“I had heard,” she said softly, “that you could laugh. But I was not told what a wonderful sound it was.”
He stared at her, the laughter fading as he remembered his own whimsical, ridiculous thoughts about her laughter. Perhaps he truly was losing his grip on his faculties. Perhaps this was some side effect of her treatment, or some aftereffect of his injury. Perhaps these odd feelings were triggered by some nerve that had been damaged. Did that mean if she healed those nerves, as she was about to attempt, that he would no longer feel such things?
He felt a sudden urge to tell her not to do it. To give him time to explore this new oddity. To understand what these were, these strange, new sensations.
Impossible. That’s what they were.
“Do it,” he said, his befuddled thoughts making his voice sharp.
“As you wish,” she said serenely, as if he had not snapped.
And thus began the worst hours of his life.
Chapter 25
“ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?”
Iolana couldn’t divert her energy enough to look at Grim so she merely nodded.
“If it is too much—”
She shook her head sharply, trying to keep her mind focused on that crucial strand of intricate, miraculous tissue that sent the impulses to the muscles that then obeyed in this marvel that was the body. This one was damaged badly, and was taking a full effort. She knew she was hurting him as she tried to delicately guide the severed cells back together, but there was no other way.
There. She had it. One more down.
“Save your sympathy for him,” she told her tall, hovering friend. “It is he who is in agony.”
“He bears it well.”
“He does.”
“He is aware,” her patient said, and she marveled that he was able to attain that dry tone.
They had been at it for . . . she did not know exactly how long, only that it was approaching nightfall. And she was weary, beyond weary. Even calling Drake back from death had been less wearying than this. The meticulous precision required for this was draining. Not to mention that Drake had thankfully been unconscious for most of it, and she’d been able to keep him so through most of it.
This man had to be conscious, and even the echo of the pain he was feeling was nearly debilitating.
“Grim, I will need extra now.”
The man nodded and left. She knew that he understood she would need Eirlys for the extra healing power, and Drake to help keep her patient going; they had discussed it before she’d begun.
She had told the major—Caze—that if she and Eirlys coupled their efforts, the worst part would go more quickly. He did not know about Drake, or rather the Raider, for she wanted the full distraction of the man she knew he considered a most worthy opponent.
She turned back to her task, trying to isolate the next pathway to reestablish, to heal. He was breathing rapidly, and she paused to wipe his damp forehead, knowing the pain was nearly unendurable.
“Caze?”
His answer came out rather truncated. “. . . lana.”
“Lana will do nicely.” She even, she realized, liked the sound of it.
“Shorter,” he ground out.
“You are doing well,” she told him.
His words came out from behind teeth clenched against the pain. “You have . . . an odd . . . perception of . . . well.”
“Then think of it as relative to being dead,” she suggested.
For an instant, a mere flash, he smiled. That he could do so despite his current state left her in no small amount of awe. “Contention . . . valid.”
The next one was particularly bad, and she was afraid for a moment she had left calling for Eirlys one strand of nerve too long. He let out a groan of pain, and a sharp gasp. Her name again, or at least the shortened version. It rattled her in a way her healing never had before. She hated hurting him, even knowing it was necessary.
And then Drake was there, in full Raider garb, leaning nonchalantly against the wall, striking the perfect note by saying, “How goes it, Major?”
She felt Caze’s breathing stop for an instant. Then, with a remarkable steadiness, he said, “I regret even more leaving Jakel alive.”
She’d been right; in the Raider’s presence he would fight even harder.
Then she had it, the torn nerve endings seeming to seek each other once they were close enough. She sealed the mend, and the wave of black, engulfing agony receded slightly.
And she thought, if she had sensed it properly, that there might now be a bit more encouragement for him.
She reached out and ran a finger lightly across the back of his right hand. His gaze shot to her face, and she could see in his eyes—even the pain could not fully dull the vivid green of them—that he’d felt it. She smiled.
“Lana,” he whispered, the wonder of it in his voice. And something warm and thrilling welled up inside her, and she renewed her resolve to heal him completely, no matter what it took.
And then Eirlys was there. She said nothing, merely knelt beside her. Iolana knew she was still uncertain about doing this, but like her brother, once she had given her word she would keep it.
“We must begin the worst now,” she said.
“Still better than dead,” he said. Then, with a glance at Drake, added, “Depending on what you intend to do after.”
Iolana also looked at Drake for a moment, willing him to understand what a tremendous effort it was taking this man to speak so evenly. But she saw by her son’s expression he already knew.
“That is something I will only discuss with an opponent at full strength,” he said.
The green eyes closed once more. She looked at Eirlys. “Hands over, I believe.”
