I.

There is no hope in this.

I measure out my distillations, record the weights and influences of each, decant them into
crystalline phials of the proper hue for each element and write out the prescriptions according to
the prevailing humour of each patient. Then I seal them, vessel and parchment, with the white
wax and leaf-seal of the Houses of Healing, and place them in the velvet-lined slots of the
carrying tray, where they gleam like dark jewels in the black recesses that cradle them. And
afterwards, I transcribe all my jottings into the Ward's chronicle, neatly and clearly on the ruled
pages, with the year, the day, and the hour set beside, and all the measurements laid out fairly for
future Dispensarians to read. And it is all utterly, wholly, completely without purpose.

"Lalaith! Are you done yet?" Ioreth comes in, talking before she enters my chamber -- as she
always does, her voice echoing like a noisy bird's down the hallway. "I still have to go up to
Healer Marach's chamber and the linen orders for the laundry aren't made up yet so I have to go
back downstairs to Housekeeping after and..."

As usual she forgets my honorific, though she remembers it well enough when speaking to, or
of, the chief of our House. I distill sound as I distill essences, letting her gratingly-chirping tones
float away like impurities from my potions. I can endure this. It is not as though there are enough
people left in the city to pick and choose from, and after all, a goodwife like her is hardly likely
to drop a tray full of expensive dishes! Which is more than I would dare to say of the page boys
remaining to run errands for the Steward and his lords -- hulking lumps pretending to be full-
grown, stamping hard with each step and deepening their voices when they speak in futile
counterfeit of maturity. And were it not for her, I would have to set aside my own studies and
waste precious time in this mindless work myself.

So I suppose I should be grateful -- but I am most grateful when she at last departs, having
rechecked every phial to be sure that I have seated them properly, sure that my comparative
youth indicates a carelessness commensurate to the difference in our ages. (I still have not fully
been able to set aside, with a scholar's detachment, her mirthfully-appalled clucking at
discovering that I cannot cook even a simple stew, the chattering glee with which she disclosed
this contradiction to her cohorts in the House Auxiliary, nor the regularity with which she has
reminded them of this fact over the past five years, with the ritual head-shakings and expressions
of humorous worry that I am allowed to concoct such dangerous substances as foxglove and
nightshade to inflict on our poor patients. There are times when I swear, as I close my eyes in the
refectory, that I'm surrounded by a flock of gabbling geese. (They pinch, too, these old biddies
of the Auxiliary.)

"Thank you, Ioreth dear," I say as the door at last closes behind her, leaving me in peace. I have
improved my performance to the point that I no longer have to force the 'dear', that it no longer
sounds forced -- not that the silly creature ever noticed one way or the other. It is not natural to
me, but it serves to make the  House run smoother, like oil to the hinges of my door, and like all
habits it becomes indeed a second nature, no harder or easier than making sure to use only
brown ink for old Ragnor's assignments, so that he could correct over them in black, or setting
the page numerals on the left side for Mistress Loriel's examinations when Lord Hathaldir insisted
that we place them on the right.

I wondered what my old teachers would say if they were living in these our times, watching us
patch up men, in their prime or aged grandfathers, and half-grown boys, and even a few women,
used to defending their farms like the forest-tribes of our distant forbears -- only to send them out
again to further mutilation and eventual death. I cannot hearten them, either assuring them of a
swift return to full health, or an end to pain; I cannot pretend that all will be well for any of us, or
that their sacrifice will be of purpose; I will not betray them with bright rallying lies. --Little
wonder that they prefer the company of those like Ioreth, who mother them with platitudes that
weigh more than any small comforts I can give, a well-adjusted bandage or a catheter whose
bronze is warmed first, little wonder that simple folk prefer simple firelit falsehoods to the
complicated truths of cold daylight.

Cold ... in a half-heartbeat's panic I set my hand yet again to the seam of my robe, where a tiny
phial not of glass but of drilled stone is tacked lightly inside the sleeve, just enough to keep it
from jarring loose in the course of my workday, but not so tight that a single swift jerk would not
pull it free. The black cylinder is Numenorean, I think: it has that strange sheen of the Ancients'
crafting, and it is certainly indestructible. I tried, before entrusting my secret to its care, with a
smith's iron-headed sledge on an anvil down at the armories. I would never dare to set its
contents in anything that might be broken, as I would never allow it off my person. I wonder, too,
what my old masters in the Healing Arts would think to see me carefully preparing and preserving
a substance with no beneficial effects whatsoever, with full intent to use it upon a human being,
at a time unspecified but very near in the future.

The container is only cold because it is of dense elemental stone, not because of any special
power of its contents; its stopper is of the same lightless substance (which may well not be stone,
but something more arcane and wonderful still) and in further contravellation of my Healer's
training I have sealed it not with the bloody scarlet of a poison, but with still more black. It
cannot be seen against my uniform of dark charcoal gray if one is not already looking for it; I can
reach it with my teeth, if I must. I savor its name upon my tongue: helcallach, 'swift ice-flame'.

