Kellen got to his feet and gazed up at Jermayan, who was still sitting astride Valdien, gazing down at Vestakia's misery as if it had nothing to do with him.
"Well? Are you going to just sit there? Do what you came here to do and be of some use," Kellen snapped harshly, in a voice he hardly recognized as his. "Or I'll tell Idalia you failed in your task to help me. And how. And why. And she can make up her own mind whether or not you were worthy of her."
Jermayan flinched back as if Kellen had slapped him, and turned wordlessly away to dismount and unpack the mule.
A heavy weight of oppression seemed to press down on Kellen's spirit. It wasn't just the deadness of this place, the gloomy sky, the unforgiving stone, though all of those contributed to the feeling. Something bad lived here. Something inimical to the human spirit. Vestakia was right, or if not right, very close.
He had to fight himself to keep from crouching down, from looking over his shoulder, from peering at every shadow in search of an enemy. Vestakia was already miserable enough; he didn't want to terrify her.
Kellen turned back to Vestakia, helping her to sit. "You'll feel better soon, I promise," he said, hoping it was true. "Shalkan says we have medicines with us, and you'll have them soon."
Vestakia smiled wanly at him, blinking back tears. "Please don't let them get me, Kellen. I'd rather die than that. Promise me."
Apparently his attempt to put on a cheerful face wasn't distracting her. Well, if this place seemed oppressive to him, how bad must it be for her?
"I won't let the Demons have you," Kellen promised, realizing with a sinking feeling just what it was he was promising. And Jermayan would probably be happy to kill you whether there was a Demon around or not.
He looked up at the sky, trying to decide how much light they had left. By the position of the sun, it was a few hours before sunset, but darkness came quickly here in the mountains. Even if Shalkan's remedies worked, and Vestakia was well enough to go on today, there was no guarantee that darkness wouldn't find them halfway along the path, trapped somewhere in the mountains far too near the Barrier.
But Kellen knew he'd been right, too. The thought of camping for the night here on the enemy's doorstep was not only unthinkable, he suspected it would be impossible. He thought of the dreams he'd had back on the haunted battlefield and shuddered. He wasn't willing to risk more of the same—or worse. There might not be any sign of opposition yet, but the longer they stayed here, the more likely discovery became. No, they'd go on as soon as possible.
Shalkan had wandered off, and was talking to Jermayan. Kellen would have given a lot to know what that conversation consisted of, but the unicorn's voice was pitched too low for him to hear. Jermayan was unloading the mule, and unpacking the brazier. Shalkan collected one of the bags in his teeth and sauntered back, depositing it at Kellen's feet.
"There's a cup, a black bottle, and a wineskin in there. Put an ounce of the contents of the black bottle into the cup, then fill it up with the wineskin. Then have Vestakia drink it. Jermayan's brewing tea." Shalkan's voice was neutral, conveying nothing of what he might be thinking.
Kellen ought to have expected that. Well, if whatever was in the bottle had allheal in it, the stuff might do Vestakia some good. "Listen, just tell me if Jermayan ever neglects to brew tea when we stop, will you?" he asked Shalkan, trying for a little humor to at least cheer up Vestakia. "If that happens, I'll know there's either something seriously wrong with him, or it's an imposter."
Shalkan sniggered. Unfortunately, Vestakia didn't seem to notice, or didn't realize he was trying to lighten her mood.
Kellen followed the directions meticulously. The contents of the black bottle smelled strongly of herbs, like fresh-cut hay, and the liquid was the bright green of spring leaves, as thick as berry-syrup. The cup was a small one, obviously not meant for ordinary use. It was made of Elven silver, a silver as bright and soft as pure gold. Kellen handled it carefully.
The wineskin contained nothing more exotic than white brandy. It was clear as water, and turned pale green as it mixed with the herbal draught.
"Here," Kellen said, holding out the cup to Vestakia.
"Oh. I don't want—"
"Please. Shalkan says it will help."
"Drink it quickly," the unicorn advised. "Really quickly."
Uncertainly, she took the silver cup, and gulped its contents down as fast as she could. A stricken expression crossed her face, and she exploded into a paroxysm of coughing as soon as she'd swallowed.
