Mortari tried to aid him. He poured his healing into Zan’Dar, but he could not focus enough to hold it. It slipped, powerful and hot through him, spilling uselessly beyond his control. There was no way to repair or mend the wounds. There were too many. Even with the sagecraft of both mounts, the damage was too severe to put him back together. He was broken beyond repair.
My love. I cannot do this without you. I cannot be without you! Please Zan’Dar! Do not do this to me!
Zan’Dar couldn’t even form the proper thoughts. Whatever had happened in the battle made his mind muddy and unfocused. Love. Love. He loved this man. He sent out his thanks to Joy, the mother of their children. Yes. Their children would console him. Bennonton would not be alone. He would have them. The mounts and his sister. They would be a family.
A brilliant white swept over him, cresting and crashing over him in a tingling wash of sunlight. There was something so familiar about the flame clad woman who swept out of the darkness and enfolded him. Alexander!
The name sent a jolt through him. The name of a child he once knew. A child who earned a true name, grew into a man, loved and lived a wondrous life. Why was this familiar being saying that name to him as he rasped out his last coppery breath in his beloved’s arms? He pushed her away. No. He was ready to lay down his sword. His war had been fought.
You are not at your end! It is the time of your beginning. The woman shrugged out of the guise of flaming light as though shedding an outer layer of clothing. With a flourish, she wrapped the white pelt around his shoulders, the being inside was shadowy and its eminence power rippling through the dark dwarfed what he had felt near the forest deities. She whispered, Forgive me, this will be painful.
The sensation of agony blurred into something so cutting and sharp that it was almost pleasure. His soul and heart cried out as the power burned through all the delicate links and cords that held him to his mounts and his beloved, melting the bounding point into glass. He screamed into the oblivion that claimed him.
Chapter 23
The soft humming sound woke Zan’Dar and he tried to sit up only to discover every fiber in his body hurt. The humming resolved to a strange, metallic chirp. Unnatural. He tensed and at the same time his eyes flew open, voices intruded on his awareness.
“Alexander!”
“He’s awake.”
“Someone get the doctor!”
Unfamiliar voices rang around him. They were calling a dead boy’s name. The sounds of them made his whole body ache from his crown through his toes. No, they were familiar voices and yet strangely distorted by time. People dead to him. Mother, Barbara. Father, Anthony. Brothers, Derek and Kenneth. Sisters, Vanessa and Kelly. Tears came to his eyes and he squeezed them closed.
No.
No!
They were not the ones he wanted to see. He reached internally for Bennonton and felt nothing but cold darkness. A slick, frozen horror gripped his chest and the alarms from the machines started to chatter and scream.
“Everyone needs to leave. Step back. Give us room.” A warrior’s voice demanded. This was someone in command sending the unwanted, strangers-but-not-strangers away from the room and him.
The pain twisted into a sharp, killing blade, tightening the breath in his lungs and his chest. No Mortari. No Amberlynn. No Jasper. He reached and reached, clawing into the tatters and found nothing. No Bennonton!
Nothing!
Only the darkness spun around him. He was deafened by the squeal of the cold, inhuman machines that tried to keep life tied to him. He could not even cut himself free and let death take him.
Easy, little one. An unfamiliar voice touched his mind and he tried to push it away and shove it back but the warmth held onto him, circling him. It is Lord Remmington, boy. What in the name of all the devils has happened to you?
What has happened to you?
He shoved all the memories he had at the intruder’s mind and felt the war-mount recoil in horror and pain.
Yes. Go. Go forever. Let it all go forever.
Remmington did not release him though. He gripped him harder. Ah. No. No! We will find them. He sensed others, nameless beings, aiding Remmington in gripping onto him. They prevented him from fighting his way free.
Why keep him? The horror of reality stabbed at him. They wanted to cull him from the bloodline. Why not let this be his time to depart?
No! Fury and determination tightened the hold. Never! That was a new voice. It was another he did not know, male and strong, blazing hot over him.
It was the last thing he remembered as cold swept over him and took him back under into sweet oblivion.
He woke several more times in the same feverish condition. Sometimes he woke in the dark and other times during daylight, and always with the same results. Slowly though, the mounts formed a supernatural ring around him, letting him have something to hold onto when he reached for the familiar links with his beloved and his mounts who were no longer connected to him. He was untethered and spun wildly from mount to mount, fumbling and slipping and grasping again. It helped, but it did not stop the tearing sensation in his heart. It managed to keep him from the spiral of panic that made him want to tear himself from the machines keeping him alive.
He found consciousness one morning to find his mother slumped over his chest, holding onto his hand. He tried to pull his hand away from her, and the movement woke her. She sat up, her beautiful face drawn and pale, eyes ringed with worry, weariness, and fear.
Culled from the bloodline.
Even as he formed the thought, the mind of some unknown war-mount tightened around his. Never.
“Alexander,” his mother whispered the name of the dead boy. Tears filled her eyes when he recoiled. “Oh my god. My sweet boy. It will be all right. I promise you.”
