Then, all at once, as suddenly as it had come, the sense of Presence was gone. Kellen fell out of the spell-trance, so suddenly that he felt giddy and chilled, and was a little surprised not to feel himself thudding down onto the ground beside his mentor.
Huh. He opened his eyes and shook his head a little. The dome of protection was gone—but then, it had done its work and there was no more need of it.
Cautiously, Kellen lifted the cloth covering Jermayan’s wound. The ugly oozing gash was gone. Only faint bruises remained, and a few dull silvery marks, as if the injury were sennights, even moonturns, in the past.
Well, I know it worked, anyway.
“That was—peculiar,” Kellen muttered aloud, breathing a shaky sigh of relief. He certainly didn’t recall Idalia mentioning anything of the sort happening to her during a healing. He felt almost as if he’d been forgiven, though he wasn’t quite sure for what.
And he was suddenly bone-weary, having paid an immediate price of his own strength for the healing and the protective circle.
Even Jermayan’s color was better, the Elven Knight having gone from a swoon into a natural sleep. He was breathing easier as well.
So the healing was more than just cosmetic, it had worked as well as Kellen could ever have asked if he’d dared—even though Kellen had no notion of what his greater price might be for the spell he had worked here today. So I’ll know what to do when the time comes, will I? That’s useful, I don’t think.
Kellen sat back on his heels, able to stop and take a deep breath himself for the first time since the fight had begun. He crushed out the little fire he’d built, reaching for his gloves and gauntlets and putting them on again before getting stiffly to his feet. As soon as Shalkan got back, he’d wake Jermayan and they’d move. He forced himself to try to think and plan, though at the moment his head felt as if it were stuffed full of feathers.
How had those bandits—or whatever they were—managed to appear out of nowhere without any of them—even Shalkan—noticing them? Had they had magic? Had they been sent by the enemy? If someone had sent them, more might be on the way.
And if they’d only been bandits and nothing worse, then at the very least, a valley full of dead men wasn’t going to be a pleasant place to camp, and where there were some bandits, there would probably be others, even in Kellen’s admittedly limited experience.
And on top of everything else, Idalia had warned him to move on quickly from anyplace where he used his magic, as it was likely to draw unwelcome attention. So whether the bandits had been sent by the enemy or not, he probably had the enemy’s attention now—or at least, would have it soon, if he was still here.
Steeling himself against the sight, Kellen went back among the corpses to reclaim the rest of Jermayan’s armor and sword. The blood hadn’t bothered him while he was fighting—not after Jermayan had been hit—but it was different now. Now the sight of the bodies made him sick, and knowing that he was responsible for killing a good half of them, well …
For the first time, he was able to count the enemy numbers. Six men and two Centaurs, all looking pretty much like what Kellen imagined hill-bandits would look like; dirty, unshaven, and under their armor, their ill-fitting clothing was clearly stolen from their victims. He took the best of the round shields that the bandits had been carrying for himself—after today, he thought it might be a pretty good idea for Jermayan to teach him to fight with one.
Once he’d done that, he led Valdien and the mule over to where Jermayan was. That took even more coaxing; Valdien was excited by the scent of blood and kept dancing away when Kellen reached for his bridle, and Lily was plain and fancy spooked. But Kellen managed that task as well—it helped that he was far too tired to lose his temper with either of them.
He hoped Shalkan would get back soon; if he didn’t, he’d have to find some way to go on without him and meet him on the way. It was already midafternoon, and as soon as the sun got much farther over the canyon wall, it would be dark down here, and Kellen didn’t want to chance trying to lead either Valdien or Lily down an unfamiliar trail in the dark.
By the time Kellen was able to lead the animals back to where Jermayan lay—making a wide circuit around the actual battlefield—the Elven Knight was awake and trying to sit up.
“I wouldn’t move if I were you,” Kellen said. “I’m not sure how badly you’re still hurt.”
Jermayan grunted and lay back, apparently agreeing with Kellen’s assessment.
“The bandits?” he asked tersely.
