The Prince of Exiles (The Exile Series)

by Hal Emerson

  He let out a howl of anger and frustration, trying to gall his mind into the right frame of mind. His brow furrowed as he desperately tried to remember what he had done to bring back Tomaz.

  And then, not knowing how, he began to pour … something … into the boy’s unconscious form. He could feel the Raven Talisman growing hotter and hotter about his neck and shoulders as the hilt of Aemon’s Blade grew colder and colder beneath his hand.

  He felt himself growing weaker. His own life was slipping away.

  He panicked and tried to pull back, knowing something had gone horribly, horribly wrong – this wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen, he was supposed to heal the boy! He had Aemon’s Blade, he should be able to use the Raven Talisman for healing, not for death, not for destruction, not –

  Life rekindled in the small form beneath him. The boy’s breathing eased and was less labored – his eyes fluttered open, and the wound in his side began to shine, not with the dark, glistening red of fresh blood, but with the bright, white light of Valerium.

  Voices began to grow louder around them – the voice of the man with the walrus mustache, Davydd shouting for everyone to stay back, the shocked, helpless cries of countless others who had rushed in to assist, clamoring to know how the boy was doing – can I help? – has someone called for a Healer? – who is –?

  Raven’s mind felt like it was being pulled apart. He tried to push it all back together, grabbing the fragmenting pieces, but found he just couldn’t do it. He didn’t have the energy. His life was slipping away, growing dim. He felt weak – he could barely keep his eyes open now.

  The boy – Tym – sat up, and the white light cut off. Most of the wounds were gone, replaced by freshly healed skin. He got to his feet without hesitation – his legs were straight and unbroken.

  Raven’s vision split and cracked. His eyes rolled back in his head, and darkness took him.

  Chapter Eleven: Informalities

  When Raven woke, his mind was still fuzzed and hazy and no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t seem to focus. Everything was dark. Why was everything dark? His whole body felt heavy, as if whatever had been in his system was still there, weighing him down.

  Wait a minute – Henri Perci – he drugged me!

  His eyelids snapped open and he found himself staring at a white-washed ceiling. He sat up – and the room spun around him, and he almost emptied his stomach.

  “Careful princeling!”

  A hand pushed against his chest and he fell back, landing on the pillow propped behind him. He groaned as his head throbbed. His whole body was sore, as if he’d been bruised all over. He blinked to clear his vision and then his eyes focused on … Leah.

  “Are you still mad at me?” He asked. For some reason that seemed very important at this moment.

  She cocked her head to the side and stifled a smile.

  “No,” she said, “I’m not. You apologized.”

  “I was drugged at the time,” he admitted immediately.

  “You’re still drugged,” she said, “though we gave you a counter-toxin and it’s wearing off now. Just … take extra care in what you say. Think about it really hard before you speak. You’ll thank me later.”

  “But we’re friends again?” He asked, more forcefully.

  “Yes,” she said. He nodded, and then relaxed.

  “What happened after … ?”

  He couldn’t find the words – thoughts were still slippery, and his tongue felt heavy and too big for his mouth.

  “Elder Keri appeared right after you collapsed,” she said, catching on to what he was asking. “She had a team of Healers with her and she commanded you and Tym be brought to the hospital. You were here, nearly dead, for almost a full hour before they got you breathing on your own again.”

  “Tym?” He asked. His throat felt raw and his voice sounded hoarse.

  Leah’s face softened, and she nodded to a bed to his left. He turned to look and saw that curtains had been drawn around it to give whoever was inside privacy while they rested.

  “He’s recovering too,” she said.

  She turned to him.

  “Everyone in the city is talking about what you did –”

  “I don’t care what everyone in the city is saying,” he said harshly, rasping, forcing his voice out. “The boy? He’s okay? Is he going to survive?”

  “He’s fine,” Leah said, reassuring him with a simple force of emphasis, holding up a hand to prevent him from rising. “He’s right there, but he’s sleeping now so you can’t see him. He lost a lot of blood, but whatever you did closed his wounds. He had a few bones that needed to be set, but Elder Keri said the most dangerous of those were already taken care of. She said it looked as if half the boy’s injuries were weeks old.”

  “I couldn’t heal all of them,” Raven said, swallowing hard. “I didn’t have the strength – I don’t know why. When I healed Tomaz, I did it all, I brought him back from the dead.”

  “You had the Ox Talisman to draw on,” she pointed out.

  “I still should have been able to finish it,” Raven said. “Whatever was in me, the drug, it must have stopped me from being able to do it the right way. I didn’t –”

  “You did enough,” Leah insisted, smiling at him with her eyes. He felt calm descend on him. If she said things were fine, then they must be. Right?

  “You’re sure?” He asked, almost begging her for confirmation.

