“I think you’re confusing enough as it is,” Gerald grumbled. “But if everyone’s done laughing at my expense, why don’t you explain what happened in the Enchanted Forest?”
Chapter Fifteen
AFTER EXCHANGING GLANCES with Erick and Nedi, Omar started the story. “Well, the dragon got us there even faster than it thought it could,” he began. “It was closer to a day than a day and a half, and we got there around dawn. But we couldn’t go flying straight in looking for Erick, because there was a group of royals camped out along the edge of the forest and the dragon didn’t want to start a panic. Since it was still pretty dark, the dragon was able to find a secluded place to land and then I walked over to the tents to ask about Erick.”
He smiled wryly. “Unfortunately, there aren’t any towns or villages all that close to the Enchanted Forest—you can imagine why—and my showing up on foot at the crack of dawn was deemed rather suspicious. I had a terrible time convincing the other royals I wasn’t some shapeshifter that came out of the forest to eat them or something. It didn’t help that we disabled my tracking spell, so I wasn’t showing up on their maps. And, even though they said Erick wasn’t there, you never actually described him to me, so I didn’t even know if they were telling the truth or not.”
“They were,” Erick interjected. “I was on my way to Nedi’s tower by then.”
Omar flapped a hand at him. “Yes, but I didn’t know that then. I went back to the dragon and we decided to write to Erick with the two-way parchment. If he were one of the people I had just spoken to, that would probably convince him I was telling the truth. And if he wasn’t, then he could tell me where he was.”
“I really have to come up with a silent alert for that spell,” Erick interrupted again. “I was trying not to draw attention to myself in the middle of a highly magical environment with dangerous plants and animals and other things everywhere. Needless to say, I had to look at it immediately, if only to get it to stop chiming. Also needless to say,” he added with a glare at Gerald, “I was not thrilled by the content of the message.”
“You do realize I didn’t do this on purpose, right?” Gerald said, gesturing at his bandaged leg. “I mean, there is actually a small percentage of my life that is not solely dedicated to annoying you.”
Erick rolled his eyes but otherwise ignored him as he kept talking. “By that point, I was closer to Nedi’s tower than to the edge of the forest, and Omar mentioned he was with your dragon, so I decided to keep pressing on. The tower would be a good landmark where we could meet up and I figured it would be easy enough for them since the dragon could fly over the dangers of the forest.”
“He didn’t think about how many of the Enchanted Forest creatures can also fly,” Omar said.
“Yes, well, you got there, didn’t you? And you didn’t seem any worse for wear. Or at least not much worse for wear.”
“It was one of the more interesting wake-up calls I’ve had,” Nedi broke in. “Erick wasn’t much of a surprise—I did get potential rescuers dropping by semi-regularly, despite the environment. But the dragon—that was new.”
“We almost landed on the tower, too,” Omar said, laughing. “The clearing around it was a bit smaller than the dragon was anticipating, but we were in too much of a hurry for it to worry about a little thing like having a place to land.”
“I got there right after they did,” Erick said. “Omar wanted me to get on the dragon and go immediately—”
“Which was perfectly reasonable considering your cousin urgently needed a healing spell!”
“But I didn’t know how serious the situation was,” Erick continued with a glare at Omar, “and since we were already there it seemed reasonable to take the time to free Nedi’s guardian and see if we could interest her in our plan.”
“And I didn’t know anything about you at all,” Nedi added to Gerald, “and I wasn’t going to let them leave without learning why a dragon had come to visit.”
“She was so calm,” Omar said with admiration. “She opened the window and leaned out and formally introduced herself like everything was completely normal—”
“And Erick acted like you did,” Nedi said to Gerald, “he tried to be very gallant, even though Omar was trying to physically drag him over to the dragon and the dragon was making a huge fuss itself—”
“And of course all the hubbub made the guardian show up,” Erick added, “and then it was all such a mess—”
They were all talking over each other now, and talking loudly, and laughing, and Gerald felt both that he had a very good idea of what, exactly, that first meeting had been like, and also that he had missed out on something he rather would have liked to have been a part of.
