“How am I supposed—” Exhaustion made Julian’s first few words sharper than he intended, and he bit back the rest. Their erstwhile target’s trackers needed no more ripe an opportunity than a distracting argument to catch up with them. Nor could he ignore the anxiety that stripped years from his partner’s features. Rab never wore that look unless he was alarmed, and it took fire, tornado or earthquake to alarm Nine-fingered Rab. Julian massaged his shoulder, wondering how one girl could rival such acts of the gods, because clearly she’d alarmed them both. More calmly he went on, “You know as much as I. Mage. Girl. I had no time to tell more than that.”
“If she’s a mage she’s elf-blooded, in part or in whole. Our clients aren’t going to like this.”
“Assuming they don’t know about her already, one of many questions I intend to ask at our rendezvous.” Grimacing, Julian nudged his stallion Morrigh back into motion and waved his partner forward. Rab, with his unhindered vision, had to go first.
Only Rab’s right hand remained on the reins, though, as he rode his horse Tornach on ahead. Through the four fingers of his left hand he twirled one of his treasured daggers, back and forth, till the blade’s dance made it seem as though he were playing with a fragment of light. With one last look back, he said, “They also won’t like that we haven’t taken down the target.”
“We’ll handle that when we arrive,” Julian ground out through clenched teeth.
He didn’t like their failure either.
* * *
It took several more hours of hard riding, deeper into the wet forest reaches between the mountains and the coast, before they reached the ill-maintained road that was their destination’s first marker. On a bend that twisted from west to southwest, they found the pile of fist-sized, moss-blanketed stones that might have been an ancient cairn. Three of these, by seeming happenstance rolled onto the ground ten paces away, turned them southward into the trees. Slow going through falling dusk brought them to the great skeleton of an oak, split in half by lightning. An hour from there they caught the sound of a waterfall, and a quarter hour beyond that, they at last reached the secluded pool where their clients had promised to meet them.
By then the moon was high, casting ghostly light down upon the wood. To Julian’s single eye that pittance of illumination was scarcely helpful. Shadows of gray and green dark enough to pass for black bled into one another, playing havoc with his depth perception, until he did well to make Rab out ahead of him. On foot he trudged, for they’d dismounted to ease the burden on the horses, and Rab’s feet and Tornach’s hooves guided his ear with every tread upon a twig or patch of gravel. Rab’s soft, labored breathing warned him his partner was as tired as he and beginning to show it—but that didn’t stop the flow of whispered instructions, for Rab diligently upheld the task of acting as his eyes.
Every so often, though, like the clatter of a distant wind chime, the voice of the girl in the duke’s cellar echoed across his thoughts. The noise of water didn’t silence the resonance of what she’d done to him, throbbing in his bones. As Rab tied the horses to the nearest tree, Julian rubbed again at the shoulder that should have borne a bullet wound. Uncanny prickles crackled down his right arm, straight to the wrist where his false hand was attached, while he edged down after his partner into the little ravine the waterfall had carved into the forest.
For an instant his forearm pulsed with a familiar pain, twelve years in the fading, yet entirely new. With a grunt of reaction Julian stumbled, and Rab whirled back to him. “Rook? What—”
An arrow sliced the air an inch and a half away from Julian’s ear, overriding all else. He hurled himself to the ground. Rab let out a sizzling oath, pivoted and dropped into a crouch and flashed a dagger in each hand, all in one swift motion.
“Gods damn you,” Julian yelled, “tàe hallekìan divarrè! Tàe hallekìan divarrè!”
He couldn’t see Rab move much in the gloom, but Julian shot his hand out to him anyway before he sought a target for his blades. As they both froze, his bellow provoked a response in Adalonic, as cool and liquid as his Elvish had been rough.
“You weren’t due until tomorrow, assassin.”
The voice rose through the waterfall’s rushing as though born out of the ongoing spray. After a moment’s concentration, he identified the speaker, the one male among their clients. The elf’s voice was distinguishable from those of his female compatriots by a slightly lower pitch, dipping into what would be tenor ranges for a human.
