Icestorm

by Theresa Dahlheim

  “No, I’m all right. Help him first.”

  Henrey did not argue. He never did. “Yes, my lord.” Firmly but not roughly, he pulled Rond to a sitting position. Unfortunately, that allowed Rond to see Ahren’s body, and he froze.

  Graegor leaned—carefully—to his right to block Rond’s view. Rond blinked at him. He moved his stump as if to point with it, then stared at it, and finally winced his eyes shut again. In silence, he let Henrey pull him to his feet. His knees immediately buckled, but Henrey held him around the waist, and he looped Rond’s good arm over his own neck before shuffling toward the stairs. Graegor sensed him using telekinesis to get enough leverage to lift Rond over the steel blade in the floor, and then up to the first stair, and the second.

  Tabitha followed them. Her arm was still bent beneath her wrap, and she moved with slow care to not jostle it. Though she didn’t look over at him and didn’t reach toward his mind, she wasn’t simply shutting him out. It didn’t feel the same as it had at the theater. The silvery cords that tied them were warmer.

  When Graegor emerged through the hatch at the top of the stairs, he had no idea how he’d done it—just that he’d kept his weight off his bad leg and his eyes on Tabitha’s skirt. He leaned against the wall and caught his breath while Henrey led Rond into a room only a few steps from the hatch. The light of a candle fell across its doorway, and in the other direction, more candles were glowing in the house’s other rooms. Henrey had probably lit them as he’d moved through, shouting for Graegor.

  “It looks like a guest room,” Tabitha said. “A guest house. Everything is in place for someone to live here, but no one does.” She was standing in the opening between the hallway and the front room, her injured arm still bent, but the pain obviously not bad anymore. Some of the crystal pins had fallen from her hair, and it was sagging noticeably from its upsweep. The sense of her mind was … softer, somehow, but also stronger. She’d stood in the stairwell alone to face what could have been rogue magi. She’d been ready to fight, just like Koren.

  A surge of emotion made him move toward her, and his heavy, hopping step made her turn around. As he leaned most of his weight against the wall, she reached with her good arm and gingerly touched his shoulder in sympathy. But then she flinched at the sight of his hands and arms, dark with Rond’s blood. “Oh, no. It’s—oh, no.” She covered her mouth and turned away, and through their bond, he could sense her nausea, and the reviving pain in her arm. “Forgive me,” she sent.

  Before he could tell her that there was nothing to forgive, he felt Stan tapping his mind, and he opened their link. “My lord, Lord Contare says that I should take Lady Tabitha home. Lord Natayl wants to talk to her.”

  “All right. Wait—Lord Henrey said you were following the rogues who attacked us.”

  “Yes, my lord, but I lost them. I thought I could catch them up at the next street, but they doubled back. Magus Hugh is trying to track them now. I’m sorry, my lord.”

  “It’s all right. It’s not your fault.” It was his. He was a sorcerer. He should have been able to stop them from escaping. “I’m bringing Lady Tabitha out now.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  Tabitha had turned back to him and was looking anxiously at his face, and he immediately felt bad for not answering her earlier. “It’s all right,” he sent, then felt stupid because it wasn’t all right and he couldn’t pretend it was. “I’m sorry. I mean, I understand.”

  “Were you talking to Lord Contare?”

  “No. I mean, not just now, but I did before. He’s on his way here.”

  “Do you think he could look at this with me?” She meant her arm.

  “Well, Natayl wants to talk to you. I think Contare already told him what happened.”

  “I see. How wonderful.” She loaded irritation into her sending, but he could feel her underlying unease. Natayl would not be happy that she had accompanied Graegor to the fox-den without asking permission first.

  “I’m sorry,” he offered, for lack of any real way to comfort her.

  Tabitha’s tone softened into a kind of joking formality. “Then, my lord, may I trouble you for the loan of your carriage? I would much rather suffer the wrath of my master face to face than mind to mind.”

  He didn’t blame her. “Of course, my lady.” He started to offer her his arm, then awkwardly drew it back. It was covered with Rond’s blood. “I’ll walk you out.”

