The Mage Wars

by Mercedes Lackey

  He had never really expected that he would find anyone he wanted to share his life with. He had always thought that he would be lucky to find a casual lover or two, outside of his profession.

  He had certainly never expected to find anyone so well suited to him—little though she knew the extent of it. Right now, she only knew that he could comfort her, that he had answers for the things that had eaten away at her heart until it bled. He did not want her until she had recovered from all this—until she knew what and who she was, and wanted him as an equal, and not as a comforter and protector.

  She got enough of that with Conn.

  For Winterhart, whatever she had been, was now a strong, vital, and competent woman. She had a deep capacity for compassion that she had been denying, fearing to be hurt if she gave way to it. She had overcome her fears to find some kind of training that would make her useful to Urtho’s forces, and then had returned to take her place there, when hundreds of others who had not been affected as profoundly as she had remained deserters. Granted, she had not come back as herself, but at this point, any attempt to reveal her name and nature would only disrupt some of what Urtho had accomplished. The House and forces of Laury answered now to Urtho and not to those who had once commanded them and their loyalty by right of birth. Why disturb an established arrangement?

  He thought he had persuaded her of that—and what was more, he thought she had figured that out for herself, but had been afraid that saying anything of the sort would only be taken for further cowardice. It wasn’t, of course. It was only good sense, which in itself was in all-too-short supply.

  “It would be different,” he’d told her, “if we had a situation like Lord Cory’s. He was back on his estate, in retirement, and was left the only member of his line to command his levy. So he did, even though he is far too old for the task. He’s a fine commander, though, so Urtho isn’t going to ask him to step down—but if one of his sons or daughters ever showed up, willing to take the old man’s orders, there’d be a new field-commander before you could blink.”

  “But the Laury people are commanded by General Micherone,” Winterhart had observed, and sighed. “Bet Micherone is a better commander than I could ever be, and Urtho has the utmost confidence in her. I don’t see any reason to come back to life.”

  “Nor do I,” Amberdrake had told her. “You might ask Lady Cinnabar, since she knows the political situation better than I, but if she says not to bother, then there is no reason why you can’t remain ‘Winterhart’ for the rest of your life.” He chuckled a little, then, and added, “And if anyone asks why you have a Kaled’a’in name, tell them it’s because you have been adopted into my sept and Clan. I’ll even arrange it, if you like.”

  She’d looked up at him thoughtfully. “I would like that, please,” she had replied. “Very much.”

  He wondered if she knew or guessed the significance of that. Kaled’a’in did not take in those from outside the Clans lightly or often—and it was usually someone who was about to marry into the Clans, someone who had sworn blood-brotherhood with a Kaled’a’in, or someone who had done the Clan a great service.

  Still, he did not regret making the offer, and he would gladly see that the matter was taken care of. Because if things fell out the way he hoped…

  Not now, he told himself. Take one day at a time. First she will have to deal with Conn Levas. Only then should you make overtures. Otherwise she will be certain that she betrayed him, somehow, and she has had more than enough of thinking she was a traitor.

  All it would take was patience. Every Kaled’a’in was familiar with patience. It took patience to train a hawk or a horse—patience to perform the delicate manipulations that would bring the lines of bondbirds and warsteeds to their fulfillment. It took patience to learn everything needed to become a shaman, or a Healer, or a kestra’chern.

  But oh, I have had enough of patience to last me the rest of my life! I should like some immediate return for my efforts, for a change!

  He would like it, but he knew better than to expect or even hope for it. It was enough that in the midst of all this pain and death there was a little life and warmth, and that he was sharing in it.

  And it was with that thought uppermost in his mind that he finally fell asleep.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  A bird-scream woke Amberdrake out of a sound and dreamless sleep. He knew those screams; high-pitched, and sounding exactly as if a child was shrieking. He sat straight up in bed, blinking fog out of his eyes.

