Eyes of the Alchemist

by Janet Woods

  “It seems that Kavan has appointed everyone as my protector, but failed to take into account that I have a mind of my own. Generous of him when it’s obvious that he is the one who can’t look after himself.”

  It was the type of humor the troop understood, for they dissolved into laughter. Throwing her sack over her shoulder she clambered on Shazah’s back with Santo behind her. “Let’s go, Torma,” she said.

  Soundlessly, they soared up into the wind.

  *

  Time dragged for Kavan. His feet were raw and bloodied from the relentless pecking. Each prick of needle-sharp teeth seemed to unearth a new nerve. Every part of his body ached as if it had been flagellated. His nostrils burned from the odor of bad blood, bats and his own unwashed body. Every itch was unrelieved torture, and there were plenty of them. Biting and stinging insects had left their marks on almost every portion of his exposed flesh.

  Over the day he’d spent precious energy struggling against his bonds and deciding what he’d do to the followers of Beltane when he got free. He’d boil them in oil. But first, he’d cut off their eyelids and leave them staring into the sun. Eventually, their eyes would fry in their own juice, and pop. As for Pannis, he’d hang the diabolical bastard right where he was now, but by his manly parts, if he had any.”

  He growled, and the dragon bats squeaked in alarm. “It’s night,” he shouted. “Why don’t you seek other prey?” But then he thought. Why should they go to the effort when they had him hanging like a carcass in a larder?

  * * * *

  High above, the hawk’s head swiveled round and it gave a soft trill. Tiana hoped it wouldn’t be another false alarm.

  The storm had hampered the search. The wind carried away sound and the lightning confused the eyes. At her command, Shazah wheeled around and began to glide in ever-decreasing circles. Below the clouds the light of a fire gleamed on water. She concentrated on it, drew its serenity into her mind.

  “Where are you, Lord?”

  “In your mind, your heart and your soul, as you are in mine.”

  “This is no time for foolish love talk. I’m here to rescue you. Describe your surroundings.”

  “My Lady is sour.”

  “My Lord is an idiot if his intent is to indulge in idle chit chat,” she said shortly. “ I cannot meditate indefinitely, and your hawk is unable to locate your exact position in the storm.”

  “You’re close. I can smell your perfume on the draught coming down the shaft.”

  “You need not wax lyrical about it,” she said drily. “Your location, Lord?”

  “I’m in a blow hole on the shore of an ancient ocean bed.”

  How weary he sounded. She absorbed some of his pain to give him strength, sucking in a swift intake of breath at its intensity. “Torma knows the place.”

  “You’ve brought my troopers?”

  Was he concerned he’d lose respect if they sighted him in weakness? Never. She’d seen for herself how much love he inspired. Her voice softened. “Only Torma. He insisted, and I will need his strength.”

  “Aye, Lady, so will I,” was the faint reply.

  * * * *

  Thanks to the gods, Tiana had protection.

  There was a scuffle at the top of the shaft and gravel peppered Kavan’s head. Light from some lanterns bathed him when he looked up.

  Tiana gazed back at him, her expression one of preoccupation. He grinned at her like the idiot she’d accused him of being. “Being rescued by a woman will be an everlasting source of amusement with my troopers.”

  She snorted and spat out, “Hah!” which made him grin even more. She turned to consult with someone, and then turned back to him again. “Close your eyes. Santo will try a spell to free you.”

  “That child?”

  The manacle on his wrists exploded in a shower of sparks and singed the hairs from his wrists. “Banefire,” he yelled and sagged to his knees in a heap of protesting muscles. Immediately, his ankle manacles exploded under him, and with the same result.”

  “Can you climb up the rope?”

  “Climb up the rope? Are you insane, woman? I can hardly move for pain, and now I suffer from burns inflicted on me by a foolish child who cannot properly control a bit of fire trickery.” Too late, he realized he’d incensed her.

  “Fire trickery! If you’d prefer being eaten by dragon bats I’ll insist he reinstate you to your former glory.” A clump of earth landed on his shoulder . . . and were those tears glistening in her eyes and thickening her voice? “You can climb out of there unaided for all I care. I’m going home, you . . . you, ungrateful savage.”