“Complications came up, Jannyn. Rab and I are too cursed tired to ride around the verdant wilds long enough for tomorrow to dawn. Will you let us come down, or do you plan to try to put out my other eye with your next shot?”
A frosty chuckle wafted up from below. “Don’t give me ideas. Are you seeking more mutilation than what’s already been dealt you, or are you simply a fool?”
“I’m the one who’ll be riding off into the verdant wilds with a terminated contract if you insist on this pointless posturing.”
Silence. Rab spun his dagger through his fingers; Julian scowled and squeezed his eye shut to block out the sight. Tired as he was, the glint of moonlight off the blade was mesmerizing. Closing his eye, though, was a mistake. Another echo of the girl’s power flickered through his muscles, bringing heavy, numbing grogginess that stung the inside of his skull with an overwhelming need for rest. Yet despite his hazed awareness, he caught the second voice that rose from the hollow.
“Let them pass the Ward and come down. There are no others nearby, and the Rook’s said they come in peace. We’ll hold him to his claim.”
Alarrah, the oldest of their clients, spoke with a voice as cool as Jannyn’s but with no hostile edge. A burst of agitated Elvish answered her, first from Jannyn and then from Tembriel, the third of the trio. Their words pealed like irate bells, too rapid for Julian’s meager skill with the language and almost too soft to be heard over the waterfall. But the others seemed to make no impact upon Alarrah’s resolve. She leveled determined syllables back at her companions, and then called in Adalonic, “I’ve lowered the Ward, gentlemen. Come down. Slowly, with your hands out where Jannyn and Tembriel can see them. The slightest sign of treachery will mean arrows through your throats.”
“Sheathe,” Julian said at Rab’s querying glance, not bothering to whisper—the elves would easily hear him even through the waterfall’s incessant din. The younger man obeyed, though with reluctance Julian couldn’t begrudge. Near blind with exhaustion wasn’t the state he would have preferred to be in when explaining to three irascible clients why their contract was unfulfilled. Putting away their weaponry only made it worse.
Rab led the way into the ravine, moving now with greater caution though neither he nor Julian could sense the magic of the Ward on the path. Elven blood and divine aid were the only ways to detect the workings of power, or so the Church preached. So why is her power still stabbing through you, eh? Julian drove off the sardonic thought and focused instead on making it down the rocky hillock. His supple boots let him find and feel the right places to step—as long as he kept awake enough to pay attention.
No telltale flare of magic intercepted them as they climbed down the steep curve of the path to the waterfall’s base. But when they reached the open ground beside the pool that caught the water’s flow, yellow radiance exploded across his line of sight. As his vision abandoned him completely, panic at his sudden blindness roiled through him, driving his hand to the nearest of his knives.
Before he could draw, the brilliance diminished till it was barely brighter than firelight. It had no source that Julian could see, but it was more than enough to limn the female standing at arm’s length before him. A ponytail pulled her dark auburn hair in tight along her skull, accentuating her high cheekbones and pointed ears before bursting forth in a riot of curls behind her head. She was shorter than Julian and far more slender, but her gold-green gaze was implacable. So was the silver head of the arrow three inches from his throat.
What hadn’t they told them about the girl in the Duke of Shalridan’s cellar?
“If you’re just going to shoot me,” Julian growled, “you could’ve spared yourself the cheap theatrics.”
“Even a small fire-gift has its uses,” the she-elf said. “Mine was to get before you and ask one question. If I don’t care for the answer, you won’t have a chance to see what further cheap theatrics I can do.”
Where was Rab? To his left as always, protecting his blind side, but he was held in place by the bow of Tembriel’s brother. Jannyn’s eyes, a lucent gray like moonlit fog, were no more hospitable than his sister’s. Neither elf looked much older than his partner, but that was no measure of their ages. Never mind their reputed centuries-long lifespan, no elf Julian had ever seen had eyes that looked anything less than ancient, filled with the wary suspicion of a people who spent every waking moment hiding and hunted. That suspicion glinted in Tembriel’s and Jannyn’s eyes now. It cut into Julian’s panic, bringing the surety that if he and Rab so much as twitched fingers toward their weapons, they’d die.