"It doesn't taste very good," Shalkan finished mildly. "Unless you happen to be a horse or some other grass-eater. Now you, Kellen."
"What does it do?" Kellen asked, suspicious now that he'd seen its effect on Vestakia.
"Among other things, it closes down the magical senses, though not for very long. You'll need the breathing space. You may not think you can sense the Barrier from here, but you can. Drink it."
Vestakia stopped coughing and sputtering. "That was horrible!" she said. "But… I feel better now. Thank you." She took a deep breath that turned into a sigh of relief.
Kellen looked at the cup and the bottle and winced. But Shalkan had never given him bad advice yet, and if his mounting despair was due to sensing the Barrier—well, he needed the help. Much worse, and he'd start weeping over trifles. Or he'd sit down in the middle of the path and refuse to go on. Quickly, he mixed his own dose, and drank.
The brandy seared his mouth and throat with choking fire, and did nothing to mask the incredible gagging bitterness of the herbal liquor. Even braced for it, Kellen choked and sputtered nearly as much as Vestakia had, swallowing over and over to try to get the taste out of his mouth. But once the burning and bitterness subsided, he did feel better. Some of the despair lifted. Now, he was merely depressed.
And who wouldn't be, around here?
Kellen investigated the bag further, discovering it was the first-aid kit.
He pulled out the jar of allheal salve and a roll of bandages.
"You were limping earlier. Which ankle is it? If I use some of this on it and strap it up tightly, you should be able to walk." I hope, he added to himself. "I wish I could Heal you, but I… don't dare," he finished, feeling ashamed.
"You couldn't do it right now, anyway," Shalkan said helpfully. "Not after drinking that."
"It's because it would call Them, isn't it?" Vestakia said, shuddering. "Never mind. I'd rather bleed to death horribly than do anything to summon one of Them, and this close…" She shivered again, wrapping her cloak tightly around herself.
"Even without magic, I should take a look at it," Kellen said. "Some allheal will do a lot to make the bruising heal faster." Assuming that matters, and we aren't all dead before morning.
Vestakia seemed to see the sense of that.
"This one," she said, thrusting out her right foot. "I twisted it when I fell. He'd never have caught me otherwise," she added proudly.
Kellen removed his gauntlets and eased the boot off. Vestakia was wearing much the same thing the farmers working the fields in Merryvale had been—long tunic, wide calf-length trousers, and heavy boots of rough leather lined in sheepskin. It was the boot that had kept the sprain from being any worse: her ankle was a little swollen, and warm to the touch, but it didn't seem too painful when Kellen prodded it experimentally, asking her how it felt. With the color of her skin, he wasn't sure whether he'd be able to tell if it was bruised or not, otherwise.
"I'm afraid this will hurt a little," he said, as he began to work the salve into her skin. "But it will feel better afterward."
Vestakia winced as Kellen's fingers found a particularly sensitive spot. Kellen cast about for something to distract her.
"You said you'd tell us how you came to be here?" he asked. "This would be a good time." He glanced over his shoulder. Jermayan was taking an awfully long time getting the tea to boil.
"I suppose I owe you the tale," Vestakia said, hanging her head. "I warn you, Wildmage, it isn't a pret
ty one."
"Well," Kellen said lightly, "it's bound to be interesting."
She managed a wan smile. "My father, as you know already, was a Demon. My mother told us that he called himself the Prince of Shadow Mountain, and though all Demons lie, I have no reason to think that this one time he wasn't telling the truth."
Interesting. He wondered why she was so sure, but decided to let Vestakia tell the story in her own way. He could always ask questions later. Beside him, Shalkan was listening with rapt attention.
"My mother was a Wildmage, who lived with her sister in a little village far to the east of here. My father seduced her in human form and got her with child, intending to leave her on some pretext and come back after I was born and claim me for his own. It is a common practice among Demonkind and well known among the Mountain-folk—perhaps you have heard the songs we sing about it?"
Kellen hadn't. Vestakia shrugged.
"It doesn't matter, because this time his plan failed. One night my mother wore a Talisman of the Good Goddess made from braided unicorn hair to their bed. He did not recognize it for what it was, and he touched it. It burned him, and he vanished."
