Royal Rescue

by A. Alex Logan

  The healer lowered its head so it could fix one of its massive eyes on Gerald. “Do you know how many wounds I’ve treated?” it asked, not unkindly. “I have seen much worse than your leg. And I’ve seen your leg already. What will it hurt to let me see it again?”

  “He hasn’t seen it,” Gerald said stubbornly, nodding at Erick. “And…neither has Omar.”

  “I have, actually,” Omar said. “You were unconscious at the time. But I’ll leave if you want me to,” he added quickly. “I don’t mind staying, but if you want me to go…”

  Gerald hesitated. “Just…don’t look. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Well, I have to look,” Erick said. “And even though I didn’t see it properly yesterday, it is my spell on your leg, you know. I know what’s wrong with it, even if I haven’t actually seen it.”

  Still, Gerald hesitated.

  “If they can make it heal faster, it will be worth it,” Omar said gently. “Won’t it?”

  “It’s not going to heal,” Gerald said pessimistically. “Not properly.”

  “It certainly won’t if you don’t let us tend to it,” the healer said, a touch of exasperation creeping into its voice. “Now, are you going to let us, or should I call Calin over?”

  After spending days under Calin’s strict supervision, Gerald had worked up a healthy respect for the piedling. He was, perhaps, even more intimidated by her than by the healer, despite its imposing size.

  Gerald forced his hands to open, his fingers to unclench. “Don’t look,” he said again to Omar. And then he drew the towel aside.

  Erick and the healer leaned in and quickly began discussing spell variations, their conversation peppered with phrases like, “subverting analgesic energies” and “balancing regrowth with repair”. Neither of them had drawn back in disgust. There hadn’t been the faintest flicker of revulsion on Erick’s face, and while Gerald was not entirely sure what revulsion would look like on a dragon, he was sure the healer hadn’t flinched either.

  He leaned his head back and caught sight of Omar, who was still standing behind the chair. Omar had angled himself so he could still see Gerald, but not his leg.

  “Is it really that bad?” Omar asked quietly. “I mean… I saw it when it had first happened. I helped Calin bandage it. Did you know that? And it wasn’t, I mean, it wasn’t anything nice. But, well, it’s not like it drove me away.”

  Gerald shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe it seems worse because it’s my leg. But I think it’s worse than it was at first. When the healer had to take the spell off, the pain got worse during those days when you were gone. It wasn’t simply that it wasn’t healing. It hurt more.”

  “Burns do that,” the healer said absentmindedly, flicking its attention away from Erick for a moment. “The heat of them gets trapped under the skin, and they keep burning deeper for a day or two.”

  “But it’s stopped now,” Omar said. “It’s healing now.”

  “The spells are working,” the healer confirmed.

  “But my leg’s not,” Gerald said. “Working, I mean. I can’t move it properly.”

  “The muscle is damaged. It has to be repaired. I’m afraid you’re going to have to be patient.”

  With that, the healer returned to its debate with Erick. After what felt like a small eternity, they were both satisfied. “I’m going to add another layer of spells,” Erick said. “The healer is going to lend me some strength so I won’t fall over this time. What I did last night was mostly pain relief and addressing the infection. This is going to start a deeper healing process. It might sting a bit,” he warned Gerald. “Just until it takes hold.”

  “Go ahead,” he said. After the last few days, I can handle a little stinging.

  For a brief moment, it felt like dozens of hornets were jabbing their venomous stingers into every inch of his leg. But the pain passed as quickly as it came before Gerald could do anything more than gasp.

  “Sting a bit?” he started indignantly, but Erick interrupted.

  “Sorry, sorry, it shouldn’t have been that bad! But that should really speed things up now. All right. I’m done with my bit.”

  Calin materialized at his elbow, as if she had been waiting for those words. Two of her sisters hovered behind her, holding baskets of bandages, ointments, and herbs. In the blink of an eye, they had Gerald’s leg treated and bandaged once more. He relaxed as soon as the last bit of burn was covered, and only then did he realize how tense he had been.