  She smiled a little. “Graegor, you can’t walk at the moment.”

  “I’ll hop you out.”

  This earned him actual laughter, which pleased him enormously since it was so rare. She kept pace with him as he hopped through the rooms to the front door, using telekinesis to balance as the weapons master, Magus Darren, had taught him. Somehow he managed not to brush his bad leg against any of the furniture. When he opened the white front door, a breeze greeted them, and it seemed to take away some of the smell of blood and gore. Tabitha thought so too, and she took a deep breath as she stepped onto the wide porch. She brushed her fingers over her wrap, where her wounded arm bent under it. Graegor remembered that she was wearing the pearl bracelet on that arm. At his wordless thought that he could clean it for her, she shook her head. It would be messy and even painful to pull it off now. She would clean it herself when she got home. She liked it very much.

  The porch steps were not much trouble for Graegor to hop down, since there was a railing. But then he looked across the shadowed garden to the gate, now standing open to the street. The garden was not large, but balancing on one leg would be even trickier on potentially uneven ground when he couldn’t see his feet. He summoned a light, which took more effort than he thought it should. Tabitha looked at him, and he could feel her concern as he hopped forward.

  His ankle turned, and his attempt to correct his balance jostled the spearhead. Pain lit him like a torch. The light vanished as he fell to the paving stones, and only sheer force of will kept the howling string of curses behind his teeth. Vaguely aware of Tabitha hovering anxiously over him, he concentrated on not moving, not even breathing, just trying to control the renewed bleeding, at least, because controlling the pain seemed impossible.

  Someone else was there. He heard talking. Then he felt the sweetness of Tabitha’s lips against his cheek, then against his forehead. Wordless impressions from her told him that Contare was here, and that Stan was going to take her home. She kissed his forehead again, and then she closed their link. It was smart to close the link, because when it was open, she could feel what he was feeling, and she shouldn’t have to feel this. He tried to tell himself that it shouldn’t hurt this much, that it didn’t hurt this much, that men in battle suffered worse than a blade in the leg and kept fighting. But the pain would not yield to logic. He knew he should take long, deep breaths, but realized he was actually holding his breath when Contare startled him with a tap on his head. “Sit up.”

  He did, and the pain lessened as soon as his good leg was no longer pressing on top of his bad one. He sighed.

  “Grab my arm.”

  Graegor opened his eyes. The blue-white light Contare had summoned showed the grey sleeve of his overcoat as he held out his arm. The old man was strong, and he pulled Graegor up to his feet—his foot—and then patted his own shoulder. “Here.”

  With one hand on the shoulder of Contare’s coat and the other extended for balance, Graegor hopped back into the house, into the same room where Henrey had already put Rond. There were two narrow beds against the walls, and on a table between them sat a lit lamp and a clock. Rond seemed asleep, but his breathing was shallow and raspy. Graegor again had to bite back curses as he gingerly sat on the pillow at the head of the other bed and straightened his legs across the blankets.

  Contare pulled off Graegor’s boot. “I’m going to try to take the spearhead out without actually touching you,” Contare said. His tone was calm, and Graegor could not sense any other emotion from him. “Try to keep your power from reacting.”

  Graegor
took hold of the bedframe with both hands and held tight. The pain was climbing. He imagined the spinning purple knot of his power shrinking, compacting into a dense mass in the center of his brain. He is not harming, he is helping, he told his magic. He is not harming, he is helping.

  The sound the spearhead made when it slid out of his leg was a disgusting slurp, followed by a rip through the fabric of his trousers. With the sharp, fresh pain came bright, fresh blood, overrunning the weeping pus from both wounds. Graegor managed to keep his magic from lashing out at Contare while he used a small, sharp knife to cut the trouser leg away at the knee and then gently tugged the fabric free of the old blood. New blood flowed, and Contare poured a cup of water over the wounds. “Let it bleed for a moment,” Contare said. “Flush out the bigger bits of fabric. In control?”

  Graegor only nodded tightly.