  Dirt made his eyes water. “Will you please stop pelting me with soil.”

  “I’d throw a rock if I could find one, monkey-brain.” She gave a sob and disappeared.

  What was the matter with the woman? Had she no backbone? “Tiana, come back,” he said softly, but she did not reappear.

  Instead, Torma swung his leg over the hole and was lowered to where he crouched. Unceremoniously, Kavan was pincered between his thighs. “Pull,” Torma shouted.

  Gradually Torma’s charger dragged them up the shaft in a series of jerks. Deposited on the ground, Kavan swallowed deep gulps of air into his lungs. When he tried to stand his legs collapsed beneath him.

  They were all watching him. Torma, the child, Santo . . . ? He shook his head in wonder. Santo had become a man overnight. Tiana had brought a couple of watchers with her as well. Their eyes shone, which explained the lanterns. How had she’d persuaded them to leave the forest?

  Torma put a flask against his lips. Kavan drained it, using the last of the water to splash on his face. He began to massage his calf muscles, Torma started on his shoulders. “Leave it, we have no time. Fetch Tiana to heal my feet.”

  “She’s taken Shazah and gone.”

  “Without a bodyguard?”

  “Most of the troop is standing off. They’ll intercept her and bring her back.”

  “She brought the troop with her, but she said –”

  “No, Lord. She commanded them to stay, but they followed at a discreet distance.”

  “She’s their commanding officer. They should have obeyed her.”

  “They put her safety first, Lord, as you would have expected of them.”

  Kavan groaned and gave a piercing whistle. He could not lay any blame on them, but their presence would heap indignity upon indignity and he could expect no mercy from their bantering.

  Within a short while Shazah came back to him. Tiana tumbled from the charger’s back and stood over him her chest heaving with affront. He noted the tears glistening on her cheeks and gazed at his companions. Some moments needed privacy. “Leave us.”

  When they moved discreetly out of earshot, he said. “My thanks for the rescue, Lady.”

  “I should have left you there.”

  “Much as you dislike me I doubt if you’d let me die.”

  “I did not say I disliked you.”

  He pulled her down beside him and smeared away the tears on her cheek. “Do you cry for another, then?”

  She would not meet his eyes. “I did not say I liked you, either. I feel your pain as I would the pain of any other wounded creature. It makes me sad.”

  He stroked the side of her face. “You have a soft heart. However undeserving you find him, can you ease this poor creature’s pain?”

  “I’ll try.” She placed his feet in her lap and laid her palms against the shredded soles. Her eyes came up to his, glowing like still water in the sun. The silence in her was uncanny. He allowed her access to his mind, but no further than she needed to effect healing. He floated in the coolness of her serenity, feeling it settle about him like a healing cloak.

  Above them the storm raged, the air was sultry, the wind throwing gusts, like the breath of sulphurous tongues reaching for them.

  His feet gradually stopped throbbing, and then the flesh cooled and healed. He sensed she was about to withdraw, but he wanted more of her,
wanted to share his troubled thoughts with her so his soul was refreshed as well. His eyes brought hers back to his, kept them there, drew her into him. He sensed her resistance and overcame it by force of will. A tiny plea plucked at his conscience.

  “You cannot use me in this way, Kavan. It diminishes me.”

  Uttering an oath, he withdrew. She removed his feet from her lap, stood up, and shoulders drooping with tiredness, stumbled away from him.

  He drew himself upright to go after her. Rubbing at his aching wrists, for the blood was rushing back into his body with a vengeance, he called after her. “My thanks, Lady Tiana. You’ve cured me.”

  When she turned, her eyes were blazing. “I’ve cured only your flesh, Kavan. Your fury roils like the storm above us, and your need for vengeance twists at my very soul.”

  Legs apart and fists resting on hips he contemplated her. He couldn’t understand her thinking. Did she not feel the need to purge the land of evil-doers? “My enemies will not escape me.”

  “Your quest is not to kill. It’s to save life,” she reminded him.

