The Waiting King (2018 reissue)

by Deborah Hale

  He raised his wand in Maura’s direction.

  She turned to run, but before she got a step, pain ripped through her. As bottomless as Raynor’s Rift. Every bit as cruel. Every bit as terrifying. It was a pain of deep, searing cold. Jagged shards of ice driving into her flesh, but never bringing the blessed numbness of natural cold.

  Maura heard herself scream, but it brought no release, elicited no pity.

  With the tiny morsel of herself not yet too overwhelmed with pain to think, she tried to move her twitching body closer to the edge of the cliff. The pain that waited her below could be no worse than this. It would be over quickly. Then all pain would stop.

  “Maura!” Rath’s voice came to her as if from a vast distance.

  She clung to it. One flickering flame of warmth and comfort in a fierce blizzard of bone-gnawing cold.

  “Take this!” When he thrust the copper wand into her hands, she realized she had dropped the bow. “Hang on to it!”

  At once the pain eased to an almost bearable level. But something else took its place—a heavy, suffocating darkness that pressed down on her, stifling all good, all life from her body and her spirit.

  Unless it lifted soon, she knew she would suffer something worse than death. She would be eaten by the Beast.

  What had he done by giving her the copper wand to hold? Rath bent over Maura. The only thing he’d been able to think of to save them both from the death-mage.

  It had saved him... but had it doomed her?

  Pain tore at his heart, not inflicted by any cursed gem, but every bit as intense as if it had been.

  He unclenched her hands from around the cursed wand, then he pressed his fingers to her throat in search of a pulse.

  There it was. Sluggish and erratic but holding on, bless her. He must find some way to revive her.

  What was that tonic she had compounded in an effort to bring back Langbard? He did not recall the name of the herb she had used, if he’d ever known it.

  But names did not matter. He remembered that night in vivid detail, right down to the smells. He would find the right herb, if he had to sniff in every pocket of her sash.

  But first he must heat some water.

  The Hanish soldier had nicked Rath’s arm, but the bleeding had almost stopped. His ribs hurt from a blow that his padded vest had deflected. And every muscle and joint in his body ached from the mortcraft attack.

  Still he made haste to gather some twigs, rifle his pack for flint, kettle and water pouch. He did not have much water left, but perhaps that was just as well—a small amount would heat faster. Once he got a fire started under the kettle, he launched his search for the proper herb.

  He cast his thoughts back to the night of the fire at Langbard’s cottage. He remembered Maura bending over the old wizard’s body, as he was doing now, with her. She had not shifted the sash around to dig something from one of the back pockets, he was certain of that. It made his job only half as difficult.

  One by one, he began his search through the front pockets, now and then stopping to call Maura’s name or give her face a fleeting caress. Some of the pockets were empty. Others held magical ingredients he had come to recognize—dreamweed, madfern, spider silk. From each of the others, Rath removed a tiny pinch and held it beneath his nose.

  Was this it? Perhaps. He could not be sure.

  Or this? No, definitely not. The scent was too acrid.

  This? Yes! Without a doubt. This had been the ingredient of Maura’s tonic—the one she had bid him chew to keep awake when he searched that house in Prum. With eager, trembling fingers, Rath extracted a larger amount and added it to the water in the kettle.

  He probably did not have the herb in its proper measure, and he could not remember the words of the incantation Maura had used, but she had taught him enough Old Embrian, he hoped he could string together something acceptable... if the Giver would allow him a little leeway.

  Rath shook his head hard. The Giver? Had that wand blast shaken his wits loose?

  True, the vitcraft incantations were all phrased as petitions to the Giver. But that had no bearing on whether they worked, did it? For all it seemed so baffling, there appeared to be some rules to the practice of life magic. Perhaps one day folk would understand how it all worked and think their ancestors daft for believing some all-powerful spirit had cared what happened to the trifling creatures of this world.

  Firmly reminding himself that speaking a spell did not concede the existence of the Giver, he poured the hot tonic into a mug. Then he lifted Maura’s head and shoulders while he mangled a phrase of Old Embrian that he hoped would suffice to kindle the spell.