  What—a messenger, at this hour? It was morning! What could—

  But if someone had sent a messenger-bird to screech at the entrance to his tent, there was grave trouble. Anything less and there would have been time to send a hertasi rather than a bird. Before Gesten could get to the door-flap, he had rolled out of bed and flung open the flap to let the bird in. It whirred up from the ground and hit his shoulder, muttered in agitation for a moment, then spoke in Tamsin’s voice.

  “Drake, we need you on the Hill, now.”

  That was all there was to the message, and normally the last person that Tamsin would ask for help on the Hill was Amberdrake, despite his early training. Amberdrake knew that Tamsin was only too well aware of his limitations—how his Empathic Gift tended to get right out of control even now. He was much better suited to the profession he had chosen, and they both knew it. But if Tamsin had sent a bird for him, then the situation up on the Hill was out of hand, and the Healers were dragging in every horse-doctor and herb-collector within running distance—and every other kestra’chern who knew anything of Healing or could hold a wound for stitching or soothe pain.

  He flung on some clothing and set off up to the Healers’ tents at a dead run. There were plenty of other people boiling out of their tents wearing hastily donned clothing; as he had surmised, he was not the only kestra’chern on the way up there. Whatever had happened, it was bad, as bad as could possibly be.

  He found out just how bad it was when he arrived at the Healers’ tents, and stopped dead in his tracks, panting with effort, struck dumb by the sheer numbers of near-dead.

  The victims overflowed the tents and had been laid out in rows wherever there was space. There was blood everywhere: soaking into the ground, making spreading scarlet stains on clothing and hastily wrapped bandages. The pain hammered at him, making him reel back for a moment with the force of it pounding against his disciplined shields.

  “Amberdrake!”

  He turned at the sound of his name; Vikteren grabbed his arm and steered him into a tent. “Tamsin said to watch for you; they need you here, with the nonhumans,” he said, speaking so quickly that he ran everything together. “I know some farrier-work. I’m supposed to assist you if you want me—”

  “Yes, I want you,” Amberdrake answered quickly, squinting into the semi-darkness of the tent. After the bright sunlight outside, it took a moment for his eyes to adjust.

  When they did, he could have wished they hadn’t. There were half-a-dozen kyree lying nearest the entrance, and they seemed to be the worst off; next to them, lying on pallets, were some tervardi and hertasi, he couldn’t tell how many—and at the back of the tent, three dyheli. There was only one division of the forces that had that many nonhumans in combat positions, and his heart sank. “Oh gods—the Second…?”

  “All but gone,” Vikteren confirmed. “Ma’ar came in behind them, and no one knows how.”

  But there was no time for discussion. He and his self-appointed assistant took over their first patient, a kyree that had been slashed from throat to tail, and then there was no time for anything but the work at hand.

  Amberdrake worked with hands and Gift, stitching wounds and Healing them, blocking pain, setting bones, knitting up flesh—he worked until the world narrowed to his hands and the flesh beneath them. He worked until he lost all track of time or even who he was working on, trusting to training and instinct to see him through. And at last, he worked until he couldn’t even see his hands,
until he was so exhausted and battered by the pain and fear of others that the world went gray, and then black, then went away altogether—

  And he found himself being supported by Vikteren, his head under the spout of a pump, the young mage pumping water over him frantically.

  He spluttered, and waved at Vikteren to stop, pushed himself up to a kneeling position, and shook the cold water out of his eyes. He was barely able to do that; he had never in all of his life felt so weak.

  “You passed out,” the mage said simply. “I figured that what worked for drunks would probably work for you.”

  “Probably the best thing you could have done,” Amberdrake admitted, and coughed. How many more wounded were there? His job wasn’t done yet. “I’d better get back…”

  He started to get up, but Vikteren restrained him with a hand on his shoulder. He didn’t do much but let it rest there, but that was enough to keep Amberdrake from moving.

  “There’s nothing left to go back to. You didn’t pass out till you got the last tervardi and a couple of the humans that the others hadn’t gotten to yet. The rest no one could have helped,” Vikteren told him. Amberdrake blinked at that, and then blinked again. The mage was a mess—his clothing stiff with blood, his hands bloodstained. He had blood in his hair, his eyes were reddened and swollen, and his skin pale.