They all have this story now, and I’m not part of it, even though I’m the reason they have it in the first place, he thought. He felt oddly left out and the feeling only increased as Nedi and Erick started laughing at some shared memory.
The dragon came back in then, licking its chops and looking full and content. It perked up even further when it heard the gist of the conversation. “Have you gotten to my part yet?” it asked eagerly. “I’m the one who spoke to the guardian,” it added for Gerald’s benefit.
“You have perfect timing,” Gerald said, finding a smile. “I believe that’s exactly where we are in the story. Was the guardian a unicorn, by the way?”
“It was,” the dragon confirmed. “Omar and I had wanted to grab Erick and get back here as quickly as possible, but by the time the unicorn made an appearance, it was too late to leave in good time. With both Erick and Omar there, the guardian didn’t know who to focus on. It didn’t help that neither of them was making an attempt to rescue Nedi—it made the situation even more confusing for the poor unicorn. The collar exerts a type of…compulsion, I suppose is the word for it, to make the guardians act the way they’re supposed to. You remember the amarok?”
“Of course.”
“You remember she didn’t want to fight Taylor. But because of the collar, she couldn’t simply stand aside and give them access to the tower; she had to fight. Well, the unicorn didn’t want to fight anyone either, but no one was following the protocols and the spells on the collar were pulling it in different directions: fight Erick, fight Omar, fight me, guard the tower…”
“It started going crazy,” Erick interjected. “Lunging at each of us, running back toward the tower, spinning around and snorting and stamping its hooves. And I mean, people say unicorns are basically horses with horns, right? Well, let me tell you, there’s one big difference. And I mean that literally: unicorns are much bigger than horses.”
“They’re more camel-sized,” Omar said. “At least that one was. And the horn was proportional—it was like a spear sticking out of its forehead. It was, frankly, terrifying.”
“I had a good idea of what was happening,” the dragon said, “due to my own unfortunate experiences with the collar and its spells. So I chose to simplify the situation by the simple expedient of removing the confounding variables.”
“It picked us up and stuck us in a tree,” Omar translated.
“You didn’t!” Gerald said to the dragon.
“I did,” it confirmed. “When there weren’t any royals threatening to broach the tower, the collar went quiescent and I was able to explain the situation to the unicorn.”
“I still don’t understand why it happened, though,” Omar said. “I mean, nothing like that happened at the Burning Swamp or in the mountain, and there were three royals then.”
“The ambient magic in the Enchanted Forest undoubtedly interacted with the spells on the collar,” the dragon said. “Anything under the forest’s influence is likely to suffer some sort of side-effect.”
“Is that why I keep forgetting you’re here?” Gerald asked Nedi. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he realized how it sounded and blushed and began to stammer an apology.
Nedi waved it away with a lazy flick of her wrist. “The short answer is yes. Don’t wor
ry, the more you see me, the more it will wear off.”
“If I can get back to the story?” the dragon interrupted, sounding aggrieved. “Once Erick and Omar were removed from the situation, I was able to explain things to the unicorn. It was, of course, delighted at the prospect of getting that hateful collar off, but it was wary about the fact that it would need to be one of the royals who removed it.”
“And I was worried the environment might affect the spell,” Erick broke in. “So I insisted on being the one to work on the collar, even though Omar was the one with more practical experience with actually altering them.”
“The unicorn let you approach it?” Gerald asked curiously. “You weren’t sure it would, in your letter.”
“Yes, well, it seems that’s just a myth. Or perhaps the collar prevented it from acting on its instinct to avoid me. In any case, yes, I was able to approach it, after the dragon did some negotiating on my behalf—the fact that it had obviously had its own collar removed helped there—and as it turned out, the spell did need a few small alterations.”
