He led us to where a gully bounded by tall, rocky cliffs forked off the valley. As we followed the gully it ran ever higher until we came to a wide crack in the rock wall, which we entered. A passage turned and twisted its way deep underground. After the first turning we lost even the dim light admitted by the crack and moved in total darkness. There were several more turnings, from the feel of the air each leading to a more spacious passageway. At the same time, the deeper we went, the more strongly an acrid, musky odor came to dominate the passage’s natural earthy smell. It grew stronger and stronger until emerged into a wide cavern.

A fire in its center provided the only light, but after the darkness of the passageway the place seemed brightly lit. I expected the cavern to be filled with smoke, but some natural draft must have been at work because aside from the Wild Men’s smell, which I became accustomed to before long, the air was clear. In the firelight I saw at least fifteen more of them. There was a large female, shorter and more broad-hipped than the male who’d led us here, pendulous breasts heavy on her chest, who looked up as we entered with a hopeful expression. She was fussing over something inside a niche in the wall. Four smaller adults, two pairs of males and females, sat near the fire tending some kind of meat on a spit. A group of shorter, more slender Wild Men clustered off to one corner, looking exactly like any group of teenagers in any city I’d ever visited. A handful of Wild children scampered about.

When we entered, all activity stopped. The lone female who seemed so hopeful at first placed her body protectively over whatever was in the niche. With inarticulate calls, the females by the fire summoned their children and gathered them close, and the adolescents in the corner huddled together in fright. The other two adult males hurried in our direction with the same aggressive signs we were met with before, but at a loud grunt and gesture from the larger male they retreated, ducking their heads. He went over to the lone female. Even though they used no words I could recognize, from their gestures and soft grunts they appeared to be having a quiet but heated argument. Just as it started to look like he was losing, Kit radiated his warm, welcoming energy again.

The argument ceased. The two smaller males, who had been hovering protectively over their females since they were warned away from us, relaxed. The females released the children, who resumed their play, and the gang in the corner assumed postures of studied indifference.

“Are you sure you can keep that up?” I whispered.

“It’s all right,” said Kit. “This uses very little qi. That’s why it’s so easy to do.”

In spite of everything else I had to wonder, not for the first time, if Kit realized how much his idea of “easy” differed from everyone else’s.

I watched the Wild Men for few moments, and it occurred to me they looked like nothing else so much as an extended family or clan, with our large male and his older female as the senior members. All the others deferred to them one way or another, wherever they happened to move and in whatever they were doing.

The larger male, the clan Patriarch I guess, gestured us over to the niche, and the female, who would be the Matriarch, made room for us to approach. I had to get on my knees to see, but Kit just bent over.

A small Wild child lay there, a girl. She was no larger than the other children at play, maybe a little smaller. Her hair was very fine, almost silky, and was patterned in a way that reminded me of a calico cat, which gave her a striking appearance. I would even say she was pretty. But she was plainly unwell. She was curious about us, but it was a struggle for her to turn her head in our direction. She lifted a hand and tried to extend it toward us, but she’d couldn’t reach that far. The effort exhausted her. Her breath came in a wheezing rattle.

Kit took one look at her and shifted to his thousand-mile stare. What he saw made him furrow his brow.

“She’s dying,” he said. “I have to do something about it.”

“Can you?”

“I don’t know. They’re not exactly human, so I can’t say for sure how the treatments I know will work for her. But I have to try, or she’s dead by morning.”

“I don’t mean that.” I grabbed him by the arms. “Kit, you’re not well yourself. The way you heal people―you pump your own energy into them, don’t you? You don’t have it to give!”

“Maybe not. But you saw how I got them to trust us. It’s like making an open-ended offer, and you can’t be insincere or it doesn’t work. It would be wrong for me not to help.”

I was suddenly very afraid for him. The past hour hadn’t done him any good. His cheeks were nearly hollow, and the bones above them stood out sharply. In the firelight his hair looked dull. Even his arms felt thinner.