How could it ever be all right when his heart was ripped out of him? He didn’t care what happened to his physical body; his heart and his soul were gone. Except—no, not fully gone, just ripped and shredded to bloody pieces.
Alerted to some change in the machines, doctors came in and reluctantly allowed his mother stay there holding his hand. He was too weak to jerk free of her hold. There was no way he could wrestle free of the mounts now, they were more of them. Did they always have so many mounts? Since when did any of them concern themselves with him
Since you have earned your true name Zan’Dar. We do not turn our back on you, smallest brother.
They gave him something through the IV that pulled him back into unfeeling, uncaring darkness. The pain in his body muted some of the agony of his soul just before consciousness faded from him.
It might have been weeks or months like that. Slowly he pieced together what happened. He‘d been found in the river by his brother Kenneth and sisters, Vanessa and Kelly. His bones were fractured and he had nearly bled to death. Somehow they got him to the hospital with little hope that he would live.
The doctors though it was a miracle that he was making such a swift recovery.
When they asked what happened, he wasn’t even sure where to start. His cousins were often there, silent hostility hidden under their sympathy. No one would believe him if he told how he was beaten. He knew his mother and father wanted him to tell everything, but how could he? There was no doubt that the mounts knew, they were closer to his thoughts and the torn pit where his heart once resided, they must know every detail. And what of that other life he lived?
It might be a trick of his imagination.
He was a boy. Fifteen again.
When he was strong enough, they had him start physical therapy. He hated looking at the stranger in the mirror. He felt like a dirty old man as he regarded the naked-faced child that gawked back at him. Even the scar on his forehead had been carefully stitched and healed through medical and magical means. His vision was normal. He’d lived a whole life compensating for the limited eyesight. Now he had to learn all over how to use both eyes.
He would have traded blindness if he could have his b
eloved back and feel those powerful arms around him once more. Or feel the familiar touch of his mounts. Hear the laughter of their children.
Rest Zan’Dar. Heal. All will be well. Remmy whispered to him and tried to pull him back from the horrible thoughts.
Remmy. It seemed so long ago when he’d promised the war-mount he would never leave him. And yet, he had and felt all the worse for breaking his promise.
He couldn’t eat anything. Heartsickness, he thought as the food came back up in waves of nausea. Like Shylo when he’d denied the link with his beloved. In place of the glowing, living bonding point, there was a red, bleeding hole in his soul that had no way to heal. It would kill him.
While it wouldn’t bring him back to Bennonton, it would end his suffering.
He rarely spoke. He went through the motions of his physical recovery but he was waiting for his death to come. If he could not eat, he would slip away.
Then one day, Amy Welton showed up for a visit. Her bright orange curls were pulled up atop her head like a crown and she sat at the edge of his bed and looked at him with sharp green eyes. “Alexander Harris-Wallace,” she pronounced his dead name firmly. Her voice pinned his child’s name to him. “You are not the only person who has ever lost someone. Nor are you the only one who has to make sacrifices, my dear.” She continued to look at him until he broke eye contact. “You are much changed, my heart-son. Please, let me help you.”
He didn’t say anything, just looked across the room, trying to ignore the woman. His second mother. Rider of the formidable Aurora Borealis, whom he knew had a large part to do with coordinating the mounts to help him. Did that mean she already knew how he longed to be away and back through the gate and with his beloved and their family? He wanted his brothers, sisters, his beloved and their deity-born children.
“I know what you’re thinking. How can you possibly live without him?”
He blinked up at her and saw that her eyes were filled with tears. She inclined her head slightly to acknowledge her understanding. “I am so sorry but, you must take a step forward every day, my dear. As do we all.”
“I don’t want to,” he rasped, voicing the emotion that made his empty chest so heavy. “And I am not wanted here.”
Her eyebrows lifted, “I want you here. Your mother and father and grammy want you here. Your brothers and sisters want you here. Who else matters?”
“Did Christopher come home?” he asked, though he already knew he had not. He could feel Remmy’s loss when their minds were so close. The mount’s longing and loss almost matched his own.
“Not yet,” Amy said grimly. Jaw tight, she reached out a hand to him. “Remmy, however, has not faded or given up on his return. And, that boy is growing up the only way he knows how. He…he will come home when he is ready. He sends you a letter. When you’re ready to read it, it’s here with the flowers. Real postage and hand writing, not an email. Shocking.”
Her tone made him actually smile and she reached out and grasped his hand with both of hers. “We will help you through this, my boy, and we will do all we can to find this love of yours. It might not be the way you expect it but you have your whole life ahead of you.”
That moment, when he decided to try, was the start of his life beginning over again.
Weeks later he still couldn’t keep food down; he really was trying to eat. Everything they put on the tray looked, smelled and tasted revolting. His body rejected it. The only thing sustaining him was the IV drip attached to him.
“He needs to be with the mounts. Maybe out at the coast for a few weeks before school begins,” his grandmother, Delphine said. She discussed how they could solve the last piece of his recovery with Amy and his mother while he recovered from the latest bout of nausea.