  The effort to hide his fury made him shake. “I know what my quest is, and nothing will prevent me from carrying it out.”

  “Then you don’t need me?”

  His lip curled. He could not deny to himself his need for her. The thought of her was with him every tix of every day. He needed her as slave to his body, his heart and his soul. He tasted her in the air, smelt her perfume with every breath. She visited his every dream and filled the corners of his existence.

  He shook his head as if the act would dislodge her from his mind. Like every other woman, she wanted to hear that she’d enslaved him. Not from his lips! He smiled thinly at her. “You forget the prophecy. Of course I need you.”

  He caught her hand as she lashed out at him. “Lady mine, to lift a hand to chastise your Lord carries with it the death penalty.”

  “Then kill me,” she spat out.

  It would be easy. His finger traced an arc around her jaw and stopped. Beneath his finger a pulse throbbed with life. Kill her, when he’d gone to so much effort to get her? He’d been celibate by choice since he’d set eyes on her, which had amused his troopers no end. Either Tiana had more courage than brains, or was too confident of her attraction over him if she thought she could talk to him thus.

  “I have other plans for you,” he said, and pushed her towards Shazah.

  She kicked out at him. “I don’t want to ride with you, barbarian.”

  “You have no choice.” And he’d had enough! He threw her over Shazah’s back and brought his hand lightly down on her rump a couple of times. The cry she gave was from the shock of chastisement rather than any pain he’d inflicted. She fell silent, but her eyes blazed into his when he hauled her upright. Mounting behind her, he smiled as he spurred Shazah up into the storm. That would teach her not to push him too far. After a while, she turned her face into his chest, but she spoke not another word to him.

  They were joined by the rest of the troop, who stood by a little way off, and were escorted back to the forest. Caught up in their exuberance at his safe return, Kavan was carried high on the troopers’ shoulders, tossed into the air and jibed about his rescuer.

  From the corner of his eyes he watched Tiana go, stumbling off into the forest with Santo and the two watchers supporting her. Her face was white and strained.

  His heart ached to comfort her. He freed himself from his troopers and hurried after her. Santo stood in his path. “Every time Tiana heals she gives part of herself to the recipient. She risked her life to save yours and you repaid her with abuse.”

  “It was a mere tap. It meant nothing. I’ll tell her so.”

  “You have robbed her of her dignity, would you also take her pride? What is done cannot be undone. She’s tired, leave her alone.” He held out a closed fist and slowly opened it. In his palm nestled a glowing, green object. “She asked me to give you this.”

  When he picked the bauble up his heart leapt into his throat. It was cool to his touch, alive, like a ripple of liquid in his palm. “The water stone,” he said wonderingly. “How did she come by it?”

  “It was a precious gift of love from her mother.”

  “Does that make it a precious gift of love to her lord and master?”

  But Santo had gone, and the forest behind was dark and quiet, as if it held its breath. She’d been embraced by its darkness, had been accepted and trusted by the creatures that knew its secret ways. He might never get her back, now, for the watchers guarded those they loved as their own. He had to put his quest first and at least Tiana was aware of its importance, he thought, securing the pendant around his neck.

  She’s reminding me of its purpose.

  He put the uncomfortable thought behind him when Torma joined him, and said. “We must secure the manor before the night is over, Lord.”

  Kavan clapped a hand on his most trusted friend’s shoulder. “I should not have chastised Tiana in such a manner.”

  “No, Lord, you should not have.”

  “She thinks me a savage, a barbarian. This will only reinforce her opinion.”

  Torma grinned at him. “Lady Tiana has wisdom beyond her years and a way with words that wins the imagination, if not the heart.”

  “Being rescued by a woman was undignified,” Kavan grumbled, “and you’re siding with her.”

  “Yes, Lord, I am taking her side. Allow me to remind you that death by dragon bat is more undignified, and the fact that she pits her will against yours is the only defense she has. You should woo Lady Tiana with softness and pretty words, not brute force. Maids like their suitors to be poets, even if the expressed sentiments cover the real purpose of wooing.”

