Where Light Meets Shadow

by Shawna Reppert

  “Please,” Alban said. “Let us do this. Neither of us intended the evening to go as it did. I would not wish that you take permanent harm from it.”

  Too late for that. His father’s harp was broken. But he’d think about that tomorrow.

  “Do it, then.”

  The Leas king laid a hand on his leg above the injury. “I will be as quick as I can. Any pain I cause is unintentional and unavoidable.”

  Kieran closed his eyes and saw his father as his four-year-old self had seen him before the healers had noticed him and chased him out. Ribs smashed, tunic soaked in red, flesh showing raw like fresh-butchered meat. Did you not intend that, either?

  Alban stood, stepped behind his chair, and placed his hands on Kieran’s shoulders. Kieran felt a soothing, calming peace settle over him. Healing magic, lost to the Scathlan as long ago as the Leas had lost bardic magic. He’d thought its continuance among the Leas had only been a rumor. Healing magic, the touch of this enemy’s soul to his own. He struggled against the hands.

  “Please,” Alban said, voice pained.

  Alban was young, a few years younger than Kieran. Possibly he had not seen enough suffering to be as inured to it as those who had slaughtered his father had been. Kieran wanted to hold onto his old, comfortable hatred. But the respite offered by healing magic was too seductive.

  He closed his eyes again and dropped his head back, accepting the flow of warmth and light as pure as sunshine. The pain came, sudden, swift, terrible, and yet somehow very far away.

  “The worst of it is over,” Toryn said. “Now I will splint—Alban, are you well?”

  Kieran twisted to look over his shoulder, cursing as the movement reminded him how intimately every part of his body was connected to his broken ankle. Alban had stepped away to lean against the wall beside him, eyes closed, exhaustion lining his face and making him look much older than he was.

  Kieran had heard that the magic could be costly, as costly as the deepest bardic trance. Tired and no doubt hungry from the night’s misadventures, Alban would already be without strength to spare. Why, then, had he bothered? Kieran would have survived the bone setting without it.

  “I’m fine, Father,” Alban answered.

  Kieran hid a smile at the tone. Still a trace of the petulant adolescent Alban had been a few years ago. Kieran had used that tone often enough himself with old Cyrna.

  “Perhaps you should go rest. I can handle the Scathlan myself.”

  “I said I was fine,” Alban answered. “Besides, I always take responsibility for my strays.”

  Kieran wondered what they would do if he growled and showed teeth.

  “All right, then,” his father said. “But remember, a wise healer knows his limits. If you make a mistake out of exhaustion, it may be your patient who suffers.”

  With Alban assisting, Toryn splinted and wrapped his ankle. After they set the ankle, Kieran thought he could handle anything, but his endurance had been worn thin and he wanted to whine and cry like a child. He managed with just a few sharp gasps and one whimper.

  “You’re doing well, very well,” Toryn encouraged. “Now we just have to get you out of those wet clothes and into something warm and dry, get you fed, and then you can rest.”

  They had to slice apart his breeches to get them off over the splint. He managed the shirt himself, though his hands fumbled at the lacings and he floundered pulling it over his head. The Leas were kind enough not to laugh.

  Alban gave him a thick, soft nightshirt, and Kieran pulled it on gratefully. The comfort in contrast to the recent cold damp made him sleepy. He covered a yawn.

  “Come on, let’s get you into bed so we can prop up that leg,” Alban said. “If you sit against the headboard, you can eat before you sleep. Lean on my shoulder. Tomorrow you can start learning to walk on crutches.”

  Tomorrow would be time enough. He’d have a long while to practice, after all. Were it not for Toryn Oathbreaker, he’d be on crutches forever. Though if it had not been for Toryn’s son and the other Leas, Alban would never have broken his ankle in the first place.

  Instead, he and his mare would have frozen to death on the lonely mountainside.

  Too much to think about when he was hurt and tired and hungry.

