by Ian Irvine
Rannilt sat up slowly, thinking it through. Tobry had come back in the night and he had sat there, silently watching over her, making sure she came to no harm. Tears formed under her eyelids. She stirred the coals a little, looked into his shadowed eyes and in the reflected firelight she saw more grey than yellow. It was time. The first healing step had to be now.
She rose, making no sudden moves, went towards him and sank to her knees. He took a deep, shuddering breath.
“Hold out your arm, Tobry.”
He extended his broken arm, supporting it at the elbow with his left hand. Rannilt took hold of his right hand. The hairs on his arm stood up; his eyes flashed red-gold and she felt his muscles tense.
“You’re not the beast,” she said softly. “You’re my friend, Tobry, and I’m gunna heal you.” She had to keep saying that, as much to convince herself as him.
She could see the injury clearly now. It was a dreadful break, the broken end of the large forearm bone protruding through the skin, and the flesh around it was swollen and inflamed. Rannilt did not start there—healing was a methodical art and before she began she had to know the full extent of his injury, major and minor. She began to trace the bones of the limb with her fingertips, beginning with his fingers and moving up his hand.
His sinews stood out and he growled. She paused for a second, then continued across his wrist and up the small bone of his arm, slowly and carefully. The flesh was hot and swollen; this bone must be broken as well. Yes, right here.
She moved his two forearms side by side, comparing the length. The broken forearm was a good inch shorter. Her stomach clenched.
She looked up into his eyes. “I’ve got to pull your arm straight so I can line up the broken bones. It’s gunna hurt, Tobry. It’s gunna hurt lots.”
That much pain could make him shift involuntarily, his body choosing to take the best way out. When a caitsthe shifted from man to beast, the change normally healed most injuries, even major ones. She wondered why it hadn’t worked before; perhaps the bones had been too badly out of alignment, but next time—
“You mustn’t shift… Tobry.” She had to remember to use his name every time, to reinforce her message. “You got to stay yourself, all right?”
The way he stared at her was making her uncomfortable. His hair was standing up and his muscles were as rigid as wood. She could not tell if she were getting through to him. Dare she go on? She had to.
“Tobry?” Her voice sounded higher than usual—squeaky-shrill. She told herself to calm down.
He lowered his eyes. Did that mean he agreed, or was he trying to hide his intentions? She had to take it as the former.
After taking hold of his right wrist with both hands, she closed her eyes and allowed her healing gift to sense out the muscles, bones, veins and sinews. Tobry was not a big man but he had always been strong and wiry, and the shifter curse had made him trebly strong. It would take all her strength to pull the bones back into position. More strength than a ten-year-old girl could employ sitting on the ground.
Rannilt kicked off her sandals and pressed her grubby little feet against his chest. He looked down at them in surprise. Taking a firm grip, she leaned back and pulled steadily.
He shrieked, backhanded her aside and convulsed. His eyes began to change shape; his fingernails were extending and turning into claws.
“No!” she shrieked. “Tobry, stop! Come back!”
Heedless of the danger she threw herself at him, wrapping her thin arms around his chest and holding him desperately. He let out a deep, rumbling growl; she could feel it vibrating through the wall of his chest. His jaw was oddly elongated already, the rigid muscles strong enough to bite through the back of her neck; the front teeth were like cat teeth. And he was hot, almost too hot to touch.
“Tobry, come back! It’s me, Rannilt. Come back to me!”
She was losing hope that he could. Few people had fought the shifter curse for as long as he had, and no one had ever beaten it. She hugged him more tightly, shaking him.
“Tobry,” she wailed. “Help me! I need you.”
She felt a shock pass through him, as if the shifting process had arrested. He removed her arms from around him, sat her down, tilted her chin up and peered into her eyes. His cat-like jaw worked as he struggled to shape the unfamiliar muscles for human speech.
“Need? Me?” he forced out.
“Mama died when I was three,” said Rannilt in a little, aching voice. “A great lump grew in her belly and she died right beside me, of a wastin’ disease. It ate her up, turned her to bone and skin.”