Her daughter nodded. And when she placed her hands once more over the most damaged part of the spine, Eirlys laid her own on top, her palms already warm and ready, as if she had been thinking about the task long before she’d arrived. For a brief moment she let her gaze lock onto her daughter’s, let every ounce of the pride in her she was feeling show. Eirlys still said nothing, but her cheeks pinkened slightly, and Iolana knew she’d understood.
“And so we begin,” she said quietly.
It was both worse than she’d feared and better than she’d hoped. The pain, she knew, was incredible, but with Eirlys’s added strength she could almost feel the spinal cord mending, rewiring itself, could almost feel the body that had been senseless come back to life.
After a few minutes that must have seemed an eon to the man beneath their hands, Eirlys whispered, so softly no one else could hear, “He knows.”
“Yes.”
She had sensed it a moment before, that the signals now being sent along repaired paths were reaching his brain, signals he had not felt since that moment when the jagged piece of planium had shifted. She felt his body tense.
“Still, Caze. I understand, but you must be still.”
He made an unintelligible sound, but he did go still.
She closed her eyes. Reached, deeper than she ever had before. Searched. And finally found.
“Yes or no,” she said without opening her eyes. “Right hand.”
A moment of silence, then a half-hissed, “Yes.”
Sealed. Next. “Shoulder.”
Again the pause, but again the yes. She probed again. “Upper arm.”
“Left,” he said suddenly.
She backed off. “And that is why you have had to endure this.”
She changed the path, until he said, “Yes,” again.
She went on, connecting, mending, sealing. Then, opening her eyes, she said, “Try a fist.”
Slowly, agonizingly slowly, his fingers curled. She felt the blast of hope as it shot through him. Felt him try to tamp it down, as if it were something for
bidden. She heard Eirlys suck in a breath and knew she’d felt it too, both the hope and the instant crushing of it.
And driven by some whim or instinct she didn’t really understand, she sent him a blast of that emotion, the hope she carried within her. He would not see that it was her hope for Ziem, for her children, and for their children whom she wished to see someday. She held that back and gave him only the pure sensation that some said was the most powerful of all, for it could keep people going when all seemed lost.
“It’s real, Caze,” she said. “Trust it.”
She heard him suck in a breath, and knew it was not from pain but from the impact of what she’d given him.
And because she’d again used his name.
She had no time to spend on it. And could ill afford the energy, given there was still much work ahead.
And this was the most critical, the healing of the main nerves that had been damaged in his spine. Whether she succeeded would determine whether he would ever walk again, ever function at all normally again.
In all the ways a man normally functioned.
She swiftly blocked off the burst of feeling, of wild imagination, that thought caused in her. She knew she’d done it quickly enough to mask it from Caze, for quick as he was, he was still in a great deal of pain.
Eirlys, she was not so certain about.
She put that out of her mind as well as they began the most crucial, final stage.
“Take as deep a breath as you can,” she instructed him.
He did so, slowly, and with a hitch or two in the sound of it.
“Let it out slowly,” she said. And again he did so, smoothly this time. “How does it feel?”
He gave her a sideways look and said wryly, “Almost as if I were doing it myself.”
Again no gasps in the words, no betrayal of the pain. It was Drake’s presence—or rather the Raider’s—that was doing that, she thought.
“You are,” she said. “You have been for a while.”
The wryness faded, replaced by surprise, and then growing realization. And through the connection she felt the hope she’d given him spark, grow. Fed from within this time.
She heard Eirlys make a small sound, and knew she’d felt it, too. The emotion she’d given this man who had been starved of them, had them brutalized out of him since childhood, had called to what remnants were left within him. And they had responded, whatever tiny fragments had survived, buried under the crushing weight of Coalition demands.
“We have reached that point I warned you of, Caze,” she said softly, and again felt the spark of . . . something when she spoke his name. “This will require everything in you. And even if you feel you must recoil from the pain you must not. You must, must stay still.”
“Easier said,” he muttered.
“Yes. But you must. And you will.”
“Want me to sit on him?”
Drake’s drawl came from behind her, and she felt the spark of pride—that was a Coalition-allowed emotion, it seemed—that drove Caze to say, “I’ll manage.”
And she knew she’d been right to have Drake here. With him here, Caze would hang on until he no longer could, and in those moments it would be up to her. Or rather, the Spirit.
She leaned in, pressing her hands down firmly. She felt Eirlys shift as well, adding her own pressure.
“All of it now,” she said softly to her daughter.
She felt the power of the link increase, felt the flow become a rush. She guided it to the goal, that damaged cord of nerve tissue that fed them all. She felt the moment when it hit him, when the pain shot out in all directions as the severed connections reformed. She heard him gasp, but he made no other sound. And he lay still, when she thought any other man would have been writhing in agony.
It went on and on, until the moment when, with one last, main strand to reconnect, she felt him break. Felt that amazingly valiant spirit silently cry out in surrender.