  He held the mug to her lips, dribbling a few drops of the hot liquid into her half-open mouth.

  Nothing happened.

  Had he used the wrong herb, after all? Did spells only work if a body believed in the Giver?

  Once again he felt for Maura’s pulse. It seemed stronger.

  Rath made up his mind he would not abandon hope until he had no choice. He coaxed another trickle of tonic between Maura’s lips... and another. Until the mug was almost empty.

  At last Maura coughed and her eyelids flickered. “Rath? Are we safe? What happened?”

  “We are safe enough for the moment.” He choked the words out past an enormous lump in his throat. “If you stay quiet and drink up the rest of this, I will tell you what happened.

  Maura gave a weary nod of agreement and took another sip from the mug he held to her lips. “The death-mage?”

  “Quiet, I said. The death-mage will not trouble us any more. That copper wand did something to fight off the power of his. It was as though he had to struggle to control it. But I could see it was bad for you to hold the other one.”

  Maura moved her head in a barely perceptible nod.

  Rath hoped he would never find out firsthand what she had suffered. “So while you were keeping him occupied, I grabbed my sword and cut the ropes on one side of the bridge.”

  “Clever,” Maura whispered.

  “Thank you for staying with me.” Rath set the empty mug down. “I would be dead now, without you.”

  “I fear where I would be without you.” Something dire haunted Maura’s eyes, then it lifted a little. “Who brewed this tonic?”

  “I did.” It made him feel sheepish to admit it.

  “But how—?” Every time she spoke, her voice sounded stronger. The color was returning to her face.

  Rath shrugged. “I have picked up more from you than just what you’ve taught me.”

  A tender smile curved her lips. “So I see.”

  Just then something stirred in the underbrush nearby. Rath’s heart lurched against his ribs. He could not fight again today.

  Before he could do more than feel that alarm, a tree mouse scampered out from among the ferns and dead leaves to climb onto a nearby stump.

  Rath’s panic vented in a burst of hoarse laughter. “Thank you Master Tree Mouse for reminding me it is too dangerous for us to stay here.”

  Reluctantly he eased Maura to the ground. “Rest while I... make a few preparations. Then you feel strong enough to walk, we can go a little way off and make camp.”

  “What about you?” asked Maura. “Are you all right? Your shirt is torn—there is blood!”

  “Not much.” Rath glanced down at his wounded arm. “My ribs are sore. And my body feels like someone ripped it apart, then put it back together wrong. Do you have any herbs to cure that?”

  “I reckon I can find something.”

  Rath checked the dead Han for any useful plunder before he disposed of the body. He would have liked to take the sword or the shield, but their distinctive designs would draw all the wrong sort of attention to him and Maura when they reached Westborne. He did take the Han’s dagger, though, to replace the one he had lost to the lank wolves. The coins in a pocket of the soldier’s belt would come in handy, too.

  For the first time he could recall, Rath felt a tiny qualm about pick
ing over a corpse. Then his usual good sense reasserted itself. This fellow would not need his dagger or his coins where he was headed, but they might be vital to Rath and Maura’s survival in the days ahead.

  Grabbing the corpse by its heels Rath dragged it toward the edge of the rift. When his aching muscles protested, he reminded himself it had to be done.

  After a few steps, he halted for a rest. He glanced over to find Maura watching him.

  “Do not look at me like that! What else am I to do with it? We cannot risk someone stumbling upon the corpse or they will soon be combing the forest for us.”

  “I do not blame you.” Maura shook her head slowly, as if it were an effort. “Now that he is dead, what does it matter?”

  “Now that is a sensible attitude.” Rath tugged the corpse a little farther.

  “They left us no choice, did they?”

  “How’s that?” Rath had pulled the Han’s body as far as he dared. Now he got behind and rolled it the last few feet.

  “The Han,” said Maura. “They gave us no choice but to kill them.”