Kellen blinked at that; he'd known that the living unicorns were inimical to Demons, but unicorn hair!. He filed the information away for future reference. It could be very useful.
"She knew him for what he was then, of course, but by then it was too late." Vestakia sighed. "She was with child, of course, and—and that doomed her to lose the life she had always known, and it would be only that, only if she was very fortunate indeed."
"Why?" he asked, because Vestakia had stopped talking.
"If the villagers found out that she had been Tainted by a Demon's embrace, even accidentally, they would put her to death," Vestakia told him flatly. "If they found out she was pregnant by a Demon, they would put her to death even more swiftly—and there was no point in trying to abort in secret what she carried: Demon-children cannot be gotten rid of except by killing the mother. So she faced death twice over for her error— but my mother was a powerful Wildmage, and she was very clever as well, and she was not going to lie down and wait for death."
If she was anything like you, and I expect she must have been, I can certainly believe that, Kellen thought.
"She took stock of her options and resources, and made plans. No one but she knew that she had taken a lover at all, much less that her lover had been a Demon: she would be disgraced in the eyes of the village elders when she was found to be carrying a bastard, but not murdered—not until the child was born and showed unquestionable signs of Demonic Taint. And—she didn't intend to give birth to a child that would grow up to destroy and corrupt all that it touched."
"Well, I can see where that would be a problem," Kellen replied, keeping his eyes on her ankle, and his tone light, but not too light. He didn't want her to think he was making fun of her, or not taking her story as seriously as it deserved to be. "I assume she must have had an idea of what to do about it."
"She did," Vestakia said solemnly. "She called upon the Wild Magic to help her."
He blinked. "Oh. My." It was a completely logical solution, given that the woman in question was a Wildmage, but how many would have had the courage to take it, knowing that the price asked was likely to be very high, and there was no one to bear it but herself? Idalia would, Kellen thought with a flash of pride. But how many others?
"And so according to the ancient ways, because she had asked only for help, and not what kind of help, my mother was offered a choice, and a price."
He looked up, then, into those solemn, yellow eyes, and thought that he could guess the choice. But he didn't interrupt Vestakia. Jermayan was eavesdropping, although he pretended otherwise, and he needed to hear this from Vestakia's lips.
"Her choice was that the child to be could be completely hers in spirit, and its father's in body; or its father's in spirit, yet hers in body. So I could look like him, yet be human inside, or look like her, yet be his in every way that mattered—a Demon. No matter which choice she made, she would sacrifice twenty years of her allotted span of years."
He winced. A hard price; a harder choice. "I think," Kellen said aloud, "that she must have been very brave."
Vestakia nodded, accepting his comment as no more than simple fact. "It was—so my aunt always told me later—a hard choice to make, for some claimed that Demons were not by nature evil, and if one could only get an imp young enough, and raise it up in love and law, perhaps its nature could be turned away from Darkness. And if Mama had only taken the choice of having me look human, she could have stayed where she was, among her friends and family, and hoped for the best. Perhaps—so she might have told herself—I could have been turned from my evil ways. And even more temptingly, even if I was evil by nature, there was a good chance that I wouldn't begin to work my wickedness until I was grown, and due to the nature of her price, she knew she would be dead by then."
Shalkan made a little, thoughtful sound. "Less risk for her; potentially a disaster for everyone else. Not so much a choice as a temptation?"
"Maybe," Vestakia acknowledged. "Maybe not. Maybe it is true that Demons are not evil in nature; maybe she would have been doing all of the world a great service by proving it. If it were only her own fate that was at stake, I believe she might have tried it. But it was not. If the child proved to be evil in blood and bone, if my nature had been unredeemable, she would be risking not only her sister's life and those of everyone in the village—not only with what I might do to them, but in what would certainly happen when my father came for me. And not only theirs, but perhaps the lives of everyone in the surrounding countryside as well, for once Demons are drawn to a hunting ground and find it undefended, they do not stop until they have destroyed everything within reach. Mama saw that one path was easy—for her—and one was hard, but that only one was right. She was very brave," Vestakia finished proudly. "She told the Good Goddess that she would bear a Demon-appearing but human-spirited child, and sealed her bargain."