Tobry made a pained noise, deep in his throat.
“She was in a fever, that last night,” said Rannilt. “Mama was beggin’ me to save her.”
He let out a whimper.
“ ‘Help me, Rannilt. Please, help me,’ ” Rannilt said in a frail, aching woman’s voice.
“ ‘I’ll save you, Mama.’ ” Now she used a little girl’s piping voice.
“I laid my hands on Mama and tried to heal her.” Rannilt looked up at Tobry. “Lots of us Pale have the healin’ gift, you know. I was sure if I tried hard enough, if I wanted it enough, I could save her. I tried so hard, so very, very hard, but she died anyway. I was just a little kid. I didn’t know nothin’ about healin’.
“I so wanted to heal, Tobry. I practised it every night after that, but it never worked. Never once, ’til the time Tali dropped that sunstone down the shaft at Cython and it smashed, and some great power burst out of it and knocked all the enemy unconscious. It knocked me out too, though not the other Pale.”
He made a questioning sound.
“I don’t know who my Papa was,” said Rannilt. “But the burst of power unlocked my magery, and my healin’ gift. You remember the golden light that used to flood from my fingers, don’t you? I healed lots of things with it.”
His jaw didn’t look quite so cat-like now. He made a purring sound. Rannilt took it to mean that he remembered.
“When wicked old Lyf attacked us in his caverns, he tried to rob away my gift, but all he got was my magery. Tali kept sayin’ that Lyf stole my healin’ gift, but he couldn’t get near it. It hurt him when he tried to touch it.”
Rannilt smiled at the memory. Then the smile faded and she held out her bony, twisted hands. “So you see, I got to heal you, Tobry. I just got to. Give me your arm.”
He extended his broken arm and she took hold of his wrist as before.
“It’s gunna hurt,” she said. “It’s gunna hurt bad and the shifter is gunna try and get out, but you got to stop it.”
Again that questioning note.
“The shifter can heal your arm, Tobry, but it won’t heal the pain in your head. Shifter don’t want to heal itself.”
Tobry bared his teeth, closed his eyes for a moment, opened them and stared at her. The claw-like nails slowly reverted to human fingernails, the reddish fur on his arms thinned and turned pale brown. He was no longer radiating that scorching shifter heat. For the moment, the man was in control.
Her healer’s gift sensed out the structure of his bones and tissues, the shape of the breaks, and what she needed to do to align the bones. She put her feet in the middle of his chest again and pulled steadily on his forearm.
He gasped and again began to shift.
“You’re in charge,” said Rannilt, deadly afraid but trying to sound calm and in control. “You, Tobry. Not the shifter.”
The shifting stopped, though he was still resisting her. She kept pulling his forearm, overcoming the resistance of his contracted muscles. When she saw in her mind’s eye that the broken bones no longer overlapped, she gave a couple of little twists that pulled the ragged ends into place. Rannilt wiggled his forearm back and forth until she knew that the breaks were in good alignment, then took his left hand and clamped it onto his right arm, over the break.
“Hold it. Don’t let it move.”
She bound two straight sticks to his forearm with strips of cloth to m
ake a splint, then slid her fingers around the inflamed area above the broken bones.
“Anyone who cares can do what I just done,” she said. “This is the hard bit—the healin’ bit. The best bit.”
She began to hum softly, tunelessly. A soothing golden light lined her fingers, growing and spreading until all her body was enveloped in it and rays burst out in all directions to light up the surrounding darkness. Rannilt could feel the warmth radiating from her fingers, passing through Tobry’s inflamed muscles to the broken bones. Stimulating them to rejoin.
“It won’t get better straight away,” she said. “Only a master healer can do that. But the bones will heal in a few days, not a few weeks. And they’ll be stronger than before.”
As the minutes passed, it became harder and harder to sustain the golden light and the healing power that came with it. Her head drooped. She was exhausted. Her arms grew heavy and her fingers ached where the slave girls had broken them, years ago. But she was healing her friend, who really needed her help, and she wasn’t giving up.