  Rath pondered her question briefly. “Not much of one. Kill them or let them kill us. I do not fancy the first, but it beats the second.”

  With that he gave the corpse a final shove, and over the edge it went. So steep were the cliff faces and so deep was the rift, that the corpse’s fall made no more sound than the descent of a snowflake from a winter sky. It seemed strange.

  Rath dragged himself back to where Maura lay by the small dying fire.

  “Have we any more water?” she asked him.

  “Whatever is in your drink skin. Why?”

  Maura reached toward her sash. “Let us put some of it in the kettle and brew a tonic for you while there is still a little heat in these coals.”

  “We cannot spare the time.” He tried not to sound as bone-tired and aching as he felt. “We need to get away from here.”

  The look she leveled at him refused to make light of his injuries. “Just put the water in the kettle, Rath. We will get away from here a good deal faster if you do not swoon on your feet. While it heats I will take a look at that ‘scratch’ on your arm. I reckon by that you mean it is not cut all the way to the bone.”

  With a sigh of surrender, Rath reached for the kettle. “You sound right overbearing for a lass who hardly had a pulse a little while ago.”

  “Proof of how well the tonic is working on me.” Into the palm of her hand, Maura sprinkled the herbs she meant to use. “Think how much better it will work on you when I say the right words... or rather, teach you how to say them.”

  Rath poured some water in the kettle and set it on the coals to warm. Maura dumped her palmful of herbs in the water, then turned to examine his arm.

  “You are lucky it was not any deeper, or it would have bled a good deal more.” She pulled a couple of wilted leaves from her sash, popped them in her mouth and began to chew on them.

  Rath made a face. “What are you doing?”

  She spit the chewed leaves back into her hand. “I am sorry I do not have time to mix these into a proper poultice, but this will work in a pinch.”

  Then she smeared the warm, wet wad of chewed leaves over his wound and bound it with a small strip of linen. As she worked, Rath sensed something weighing on her mind.

  “What is wrong?” he asked. “You have seen for yourself, my wound is not so bad.”

  “It is not that.” Maura tested the water in the kettle, then set it back on the coals to heat longer. “I want to ask your pardon for chiding you so often about your use of arms.”

  She nodded toward the edge of the rift. “Even vitcraft can be used to kill.”

  Rath reached for her hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “I told you... or perhaps you told me. The Han gave us no choice. If they had not attacked us, we would not have gone seeking to harm them.”

  “Perhaps not this time.” Maura’s gaze searched his looking for answers Rath did not have. “But when the Waiting King wakens, how are we to rid Embria of the Han without attacking them? I do not think I have the stomach for it. Langbard taught me to believe that the power of life and death belong to the Giver. Mortals who take that power into their own hands do so at grave peril to their spirits.”

  Rath reckoned a rough tally of the men he’d killed in his life. Never wantonly, never taking pleasure in it as the Han seemed to do. But when it had needed to be done, he had not hesitated. Nor would he again. Yet he yearned for the luxury of a little peace.

  He shook his head. “I am not the Oracle of Margyle, lass, just a simple outlaw from the Hitherland. Something tells me those are questions a body has to find their own answers to. For now, put them aside and take some rest.”

  Pondering what lay between them and Everwood, he thought, You will need all the rest you can get for the days ahead. We both will.

  Chapter Five

  “SHH!” RATH WHISPERED in a tone of harsh urgency as he and Maura prepared to leave the fringe of forest on the western edge of Raynor’s Rift. “Did you hear something?”

  Maura froze, her heart racing and her senses alert, listening for trouble.

  How tired she had grown of these constant threats of danger! The past two days she and Rath had spent resting and recovering their strength had given Maura a bittersweet illusion of peace. But it had proven all too fragile.

  She so longed for her old quiet life keeping house for Langbard—gathering and preparing herbs, visiting with Sorsha, studying the Elderways. With one small addition.

  Or rather, one large addition.

  She glanced over at Rath, still tense and alert. Her gaze lingered fondly over his rugged features. Any slight sense of safety she still possessed resided in her nearness to him. She had seen the lengths to which he would go to keep her from harm. But why?

