by P. M. Biswas
As if to spite her, Loren didn’t bid her goodbye either. He spurned Tam to instead say goodbye to Maple. Maple, as if it were Maple whose beliefs he’d just shaken to their roots.
“Unfair,” Tam groused as she rode out of the Wanderwood. Her heart’s home, was it? It still unnerved her too much for that—the immenseness of its trees, the absence of any birds or animals, and the charged silence of the undergrowth, as if whatever wildlife there was, it was deliberately hiding from her.
It was a deceitful, oppressive place. It wasn’t her heart’s home. She’d never come here again, but….
At least it’d be a tale to tell.
Chapter Two
RETURN
TAM RODE back to the Astarian fort as fast as Maple could go. Maple seemed recovered from her previous exertions, and flecked with the blood of her enemies as she was, she tossed her head proudly when they approached the gates at sunset.
Tam wasn’t proud, however. She was ashamed. She wasn’t returning a hero; she was returning a survivor, a child who had stumbled into that which she did not understand and had then paid for it with her own blood.
Tam was also paralyzed by terror at the prospect of how many may have paid not only with their blood, but with their lives. Borik may no longer be alive. Maryada may be rotting on the battlefield, her sturdy frame now a lifeless corpse. And Dale—
Dale, Tam had seen dying. The vision of Dale going down played over and over in her mind, and the urge to vomit once again threatened to overwhelm her. Her hands were slippery with sweat on Maple’s reins. Perspiration trickled down her back underneath her slashed and bloodied tunic, and her heart twisted and untwisted like a sprain.
Loren had been a distraction from the misery that roiled within her, but now it bubbled to the surface. As she drew nearer to the fortress, panic engulfed her. The places where she’d been healed throbbed as if they were bleeding anew.
The guards at the drawbridge unsheathed their swords at Tam’s approach. They weren’t the guards that had been stationed there when Tam had headed out with Kay. They didn’t recognize her.
“Halt!” The woman by the gate stepped forth. “Identify yourself.”
“I-I’m—” Tam stuttered. For the first time in years, she said, “I’m Tamsin Bladeborn. I’ve just ridden here from the border. I… I’m with the spear unit.”
The woman exchanged glances with her watch partner, a younger man with a sparse beard.
“That’s impossible,” the man said. “The spear unit sent out to the border has already come back.” His features clouded over. “What remains of it.”
Tam’s breath hitched. “How—how many—made it back?”
“You’re an outsider. Why should we blab our business to you?”
“I’m… I’m not an outsider. Send a messenger to Queen Emeraude, please. Or to Borik, commander of the spear-wielders. Is… is Borik…?” Tam could not finish the question. Tears flooded her eyes.
The woman regarded Tam narrowly. She rapped the hilt of her sword against the wooden gate and called out, “Ho, there! Did you hear that? Send a page to the queen.”
The queen. Not Borik. Did that mean Borik was—
No. No.
Tam slid off Maple and doubled over, retching. The guards watched her uncomfortably. The male guard made as if to offer Tam his flagon of water, but was stopped by his partner.
“She could yet be a spy,” said the woman, and he retracted his flagon.
When Tam had finished spewing the meager contents of her gut, she leaned against Maple, exhausted. Maple let her, curving her neck around Tam to snuffle comfortingly into Tam’s hair. If even Maple pitied her, then Tam must be quite wretched indeed. Tam was shaking as if with the ague, and she could barely stand. The strength that had driven her home had suddenly been sapped from her, and the acidic, half-digested food she’d brought up had scoured her throat and left it raw. Her mind was blank, as if it had been emptied along with her belly.
The giant bolt on the other side of the gate slid loose with a deep metallic clunk, heralding the advent of the page. The gate creaked ajar.
Tam straightened, expecting to be escorted to the queen, but instead a blur hurtled toward her and collided with her, almost knocking her off her feet. She brought her fists up on instinct, but—
It was just Kay.
Kay, who wrapped his arms around Tam tightly, as if he could keep her from leaving him ever again.