Rannilt felt the inflammation subsiding under her fingers. She sensed fibres stretching across the rejoined ends of bone, forming a structure on which new bone would grow. She felt the liquid rush and the warmth as the blood flow increased through a network of new blood vessels.
She swayed and almost fell over. It took all the strength she had left to remain sitting up, to finish the healing. Then, suddenly it was done. Her fingers slid away and the next thing she knew she was lying on the ground beside the fire, with Tobry looking down at her anxiously.
“Healin’ hurts,” said Rannilt. “But it’s a good hurt.” She smiled dreamily. “So hungry…”
Someone was shaking her, trying to wake her. Rannilt roused sluggishly. Tobry was kneeling beside her, holding out a small piece of crayfish flesh. She was too weak to sit up. He pressed the flesh to her lips. She ate it and felt a little better.
Rannilt beamed at him and sat up. He was looking at her expectantly.
“I’ve got to heal you three ways,” she said. “The first way, the normal way, is healin’ infections, wounds and broken bones. That’s not so hard.” She paused.
“But healin’ the mind of a mad—” She corrected herself hastily, “Of a shifter… that’s gunna be tricky. I don’t even know how to start. But I’ll work it out…”
He offered her another piece of crayfish. She took it absently.
“The last healin’ is the hardest of all,” said Rannilt. “Everyone says a full-blown shifter can never be turned back to a normal man or woman. They say the shifter curse can’t be broken.”
She looked up at Tobry. “But I’m gunna find a way.”
Without any warning, Tobry picked up Rannilt, heaved her over his shoulder and bolted to the east, running tirelessly at a speed no normal, fully human man could have matched.
He kept running for hours, until they reached a landscape of jagged, black slate hills Rannilt had never seen before. He went back and forth until he found the triangular entrance to a cave, then carried her underground, as if into his shifter lair.
CHAPTER 18
As the survivors of Lyf’s army retreated south, leaving sixteen thousand dead or dying on the battlefield, he sat in his command wagon, tearing a book to tiny shreds. His personal victory over Grandys, sweet though it had been, could never make up for his army’s disastrous defeat.
“How did he do it?” Lyf raged. “It wasn’t possible.”
The blood was roaring through his veins and he felt a suicidal urge to turn back and charge the enemy with the men he had left, even at the risk of ending it all. Grandys would have done so. He would never have capitulated the way Lyf’s troops had, and it burned him.
Moley Gryle sat at the other end of the wagon, her head bent as if baring her neck to the sword. Since the astonishing moment when she had saved him with that reversal spell, she had not spoken. Forbidden magery required the death penalty and not even the king was above the law. So why had he held back from enforcing it?
“That black pyramid was a magical shield—” said Errek’s shade.
“I know!” Lyf snapped. “But how did Grandys make the shield work? How can magery neutralise our alchymical weapons? They’re entirely different things.”
“Herovian magery is designed for war,” said Errek, “while our king-magery was entirely devoted to healing… at least, until you debauched it by creating shifters, and using it in other dire and destructive ways.”
Errek never tired of pointing out Lyf’s failings. “Even so—” said Lyf, “How—?”
“Powerful magery can stop a man’s heart. Unlock a lock. Set wet wood alight. Why shouldn’t it be able to stop a bombast from exploding?”
“One bombast, or two,” conceded Lyf. “But magery must be focused precisely on the object it is to affect. How can it be used to blanket a battlefield—to smother every one of a hundred bombasts, a thousand grenadoes, ten thousand fire-flitters and countless more of our myriad weapons of war? Not one of them worked, Errek.”
“I don’t know. The Five Heroes linked their individual gifts, and that’s never been done before. Never before have magians been able to join together without undermining the source of their power.”
“I’ve got to strike back,” said Lyf. “If I can’t hurt Grandys, my people will lose faith in me.” He turned to Moley Gryle, who was staring out at the dry grassland, though he did not think she was seeing it. “Moley?”
“I counsel caution,” said Errek. “Grandys—”
“Moley?” snapped Lyf.
She started. “Yes, Lord King?”
“Advise me.”