His night vision slowly returned, adjusting to the unearthly light, and restoring what little there was to see of his surroundings. The waterfall, pale against the darkness, roared to his left. Behind him was the path they’d descended, the only access to the pool. On all other sides, the high, spray-dampened walls of the hollow cut off any easy views from above. There was no sign of Alarrah. Julian forced himself to stay alert, for he couldn’t relax, not yet. If he did he’d faint where he stood, and until the elves backed off he couldn’t allow himself that weakness.
Resigned, he told Tembriel, “I’m at your disposal, lady.”
“Then answer. Swiftly. Why are you here before your own appointed time?”
“We were betrayed. Our contact in Lomhannor Hall was discovered and has very possibly been hanged by now. Kilmerredes had a trap waiting for me.”
Jannyn cried, “He’s not dead?”
“Your reputation doesn’t name you a man who merely wounds his targets.” Tembriel’s eyes never left Julian’s haggard features. Her arrow never left his throat.
“I reached his bedchamber,” Julian said. “But the duchess, not the duke, was in it. She damn near stabbed me. He charged in with three guards and a bloody pistol. They knew I was coming.”
“Is this why you’re here early?” For all that his sister was the one who wielded the fire magic, Jannyn’s expression flared with far more open fury than hers. He lunged, and only faltered when Julian struck him a blow with his false hand, low and hard across the belly. The elf stumbled back, panting, but his anger roiled undeterred. “Damn you! The bastard killed our parents before our very eyes in your precious war. He killed Alarrah’s father! We paid you to kill him, and all you can bring us are excuses?”
A snarl burst out of Rab, and his daggers snapped back out into his hands. Julian flung out his living hand to stay him, and with it, flung unyielding steel into his voice. “Use either of those blades, man, and by Tykhe I swear I’ll kill you myself.” To Jannyn, he added, “After I kill you, because if you come at me like that again, that’s exactly what’s going to happen.”
As furious as Jannyn, Rab shouted, “He calls your honor into question! You were shot doing their work for them and he—”
“Assassins have no honor,” Jannyn seethed. “Humans have no honor!”
But his sister started, her eyes going wide as she looked Julian up and down. “Shot?”
“I believe this is where I come in.” Alarrah finally revealed herself, slipping out from beneath a low overhang of rock behind her companions. She was of a size with the other she-elf, fair where Tembriel was dark, with a gentler cast to her features. Unlike the others, she bore a thoughtful expression that promised at least the possibility of compassion. “If you’d been shot, the òrennel wouldn’t have healed it, and the wound would scream in my senses.”
Jannyn, his stare locked with Rab’s, drew his bowstring back another inch. “More excuses, more lies! You saw him come down, Alarrah. He doesn’t move like an injured man.”
As Tembriel’s weapon remained locked in its lethal position, Julian kept absolutely still.
Alarrah’s gaze swept over him as Tembriel’s had done, lingering on his shoulder and leg. “But he moves like an exhausted one. I scent both blood and gunpowder upon him.”
“That’s because he was shot,” Rab snapped, “and his leg broken. In your service.”
“Yet he stands before us on both feet,” said Tembriel.
Alarrah met Julian’s eyes. “Please do us the honor of an explanation.”
“Whether I can bring honor into this conversation appears to be under debate.” Julian flashed a pointed glance at Jannyn. “But I can bring information. A girl in the cellars of Lomhannor Hall healed me. I assume she’s a captive, though I had no time to learn that for certain.”
All three elves jolted, and even Jannyn wavered, enough that Rab sprang back a step to get out of his line of fire.
Stricken, the elf didn’t appear to notice. “The monster has one of us in his own home?”
“Alarrah, see if he really was wounded,” Tembriel urged, but she too sounded shaken. Her bow dipped, but only fractionally, and as she stepped sideways to give her companion room to approach, the arrow aimed again for Julian’s throat.