  That was a question she dared not ponder too long or it would spawn a host of wistful regrets.

  Rath let out his breath and the tight set of his shoulders relaxed a little. “I reckon it was nothing. I am jumping at shadows. The sooner we get on our way, the better. Before somebody comes looking to use that bridge. Then this place will be crawling with Han.”

  “I wish we could stay awhile longer.” Maura ran her hand down the stippled bark of a nearby tree in a kind of caress. “Even with all the Comtung we have practiced, I do not feel ready for Westborne.”

  “It will not be as bad as you think.” The slight furrow of Rath’s brow belied his reassuring words. “There will be plenty of crowds to get lost in. Proper inns where we can eat and sleep.”

  “Han thick as fleas.” Maura muttered as he helped her shoulder her pack.

  Rath gave a grim nod. “It is not only the Han you need to be wary of. Watch out for the zikary, too. They are Embrians who work for the Han, even try to copy their looks and their ways. Bleach their hair!”

  He spat.

  Casting a pensive glance around, he beckoned Maura and they set off, taking care to stay far west of the path that led to the Rift Bridge.

  They walked in silence for a while, then Rath spoke again. “Even among the ordinary folk, take care. Watch your tongue. Do nothing that will draw attention to us. The yoke of the Han has fallen heaviest on Westborne and for the longest time. Folk do what they must to survive. If that means passing information to the Xenoth in exchange for food or slag, so be it.”

  “Slag?” said Maura. “I have heard you use that word as a curse. What does it mean?”

  Rath shook his head in a way that suggested impatience, and perhaps a scrap of envy. “Langbard did keep you well sheltered, didn’t he? Slag is dust... from the mines. A wiser man than me once said it numbs the pained heart but rots the spirit. Some folk are desperate enough to reckon that a fair exchange.”

  Maura’s nose wrinkled, as if at a putrid smell. “What do people do with this mine dust?”

  “The men in the mines have little choice but to breathe the foul stuff.” Rath’s voice sounded harsher than Maura had ever heard i
t. “I reckon the Han saw it made them more biddable, so they took to giving them more of it to sniff.”

  He mimed inhaling something off the back of his hand. “Then somebody got the clever notion of using slag to pay off Xenoth snitches. Then they started selling it to other folks.”

  “Is this slag really so terrible?” asked Maura. “If it makes people more biddable?” Vang Spear of Heaven and his outlaws could use a dose.

  Rath shook his head. “It is not so terrible what the slag does to you when you take it. It’s what it does to you when you cannot get it. The stuff makes a body its willing slave.”

  “Did you ever...?”

  “Once. For a while.” Rath looked off into the distance with a rueful frown. “It is one of the worst feelings in the world when you come off it. Like the pain you feel when you warm frozen toes too fast in the winter, only it is not your flesh, but your senses.”

  Just hearing about it made Maura flinch. How many Embrians had fallen under the thrall of this slow, pitiless poison? Defeating the Han might be the least of the challenges the Waiting King would face when he woke.

  “Light is too bright,” Rath murmured. “Colors pain your eyes and patterns make you dizzy. Everything looks all jumbled, somehow. Any tiny noise is like a hammer beating against your head. Every smell makes you want to retch. It feels like every inch of skin has been flayed off your body and you’re raw.”

  An echo of that old torment throbbed in his voice.

  Maura moved closer to him and slipped her hand into his. It would be little, if any, comfort. But she had nothing else to give. Nothing else she dared give, though she wanted desperately to soothe his distress.

  “Newlyn Swinley, you remember him—from Hoghill back in Windleford? I think he must have gone through something like that when Sorsha found him.”

  “I reckoned he might have been in the mines.” Rath gave Maura’s hand a little squeeze. Perhaps her clumsy attempt at solace had not been too wide of the mark after all. “It would take quite a man to win his way free of that vile place.”

  He thought for a moment. “And quite a woman to help him break free of the slag.”