  “Yes,” she said, nodding, all the while holding his gaze. “When Elder Keri checks in you can ask her yourself.”

  He leaned back and let out a sigh, and took the moment to focus on how he was feeling. His body still ached, and he felt like he could sleep for a week, but he didn’t seem to be otherwise injured. He could move everything, even though moving was painful. He tried to swallow and realized his throat hurt because it was incredibly dry.

  “Water?” He asked Leah.

  She nodded and reached over to a table by the bed and handed him a cup. He started to sit up and she bent down to help him.

  His heart gave a strange sideways thump as she leaned in, the smell of her filling his head. He felt the urge to do something, felt the urge to reach up and grab her, but then she pulled back and just that quickly the moment was over.

  He drank from the cup, the cold water soothing his throat, helping him clear his head. He looked around the room. It was long and tall, full of rows of beds, all of which, save the two he and Tym occupied, were empty. The floor was made of a simple light-colored wood and the walls were whitewashed, with windows spaced every so often to let in warm orange and yellow light from the outside. The normal smell of a sick room was notably absent – this place smelled instead of clean linen and fresh air.

  “We’re in the recovery wing of the trauma ward,” Leah told him, following his gaze. “We’re lucky in Vale that there isn’t a lot of trauma to deal with. Outside of an invasion of course, like the one a few months ago … but something on that scale is rare. Mostly this place is used by people who live in the woods like Tomaz and hit themselves with their own ax or something. I saw a woman come in once who’d managed to cut herself with a boning knife … that was a nasty thing.”

  “Were you wounded too?” he asked, wondering how she’d seen this.

  “Eshendai are required to train under Elder Keri and her Healers,” Leah said. “And after the training is done, we have the option to come back here for work when we’re not on assignment. I get a stipend from the military and Goldwyn keeps my rooms the way I like them, so I don’t need the coin. But I like it anyway – it’s a way to help people.”

  “You like helping people,” he said, watching her out of the corner of his eye, pretending to examine the room. He had the urge to just stare openly at her, but he was fairly certain that was coming from the dopalin. Yes. Just the dopalin.

  “I do,” she said. “I didn’t for a long time. Tomaz was the same – when we joined the Kindred we had a lot of work to do on ourselves. But
eventually, you heal and you move on. And when I did the training to become an Eshendai and I had the chance to help people here – to help people in a way that only a few can – I found that I really did like it.”

  They lapsed into silence as Raven drank more water.

  “Tomaz actually just stepped out,” Leah said, awkwardly filling the sudden gap in conversation, “he should be back soon. He’s grabbing Mary –”

  “Oh! Shadows and light, I left her –”

  “Yeah, he went looking for you when you didn’t come back –”

  “Of course, that makes sense, I was about to go back to him but –”

  “But you got drugged by Henri Perci,” she said, her face darkening as she said the words. “Did anyone see it happen?”

  “No,” Raven said, thinking back. “They saw me at the drinking house we went to, but otherwise all anyone saw was us talking. I don’t even really understand how he did it.”

  “From what Davydd described, I’d say it was melted down into a liquid form. It can be injected directly into the bloodstream, but that would incapacitate a horse, and while you certainly weren’t unconscious, you weren’t in your right state of mind either. It was most likely diluted – did he offer you something to drink?”

  “Yes,” Raven said, thinking back. “I drank a whole skin of water he gave me. That’s the first I remember feeling strange … feeling very thirsty. Everything after that is hazy at best.”

  “Diluting it in water will certainly do the trick,” rumbled a familiar voice from the far end of the hall.

  They turned to see the hulking form of Tomaz walk in with Elder Keri just behind him; she was accompanied by two women in long, baggy, white shirts and pants.

  “I turn my back for one minute,” Tomaz chastised before he’d even reached the bed, “and you go and get into trouble.”

  “To be fair, I didn’t do it on purpose.”

  “When do you ever get into trouble on purpose?” Tomaz grumbled. “Usually trouble just finds you. You’re like the little lost puppy from the story.”

  “I don’t think I know the story?” Raven asked, looking around.

  “It’s not a real story,” Leah said. “No one knows it, Tomaz just brings it up all the time. It isn’t real.”

  “It is too!” Tomaz rumbled insistently.

  “Okay, tell it to him,” she retorted.

  “Can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Don’t remember it all.”

  “See?!”

  “As lovely as this banter is,” Elder Keri said, pushing Tomaz out of the way, kindly but forcefully, “I need to examine my patient. How are you feeling?”

  “I ache,” Raven said truthfully, “and I’m parched, but otherwise I’m fine.”

  “Good,” she said, reaching up and feeling for his pulse as she glanced at a large clock at the end of the hall to time the beats. “No adverse reaction to the dopalin it looks like. You ingested a heavy dose – much more and it could have had serious side effects.”