"Good for her." Shalkan touched Vestakia's cheek lightly with his horn, and she glowed a little at his praise. Out of the corner of his eyes, Kellen caught Jermayan watching, his frown deepening at this further proof that Vestakia was not what he thought her to be.
She picked up the thread of her story again. "But I would not be born for many moonturns yet, and she had many plans still to make if we were both to survive, for Mama did not intend for either of us to die—nor for either of us to fall into my father's hands again. She went to her elder sister Patanene, who was unmarried and loved her dearly, and confided all to her, and my aunt was just as brave and strong as Mama. Aunt Patanene got herself put in charge of a flock of goats to be sent out deeper into the mountains for summer pasturage, and Mama went with her. They stole half the flock, and took it away with them deep into the Lost Lands, where they knew they would never be found, walking for moonturns. I was born in a hut the two of them built with their own hands and shared with their little flock."
Two women and a baby all alone in these mountains? And I thought living in the Wildwood was hard! Kellen thought to himself.
"I suppose it was a hard life for them," Vestakia said, in an unconscious echo of his thoughts. "As for me, I never knew any other. Mama's Wild-magery kept us well and safe and fed, and I was always happy, even though the very first thing I learned was that I must never let anyone see me. All was well for ten years, then Mama died, paying her price, and Aunt 'Nene and I were left alone to fend for ourselves. We didn't do quite as well, I think… Mama's magic had kept us safe when the Demons hunted me, and when she died, at first we were never sure when they were near. But then, when I…" Vestakia hesitated, and looked away, embarrassed. "When I… began to become a woman… I realized that I could sense them when they drew near, because I became ill. Aunt 'Nene and I had reason to bless that gift, many times!
"But it was a hard life, very hard. And when Aunt 'Nene fell ill, four years after Mama died, I w
asn't skilled enough to nurse her back to health, and though I called upon the Good Goddess, without Wild Magic, I could do nothing for her but to keep her comfortable and ease her spirit. And she died. So then I was alone."
By now Kellen had finished working the allheal into Vestakia's ankle, and he began winding the linen bandage firmly about her foot—not too tight, or it would cut off the circulation. He only hoped what little he could do would be enough.
How brave she had been! Compared with what she had faced growing up alone and isolated, his own problems as Lycaelon's despised and socially embarrassing son seemed like nothing. He'd spent a lot of time feeling sorry for himself, but he could tell, just by looking at her, that Vestakia had never wasted a single moment on self-pity.
"What did you do then?" he asked. "After your aunt died, and you were all alone?"
"What could I do?" Vestakia asked, with some spirit. "If I sat about and bewailed my lot, the goats would starve, I would starve, and what use would there have been of Mama's sacrifice, of all of Aunt 'Nene's care? I buried her next to Mama, I tended my flock, I went on with my life. I knew how to hunt, I had milk and cheese and butter from my goats, eggs from the wild birds, and sometimes meat. Though you may not think it, there are wild foods growing in these hills, not abundant, but Mama and Aunt 'Nene taught me how to find them. Sometimes I could trade for bread and flour with the other crofters—I wore gloves, and bandages over my face, and let them think I had some horrible skin disease. I managed well enough. I knew the Demons were hunting for me—Mama had warned me that my father would always know that I was still alive, even if he could not tell exactly where I was because of the boon the Good Goddess had granted her, and that he would never give up searching for me. So I hid whenever I felt the Demons nearby, but I dared not leave the hills, or go anywhere there were more people, because I would be killed at once or, and that would be nearly as bad, lead the Demons among people. Mama made sure I learned those lessons well, so that I would never be tempted to show my face to anyone. She warned me that anyone who saw it and pretended not to care must be a Demon in human guise; of course, she never lived to know that no Demon would ever be able to trick me that way…" Vestakia sighed and bowed her head. "When I saw you… when you saved me… I was so afraid! I thought my power had failed me somehow. If Shalkan hadn't been there…"
The Outstretched Shadow ou(tom-1 Page 72