“Tam!” Kay cried out, and he was shaking too. His eyes were red-rimmed and wild, like he hadn’t slept, and unshaven fuzz lined his jaw. Kay always shaved. He was meticulous about it, the sole aspect of his physical appearance that he paid attention to. But now he looked….
He didn’t look like a prince. He just looked like a boy who’d lost his best friend.
Kay held her and held her, his grasp tightening instead of loosening, and in it Tam found herself weeping, holding him as well.
“I’m sorry,” Tam said. “Kay, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry….”
“You’re sorry? Do you know—I couldn’t sleep all night, thinking—you were lying somewhere, dead and cold and all alone, and I’d put you there, I’d snuck you out, and it—it was all my fault.”
“It was on me, Kay. Don’t blame yourself. Don’t pretend—”
“I’m not pretending. It was my fault. Mine as much as yours. But why are you…? Where are your wounds?” Kay drew back to peer worriedly at Tam, taking in the rips in her bloodstained clothing and the absence of any injuries through those rips. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“But how…? Borik said you’d been all but dea—” Kay faltered. “He said you’d been fatally injured, and that if you hadn’t made it back, you….” Kay swallowed. “You must be gone.”
“So Borik’s alive? Oh, Astar. Thank Astar….”
“He’s—he’s alive.” Kay twined his fingers around Tam’s. “But Tam, he’s….”
Tam’s heart plummeted. “He’s what? What happened to him?”
Kay closed his eyes. When he reopened them, they were shadowed, weary, old, the eyes of a man and not the boy he’d been just moments ago.
This is what he’ll look like when he’s king, it occurred to Tam. This is what Emeraude gave him. The eyes of an all-seer.
“Perhaps you should check on Borik for yourself,” Kay said. “He’s awake enough to talk, if that’s any consolation. But telling you more than that would be—” Kay hesitated. “I may just be a coward striving not to be the harbinger of bad news, but it might be a lesser blow if you can talk to him, if he can reassure you in person. As much as he can reassure anyone.”
“I certainly hope he’s reassuring, Kay, because you’re not reassuring at all.”
Kay laughed, but it was a ragged laugh. “There you are. The usual Tam. I don’t suppose you noticed that the drawbridge had already been lowered when you rode in?”
“I hadn’t,” Tam said, surprised at herself for missing something so self-evident. “Isn’t it always up? Why isn’t it up today?”
“Because my mother was hoping that, unlikely as it was, a certain injured girl might find her way back. And if that girl did find her way back, time would not be wasted in lowering the drawbridge. A healer was appointed at the entrance to treat her immediately. The plan was to raise the drawbridge only if she hadn’t returned by the morrow.”
It was only then that Tam saw a fellow in a healer’s cloak lurking directly behind Kay. “I….” Tam sniffed, overcome with gratitude and guilt. “I can’t believe the queen would wait for me.”
“Can’t you?” Kay tugged on her hand, leading her to the healer. “You mean a lot to my mother and me, Tam. You’re family to us. Although, if I’m to be honest, my infinitely just mother would have left the drawbridge lowered for any straggling soldier.”
“You’re right, she would have.” Tam batted away the healer’s reed stethoscope. “I’m fine.”
“You can’t possibly be ‘fine,’ Tam. I
n fact, I can’t make sense of where your wounds are, since those horrifyingly gaping holes in your clothes indicate that you were punctured like a pincushion.”
“That’s because—” I was kidnapped by an elf and forcibly healed. Gods, that sounded bizarre. Disturbed, even. Folks would accuse Tam of going barmy. “Um. I’ll… wait to tell you about that too? If you can wait to tell me about Borik, then I can wait to make my revelation.”
“The plot thickens,” Kay said in mock suspense, the wildness finally fading from his eyes. He seemed like himself again, like the Kay that Tam was accustomed to bantering with—except he still hadn’t let go of her hand, which he was clutching as hard as before.
“This isn’t a novel, Kay. There is no plot.”
“There’s always a plot. And plotters aplenty.”
“The court has disillusioned you, my innocent prince.”
“No, the war has. Now would you stand still and let the good doctor have a look at you?”
“I don’t need to be prodded like cattle.”