“Meanwhile,” Nedi broke in, “Omar was still sitting in a tree, and he was close enough to the tower window that I could bully him into telling me exactly what was going on. It would have been much easier to get the information if Erick had been up there, I think, since he had been acting the gallant. Omar was much more interested in the progress on the ground than in talking to me.”
“Because we were in a bit of a hurry!” Omar protested. “Or at least, we should have been. But once he started in with the wax stick, it was obvious I wasn’t going to get him out of there until he was finished, so there was no reason not to talk to you.”
“All right, that’s true,” Nedi conceded. “It took a while to get to that point, but you did tell me everything.”
“And then she said she would tell everyone unless we took her with us!”
“Hadn’t Erick said you were going to do that anyway?” Gerald asked.
“Yes, but she didn’t know that.”
Nedi dismissed Omar’s comments with another lazy flick of her wrist. “In any case, I didn’t even need to blackmail you, since, as you said, you were planning to bring me along anyway. The unicorn is free and so am I, Gerald got his leg healed, and I am going to be invaluable to organizing this scheme of yours, so I really don’t see what the fuss is about.”
Omar opened his mouth indignantly and then visibly thought better of what he was going to say. “No harm done, I suppose,” he said instead. “But I don’t think Gerald’s healed quite yet, or Calin wouldn’t be making such a fuss still.”
“He’s not,” Erick said. “It’s not even all that close to being healed. There’s a lot of damage. It’s going to take a while, even with magic.” He shrugged. “It won’t hurt anymore, though.”
“That’s the most important thing to me right now,” Gerald assured him. “I have time to wait for it to heal. We need to get organized here before we go haring off and dragging dozens of royals back with us.”
“Leave the organization to me,” Nedi said. “I think I saw some maps sticking out of one of those bags—”
“There are notes, too,” Gerald said. “A tally of who’s out there and where they are, that sort of thing.”
“Let me at them,” Nedi said with a gleam in her eye. “I’ll start strategizing.”
Within minutes, everyone was scattered: Nedi and the dragon to the maps, Erick and the healer to resume their discussion, and the piedlings carrying away the remains of the meal.
Calin popped up then, her gray hands on her hips. “Bath! Now!” she told Gerald firmly. “And then we’ll change your bandages. I’ll fill the tub. You can push the chair,” she added to Omar.
Calin bustled off without waiting for a response, expecting she would be obeyed without question. And she was. Omar brought the wheeled chair over and pushed Gerald into the bathroom. The tub was already full, the water was steaming gently, and Calin was setting out towels and clean clothes.
Gerald focused on Calin instead of looking at the water. “Is it okay to get the bandages wet?” he asked doubtfully.
“We’re changing them anyway,” she reminded him. “Unwind them and hop in the tub. A bit of water and soap should do you good. But no scrubbing. Not with the towel, either. Pat the burns dry. Gently.”
Gerald dredged up a crooked smile. “You don’t need to tell me that twice.”
She sniffed but then broke into a grin. “No, I suppose not. Don’t drown, now.”
She turned and left without another word. Omar was still standing there, though, and Gerald tightened his grip on the armrests. “I’m not going to drown,” he said. His voice was strained and Omar said, “Oh!” He shook his head as if to wake himself up and said, “Sorry,” blushing slightly. He slipped out of the room and Gerald heard the door close behind him.
Still, he made no move to get out of the chair. You’re being ridiculous, he chided himself. No one’s here and this will be a nice change from washing in cold rivers…
He slowly shrugged out of the robe and removed his shirt. Then he stopped, contemplating the yards of bandage wrapped around his leg. He wasn’t sure he wanted to see what was under them again, especially now, not with clear eyes, not without the comforting fog of fever. Erick even said it’s not healed. It’s just numb.
After a long moment, he sighed. It’s not going to get any more healed while I sit here. With unwilling fascination, he unwound the bandages and contemplated the ruinous mess underneath them.