“If that’s what they were,” Kellen said doubtfully. “Dead. All of them.”
“Good,” Jermayan said with satisfaction. He pressed his fingers against his side, wincing as he probed the site of his injury, and then sat up. His face was pale, but determined.
He looked around, taking in the circle drawn in the dirt, the remains of the fire. “It seems I owe you my life,” he said.
“I owe you mine,” Kellen said, feeling his inadequacy engulf him like a wave. “I’m … sorry, Jermayan. I just … froze.”
And that was when everything fell apart for him.
Kellen dropped to his knees, retching, his stomach heaving, tears streaming down his face as he sobbed between bouts of vomiting. He felt, more than saw, Jermayan getting slowly and carefully to his feet; felt Jermayan kneel beside him, and felt the Elf’s hands steadying him as his stomach emptied. He wept for himself, for a loss of something he could not name, for the blood on his hands and his soul. He wept that he had been so weak that Jermayan had been forced to put himself in danger. He wept that he had simply not been good enough.
And he wept with rage, at the men who had forced him to kill.
“All the practice in the world cannot prepare you to see a man die,” Jermayan said simply when Kellen was able at last to listen. “But you did not let your feelings overmaster you—or we would not be here now.”
“But—” Kellen groaned. He’d failed. He’d gotten Jermayan hurt, nearly killed! “I—”
“Hush. And listen to one who is briefly your master,” Jermayan said gently. “You have crossed a great abyss today. You have chosen death. With your two hands, you have delivered it. Are you sorry?”
“Yes. No. Both.” There was nothing left in his stomach, but Kellen remained bent over, gut aching, throat raw, tears still burning down his cheeks.
“Good. It is a wretched thing to take a life, but it was what needed to be done today. These outlaws could have turned aside from us; they could have broken off combat at any time, and we would not have pursued them. They did neither. We cannot know if they deserved the death they won, but if we had not slain them, they would have slain us, and our task requires that we live. Do you hate them? Do you anger, still?”
That Kellen was sure of. “Yes!” He’d killed today. He would never forget that, never forgive it. Never!
“Do not; we cannot know what drove them. Perhaps their minds were not even their own. Let it go. Forgive them.”
“How?” Kellen cried in anguish.
“Now they are not your foes. Think of them as men and Centaurs once more.”
It was the hardest thing he had ever done, until he remembered that moment of paralysis, when he had looked at the face of the first dying man, and had thought, He has a wife, friends, parents—
Then at last he could, and did. The tears came again, and in weeping for them, Kellen forgave them.
“Now forgive yourself,” Jermayan said. “You could do no other than what you did.”
And Jermayan put a steadying arm around Kellen’s shoulders, and waited until he could.
FINALLY, Kellen was done with forgiveness and forgiving; he was empty and exhausted, but he finally felt—clean. As he had not felt since the fight began.
He got to his feet with an effort, then helped Jermayan to stand. They stood for a moment with hands clasped, looking into each other’s eyes. Finally, Jermayan nodded, as if satisfied by what he saw in Kellen, and let his hands go.
When Jermayan stood, Valdien hurried to his master’s side, nudging at him worriedly. Jermayan put an arm over the destrier’s neck, gripping his mount’s saddle for support.
“You’ll need to clean the swords,” he said matter-of-factly. “Scrub the blades down with earth. Pack my armor on the mule … I think I will have to ride without it.”
For Jermayan to make such a concession meant that the Elven Knight must be far weaker than he wanted to admit, Kellen realized. He said nothing, merely doing as he was told. Most of the blood came off the blades with a few handfuls of earth, and he was able to sheathe them. A thorough cleaning with oil, rag, and whetstone would have to wait, but this would do for now.
By the time he’d repacked the healing supplies on the mule, added Jermayan’s armor, helped Jermayan back into his padded tunic and surcoat (the tunic was torn, and both items were bloody, but they could not spare the time to unpack anything else), and gotten a cloak for Jermayan to wear over the padded undertunic, Shalkan had returned, to Kellen’s great relief.