School? He frowned as he shuffled back to the bed with his stomach lurching. How many years ago had it been since he’d sat in a classroom? Gods and devils. All the history he’d learned about, the wars and battles he studied and planned were from a different world. He knew the line of succession for six kingdoms and the names of the generals who were heroes to him, however, these were fiction this side of the gate.
He trembled and sensed Remmy cuddle closer to him. You will be well and you will be guarded, youngest brother.
“Marion said she would help transport some horses so we can get more than a pair up there. You don’t think he would be better at your place?”
“I have another idea to start with. Highly unorthodox.”
“I gathered as much,” his mother said and sat beside him on the bed. “Alexander, my dear, if you’re agreeable to this arrangement, we’re going to get a private nurse to look after you and take you out of here. We think you will recover better with nature around you and with some contact with the mounts.”
The thought of being outside with the wind in his hair almost brought tears to his eyes. He nodded and whispered, “Yes, I would like that.”
His mother hugged him tightly and he hated how small and frail he felt.
A week later he curled in the backseat of his parents’ car, driving out to Bodega Bay. The doctors had not wanted to release him. Instead, his family had hired an in-home staff of nurses and a doctor. No one could explain that their son was beyond the help of earthly medicine and machines. There were no stitches that could fix his soul or his heart.
Amy’s cool fingers smoothed his forehead and she smiled at him where she sat beside him, letting him rest weakly against her side. He imagined he already felt a little better just having the sunlight warm upon his face and smelling the late summer world that was so different than the one he left behind.
He dozed fitfully, caught between memories of late summer on the crescent shore and his life before he’d been driven through the gate on the brink of death. The longing for the end of Festival made him ache deep inside. Would their children be enjoying the spun sugar? Perhaps they were riding their ponies? Or, could it be possible that his former mounts turned to the children to protect them? It hurt that he could not be there to join in that responsibility. Well, their mother was there, if they were not safe under the guardianship of a deity, no one was.
If he didn’t believe them safe, he would drive himself mad with grief.
Only when the doors opened in the car did he realize they’d arrived at their destination. The world was cloaked in fog and through the mist he could see the slate gray sea slamming into the rocky cliffs on one side. As he was helped from the car he saw the enormous old house high on the hill. Despite being painted in cheerful honey yellow and white, the house had a particular foreboding appearance. Something about the building seemed watchful, and he realized as they crossed the barrier that it was a heavily warded fortress. The walls allowed him in, the house and grounds grudgingly granting him entry.
“What’s this?” he asked, carried up the grand curving steps by his father.
“This is my beach house,” Amy said with a pained smile. She dug into her pocket and drew out a set of keys and padded ahead to get the door open. Before she got there it swung open and a small, svelte man stepped out and greeted Amy with a tight hug.
“Mambo?” Zan’Dar blinked up at his father and then at the blond man who received Amy’s kiss on his cheek with the poise and grace of a lord to his deity.
Father didn’t say anything, simply carried him through the open door and into the expansive front parlor.
“I’ve been helping get the house ready for you.” The way the little man looked at him cut right through Zan’Dar. He seemed to see everything. When Zan’Dar tried to peer into those cold, silvery eyes, he saw absolutely nothing.
Empty.
He shuddered despite himself. Mambo though, pressed his fist to his chest, proper and respectful and inclined his head with more courtesy than Zan’Dar…no, now he was only Alexander, deserved. The child was owed no courtesy and could claim no rights to anything. “Millon is eager to meet you in person.”
Alexander didn’t understand and he didn’t h
ave time or energy to question him. With a cool smile the blond padded down the steps to help with the unloading of the horses while his family and the nurse helped Alexander through the enormous house.
“You will have the rooms down here on this wing of the house. You can overlook the ocean and there you can see the stables and the mountainside so you can admire the mounts. Mano will have the room on the far side of this floor and I’ll be in the suite upstairs. We will be just a word away if you need anything.”
There was a bedroom attached to a bathroom and beyond that was a sunroom. The furnishings were antiques and very recently dusted from the smell of the place. He limped to the window seat and settled down to catch his breath. Weak. He was so damn weak. It seemed impossible that he once ran across a country with the blood horses. He only meant to rest there a moment, instead he fell asleep in the sunbeam like a scrawny, starved cat.
He woke in the bed, disoriented. When he realized he was reconnected to the machines and the drip he slumped back into the pillows. At least he had the view. The curtains were open and he lay in the middle of the huge bed, watching the sea crashing against the cliffs. He could make out the small group of horses, there was Remmy for certain and Bora. He knew a couple others were Amy’s mounts though at the moment he could not tell one from another in the foggy early morning. He sensed their warm greetings and for the first time since he woke this side of the gateway, a sliver of happiness touched him.
The machines must have given him away, or Amy sensed he was awake because both she and the nurse hustled in the moment he started to fuss with the cords that held him.
“Now, just where do you think you’re going?” the grim faced nurse asked as she moved to check the various recordings and monitors. He tried to answer until she pushed a thermometer in his mouth.
Amy smiled from the woman’s side, rolling her eyes expressively for Alexander alone to see. “I’m sure he is eager to get out of bed and outside. You are not to exert yourself until you begin keeping food down. Understand?”
An End to Summer Page 20