I gave him a shake. “These aren’t humans, like us. They’re not people, Kit! I don’t care what you think you offered. You don’t have to risk yourself to help them!”

He made no attempt to release himself from my grip, but his expression was full of reproach. “Don’t say that. You know better.”

I’d known better ever since I called them a family in my own mind, but that didn’t make it any easier. I swallowed, trying to force down a lump in my throat, and held his gaze as my hands relaxed. “Is there anything I can say to make you not do this?”

He shook his head, but I didn’t really to see it to know his answer. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d risked his life for another. Only never before was death so near before he even started.

I hugged him as hard as I dared. “You... you’re one pathetic mercenary, you know that?”

“I know. Thank you, Tam.”

He went over to the fire, and with a gesture asked for a clear space to be made. The two younger couples rose and backed away to seat themselves at a distance, watching. Kit dropped his pack, laid his sword carefully next to it, then removed his coat and spread it fur-side up on the ground next to the fire. He pointed toward the girl, beckoned, and patted the coat. The Matriarch brought her over, and laid her out upon it.

Kit rummaged around inside his pack until he came up with a small open kettle. “Tam, could you do me a favor and put some water in this? It’s got to be clean. Go outside and bring some snow if you have to.”

I didn’t have to. When I mimicked scooping up some water and drinking out of my hand, one of the younger adult Wild Men led me to a side passage where a spring trickled into a pool. It was cold and clear, so I filled the kettle and hurried back to the cavern.

When I returned with the water, Kit was searching through his box of medicinal herbs. I handed him the kettle, and he set it among the coals.

“This may take awhile. It looks like she inhaled something that doesn’t belong in her lungs, and she has a huge infection there. I know what I’d do for one of us, but these people aren’t quite the same. I have to experiment.”

When the water came to a boil he put in a assortment of herbs. After they steeped, he took up a small amount on a spoon and brought it near the girl’s nose, his thousand-mile stare intent on her. A moment later he snatched it back, then handed me the kettle again. “Could you dump this somewhere and refill it?”

I found the Matriarch kneeling alongside them when I came back again. Kit had one hand on her and another on the girl. He shifted his hands from place to place on both, each time placing them over the same parts of each body. He had the vacant look that always came over him when he was concentrating very hard on something, so he didn’t notice me until he was done.

“I was trying to figure out what’s normal for them, and I needed the big old girl here because I can’t decide that from a sick one. I could screw up badly if I’m not careful.”

“What the worst that can happen?”

He chewed his lower lip. “I fail, and her life is a few hours shorter than it would have been without me.”

Kit tried out almost half the herbs in his box in every combination I could imagine. Sometimes he would test the brew on her the same way as the first time, other times he would reject it out of hand after he’d taken a whiff of the vapor himself. By the tenth attempt I was starting to wish we had a bucket or something he could dip from, but if I was feeling the tedium he was feeling the strain. Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead, and turned to rivulets that ran down to drip off his chin. He removed his leggings, and soon after his overtunic. With fewer clothes on I could almost see him growing thinner from one water run to the next. His eyes took on a sunken look.

Within a few hours all other activity in the cavern ceased, and the Wild Men gathered around to watch from a respectful distance enforced by the Patriarch. Kit’s undertunic grew so damp with sweat that it clung to his enervated body like a second skin. Still he worked until he had his choices down to a combination of three herbs, which he tried in different proportions. It must have been four hours after we arrived and well past sunset when he brought the spoon beneath the girls nose and breathed a huge sigh over what he saw.

“That’s it. Thanks, Tam.” His voice was very weak, and broke as he talked. “It needs to cool down. Then we’ll be finished. One way or another.” He looked her over again and swore quietly. “I took too long. She’s almost gone.”

“It’s not too late, is it?”

“I hope not.”

I grabbed his arm. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“No. But she’ll die if I don’t.”

I released him. The ice returned to the pit of my stomach.

As the brew cooled he sat with his head bowed between his knees. When he rose up I had a shock. His face had become so emaciated that I could see the fibers in his jaw muscles, and his cheekbones stood out like knife edges.