The word is as cold as unsubstantiated tradition holds its taste to be: icy, biting like the clear
water of a rushing mountain stream -- and killing as swiftly. I carry it, because I have no hope. I
will not die rent in the dismembering of my city, nor live the slave of some pirate chieftain,
renegade of our race or foreigner, himself a slave of our Enemy, nor set my skills to the task of
preserving and patching my fellow citizens to labor a little while in the gray wastelands of
Mordor. --Bad enough that I must send them to die in our own green earth, before our snow-
white walls, to beat back the hour that comes on like a dire-wolf, without hope of success...

"Milady? Healer Lalaith?" I turn suddenly from the wide windows that are made to illumine my
worktable, which now reveal only the drear Eastern horizon and our lost lands beyond the river.
It is Faelivrin, who far more than Ioreth is still in awe of the Healer's holy powers and the sacred
heritage of our House. (Ah, if only she knew...) "I'm so sorry to trouble you, milady, but you're
supposed to be going to assist in chirurgery now," she bleats apologetically, as she always does
whenever she is obliged to disturb someone.

Since that is one of her appointed tasks, to go about and remind absent-minded staff of their
duties, it seems that this would have gone by the roadside long ago, but the woman seems to take
a positive relish in abasing herself. She apologizes all the while that I am getting my smock down
from its hook and onto my body, all the while that I wash and debride my hands and nails,
continuing while I check the level of spirits in the alembic and lock the workroom behind me,
trotting along at my heels down that length of the hall that we are forced to negotiate together
like a plump white duck, if a duck wore pale periwinkle-blue lace.

Everything about Faelivrin is soft, like a duck's plumage; from her round little hands to her
downy, faintly-lined face, to her mild, modulated, dulcet voice. I find myself growing inexorably
louder and more precise, and more abrupt, the longer I am in her company, which is foolish,
because it only makes her grow yet more groveling in her self-deprecations and excusings. Finally
I reach the central staircase, where -- thank the Valar for tiny favors -- my escort must continue
down the hallway to afflict other colleagues of mine.

I rattle down the staircase as quickly as I can without thundering like one of the young porters, in
the swift gait perfected during the ceaseless labours of my Apprenticeship here, not tripping on
the steps' worn edges nor catching a shoe in the loosening hem of my robe -- alas, yet another
need for venturing into the wilds of feral granny-land. Fortunately I am too tall for most of them to
pinch my cheeks, the ones who refuse to accept my Healer status as anything but a youthful
prank to be set aside when I grow bored of it and accept my presumed destiny as a future Old
Gammer, learning to cook food and sew fabric and to offer sweet words to prosperous
men that have nothing to do with the need for more expensive panoplies of custom-blown glass.
The subsequent annoyance fills the small amount of mental ability which is not set in
concentration upon navigating the stairs and which would otherwise be filled with terror at the
prospect of the coming ordeal. It is not as though I am the only woman Healer, by any means --
simply the youngest, and hence fair game in their minds. After all, they would hardly dare to
cluck and cackle at nonegenarian Lady Healer Emeldir, as dauntless and daunting in her own
way as her famous namesake. She would set those young sexagenarian impudents in their
places fast enough; provided, of course, that their nattering could even penetrate the intensity of
her concentration upon the nature and causes of corruption.

As I reach the final turning I slow with the long, floating strides of a champion athlete so that I do
not either spin gracelessly to a hairpin halt at the end of the baluster or slide catastrophically
across the foyer into anyone else who might be hastening in the opposite direction. As in all
things it is a matter of will and concentration as much as it is practice and physical effort. And as
usual, it is well that I chose to exercise discretion over haste, for my ultimate superior, the
Warden of the Houses of Healing, is approaching. I greet him with all appropriate courtesy given
the hour and the occasion, and he returns with equal graciousness.

"Healer Lalaith. Please don't let me interrupt you."

"Not at all, sir." His eyes are wise and compassionate, and I feel a twinge of guilt that I cannot
believe as he does any more in the value of what we are doing.

"Alchemical, is that right?" I know that our chief makes every effort to know all of his staff and
that I am certainly not least among those, but still the recognition blows a breath of life on a little
coal of pride that has, it seems, not been entirely extinguished by the dark.

"Yes, sir."

"I won't delay you further, but I do want to say that I'm exceedingly impressed with the quality
of your work, and of your record-keeping skills. The attention to detail is only surpassed by the
care you devote to it -- I think we'll have to come up with some sort of special commemorative
award to recognize a First Achievement in Ward history, possibly in the Houses of Healing -- the
advent of readable records!"

I confess that I blush, that I say something deprecating and silly, and that even though I know that
there is no hope, I imagine myself at a recognition ceremony being hailed by my peers. I am
human, after all. Excusing myself with all due propriety, I make the last few paces to my
destination, where I compose myself to assist in the most grueling, miserable task to ever confront
a Healer: not the inflicting of temporary pain to preserve life, not the thankless duty of informing
family members of professional failure; not the healing of small children. It is not the fact that my
expertise is not in cutting but blending, nor that I had, before the war came to our doors, only the
dimmest memories of my Apprentice days assisting the Head Chirurgeon, that terrifies me.

Before the doors I smooth down my white smock over my dark robes, like the ramparts of dressed
stone before the great stone wedge behind us, and steel myself to enter upon my own field of
battle -- to give hope to men dying and still more gravely hurt, when all hope is a lie, and I
have none to give. And then I open the doors, and go in.