  “When you’re healing someone else, you’ll need to be more careful about getting all the foreign particles out of the wound. All right, you can get started now.”

  Graegor leaned forward to cover the wounds with his sticky hands. “Thanks,” he whispered, his chest slumping, his head bowing to rest against his knee.

  “Your tibia and fibula are both broken. Remember what I taught you about using your body’s other side as a guide. Remember it’s mirrored.”

  “Yes, sir,” Graegor murmured.

  “I’m going to put this with the other spear. Then I’ll be back to see to Rond and check on you. All right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Contare left the room with the spearhead. Graegor finally let himself snarl curses as he took a better grip of his bleeding leg. The purple knot of his gen was spinning, expanding, pressing him with urgency. He tried to keep his hands still as his magic accelerated his body’s natural healing to a nauseating speed that was anything but natural.

  After he got the bleeding under control, he narrowed his focus as tightly as he could, focusing just on lining up the two shin bones correctly. As Contare had suggested, he put one hand on his good leg to guide him.

  No. The tibia was healing wrong. The fibula wasn’t straight. It was … splintered …

  Fields of flowers, open to the sun. Fields of flowers, petals closing.

  It helped. It balanced him. He felt his muscles begin to relax … though one had torn away from his knee …

  He lost track and sense of time. Moments or hours might have passed before his consciousness swam up from the healing trance. Though he felt lethargic enough to fall asleep, he blinked his eyes open. He immediately breathed the stench of blood and pus congealing on the bed and dripping on the floor, and when he unconsciously moved his gore-covered hand to his nose and mouth to cover them, it got much worse. Bile rose his in his throat, but he managed to keep it down, and then, slowly, managed to sit back up. He’d been folded in half at the waist for so long that his lower back ached, and he leaned his shoulders and head against the wall behind the bed before looking around the room.

  Contare was there, sitting motionless on a stool between the two beds. His blue-white light shone on Rond—just like it had the day Graegor had met the old man, in the cloister yard, when Ahren and Rond had been thrown to the ground by Graegor’s uncontrolled earth magic. Then, Contare had touched Rond’s chest; now, he was working on his arm.

  His whole arm. For a moment Graegor thought it was the other arm he was seeing, but no, it was the one that had been severed by the giant blade. Contare held the arm gently, his hands on either side of the cut. It looked like a black ring just beneath Rond’s elbow.

  I cauterized it. The nerves are dead. Would Rond be able to use it, even if it was reattached? It hadn’t even occurred to Graegor that Contare might be able to save it. Had he done more harm than good by burning it?

  His body felt heavy and his wits felt scattered. He could feel a cool spot on his chest, and eventually realized it was his medallion. He watched Contare heal the arm, and his eyes were closing when he finally heard his master take a deep, slow breath.

  “Will he be able to use it?” Graegor asked, fighting to rouse himself.

  Contare nodded without looking up. “Not right away. Soon, I hope.”

  “I’m sorry.” Graegor wished Contare hadn’t had to tax himself so much. “I didn’t think I could save it. Maybe I should have tried.”

  “You did enough.”

  “Maybe I—”

  “You stopped the bleeding. It saved his life.”

  That was true. But it wasn’t the whole truth. “Ahren.” The memory still made him sick. “I didn’t save his life.”

  “He had no chance, from what I saw.”

  Graegor knew that, but hearing it made him wince. “How could … I mean … the bolts, I think I can see how … but the blades, they mounted those blades into the ceiling. How?”

  “Henrey is looking at it.”

  “Did you notice the tracks in the walls too? Disguised as paneling. Guided the blades straight down, nine of them.”

  “I saw. It was a good plan. It had a better than even chance of killing you.”

  “I … it did?” Though all his panicked urgency, Graegor hadn’t really feared for his own life, and even now, even from Contare, the idea didn’t sound real—didn’t feel real.

  “Decapitation,” Contare said. “Not even we can survive that.”

  “Has that … happened?”

  “That’s how Darion died. Michail cut off his head.”

  Those were the third and fourth Kroldon sorcerers. “With what? A sword?”