The unicorn had managed to wash off all traces of blood while he’d been gone, his fur restored once more to its pristine glistening whiteness. Kellen was grateful for that—there’d been something especially disturbing about the sight of Shalkan covered in blood.
The unicorn took in the situation in a glance and nodded in approval.
“I’ve found a place that should do. All ready?” Shalkan asked.
Kellen looked to Jermayan. The Elf nodded.
“Good. Let’s go,” Shalkan said with a wary look around. “We’ve been here too long already.”
Kellen helped Jermayan into Valdien’s saddle—another concession that proved how weak the Elven Knight really was, no matter how hard he tried to hide it. Jermayan rode heavily, as if remaining upright took most of his strength. Kellen hoped they didn’t run into anything else between here and the campsite Shalkan had found for them. Jermayan was in no condition to fight at all, and Kellen wasn’t feeling much better, truth be told. He swung himself into Shalkan’s saddle and landed, despite his best intentions, with an ungraceful thud. The unicorn didn’t comment.
SHALKAN led them through the trees toward the eastern wall of the canyon. Soon Kellen heard the sound of trickling water, and saw that they were paralleling the path of a tiny stream. After a short while, the sound of the little brook was joined by the louder sound of falling water, and through a gap in the trees ahead, Kellen could see what must be their destination for the night: a wide crack in the canyon wall where a tiny waterfall spilled down from above to fill a cuplike catch-basin before spilling away into the narrow stream.
By the time they reached it, Jermayan was swaying dangerously in his saddle. Kellen had saved his life, but he didn’t have Idalia’s practice in healing; whatever had happened had been done by the Powers without any help or guidance from him.
He had the feeling that this healing had been a great deal like forcing a lot of water into a pond by flooding it, rather than allowing it to trickle in. The pond got water in it, but a lot was lost in the process.
And there had been no one to share the price of the healing with him, either, which probably made more of a difference. The Elven Knight was still dangerously weak, and Kellen couldn’t think of any way to fix that except rest and food.
As for Kellen, between the fight and the healing and the aftermath—well, he was exhausted, and really not interested in anything but rest himself.
And what about attackers on their trail?
The thought made his stomach hurt all over again. We’re not up to another attack, he thought desperately.
But the campsite Shalkan had found them was easily defensible—there was only one direction from which anyone could approach, and the entryway was not that much wider than the canyon from which Kellen and Shalkan had fought off the Outlaw Hunt. The moment he saw it, he sighed with relief. He and Shalkan could protect it alone if they had to.
Best of all, there was plenty of water. He was thirsty, and knew Jermayan must be as well, having lost so much blood.
As the light faded from the sky, Kellen was wholly occupied with the chores of setting up the camp, since for the first time he had to do it all by himself. First he got Jermayan off Valdien’s back and settled more or less comfortably against one wall of the narrow canyon while Valdien and the mule quenched their thirsts. He filled one of the tankards from the spring and handed it to Jermayan, then he got Shalkan out of his armor and unsaddled Valdien. He found a twisted bit of tree growing out of the rock wall at the back of the canyon, and tied the mule’s halter-rope to it securely. He was sure that Valdien wouldn’t stray—the big Elven destrier behaved more like a large dog than he did like any horse Kellen had ever seen—but Lily had had a hard day, and Kellen didn’t want to wake up to find the mule gone. Once she was securely tied, he removed his own armor at last and began unloading her.
After that, all that was left to do was to light the lanterns, build a fire, and feed the animals while the tea was brewing—allheal, he thought, since both of them could use it. Once the animals were fed, Kellen unwrapped a couple of trail-bars for Shalkan and began cutting up another couple to make soup.
By the time that task was done, the tea was ready. Kellen added a large disk of crystallized honey to each cup—they could both use the sugar—and poured the two cups full. Maybe Idalia and the Elves were right about the restorative powers of tea after all, Kellen thought. Certainly nothing had ever seemed so welcome as the thought of a hot cup of sweet tea just now.