  He slumped back in the chair with a sigh and found himself smothering a yawn.

  “Go back to bed now,” Calin instructed.

  “It’s not even noon,” Gerald protested. “I shouldn’t be this tired.”

  She gave him a black look. “Days of fever, a severe injury, the strain of being up and moving around, the drain on your energy of healing spells… Oh, no, you shouldn’t be tired at all.”

  “All right, all right,” Gerald said. “I get it.”

  Omar started to push him back toward his sickbed, but Gerald stopped him. “I can go back to the other room, can’t I?” he asked Calin. “I was only out here so the healer could fit, in case something went wrong, and it needed to get to me in a hurry. That’s not necessary now, right?”

  The piedling shrugged. “I suppose not. One bed is as good as another, as far as I’m concerned, as long as you’re asleep in one!”

  Omar changed directions and took Gerald through into the more human-proportioned caverns.

  “I’m tired of everyone watching me,” Gerald admitted a little sheepishly as Omar helped him move from the chair to the bed. “And there are so many more people to watch me now.”

  “Everyone’s been worried,” Omar said. “You were in bad shape.”

  “I know. I don’t mean to sound so ungrateful.” Another yawn interrupted him. “Sorry! I really am tired. I’m not fit company in any case.”

  “Oh, you’re not as bad as all that,” Omar said with a grin. “But I’d better let you go to sleep or Calin is going to have something to say about it.”

  Gerald shuddered theatrically and closed his eyes. “We can’t have that,” he murmured. And he was asleep before Omar could respond.

  Chapter Sixteen

  WHEN HE WOKE, Omar was sitting on the bed across from him, sorting through papers Gerald recognized as pages from the Who’s Who guide. He pushed away a stab of guilt that the others had been working—on my scheme, no less—while he had wasted the day by sleeping.

  “Hello, sleepyhead,” Omar said as Gerald sat up. “I was just thinking about waking you. Are you hungry?”

  “Famished,” Gerald said, and his stomach growled as if to underscore his declaration.

  Nedi and Erick were already at the table when they entered the reception cavern. They, too, had piles of paperwork in front of them.

  “I told you she was going to organize everything,” Omar said quietly into Gerald’s ear as he guided him over to the table.

  “Good,” Gerald said. “I’m not good at following up with my ideas. If she can organize this, I’m happy to let her.”

  Nedi began talking as soon as Omar and Gerald were seated. With no preamble, she said, “It seems like there are really two prongs to this plan: one is bringing all the royals here for a showcase; the second is freeing all the guardians. There are a few ways to accomplish those things. The logistics depend on a few key factors: how we will be traveling to them, how they will be traveling to us, how much secrecy we need to have with either or both projects, and how long the dragonlands can provide hospitality for how many people prior to the start of the showcase.”

  She paused there, and Gerald tried to decide if she had stopped to draw breath or if she was waiting for someone to start elaborating on her key factors. When she looked up from her papers and looked around the table, meeting each of their eyes in turn, Gerald figured it was probably the latter.

  “Well, you’ll have to ask the dragon about that last one, but I would guess t
he answer would be ‘a lot of people for a long time’. I mean, compared to dragons, people—even a hundred-odd people—don’t eat much food or require much space,” he said slowly. “As for secrecy, quite a lot. You know about Erick’s spell to cloak the tracking spell, right? We’ll be using that to keep the Council from knowing everyone is coming here. They’re going to want to stop us, you know. I mean, we’re undermining the entire system.”

  “But that in itself is going to raise suspicions,” Nedi said. “When everyone starts disappearing from the map, don’t you think the Council is going to investigate?”

  “That’s why we’ll have to move people quickly once the spell takes effect. To scry someone, you have to know where they are, that’s what the dragon says. So if we move them away from their last known position fast enough, they won’t be able to find them.”

  “Which brings us back to transportation,” Nedi interrupted. “I saw for myself how fast your dragon can fly, but it’s only one dragon.” She gestured to a map of the Thousand Kingdoms she had unrolled on the floor and marked with the locations of the royals awaiting rescue. “You can see for yourself how widespread all the towers are. Not to mention all the rescuing royals who are traveling freely. Using one dragon to round them all up and ferry them back here individually will take longer than I think you care to spend.”