  “How do you get much more serious than telling your mind to everyone you meet?” Raven muttered.

  “In order of severity: blindness, paralysis, and death.”

  “Ah. Well, that would be worse.”

  “Yes,” Keri said, removing her fingers from his neck. “But thankfully it wasn’t that bad. In fact, you seem like you’re ready to go. You’ll be fine by the end of the day – though I suggest you take it easy. Whatever it is you did to heal this boy … I’m grateful for it. You saved his life, but it nearly cost you yours. Thank whatever gods you pray to that you’re young and your body is resilient. When I first laid hands on you, you were a breath away from leaving this world. If I hadn’t arrived when I did, you’d be dead.”

  Raven felt suddenly cold, as if the temperature of the room had dropped several degrees. He swallowed nervously; both Leah and Tomaz looked grim.

  “Now,” Keri concluded, “all that is left is the legal matter of the fact you ingested dopalin.”

  “Wait – what?”

  “Dopalin is illegal,” the Elder said, looking at him sternly. “And while I can understand the desire to experiment with mind-altering substances, after all I was young once too, you should never have flaunted your use so flagrantly.”

  “Wait – no, you don’t understand, that’s not what happened –”

  “I will vouch for him,” Leah said immediately. “He would never –”

  “I take full responsibility as his caretaker while he’s here in Vale,” Tomaz broke in with a heavy rumble, looking sternly from Raven to Elder Keri. “He has been staying with me, and I assure you that he hasn’t had the chance to – ”

  Keri firmly held up a hand, silencing them both. She was still the kind, matronly woman she’d always been, but there was something of a fierce, protective mother about her now that told them quite clearly she would brook no nonsense. She was in control, and that was final.

  “So you didn’t take it purposefully,” she said. “An accident then?”

  “No,” Raven said immediately, “Henri Perci slipped it to me.”

  She looked at him for a long moment, her face unreadable. Did she think he was lying? Trying to pin the blame on someone else?

  “Henri Perci? Well, that’s quite an accusation. Do you have proof of this?”

  Leah and Tomaz looked at him anxiously, but he shook his head slowly. His hands balled into fists. He wanted to punch something.

  “No,” he said, careful to keep his voice steady. Showing anger here would do nothing but hurt his case, making him look like a liar or a vindictive fool.

  “Then you still have to talk to Elders Spader and Ekman,” she said, very matter of fact. “They’re waiting for you right now at Elder Goldwyn’s manor – they sent word to send you there when you woke.”

  “The Elders?” Tomaz asked. “Surely this isn’t something that needs to be taken up with them directly. I accept responsibility for him, and as it is a first time offense, it can’t be a matter serious enough to involve the Elders in –”

  “He’s a ward of the state since he has no family here,” Elder Keri said sternly, her kind, motherly exterior gone to expose the protective caretaker underneath. “Until he reaches his Naming, he’s under the care of the Elders, and he goes to them directly when he breaks a law. Dopalin is a dangerous substance, particularly if ingested by a skilled swordsman, you know this. If he’d been triggered, particularly with his … abilities … we may have had a massacre on our hands.”

  “Triggered?” Raven asked, his breathing suddenly coming short and fast. What did she mean by that? A massacre?

  “I claim him,” Tomaz said immediately, without the slightest hesitation. “He will be my family, and I will take full responsibility.”

  “That’s very kind of you Tomaz,” Keri said, her face softening noticeably. She looked truly touched. “But you know it’s not that simple. First of all, you’re an Ashandel, and you’re forbidden from taking on any children until you’ve been moved off active duty. That you and your Eshendai would vouch for him means a great deal, though. Take him to Elder Goldwyn’s manor, speak for him in front of Spader and Ekman, and go from there. Normally I’d have to have him escorted, but if you will take him yourself, then we can forgo that.”

  “Right,” Tomaz said, though he looked grim. “He has your leave?”

  Keri nodded, and that was all Raven needed to throw back the sheets covering him and swing his legs over the side of the bed.

  As he did the room spun again, just enough that he had to pause and take a slow, steadying breath. Tomaz rested a hand on his shoulder and offered to help him stand, but he waved the giant off.

  He came slowly to his feet, assuming the straight-backed stance that had been bred into him, and realized he was once again shirtless. He looked down and saw he had pants on, which was a good start, but was a little self-conscious of the fact Leah was standing not three feet away from him.

  Elder Keri ge
stured with a small smile to a trunk at the foot of the bed. He moved to it, threw open the lid, and saw inside his boots, his cloak and tunic, and Aemon’s Blade. He pulled them all on, hesitating slightly when he grasped the Blade, and then they were off, heading out the door at the end of the recovery ward as Keri moved to check on Tym.

  “So it was Perci, you’re sure of it?” Tomaz asked as soon as they were out of earshot of Keri and her Healers.