  “We’re done?” he asked, trying not to sound too hopeful.

  Vikteren nodded. “Near as I can tell. They brought the last of the wounded in through the Jerlag Gate, evacuated the rearguard, and shut it down about a candlemark ago.”

  Evacuated? Shut the Gate down? Amberdrake blinked, and realized then that the light shining down on both of them was entirely artificial, one of the very brilliant mage-lights used by the Healers. Beyond the light, the sky was completely black, with a sprinkling of stars.

  We’ve been working all day?

  “Sunset was about the same time they shut the Gate down,” Vikteren told him, answering his unspoken question. “Urtho’s up at the terminus now, and—”

  A ripple in the mage-energies, and an unsettled and unsettling sensation, as if the world had just dropped suddenly out from underneath them, made them both look instinctively to the north. The Jerlag Gate was in the north, beyond those mountains in the far distance.

  Far, far off on the horizon, behind the mountains, there was a brilliant flash of light. It covered the entire northern horizon, so bright that Vikteren cursed and Amberdrake blinked away tears of pain and had false-lights dancing before his eyes for several moments.

  It took much longer than that before either of them could speak.

  Vikteren said carefully, “So much for the Jerlag Gate.”

  “Did he…?” Amberdrake could hardly believe it, but Vikteren was a mage, and he would recognize what Urtho had done better than any kestra’chern.

  Vikteren nodded. “Fed it back on itself. Ma’ar may have taken Jerlag, but it’s cost him a hell of a lot more than he thought it would. That’s the first time Urtho’s ever imploded one of his permanent Gates.”

  The thought hung between them, ominous and unspoken. And it probably won’t be the last.

  Amberdrake swallowed; he could not begin to imagine the forces let loose in the implosion of a fixed Gate. Vikteren could, though, and the young mage squinted off at the horizon.

  “Probably a hole about as big as this camp, and as deep as the Tower there now,” he said absently.

  And then it was Amberdrake’s turn to grab for his arm and steady him, as he trembled, lost his balance, and started to fall. He was heavier than Amberdrake could support in his own weakened condition; he lowered the mage down to the muddy ground in a kind of controlled fall, and leaned against him, Vikteren blinked at him with glazed eyes.

  “You collapsed,” Amberdrake told him gently. “You aren’t in much better shape than I am.”

  “You can say that again, Drake.” Gesten padded up into the circle of light cast by the mage-light overhead, with Aubri and two of Lady Cinnabar’s hertasi with him. “The Lady told me where you were. She and Tamsin and Skan are worried sick. I’m supposed to have Dierne and Lysle help Vikteren back to his tent and get some food in him, while Aubri helps me get you back to yours.” The hertasi patted the young mage on the shoulder. “Good work, boy. Tamsin says you two basically took care of every badly injured nonhuman that came in. Real good work. If I had a steak, I’d cook it up for you myself.”

  “Right now a couple of boiled eggs and some cheese sounds fine,” Vikteren croaked, his face gone ashen. “I’d rather not look at meat just now—could look like someone I knew…”

  Gesten gestured to the other two hertasi, who levered Vikteren back up to a standing position and supported him on his feet. “Get some food, get some rest. And drink what these two give you. It’ll keep you from having dreams.”

  “Nightmares, you mean,” Amberdrake murmured, as the hertasi helped the mage down the hill, step by wavering step. “I remember my first war-wounded.”

  “As do we all,” Aubri rumbled. “Gesten, if you can get him standing—Amberdrake, you lean on my back…”

  As he got to his feet, he began to black out again, and Gesten tsked at him as he sat abruptly back down. “I thought as much,” the hertasi said. “You’ve drained yourself. You’re going to be a right mess in the morning.”

  “I’m a right mess now.” Amberdrake put his head down between his knees until the world stopped spinning around him. “I hope you have a solution for this. I’d hate to spend the rest of the night sleeping in the mud.”