  “You have a suggestion, then?”

  “Several,” Nedi said, glancing at another bit of parchment. “Again, there are different possibilities. The first option would be to recruit some more dragons. We could split up, with one dragon carrying each of us, and divide the towers between us. Another option would be to get some of the other royals to help us. We could send letters to the rescuers asking them to make their way to a specific town, and then we could gather up several at once and bring them here directly. That would prevent them from getting too close to the dragonlands while their tracking spells were still active. We could also try to recruit rescued guardians as we went. That would, of course, depend partially on the species of the guardian. Other dragons would be a big help; merfolk, not so much.”

  She paused to let them take all that in and then continued. “I personally think a mix of strategies would work best. The royals in towers are the easiest part, really; we have to go to all the towers anyway to free the guardians, and we know exactly where they are. It’s the roving royals who are more trouble. If we can get them to concentrate in a handful of towns, that would be the easiest way to get them back here. And so long as we won’t be wearing our welcome thin, we should start collecting people right away.”

  Erick cleared his throat. “And what about those who don’t want to be collected? I mean, I think this showcase sounds like tremendous fun. But we can’t really force people to participate.”

  “Why not?” Gerald asked heatedly. “We’ve all been forced to participate in the current system.”

  “Yeah, and how much did you like that, not having a choice?”

  “We have to free the guardians,” Gerald said, quietly but forcefully. “If there are royals who don’t want to take part in the showcase, well, we won’t force them to participate. But they have to be here, out of the reach of the Council, until those who are willing have a chance to show this will really work.”

  “Fine,” Erick said. “I suppose that’s all right. We won’t be keeping them here that long, anyway.”

  “Especially not if we split up,” Nedi said. “I’ll talk to your dragon about finding some others to help us. I can work on some better harnesses as well. The more people that can be carried at once, the better. We can leave as soon as we have the transport and the harnesses.”

  Omar, who had been quiet all through the discussion, finally spoke up. “Gerald can’t travel yet. And shouldn’t Erick stay here until Gerald’s leg is better? Especially since the dragon healers can’t use their magic on it.”

  “We’re splitting up anyway,” Nedi said. “We don’t all have to leave simultaneously. There probably should be someone here—someone human, I mean—to help get the new ones settled, too. You and I can get started, and the cousins can stay here until Gerald’s ready to travel.”

  Omar frowned but swallowed whatever he was going to say, and Nedi nodded briskly. “Since that’s settled… Shall we eat?”

  THE NEXT FEW days passed in a whirlwind of activity. Gerald still spent long stretches of the day sleeping and recovering his strength, but when he was awake, he helped the piedlings sew new harnesses and helped Nedi plan their routes. The dragon had recruited two more who were curious about the human world and were young enough that they were restless and wanting to stretch their wings. Erick tailored his tracker-removal spell to make it longer lasting, and he also added another layer to the spells on Gerald’s leg each day. Slowly but surely, visible signs of healing were beginning to appear. Nedi copied maps and made checklists and began drafting letters to the rescuers to draw them toward major cities. The rescuers all visited the cities sometimes anyway, to stock up on supplies or spend a night in an inn instead of along the side of the road, and they thought they could get as many as five or six in a single city without it looking overly suspicious.

  “After all, there were at least that many camped outside the Enchanted Forest,” Erick had pointed out. “And all of them had traveled at least part way with other rescuers at some point. Little clumps are normal. It would be stranger if we picked them all up one by one.”

  Omar was the only one who hadn’t gotten caught up in the flurry of work, planning, or preparation. More than that, he seemed to have lost some of his enthusiasm for the endeavor. When Gerald was awake, Omar was always nearby and would lend a hand with whatever Gerald was doing, but one morning while Erick was renewing the healing spell, he mentioned that when Gerald was asleep, Omar was nowhere to be found.