  Kavan nodded. “It’s true that soft words and actions go a long way. A man should expect a maid to be irrational about certain things, however deserved they might be. Despite her smallness her seat was well padded, so only her pride was hurt. She will bear my children easily, I think.”

  A soft growl echoed in their ears, then a barrage of twigs and leaf debris powdered around them.

  “My lady,” he called out, “Did you not know that an eavesdropper never hears flattery? I’ll learn how to please you eventually.”

  “You couldn’t please a black-sighted hag in a thunderstorm, however hard you tried,” she mocked.

  He and Torma looked at each other and grinned.

  “I think she’s forgiven me,” Kavan said, and the pair threw their arms about each other’s shoulders and began to concentrate on the business of ridding the manor of the insurgents.

  * * * *

  Those servants loyal to Kavan had escaped earlier from the manor, creeping off into the night to take refuge in their homes or the surrounding countryside.

  Of those few who chose to serve Kavan’s enemies, each woke to a dagger held to their throats, and were given only a moment to repent and regret before being efficiently disposed of. The troopers moved silently from room to room, their faces grim with the task of rooting out those guards who’d humiliated them.

  They were just as efficient at dispatching their captors as Torma was being. Discovering Pannis dressed as a woman and hiding in the battlements, he mercifully sliced him open from head to abdomen. Vandrew’s heart failed under interrogation, but not before he’d told his tormentors everything they wanted to know. Kavan’s enemies were swiftly rounded up.

  Rowena woke from her slumber to find Kavan gazing down at her. The blood drained from her face.

  “Where’s General Saayer?” he growled.

  Her face was full of loathing when she gazed up at him. “Gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  “He’s taken the fire stone to Bane. Beltane will resurrect the war demons with it, and Saayer will bring them back to defeat you.”

  “When did he leave?”

  “Last night.” Her smile was so smug he wanted to smash his fist into it. “What you’ve done is set in motion the destruction of the worl
d. We’re on a collision course with Truarc. The fire stone is an essential component in the prevention of it.”

  She examined a fingernail. “Beltane will not allow that to happen. If you wish to become a follower I can make sure you survive the invasion.”

  “I would rather perish than be swayed from my quest.”

  “So be it.” Malice filled her eyes and spilled from her mouth. “That Truarc maid you brought here will make fine sport for Beltane’s war demons.”

  She cringed against the pillow when he drew his dagger and held the point against her jugular.

  Barbarian, savage . . . she’s your mother, she gave you life, Tiana’s voice reminded him. He cursed his conscience and sheathed the weapon.

  Despite the fright in her eyes, Rowena smiled. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to kill your own mother.”

  She was right, and Kavan bitterly regretted that fact. Tears in his eyes, he turned on his heel and left, nodding to the troopers who waited outside.

  As soon as Kavan turned the corner, the trooper who’d drawn the short straw slipped inside the chamber. Rowena’s eyes widened when he handed her a small vial of liquid.

  “What is this?”

  “You know what it is, Lady. Drink it . . . I guarantee you will not suffer.”

  A few tix later the trooper caught up with his brothers-at-arms and slid unobtrusively into their midst.

  * * * *

  The market place was silent. The villagers peered from behind drawn curtains as carts came out with the dead. Bodies piled up, wood was stacked and torches thrown amongst it. Soaked in pine resin, the fire became a fierce, all-consuming conflagration that burned steadily throughout the day. It was a reminder to the Cabrilan people of the fate waiting for insurgents.

  They watched a trooper head out on foot. He came back in a little while with Benlogan, the blind silversmith, and they disappeared inside the palace. Just before night fell, Kavan and the troopers left the battlements on their night chargers.

  Running from their houses the villagers gazed upwards. An awed sigh went up. It was the first time they’d seen their lord in full battle dress. Kavan wore supple black leather jerkin and breeches, under breast and thigh plates fashioned from studded hide. His hair was dressed in a high braid twisted into a leather thong. Carried across his back, his sword was smeared in mud and water so the shine would not alert the enemy. Daggers and mace hung from his belt. He looked fearsome astride a black charger, his face painted with camouflage stripes, and his purple eyes glittering.