“What if I order you to be prodded? I am a prince, after all,” Kay said haughtily, “and you are but a serf.”
“Kay. Be serious. I’m in perfect health.”
“Inside and out?”
Tam huffed. Kay was being a bit too much like himself, actually. “Kay, could you just… take me to Borik, please? Or to the queen, although I assume Borik’s already told her what happened, so perhaps she won’t be offended if I visit Borik first?”
“Offended? Tam, she’ll be relieved that you’re unhurt. And anyhow, if I take you to the palace infirmary, you’ll see Borik and my mother. They’re both there. You don’t have to fret about who to meet first.”
“The queen’s in the infirmary?”
“She’s overseeing the healers. There were… a lot of wounded.” Kay reeled Tam in for another hug. “Is it true? About the—about the undead soldiers from Axenborg? Is that why your injuries are gone? Gods, you’re not…. You haven’t been converted by them, have you? But you don’t have those red eyes Borik was talking about….”
“I’m not undead, Kay,” Tam said in exasperation.
“Didn’t think so.” Kay shuffled awkwardly. “Just figured I’d ask.”
As Tam and Kay left for the infirmary, the guards at the drawbridge gaped at Tam. They likely hadn’t pegged the short, stocky, unkempt girl they’d dealt with so rudely as the prince’s friend. That reaction always embarrassed Tam, so she ignored it. They were right to have been rude. She could’ve been a spy.
The infirmary was teeming when Kay and Tam got there. Nurses bustled about, their aprons smudged with bloody fingerprints. Healers murmured soberly among themselves, and the royal apothecary decanted potions into vials as his assistants soaked cotton bandages in brine.
But beneath the hubbub and the stinging scent of quicklime was the smell of sickness and urine and blood, a thick miasma of death that had Tam wanting to retch again. From the curtained enclosures within which the patients rested, there arose faint, faltering moans—but the most alarming enclosures were those from which no sounds arose at all.
There were five empty beds. Tam stared at them, at their parted, fluttering curtains. A slow, ink-dark desolation sank into her.
Five empty beds. Five spear-wielders who hadn’t returned. There couldn’t have been any that weren’t wounded—not after a battle that brutal—so they should all be here in the infirmary, all eleven of them. Marta. Grennulf. Collard. Yusef. Miranda. Feng. Isman. Yvette. Maryada. Borik.
Dale.
Dale, who Tam had seen die. Dale, whose laughter and playful brotherly mocking had been silenced forever.
Who else had joined him in the nightlands? Tam couldn’t bear to guess. She couldn’t bear to imagine who wasn’t on those empty beds, just as she couldn’t bear to see who was in the remaining beds and how critical their conditions were.
“Tam,” Kay said softly. “Borik’s down there.” He led her to the curtained bed at the very end of the infirmary and never let go of her hand. Tam squeezed his right back.
When Kay parted the curtains, Tam froze at the scene that confronted her.
Borik.
Gods, it was Borik, prone and ashen and feeble amidst blood-soaked sheets, fever-sweat lending a sickly sheen to his skin. And his legs were…
They were gone.
They were just—
There was nothing below Borik’s thighs. Nothing. Only two bandaged, severed stumps.
Tam staggered back against Kay, a bout of intense, incredulous dizziness gripping her. This couldn’t be real. This was… this was a nightmare, some disjointed dream she was having in the Wanderwood while she lay unconscious and under a malevolent elf’s thrall.
Borik’s eyes flickered to her, and they, too, were different, unknown to Tam, almost alien. They were feverish and glassy and not quite present, as if Borik’s pain had taken him to some faraway place.
“Tamsin,” he rasped. The name cracked in the middle as he uttered it, and for a moment, the stark, solitary agony of his face transmuted into joy. “Tamsin. My girl. You’re alive.” But then, in a jumbled, confused torrent of words, he said, “Dreaming again. I’m dreaming….”
Tam sank to her knees, her hand slipping free of Kay’s. She knelt there, on the blood-sticky floor by Borik’s low bed, and keened. It was a low keen, more akin to a thin, prolonged whimper than a scream, and she hunched around it as she would around a knife in her stomach.