She called up everything she’d learned as the Spirit, as she had one day not long ago on a Ziem mountainside. She let out what she thought of as the power of her world itself, into a glowing blast of power and light. Everything under her hands froze, as if time had stopped.
His surrender hovered, as if waiting. She felt something, shifted her gaze, saw he was staring at her. She could see the flare of light reflected in his eyes, for the first time was able to see what others saw when Ziem gave her this gift. But she never stopped sending the healing waves, holding him in the heat and light for these last critical seconds. And in the moment when she could no longer hold onto that light, she felt the last rejoining seal, and it was done.
Chapter 26
“THEY’RE GETTING restless,” Brander said.
“Of course. They want to strike back.” Drake tapped a finger idly on the map on the table before him. He wasn’t really planning anything, but he enjoyed looking at Kye’s amazing work. And it had kept his mind off his second once more venturing down into Zelos, putting himself in the literal jaws of the enemy.
“They’re angry that they can’t find us.”
Drake couldn’t help smiling at that. “While we are perfectly happy to let them squander manpower and fuel and time in fruitless searching.” And in the process give his Sentinels time to rest, recuperate, and enjoy the respite.
Brander grinned. “I overheard a couple of troopers even questioning the power of the Coalition, if they are unable to even find a ‘tiny band of miscreants,’ as they called us.”
Drake smiled again at that. But it faded as he asked, “Did you hear anything about their . . . missing commander?”
“Not a chirp. His aide is doing a great job in suppressing any questioning, if indeed there is any. Although I doubt there is much. No one would dare question Major Paledan’s comings and goings. Speaking of which, how is our . . . guest?”
“Still asleep,” Drake answered. “With some help from my mother. She will keep him so, for now.”
“Your mother is . . .”
Brander’s words trailed away, and Drake gave him a wry smile. “Amazing? Impossible? Sometimes frightening?”
“All of those,” Brander agreed.
“And who knows that better than the two of us?” Drake asked.
“You seem much better with her.”
“She has proven her worth many times.”
“So she has earned your forgiveness. But what about love?”
Drake met Brander’s eyes, a little surprised that it seemed to matter to him. “I understand now what I did not before, how it would seem impossible to go on without the one who holds your life in their hands.” Brander lowered his gaze. And then Drake understood. “It is not I, but Eirlys you are concerned about.”
“Only insofar as it hurts her to hold ill will in her heart.”
“She has forgiven, and come a long way toward loving. Given that heart of hers, I would say she will reach it.” Drake’s mouth quirked. “They have much in common, she and our mother.”
“So much that she worked with her to heal Paledan.”
“Yes.” Drake gave a small shake of his head. Knowing Brander had risked a glance in at times during the process, when the patient was focused only on surviving, he said only, “I’ve never seen anything like what they did.”
“I’ve never seen anyone endure that much pain without cracking, except you.”
Drake shook his head. “This was much worse. She was able to mute the pain for me, for it was but muscle and bone. This was every nerve in him, likely feeling on fire.”
“And now that she has healed him,” Brander said, “the biggest question remains. What will you do with him? Just send him back?”
Drake sighed. “I do not know.”
“There’s always the twins’ suggestion,” Brander said,
with another flashing grin.
“Keep him? And what, give him free rein, to learn where we are so he can finally annihilate us? Or keep him imprisoned, until the High Command itself comes hunting for him, and us?”
“Or . . . turn him.”
Drake went still. “The man is the most decorated and honored active commander in the Coalition. He was born to it, has known nothing else his entire life. He has conquered more worlds then you or I will ever see. He has the ear of all at High Command, and could likely call in a strike to destroy us on a moment’s notice, planium or no. Why in hades would you think he would turn?”
“What I think,” Brander said quietly, “is that you having all those reasons immediately at hand means you’ve been thinking about it yourself.”
For a moment Drake just stared at him. Finally he grimaced. “You started this, you know. You were saying he didn’t fit the Coalition mold long before my mother reappeared and agreed with you.”
“Mine was just an impression. Hers is . . .”
Brander waved a hand as if unable to explain. But he didn’t have to. Drake knew what he meant. He did not understand why his mother could do what she did, but he could no longer deny that she could. He’d known, in childhood, that she could see in ways no one else could, but he had never known she was capable of what she’d shown them since she’d first come back to them as the Spirit.
Including discerning the very depths of a person with merely a touch. Who knows what she had learned of their guest, as Brander put it, during the healing?
“Some of what I think is from the man’s actions, however,” Brander said. “He has shown more restraint with our people than I ever would have expected from a Coalition commander. And I will say I agree with your mother about his frequent referring to the Coalition as something apart from himself. And there is his protecting the twins. And do not forget, he shot Jakel when he came at you.”
“And so you counter every one of my reasons with an opposing one, which leaves us . . . where?”
“With all our coin on the table and no idea who has the better hand.”
“Indeed,” Drake said dryly.
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