped restore its natural place in the world. You can do that again."
All he'd done was shift some sand. This tree needed more than a new home base. Stan wasn't a healer, not like they claimed.
Still, he did his best. While Yvette and Vadim fought to save the trunk and branches above them, he and Fanidra worked on the roots. They had resisted the rot, but the tree needed nourishment, same as any weaver after a battle. Stan used his knowledge of tree roots to help them dig further into the soil and rock below, finding nourishment for the healing above.
"Whatever you're doing," Fanidra said, "it's working."
Stan dug deeper, hoping it would be enough. He couldn't shake the feeling of dread he'd had since freeing the sentinel maple from its confines on Stony Eel Island. The tree could be transformed to something else, but if it died, it put all life in jeopardy. Stan couldn't let that happen.
Even if he didn't have a future with Tovey and Hugo, he refused to accept a future where their world ceased to exist.
#
Tovey
Above them, life flowed through the tree again. New leaf buds sprouted, and new growth trickled down from where rotten branches had fallen. Nola and Efren's water weaves drenched the earth twenty feet beyond the tree's trunk, soaking into the roots.