The healer drew close enough to lift a hand to his shoulder, without yet making contact. “I don’t like to do this without leave. May I?”
For an instant profound weariness blurred Julian’s world, until he couldn’t distinguish Alarrah’s plea from the voice emblazoned across his memory.
I beg your forgiveness—
“Do what you must,” he said, the words thick in his throat.
Nodding, Alarrah pressed her hand against his shoulder, and magic soaked like whiskey through his battered frame. Yet it was subtle only for one heartbeat. In the next, it rekindled the lingering power from the girl at Lomhannor Hall. Fire pulsed from his shoulder down to his leg—and without warning that leg gave out beneath him. The ravine and everything in it whirled and spun out of place. All that kept him from hurtling face-first into the fog rising across his senses was a pair of arms seizing him before he could fall.
“What in blazes are you doing to him?”
Julian tried to shove Rab away, but couldn’t summon the energy to lift either hand, false or true. He couldn’t call up any words at all, much less the reprimand he should have hurled at him for losing his temper a second time. He couldn’t even keep his eye open.
“Great Lady, he has been healed!” Alarrah, for the first time since the elves had sought Julian and Rab for hire, sounded openly shocked. “How long ago did this happen?”
“Haven’t you been listening? Will you believe us now, or would you rather insult our honor and our race a little more?”
“Answer her question, human!”
“Curse it, Jannyn, ease down! Alarrah, what did you sense?”
The voices wove through Julian’s consciousness, as disconnected from their owners as he began to feel from his body. He sagged, aware that Rab was helping him move a few steps, holding him upright. Disgusted, his young partner said, “We escaped the Hall almost a day ago, and we’ve ridden nonstop since! For gods’ sake, can he rest now?”
“It’s true.” Alarrah again. “His bones and flesh have been mended. Magic sings in them. If it’s still this strong after nearly a day—Mother of Stars—the girl who touched him would be the most powerful healer I’ve ever seen.”
Someone else answered—who, he couldn’t name. He was falling backward, with baffling but not unwelcome slowness, guided by supportive hands. Where he came to rest wasn’t important, for relief that he no longer had to move swamped him in an all-consuming wave.
&
nbsp; Julian surrendered, and let the wave carry him off.
* * *
Morning sunlight slanted down into the hollow, warming one side of his body when he awoke. For long moments Julian lay without moving, his attention caught by a cloud of gnats floating several feet above his face. Like the insects, fragments of recollection drifted across his consciousness, making no individual sense, nor any connections with any of the others.
Slowly the fragments meshed into a coherent whole. He lay upon a bedroll, nestled in a niche in the hollow’s rocky walls, reachable by the sunbeams angling down past the waterfall but keeping him out of sight. A folded cloak pillowed his head. Beneath a woolen blanket his right arm was propped against his side, and the absence of the accustomed weight of his false hand pulled him into wakefulness without alarm. Even as he groped with his living hand to make certain that his knives were still where they belonged, he called out to the one who knew to remove the wooden hand and leave his weapons alone.
“Rab.”
“Here.” Nine-fingered Rab appeared beside him, ducking his head to look under the overhang beneath which his partner sheltered. The younger man didn’t cut his usual immaculate figure. His eyes and jaw were shadowed, the first by weariness only somewhat blunted since the night before, the latter by the beginnings of a beard. But his gaze was alert, and one corner of his mouth curled up. “It’s about time. How do you feel?”
Julian frowned. Lack of rest and strength still dragged at his limbs, and his head ached with slumber too soon interrupted. But no other pain presented itself. Neither the shoulder where he’d been shot nor the leg that had broken in his fall issued the slightest twinge as he rolled over out of the niche. “I’ll function,” he pronounced, sitting up. “Where are the elves?”
“Gone, not long after sunrise. Julian, they’ve released us from the contract.”
“What? We haven’t killed their precious Duke for them yet.”
Valor of the Healer Page 5