“I’ll need your help,” he said, almost in a whisper. He handed me the kettle “I’m going to force her windpipe open. When I tell you to, pour that into her.”

“It’ll go into her lungs then!”

“Yeah. That’s where it has to work.”

I really hoped he knew what he was doing.

He looked her over once more, and then spread all ten fingers out upon her body. They trembled a little as he felt around for the exact spots where he needed to place them. He drew in a deep breath, held it for a moment, and then let it out very slowly.

The girl’s chest heaved, and she made a kind of choking noise, her mouth agape. At Kit’s nod, I gave her the brew. She sputtered and thrashed, but Kit kept his fingers in place and it all went in.

The Wild Men around us drew closer, shifting restlessly. If she doesn’t survive, I thought, this will get very dangerous.

Keeping the fingers of one hand in place, he made to roll her onto her side, and I helped from my end. Then he put two fingers of his free hand at points on her back, inhaled, and let out his breath again.

The girl convulsed. The brew gushed out of her mouth, bringing with it an enormous bloody mass of phlegm, mingled with some other greenish-yellow quivering stuff I couldn’t identify. I almost gagged from the smell. Kit caught all this on his overtunic and tossed it into the fire where it landed with a hiss and crackle. Moving quickly, he laid her flat again, placed a finger of one hand near an ankle, and a finger of the other on a wrist, then drew in his breath and let it out slowly, as before. Nothing changed.

Kit let out a quiet curse. He inhaled again, this time clenching his teeth and holding his breath like someone lifting a heavy weight, then released it in a single burst so powerful he cried aloud as it left him. The girl’s body jerked. She coughed a few times and drew in a deep breath. Then her head rolled to one side and she was still.

A shudder passed through Kit and he sank back on his heels. The Matriarch hurried forward to lift up the girl and hold her close to her breast, then carried her off into the shadows away from the fire.

I turned my attention to Kit. He was squatting, his arms resting straight out upon his knees and his head sagging between them. The sweat on his pale skin shone in the firelight, making it look for a moment as if he was glowing from within.

Without warning, he toppled over to one side and lay still.

The world spun around me. The cavern and everything else faded apart from Kit’s crumpled form. I stared at him for what felt like forever. The Patriarch tapped me on the shoulder. It jolted me back into the world. The other Wild Men had withdrawn, and from far corners of the cavern looked on in silence. The Patriarch motioned me to follow. I lifted Kit and did so.

I’d carried an unconscious Kit before, but every other time I understood what happened, or he’d given me some sign before passing out. This time I had no idea if he would ever come out of it. He breathed, but was otherwise lifeless. His limbs dangled from my arms as limp as his queue, and he weighed next to nothing.

The Patriarch showed us to a bower of sorts, a larger version of the niche where we first saw the sick girl. I got Kit settled in, and laid down next to him, cradling him against me.

● ● ●

I awoke without any awareness that I’d been asleep, and the first thing I noticed was that Kit wasn’t there. I sprang up, narrowly avoided cracking my skull on the ceiling of the niche, and hurried through the darkness toward the noises I heard. There were grunts, and roars, and frantic-sounding squeals. I could only think that the girl had died and they’d snatched Kit from me and were tearing him apart. When I spotted a glimmer of light from the cavern I dashed forward with the white fire burning inside me, ready to flare up at my will.

The sight that actually greeted me made me laugh out loud, partly from relief and partly from the sheer joy of it. There was Kit, clad in just his loincloth, having of all things a tickle fight in the middle of the floor with a pile of the Wild Men’s children. The roaring I’d heard was the laughter of the adults, the Patriarch’s rising above all the rest. It was only because all the others were so loud that I hadn’t heard Kit’s own happy voice crying out playful challenges the children must have understood without knowing the what the words meant. And in the middle of the heap was the calico-haired girl, romping as fiercely as the rest.

The Matriarch spotted me and rushed over, teeth bared in one of their fearsome smiles. Before I could do anything about it she snatched me up as if I were a rag doll and squeezed me with such powerful affection I thought my all joints would pop. As soon as she put me down, Kit leaped bodily onto me. I caught him by reflex and could just collect myself enough to return his kiss. When it was over he held me close, arms and legs wrapped around me.

