Healer of Sakkara

Chapter 1 - Galen

Galen fingered the silver crescent he wore above his heart and studied the woods. The pendant was his good luck charm and the only thing he had from a mother he'd never known.

The man he called his father had found him as an infant, abandoned in the forest. Not this forest, which was tame and well-patrolled, but far north along the border of Sakkara, near the Wild Green. Harrald was a soldier and a man of the Guard but, being kind-hearted and having no family of his own, he had taken Galen in and raised him as a son for the last seventeen years. 

Galen often wondered if his strange origins accounted for his love of the woods and his affinity for the things that grew there. He had a knack for finding plants and fungi with medicinal properties and for preparing poultices, tinctures, and salves. After an injury forced Harrald to retire from the Guard, Galen had supported them both with the money he made from his remedies.

Many of the best ingredients grew deep in the forest, but Harrald didn't like him spending so much time so close to the edge of the Wild Green and often warned him against the myriad dangers lurking there.

"You must be careful, Galen," he would say. "You are not like other boys."

Galen resented such words, and all they did was encourage him to spend more time in the woods. He didn't need to be reminded he was different: the evidence was all around. 

Most people in Thryn fit a mould. They were tall and robust, with blue or green eyes, light skin, and blonde or red hair. Galen had a more delicate build, wavy black hair, dark eyes, and skin that turned a toasted golden-brown in the sun, darkening to bronze by summer's end. When he was younger, no one much remarked upon his difference; but once his peers grew muscle and gained height, while he did not, it became harder to ignore.

Neither did he share the typical Thrynian talents for weapons and warfare, and was quickly eliminated from the pool of trainees for the Guard. A friend said he looked more like a Pyrran pillow-slave than a soldier, anyway, and he'd had to ask another friend what that meant.

He didn't mind. He much preferred healing to causing harm, and the peace of the forest to the clash of steel. In these sentiments, however, he did not have much company in Thryn, where service in the Guard was the highest honor for men and women alike.

Still, a healer was highly valued, too, in a place where injuries were not uncommon.

A soft breeze shifted through the dense summer foliage, bringing the sweet, rich scent of green shadowed places and living things. A spot of color caught Galen's eye, and his heart lifted with excitement: a growth of fungi sprouting from the side of a fallen log.

Kneeling by the spot, he examined the mushrooms more closely. Fungi could be powerful medicine or deadly poison, depending on the type. This one looked promising, and Galen carefully collected the soft caps for further study, packing them into a small woven basket with a lid. Storing this back in his knapsack, he stood and stepped on a twig.

The tiny snap it made was much too loud, and Galen realized the forest had gone still.

Swearing under his breath, he crouched back beside the log, straining his senses for a sign. Songbirds were the forest's early warning system, falling silent when a threat drew near. But whether this threat was a danger to people, or only birds, remained to be seen.

It might be nothing but a hawk wheeling overhead; it might be a mountain cat, or it might be something worse. Galen had heard stories of bandits roaming the woods. Supposedly, the Guard had wiped them out long ago, but it had been long since the guard came out this close to the Wild Green.

Long minutes passed. Spots of sunlight grew hot on his neck and bare arms, and midges buzzed about his face. He probably should have gone home hours ago—herbs were best picked when fresh with morning dew, anyway—but he'd been enjoying his solitary walk and wandered farther than he'd intended.