He carried the other cup over to Jermayan.
“Drink this. You’ll feel better.”
“My thanks.” Jermayan took the cup from Kellen’s hand. His fingers were icy where they brushed Kellen’s own, and his hand trembled.
“You should come over by the fire where it’s warmer,” Kellen said. “You’ve lost a lot of blood, and you’ll be cold.”
“Soon,” Jermayan promised. He drank, eyes closing.
“We ought to have died back there,” he said after a moment.
“I nearly got us killed,” Kellen said bitterly.
“No.” Jermayan reached out his hand with an effort and placed it on Kellen’s arm. “It was I who nearly got us killed, riding bareheaded and unshielded as if I went to bring in the spring-tide, though knowing that I rode through unfriendly lands with an unblooded Knight-batchelor who had not yet won shield or spurs. Against six men and two Centaurs … it is only because you are what you are that we are here now, Kellen Tavadon. And beyond that: you have put yourself under obligation to the Powers to ransom my life from Death’s cold halls. That is a gift of which I am unworthy.”
Kellen wasn’t really sure what to say to that. “Well, it’s not like I could just go back and tell Idalia I’d misplaced you,” he said awkwardly. “She wouldn’t like that.”
“There is much of your sister in you,” Jermayan said mournfully. “Her grace, her nobility of spirit. From the moment I first saw her in Ondoladeshiron I knew it was she for whom my heart had waited through all the long decades of my life. Love among the Children of Leaf and Star is no light thing. It is for ever and always. I would not have troubled her with the burden of my heart, did I not know that hers inclined to me as well. Yet she denies what we both know to be the truth.” He lowered his head and sighed deeply.
I don’t want to hear this, Kellen thought uncomfortably. And yet—
I want them to be happy, and I know damned good and well that neither of them is ever going to be happy without the other.
“I understand that she does not wish to leave me alone and forsaken when the brief span of her mortal years is run, but cannot one so wise understand that I am already alone who has once gazed into violet eyes the color of evening mists? I shall be forever alone without her, my Idalia—would she deny me even the memories of the brief summer’s afternoon of our love to warm me through the long cold winter I must spend without her?”
Urk. This was get
ting more uncomfortable by the moment.
“Every moment we spend apart is filled with thoughts of her,” Jermayan continued, with a curiously restrained passion. “It is she who completes me, Kellen—would she be so unfeeling as to refuse me the transfiguration for which her own soul must cry as well? Without love, all the treasures of the world are ashes, and the Children of Leaf and Star know that true love comes only once into every life. How is it that she cannot see that, who can see so much else so clearly? We are meant to be together. It matters not how brief the time, only that it is filled with joy.”
“I think the soup is ready,” Kellen said hurriedly, scuttling backward toward the fire.
He didn’t know if Jermayan had ever said anything like that to Idalia—if he had, it would be just one more good reason for her to not want to have anything more to do with him, by Kellen’s reckoning—but he was completely sure he didn’t want Jermayan saying anything more of it to him. It was bad enough having to read things like that in wondertales—and Kellen didn’t; he skipped over those parts—but it was a thousand times worse having to hear someone saying them about your sister.
Grace—nobility of spirit—soul must cry—filled with joy—I didn’t think anybody really talked like that! Kellen thought in disgust. He must be running a fever from that healing I did.
He glanced up and saw Shalkan watching him. From the expression on the unicorn’s face, Shalkan thought something was pretty funny, and Kellen didn’t want to inquire too closely about what it might be, Kellen thought in acute discomfort. He’d have been disgusted if it had been another human who was blathering on like that, but, well—Elves just seemed to talk like that naturally.
Like that kind of thing can be spouted off casually.
As he filled the bowls, Kellen cast about in his mind for a subject that would distract Jermayan from the topic of Idalia.
When he had Jermayan comfortably seated in front of the small fire, Kellen deftly took control of the conversation before Jermayan could start talking again.
“Those people we fought today—who do you think they were?” he asked.
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