  “An axe.”

  “So … that … did it ever happen again?”

  Contare gestured toward the floor, indicating the fox-den. “Almost.”

  They almost killed me. They almost killed Tabitha. This was almost the end.

  Fear stabbed him in the gut, and he shoved it away as fast as he could. He resisted the urge to call to Tabitha, to reassure himself that she was all right. She could be in the middle of putting her arm back together, and he shouldn’t interrupt her. “They used a spear on her arm,” he said aloud. “And my leg. Why do that, if they wanted to cut our heads off?”

  “Perhaps to distract you.”

  “One of them had a scimitar. I don’t remember what the other one had.”

  “An axe. Stan saw it.”

  “Did he see any of their faces?”

  “No. They wore hoods.”

  “He said they doubled back … they must have been moving fast.” So what did that mean? “No chain or plate,” he guessed. “Probably just leather armor.”

  “Probably.”

  “I should have pulled the earth magic into my shield right away. I know I depend on it too much, and I shouldn’t reach for it all the time. But it saved us. There wasn’t a dome until I tapped the earth magic, just a shield, like a regular round shield.”

  “Yes.”

  “I think the spear and the bolt got through because … I think it was because we were both holding all our gen over our heads to keep the saw-blades from falling. You told me, or maybe Magus Darren said that if I put all my focus into one direction, I won’t be shielded as well from other directions …”

  He trailed off. Contare was whispering in a language Graegor didn’t know. It sounded very much like swearing. Graegor waited for the invectives to fade before he ventured, “Sir?”

  It was a few moments before Contare shook his head. “Nothing. I’m sorry. Could you repeat what you were saying?”

  “It wasn’t important, sir.” He’d been chattering mindlessly. It’d be a good idea to stop.

  “You healed your leg?”

  “I think so,” he said, trying to sound more focused and alert.

  “Let me see.” Instead of requesting telepathy to inspect the healing from the inside, Contare scooted his stool across the floor a few inches, and his blue-white light sphere followed him. He peered at the still-swollen skin and pink scar across Graegor’s shin and calf, then placed his palm flat on the bottom of Graegor’s foot. �
�Push. More. Does that hurt?”

  It did, but not badly, and not sharply. “I can probably walk on it.”

  “Rest it first. I’ll look at it again later.”

  “Once we’re home?”

  “Likely before that. We’re not going home for a while.” Contare straightened his back and stretched his arms over his head with another deep breath, then shifted his gaze to Rond. “God knows I’d rather let him sleep. But I need to find out what happened.”

  “He couldn’t possibly have been working with them. Unless they betrayed him.”

  “That’s exactly what I need to know.” He looked back at Graegor. “How are you feeling? Do you want to ask the questions, or do you think he’ll talk to me?”

  “I think he’ll talk to you this time.”

  Graegor’s dry tone made Contare smile briefly. He scooted his stool back to the other bed, and the light drifted over it. Rond’s hair was in a mass on one side of his head, still sticky with blood. His reattached arm was bare—Contare hadn’t reattached the sleeve. Graegor had to suppress a strange urge to laugh at that thought. His wits really weren’t right yet.

  Contare touched Rond’s chest, and after a few seconds the man’s eyes fluttered open. He looked blearily from side to side, then lifted both hands to rub at his face. But then he stopped and stared at his left arm.

  “It will take a few days for all the nerves to reknit,” Contare said, and Rond flinched violently. He stared up at Contare in what could only be described as abject dread as the sorcerer went on. “And the scar might be permanent. But obviously you can move it. Eventually you should regain full use of every finger.”

  “My lord …”

  “Lord Graegor told me what happened.” Contare nodded toward him, and Rond lifted his head. Graegor nodded once, and Rond looked down at his arm again. “How does it feel?” Contare asked.

  “It … it’s numb, my lord. But—is Ahren …”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Rond shut his eyes tight. Contare leaned his elbows on his knees and spoke frankly. “You need to tell me how you knew about this house and the room downstairs, and why you brought Lord Graegor and Lady Tabitha here.”