  A maidservant came then, bringing a covered tray from which came the warm, savory scents of roasted meat and fresh bread. She set the tray down on the nightstand and curtseyed to her king and prince. Kieran smiled at her, but she narrowed her eyes in response.

  Kieran sighed. It looked like he couldn’t expect any comfort during his convalescence. Not that he should be consorting with the enemy anyway.

  The bread, savory meat, and the mulled wine that accompanied it settled well in his stomach, and the bed embraced him. His eyes closed of their own will, and he was only vaguely aware of Alban taking the empty cup from his loose fingers.

  Three

  Every time Kieran stirred in his sleep, pain shot through his leg and brought him to consciousness. He wanted a drink of water, but had no way to seek one out, even if he dared to go wandering through the Leas stronghold. His injury left him totally dependent on his enemies, and that dark thought created troubling dreams.

  He woke from another vague nightmare to daylight and the sense that someone had come into the room. He whipped his head around and registered the fair hair of a Leas. Where…how? Fear sluiced through him and, as his mind scrambled through memories, his hand went to his hip, seeking the hilt of his sword.

  Gone.

  “You’ll find what you’re looking for locked in the armory. Though I’ll thank you not to go in search of it. I’d rather not have to reset those bones.”

  A Leas in a richly embroidered tunic approached him with regal grace, a circlet of richly worked gold marking his rank.

  Kieran’s mind caught up with his memory. Toryn Oathbreaker. He flushed with embarrassment even as his heart continued to pound wildly. Last night. His broken ankle. His shattered harp. He wanted to deny the reality of what had happened, but his harp case leaned against the wall, and the gaping crack in the front showed the remains of his father’s instrument.

  He took a moment to assess surroundings he had barely noticed last night. White walls reflected sunlight, brightening the room. The four-poster bed had been carved of warm, honey-blond wood, a pattern of vines and flowers repeated on the mantel and the trim around the door. The style of the carving could have almost been Scathlan, except Scathlan artists generally worked in stone or metal instead of wood.

  Toryn sat in the chair by the bed. “Are you in pain?”

  He referred to the ankle, not the harp, but either way it hurt like a blow from the hammer of the legendary Giant of the North.

  “Some,” Kieran gritted out. “Your majesty,” he forced himself to add.

  A bard should never show a lack courtesy.

  “That is not a title we use here,” the Oathbreaker said. “You may call me Lord Toryn or my lord.”

  A bard should also know all forms of courtesy, but no one had thought he would need to know proper Leas forms of address. He wished they had been right in their assumption.

  “I’ll have a draught for the pain brought up with your food, but if you can wait I thought we’d talk a little first.”

  Was the Oathbreaker being courteous, allowing him to go through his questioning without a mind fogged by drugs? Or was this a subtle threat that he would withhold food and medical treatment if he didn’t like Kieran’s answers?

  “So tell me how you came to be in Leas lands.” Toryn’s tone was friendly, but his eyes were keen and hard.

  Alban would have told his father the tale already. The Oathbreaker wanted to know if the story would change with the retelling. Kieran had nothing to fear, because he was a Scathlan and not a lying Leas.

  Besides, if he had been making something up, he’d have come up with a less embarrassing tale.

  The Oathbreaker listened impassively, only occasionally asking for more deta
ils. Glad for his storyteller’s memory, Kieran answered his questions confidently. Toryn seemed particularly interested in the names of the inns where Kieran had stayed and who he had talked to during his travels.

  Kieran remembered again how the mortals he’d met seemed surprised to see a dark-haired elf. If the Leas had contact with mortals, Toryn might be intending to use them to verify Kieran’s story.

  It could only help if Toryn did check, since Kieran was telling the truth. Or at least most of the truth.

  Tradition dictated that a journeyman bard go traveling in search of new material. He needn’t mention his hopes of reviving the dying culture of the people the Leas had tried so hard to destroy, nor his fool’s hope of proving that the combination of healing and bardic magic was more than legend, nor his dream of waking his queen from her long stupor. For after the war was lost and her revenge denied, Queen Ardala in her despair had fallen into a living death, still as a statue, neither waking nor sleeping. No mortal could live so, but the queen’s power preserved her throughout the long years.