“Thank you, Tam,” he said into my ear. “You’re the most magnificent man I could ever wish for.”

I set him down at arms length and looked him over. His cheeks were still hollow, I could count every rib, and his skin was so thin I could see every vein in him, but even in their sunken sockets his eyes were their back to their old sparkle, his hair was glossy, and he was full of eager energy. I just had time to take that in when we were overrun by a horde of playful little hairy things and nothing could be said for a long time after. It’s impossible, I found, to refuse a tickle fight with the children of the Wild Men of the High Pass. Especially when they cheat and go for the back of your knees.

The Wild Men were most generous in sharing their food with us and Kit ate almost constantly. By nightfall he had much improved and was starting to look like himself again. The niche the Patriarch had given us turned out to be his own that he shared with the Matriarch. We tried to refuse, but he wouldn’t allow us to sleep anywhere else. At the end of the day we lay wrapped around each other in the darkness.

“What would I do without you, Tam?”

I didn’t mind hearing it, but I had no idea what he was giving me credit for. “All I did was carry water,” I said. “And what happened to you? I thought you were done for.”

“I almost was. You’d never know to watch it happen, but healing someone who’s really, really sick takes as much out of you as any kind of fighting. I had to use everything I had left. Didn’t plan for that, but I took too long and.... Well, you saw what happened. At that point there was nothing left in my body either, unless I was going to start breaking up internal organs, and that would be bad. Before I could think of anything else to keep myself going, I blacked out.”

“I could have guessed that―almost. But why aren’t you... Why are you alive?”

“Oh! Right. I woke up maybe two or three hours before you did. That was a surprise, because the last thing I could remember thinking was that I wouldn’t wake up at all. Then I saw I was pulling in qi with my breath just like I always did, and when I looked inside to figure out why I found everything circulating as it should. Better than it used to, if anything. I had a great workout, and then I absolutely had to go find some food. After that I was kind of occupied. I’m sorry if I worried you, leaving you like that, but I thought you must be exhausted and I didn’t want to wake you.” He kissed me on the chin.

I had to say it. “Kit... I’m sorry for causing all this.”

“What?”

“I should have let you kill Tristan. You said you had to swallow all that darkness when I stopped you. None of this would have happened, and you wouldn’t have come so close... I almost lost you, and it was my own fault!”

He didn’t respond right away, and I figured he was coming up with some way to excuse me so I wouldn’t feel bad about it. Then his elbow jabbed me in the ribs. “You bonehead!”

“Huh?”

“Tam, there was this huge dark piece of myself I thrust away and never faced up to. For eight years I covered it up and built walls around it, but behind them it grew and grew even as I tried to ignore it. I saw all this coming as soon as we took this job, but lied to myself that nothing would come of it and I didn’t need to do anything about it. When it got stirred up―it was going to, sooner or later, whether we did this job or not―I could either let it have its way, or take it on and finally deal with it.”

“So if I didn’t get in the way you wouldn’t have had to―”

“If you didn’t get in the way I’d have betrayed myself and I’d have betrayed you. I... I was letting it have its way. I didn’t want to stop. And if I’d gone through with killing my brother, I could never have gone back to what I was before. It’d be too painful. I’d have been someone else instead, someone you couldn’t recognize, maybe... maybe even someone who didn’t love you. I can’t bear the thought of that.

“You are the only one who could have given me the strength I needed to stop. Then there was nothing else I could do but take it all back in and hope I could somehow set myself right again. As it happened, something came along that did it for me, and now everyone’s happy. I’ve been very stupid, but you brought about the best possible end to it.

“Tam, because of you I’m still myself. That’s more precious to me than life. There’s no way I can ever repay you.”

Something caught in my throat and my voice wouldn’t sound above a whisper. “Yes there is.”

“Tell me.”

“Be mine, Kit.”

“I am, my love. More than I have ever been before.”