Gerald had seen a lot of injuries in his life, between the animals he tended and the usual run of castle illnesses and accidents. He had thought his squeamishness had long since been lost in that regard. But seeing huge chunks of his leg looking like a mangled roast was enough to make his gorge rise in his throat.
There are not enough healing spells in the world for this, he thought faintly. This is never going to heal right.
He moved his leg experimentally and gagged as he saw the muscles moving in several places where ghastly windows had been burned through his skin. Even with the pain gone, blessedly gone, he couldn’t force his leg to move entirely correctly. As he shakily rose from the chair and took two stumbling steps to the tub, he saw his knee refused to straighten completely. He couldn’t feel it, but he could see it.
He didn’t want to see it.
Gerald closed his eyes as he removed his undergarments, not wanting to see the fabric move across the destroyed skin he couldn’t feel. With his eyes still closed, he awkwardly levered himself into the tub.
His eyes popped open at the heat of the water and he was swamped by a sudden, bitter wave of panic before he clamped down on it hard. It’s not that hot, it’s just warm, it’s bathwater, it’s water, it’s not hurting you, it’s not burning you, it’s not fire.
He sat heavily and barely managed to prevent it from being a fall as his unused muscles protested the effort of keeping him upright. He closed his eyes again and it was several long minutes before he reached for the soap and scrubbed away the dirt and sweat of days of pain and fever. But even with his eyes closed he couldn’t bring himself to touch his right leg.
He didn’t know how long he sat there with his eyes closed. Long enough for most of the warmth to leech out of the water. Long enough that there was a tentative knock on the door.
“Gerald? You didn’t drown, right?” Omar called.
“No.”
“The healer and Erick want to look at your leg.”
Gerald fought down another wave of nausea. “Just a minute.”
He slowly pushed himself upright and got out of the tub. It was even more awkward maneuvering out than it had been maneuvering in. His eyes traveled insistently to his leg, no matter how hard he tried to keep them away. He couldn’t decide if the burns looked better or worse now. They glistened disturbingly with the damp, but some of the caked blood and pus had soaked away.
He dried and dressed as quickly as he could, his legs shaking with
the effort of standing after so many days in bed. It was a relief to lower his weight back into the chair. He draped the towel over his right leg, to hide it from himself as much as anything, and then called to Omar that he could come in.
Omar opened the door even before the echoes of Gerald’s words had disappeared into the air. His eyes went immediately to Gerald’s leg and to the towel covering it. Then he looked up and met Gerald’s eyes.
Gerald looked away, not wanting to acknowledge or respond to the concern he saw there. “It’s a mess,” is all he said. “You don’t want to look at it.”
“But it doesn’t hurt?”
Gerald shook his head.
“You, uh, you look like you’re in pain,” Omar said gently.
“Do I? It doesn’t hurt. I’m just tired, I guess.”
Omar made a noncommittal noise in response, but he didn’t force the issue. He pushed Gerald back into the big common area, where the healer and Erick were waiting with identical expressions he could only describe as “scheming”.
“I think we’ve worked out the cause of the oddities,” the healer said. It started to launch into an explanation and Gerald could feel his eyes glazing over. He had thought he had a good grasp of magical theory, but everything the healer said was going over his head. Or maybe I don’t want to hear it.
Erick, seeing Gerald’s expression, interrupted the healer. “I’m not sure the nonmagicians have the, um, training to appreciate the details,” he said, and Gerald smiled. Ever the diplomat. He’ll make a good king.
“Hmm? Oh. I suppose that’s true. It will make a simply splendid academic paper, however. I’ll have to get my secretary to start on a draft… But that’s beside the point.” It cocked its head at Gerald. “We have some variations in mind. Shall we see what we’re working with?”
Gerald’s hands tightened on the towel.
Erick sighed. “Is this really the time to worry about your cursed modesty?” he asked.
Gerald flushed. “That’s not it,” he snapped. “It’s disgusting. My leg is disgusting. I don’t want to see it. I don’t want anyone to see it.”
Royal Rescue Page 18