  The Scathlan did not fare well after the war. There was no interest in new songs, and precious little interest in old ones. The old festivals were no longer celebrated, since celebration seemed disrespectful to the queen.

  The hunting had been poor, and the elders said it was because the woods needed the energy from the old rites to replenish the creatures. And anyway, too few men survived to hunt, and too few babies were born in the years following the war to grow into young men who hunted.

  No one took initiative to establish new trade or to maintain the relationships already there. The Scathlan were now truly shadow-elves, a mere shade of what they had been before the war.

  If Toryn used his association with mortals to spread enmity against Scathlan, Kieran would have more than a bit of trouble making his way as a travelling bard.

  Just because the Leas weren’t cruel enough to let him freeze to death or be crippled by a badly healed injury, it didn’t mean they wouldn’t try in other ways to thwart his hope of helping his people. For that matter, the king had not promised to release him after he was healed.

  On that last point, Kieran intended to take matters into his own hands once he had mended. Growing up, he’d been called a troublemaker and a rapscallion, both true enough. The escapades that had earned him those names gave him the skills he needed to squeeze out of windows and climb down walls.

  A knock on the door interrupted the interview as Alban arrived, bringing a tray. Kieran had expected a servant. No highborn Scathlan would lower himself to such a task, although Brona might sneak a special treat to his rooms if Kieran were hurt or feeling poorly.

  “Hello, Alban, did the morning hunt go well?”

  Kieran had slept in late enough for a hunt to start and finish? Yes, by the angle of the sun, he had.

  “Well enough, Father,” Kieran said lightly. “And with more conventional results than we had last night.”

  “We were just finishing up,” Toryn continued. “You will be teaching your new stray to use crutches today?”

  “After he eats, Father. And can you leave off with the jest? I know it’s aimed at me, but our guest does not, and it’s making him uncomfortable.”

  Kieran flushed, even more uncomfortable to be referred to as though he were not there, and to have it acknowledged how much the Leas king managed to get to him.

  “Of course,” Toryn said smoothly. He bowed slightly to Kieran. “My apologies if I have disregarded the rules of hospitality.”

  After breaking a solemn oath, not to mention the prohibition of making war against others of elvenkind, Kieran would think the laws of hospitality would not matter much to the Leas king. He kept the observation to himself. The rules of civility for a good guest doubly bound a bard, and the vulnerability of his situation added a practical incentive.

  Kieran wasn’t really hungry, his ankle hurt too much to think about any other demand his body might have. Still, he knew he needed food to keep up his strength, and he had no say in when his next meal might come.

  Kieran hadn’t complained of his cold as it was scarcely life-threatening. Still, Alban had brought an herb tea for his congested chest as well as a painkilling draught.

  Alban sat with him as he ate, the stiffness of his posture and the stillness of his face betraying the awkwardness of the situation.

  Kieran’s bardic instincts for smoothing out moments of social discomfort engaged, and he asked about the morning hunt.

  Alban told him about a small, but well-fed buck and the larger one that got away, and then talked of memorable hunts from the past—memorable for their spectacular and humorous failures. When Kieran chuckled at his subtle, self-deprecating humor, Alban’s posture relaxed. His blue eyes reminded Kieran more now of summer skies and less of winter ice.

  Somehow, all of the food and all of the painkilling draught were gone.

  “We need to get you up on crutches,” Alban said.

  Kieran noticed that a pair stood in the corner. Had he really slept so deeply among his enemies that they came into his room some time in the night or morning and he didn’t wake?

  “I can figure them out on my own if I need them,” Kieran said. “They can’t be that hard.”

  “Have you ever used crutches before?”

  “No, why?”

  He’d broken his arm once, and his ribs a couple of times, but he’d never had an injury that required him to hobble around using a pair of sticks.