  “Nedi and I only see him at meals,” Erick said. “No one seems to know where he goes, either. He hasn’t been talking to your dragon, or to the new dragons; he hasn’t been packing; he hasn’t been helping the piedlings. I don’t know if he’s hiding somewhere, or if he’s wandering around the dragonlands, but either way, it feels like he doesn’t want anything to do with us or with the showcase.”

  Gerald frowned. “That doesn’t sound right,” he objected. “Are you sure he’s avoiding you and it’s not just coincidence? I see him all the time, and he’s been helping me sew harnesses and plot routes between the towers. He thought the showcase was a good idea when we first talked about it, and he hasn’t said anything to make me think he’s changed his mind about it.”

  “Well, maybe Nedi or I did something to upset him, then,” Erick said. “Insulted him by accident or… I don’t know, but I swear, it’s like he’s a ghost, he’s never around unless you are! Oh—” A brief flicker passed across Erick’s face then, an emotion he hurried to hide. “Anyway, maybe you should talk to him about it. If I did something, I’m happy to apologize for it.”

  “Sure,” Gerald said. “It’s probably just some misunderstanding.”

  He kept an eye out for Omar as he worked on the tasks of the day, but hours passed without him making an appearance. That was unusual and Gerald caught himself chewing at his lower lip as he wondered if Erick was right and something had gone wrong.

  He shook his head to clear it and forced himself to concentrate on the task at hand. With the harnesses nearly done, he moved on to making copies of the instructions for removing the guardians’ collars and packaging them in waterproof pouches with chisels and wax sticks. Erick thought it was possible some of the royals they rescued would want to take part in the guardian rescue before coming in for the showcase, so Gerald wanted to have plenty of materials on hand for Nedi and Omar to hand out.

  But that thought made him scowl at his leg. I don’t want to be stuck here doing busy work while they’re out there accomplishing things. And no matter what Nedi said, welcoming the influx of royals, getting them settled, and getting them to assist with the setup felt like busywork to Gerald.
It’s a combination of host and steward, and I’ve never been good at either of those roles. And it’ll all be about me delegating work to other people, anyway. I still won’t be doing anything real.

  His leg was healing, at least. Already the edges of the burns, where the damage was least serious, were scarring over, and slowly the worst areas were starting to shade from “horrific” to “severe”. He could look at it unbandaged without gagging. But he still couldn’t straighten his leg the whole way and Calin was still determined to keep him off his feet entirely, so the only times he tried to walk were when he was getting in or out of the bathtub, and he couldn’t move even those few scant feet without a bad limp and a lot of effort.

  As much as he wanted to protest that he could travel, he was no longer fevered or fragile, he knew he would be more of a burden than a help. I can’t even get into a bathtub and I want to fly all over the Thousand Kingdoms and climb around swamps and enchanted forests and run around mountain peaks?

  He scowled at his leg again. “With everything that magic can do, I don’t see why this is taking so long to heal,” he grumbled to himself.

  “Just think how long it would take without magic,” Omar said. Gerald jumped and left a smear of ink on the instructions he was copying.

  “Where did you come from?” he asked as he hastily blotted the paper. “I haven’t seen you all day. You startled me.”

  Omar shrugged. “Oh, I’ve been around,” he said vaguely. “What are you working on? Need any help?”

  Gerald looked around to see if Erick was also going to pop up out of nowhere. See? he wanted to tell his cousin. He wants to help. Aloud he said, “I’m almost done with this, actually. But that reminds me—I did want to ask you something.”

  “Oh?”

  Gerald capped the inkwell and set his pen down. “It’s just…well, something Erick said this morning. He thinks you’ve been avoiding him and Nedi, and that you’re not interested in the showcase or helping with it.” Seeing Omar’s face redden, Gerald held up a hand to forestall his protest. “I know you do want to help, I mean, look,” he said, gesturing at the papers. “You just offered to help with this. So I know that part’s not true. But the rest of it? I’ve been asleep so much, I don’t know. Erick said if he did something or said something, you know, to upset you, he’ll apologize for it. I guess what I’m getting at is, well, did something happen?”