“Don’t…. Tamsin, don’t cry.” Borik settled his broad, familiar palm atop Tam’s head. The comforting roughness of those calluses brought more tears to Tam’s eyes. There was a tangled ache within her that grew worse with every heartbeat. She hadn’t lost Borik, and yet, why did she feel like she had?
“Hush, child,” Borik said, but his eyes were far away again, and his hand slid off her hair as his awareness seemed to turn inward, toward some inner torment, as he whispered indecipherable, rambling sentences.
Tam couldn’t even begin to fathom Borik’s pain. All she could do was to stay kneeling there by his side, where she should have been during the battle instead of abandoning him to save herself.
“Tam,” said somebody, and she flinched.
She looked up. It was the queen. Emeraude was sitting on the chair by Borik’s bed.
Tam hadn’t seen Emeraude there—hadn’t even noticed the queen—because Tam hadn’t been able to register anything but Borik.
Borik was the closest thing Tam had to a father nowadays. To see him in this state, so helpless and so unlike himself….
Tam wept. Useless, ugly tears. Emeraude joined Tam on the floor, uncaring of dirtying her royal dress, and embraced Tam with a kindness that made Tam quake.
Kay hovered beside them, watching, his throat bobbing as he pressed his fingers to his mouth and stifled sobs of his own.
“Wh….” Tam couldn’t bring herself to ask it. “Why are his legs…?”
“When he returned yesternight, his lower legs had been slashed to shreds,” Emeraude answered calmly, but despite her calm, Tam could sense Emeraude’s grief, as palpable as the weight of everything she could not say. A queen could grieve, but she could not let that grief shatter her. She didn’t have that privilege. “That wouldn’t ordinarily have necessitated an amputation, but it was a poisoned blade that had struck his legs, and the poison was spreading swiftly upward, consuming and ulcerating his flesh. The surgeons had no choice but to sever Borik’s legs above the knees. It was the only means of saving him.”
Tam nodded dully.
“He was more coherent before the surgery. After, he became delirious with the healing potions, his fever, and the infection from his other wounds.”
“Did…?” Tam sucked in a shuddering breath. “Did he inform you about what happened? About what manner of foes we encountered?”
“He did.” Emeraude observed Tam intently. “Yet you do not match his description, neither in the severity of your wounds nor in your proximity to death
. He was more worried about your life than he was about his own, even after the healers told him that he would lose his legs. But you needn’t fear for his life. He is out of danger and must only recover. Once he has sweated out his fever, he will be restored to his customary clarity.”
Tam sniffled. She’d never felt so young and so adrift; only the presence of Borik grounded her, distant though he was. “Thank you. For… for staying by his bedside when I could not.”
Emeraude released her and helped her to her feet. Tam tottered, and Kay took her arm to steady her.
“Would you like to see the others?” Emeraude asked gently. “You needn’t, if you require respite, be it physical or mental. I’ll have some food brought up for you. You must be famished.”
“Of course!” Kay sprang into action, flinging the curtain aside. “Why didn’t I realize how hungry you must be, Tam? I’ll summon the maids and—”
“No,” Tam said. “I… I appreciate it, but I’m afraid I couldn’t keep any food down. Not now. I’d rather see the others. Is Maryada…?”
“Maryada is the least injured,” Emeraude assured her, “and she’s just been promoted. Borik can no longer command the spear unit in active combat, although he will still retain his position as a trainer and strategist. Maryada is your new commander. Your future commander,” Emeraude amended, “once you’re eighteen.”
Tam quailed. This was where Emeraude upbraided Tam for what Tam had done, for the rules she’d broken, nearly at the cost of her own life.
But Emeraude didn’t say anything. There was still that gentleness to her, as if she could perceive that Tam was already paying for her misdeeds. Tam had gone to battle before she’d been ready for it, before she’d been prepared for what it could do to people. People dear to her.
Tam’s own parents had perished in battle, so perhaps Tam should have predicted that she could lose her friends to it too—but she’d never witnessed the carnage firsthand. Not until yesterday. Now that she’d seen it, she would never outlive the horror of it. She would never forget.