  “It’s not as easy as it looks. And if I leave you to your own devices, you’ll put it off. It’s natural enough, you’re in pain and the ankle is telling you not to move. But if we don’t get you up and about, the rest of you will be the worse for it. Not to mention that you don’t seem the type to enjoy lying abed for the month or so it’s going to take the bones to knit.”

  A month! Sweet Grace, he’d forgotten how long it had taken to heal before. A month or more among his enemies.

  Alban must have taken his silence for agreement, for he brought the crutches over and began the instruction, then pulled the blankets off Kieran and demanded that he get up and try it.

  It rankled, taking instruction from someone younger, albeit only by a few years, and from the son of Toryn Oathbreaker. Alban may be a prince among his people, but to Kieran he was nothing more than an untrustworthy kinslayer, even if, like Kieran, he had been too young to participate in the war.

  Worse, the crutches weren’t as simple as they seemed. He struggled, hopelessly uncoordinated, and he accidentally put weight on his right ankle and stifled a scream. Kieran snarled at Alban when the Leas rushed in to prevent him from doing more damage to the injury so carefully set and splinted.

  He felt like the bumpkin in a traveling play, a failure, the fool everyone called him. Not only had his brave, reckless quest left him dependent on his enemies for hospitality, but he couldn’t even manage a simple pair of crutches.

  Worse, he could see Alban laughing at him behind his hand.

  “Get out!” Kieran was in no position to issue commands, and he knew it. “Get out and leave me alone.”

  Even to his own ears, he sounded like a petulant child.

  “I’m sorry,” Alban said. “It’s just that you remind me so much of myself when I broke my leg a few years ago. As a healer, I thought I knew everything there was to know about crutches. Turned out that theory is one thing, practice quite another. I got so frustrated that I refused to continue. My father gave up and let me alone—all alone with nothing to do and all my books on the other side of the room. I learned fast enough.”

  #

  Alban winced at his own stupidity. It was hard enough to get his own people to respect him as a healer, between his age and his father always at his shoulder, reminding him without meaning to of all he had to live up to. And this Scathlan was everything he’d been led to expect. . .hard-headed, snappish, and easy to offend.

  He’d thought for a moment when they had been talking of hunting mi
shaps that he’d seen a glimmer of something else. In those moments when his face had relaxed, the elvenness of Kieran’s features came through despite the odd coloring, and Alban could see the handsome, charming bard who’d made it so far from home on nothing but a smile and a song.

  Illusion, all an illusion. Yes, he’d been warned that Scathlan were capable of seeming civility, even friendship, as a cover for their hard, cold souls.

  And now he’d given this Scathlan an excuse to dismiss him as a healer, when Alban really needed his respect so he could heal well and they could be rid of each other sooner.

  Kieran stared at Alban after his revelation, expression unreadable, probably wondering what sort of idiot he’d been saddled with as a healer.

  And then Kieran burst out laughing, laughing so hard that tears ran down his face, so hard that Alban had to reach out to keep him from falling. The laughter was contagious, Alban laughed too, laughed freely, as though with his cousins, leaning into Kieran helplessly to balance them both.

  The dry, rational part of his healer’s mind identified the body’s need for releasing tension. Neither the situation nor anything he’d said warranted such humor. Yet it felt good, as though some dam had burst within him to let clear, life-giving flow water over a desolate land.

  Looking at Kieran, he saw something similar in the Scathlan’s face.

  “I’m not sure books would do it for me,” Kieran said. “You could try a good mead or a comely lass.”

  Why the sudden, swift disappointment at the last? Alban looked away to hide his reaction.

  “Or even a handsome lad of a certain bent.”

  He hoped Kieran didn’t notice his blush. Simple, animal attraction was all it was, attraction that could be and must be ruled. Anything else would be inappropriate between healer and patient, between two enemies.

  “If you work on the crutches, I’ll see what I can do about some mead with your dinner. Anything else you’ll have to arrange on your own.”

  Kieran sighed theatrically. “I suppose I’ll be living the life of the virtuous and boring for the near future then.”