“His… his support is strongest in the north,” she said in a whisper. “He’s garrisoned half a dozen fortresses in Lakeland and Fennery, and Herovians are streaming out of the mountains to join his army.”
“My spies tell me his garrisons are weak,” said Lyf. “He brought most of his troops south, and he’ll need to call more down to replace his casualties before he attacks again. He can’t touch Caulderon with the numbers he has.”
“That’s what you said about your mighty army,” said Errek.
“It’s a different matter attacking a great, fortified city. I don’t rely on chymical weapons to defend Caulderon—I’ve got twenty thousand men behind strong defences. Not even Grandys could take and hold the city with less than forty thousand.”
“Why would he want to hold it,” said Errek, “when you’ve purged Caulderon of his people? His Promised Realm will be pure of blood; the only outsiders in Herovia will be slaves.”
“The—the best way to strike at him right now is by destroying his fortresses, Lord King,” said Moley Gryle.
“I agree,” said Lyf. “I’ll send five thousand men west tonight, under cover of darkness, with orders to sweep north through the western forests, then attack his strongest fortresses and raze them. Then they’ll return to safety down the eastern side of Lake Fumerous, to Caulderon.”
“Grandys will strike back the moment he hears,” said Errek.
“Let him try. I’ve a retreat prepared at Mulclast, between the three Vomits.”
“Sounds like a dangerous place to hide,” said Errek.
“But impregnable. It’s a triangle of high ground in a volcanic wasteland, the only way in is via three narrow passes and there’s no drinking water save at Mulclast itself. It’s a perfect trap, and if Grandys is desperate enough to put his head in, I’ll cut it off.”
Lyf went out, gave the orders and returned. His army continued south towards the greatest and most unstable volcano in the land, the Red Vomit. That evening he sent his spies out to kill all Grandys’ scouts, ostensibly as revenge for Grandys killing Lyf’s scouts before the battle. Once it was done Lyf saw off his strike force and continued south.
“Happy now?” said Errek at dawn the following day. “Feel you’ve struck a great blow against the enemy?”
The Red Vomit towered above them, fourteen thousand feet
high, erupting gentle billows of ash and steam. The pass to Mulclast lay a couple of miles to the east and there was no sign of pursuit.
Lyf scowled. “What would you have me do?”
“Leave war to your generals. Do your primary duty.”
“If I give up the leadership now, I’ll look like a failure.”
“The only thing that matters is that the land be healed. Assuming you can,” Errek said pointedly.
Lyf controlled his face with an effort. Did Errek know his secret fear, that he was an impotent king? He dismissed the shade, put the army under the command of General Hramm and sent it across the pass to Mulclast.
Once it was out of sight, Lyf, Moley Gryle and the nine surviving men of Lyf’s King’s Guard slipped into an ancient lava tunnel on the western side of the Red Vomit. They led the horses in and tethered them at a small, iron-stained spring shaped like a triangular bathtub.
“Wait here,” said Lyf to his Guard, and headed down the steep lava tunnel.
Moley Gryle went after him. Once they were around a bend, out of sight and earshot, she said anxiously, “Lord King, you can’t go down into the quaking depths alone.”
“I’ll have Errek with me.”
“He’s just a figment, Lord King, and you’re on crutches. What if you fall on the steep slope and knock yourself out? He’ll vanish.”
“Errek?” said Lyf. “Come forth.”
The faded shade appeared in a glowing oval above Lyf’s head. He drew power, pointed at the shade and said, “Errek First-King, rise from the Abysm!”
The air crackled and Lyf fell onto his back, gasping. Sparks rained down, a distant wind howled, then the shade let out a fading wail and collapsed in on itself, consumed by the spell, leaving only a small, faintly glowing yellow oval where it had been.
Moley Gryle helped Lyf to sit up. Nothing happened for a minute or two, and he began to doubt the quality of his magery. Then the yellow oval expanded as though it was being stretched from the other side, and the wrythen of an ancient, hoary old king stepped through into the air. He was wispy, frail and scarcely more solid than he had been as a shade, though his faded blue eyes had a fierce glow Lyf had not seen before.