  “That’s why I brought Aubri. Just give us a moment.” The hertasi hustled into one of the supply-tents, and came back out again with a number of restraining-straps and a two-man litter. While Aubri muttered instructions, Gesten rigged a harness over Aubri’s hindquarters, and stuck one set of the litter-handles through loops in the harness. “Get yourself on that, Drake,” the hertasi ordered. “I’ve got this inclined so Aubri takes most of your weight.”

  Amberdrake did manage to crawl onto the litter, but he was so dizzy that it took much longer than he thought it would, and his head pounded in time with his pulse until he wanted nothing more than to have someone knock him out. He knew what it was: he’d overextended himself, drained himself down to nothing. He was paying the price of overextending, and he wouldn’t be the only Healer who’d done that today.

  He closed his eyes for the journey back to his tent; when he opened his eyes again, he was being lifted into his bed. But the moment he tried to move, his head exploded with pain, so he closed his eyes again and passively let them do whatever Gesten told them to. He wound up in a half-sitting position, propped in place by pillows.

  When he opened his eyes again, the tent was silent, lit only by a single, heavily shaded lantern, and Gesten was still there, although Aubri and the rest of the hertasi’s recruits were long gone. Gesten turned with a cup in his foreclaw, and pushed it at him.

  “Here,” he said brusquely. “Drink this; you know what it is.”

  Indeed he did—a compound of herbs for his head and to make him sleep, so thick with honey he was surprised the spoon didn’t stand in it. At this point, he was too spent to protest, and too dizzy to care. Obediently, he let the too-sweet, sticky liquid ooze down his throat.

  Then he closed his eyes, waiting for the moment when the herbs would take effect. And when they did, he slid into the dark waters of sleep without a single ripple—for a while.

  * * *

  Winterhart had never wanted quite so much to crawl away into a hole and sleep for a hundred years. Instead, she dragged herself back to her tent and collapsed on her bedroll. She curled into a fetal position, and waited for her muscles to stop twitching with fatigue, too tired even to undress.

  Urtho was losing. That was the general consensus. The only question was if their side would continue to lose ground, or if Urtho would come up with something that would hold Ma’ar off for a little longer.

  We’re being eroded
by bits and pieces, instead of being overrun the way I thought we’d go. Even that stark certainty failed to bring her even a shiver of fear. She was just too tired.

  It wasn’t just tending her own charges now, it was being called up the Hill at a moment’s notice whenever too many wounded came in. And it wasn’t just her—it was everyone, anyone who even knew how to wrap a bandage. She’d seen Amberdrake working so long and so hard today that he’d become a casualty himself, and he wasn’t the only one, either. The rest of the kestra’chern worked just as hard, and even the perchi came in to mix herbal potions and change bandages. For now, all the little feuds and personality conflicts were set aside.

  Unfortunately, Shaiknam and Garber have their commands again. Although General Shaiknam no longer had nonhumans or mages under his command, he was still managing to account for far too many casualties. When he succeeded, he did so in grand style—but it was always at a high cost in terms of fighters.

  I wish that Urtho would just put him in charge of siege engines and catapults. They don’t die.

  Well, she no longer had to parrot Garber’s stupid orders, or try to make excuses for him. And the Sixth was holding its own at the moment. Perhaps they would continue to hold, and Ma’ar would give up for a while, let things stand at stalemate, and give them all time to breathe.

  Footsteps outside the tent warned her in time to roll over to face the back of the tent and feign sleep. It was Conn, of course, and wanting the usual; she could not imagine where he got any energy to spare when everyone else was exhausted.

  He shoved the tent-flap open roughly, and stood beside her bedroll, waiting for her to wake up. Except that she wasn’t going to “wake up.”

  I’m tired of you, Conn. I’m tired of your so-called “temperament.” I’m tired of acting like your mother as well as your lover. I’m very tired of being your lover; you have no couth and no consideration.

  It occurred to her then that he had so little consideration for her that he might well try to shake her awake. Then she would have no choice but to give up the ruse.