Meira looked up at him occasionally. After a while, she called him over.
“What do you need?” He tried his best to sound helpful and obedient, but was afraid resentment crept into his voice.
Meira grinned at him. “Elkan told you to do whatever I said, correct?”
He grimaced. “Yes.”
“Well, Josiah, I’m settled just fine here, but there’s one thing you could do for me that would be a big help.”
Josiah frowned at her, puzzled by her amused look and the conspiratorial tone of her voice.
“Poor Thistle has been cooped up in a stall ever since we’ve been in Tathorlith. She’s boarding at a public stable near the Miners’ Guildhall where I’ve been staying. It’s a lovely morning. I think she’d enjoy a little exercise, maybe a nice walk out in the fields. You could ride her for a bit if you’d like. I hear there’s some good grazing to the north, toward the mountains. Could you take care of that for me?”
He stared at her, unsure if she really meant what she seemed to be saying, but her nod confirmed it. He grinned. “Yes, ma’am!”
“Wait,” she called, as he bolted for the door. “Don’t you want directions to the stable before you rush off?”
Josiah forced himself to listen despite his impatience. When she was satisfied he’d be able to find it, she dismissed him with a wave.
Josiah raced through the streets. A few words with the journeyman herder in charge of the stable saw Thistle bridled and handed over to him. The donkey was indeed restless, eager to be away and disinclined to cooperate. He wrestled with her a few minutes, cursing the time wasted, before he was able to clamber onto her back and guide her to the north road.
Thistle balked and shied at every shadow on the way through town, but once past the last straggling buildings she settled. She turned her head as they passed open green meadows, but Josiah held her to a steady trot along the road he’d seen in the window. He didn’t really hope to catch up with the searchers. They had a generous head start. And he didn’t think he could do more to find Nirel than they could; Elkan’s ability to see into the past would lead them straight to her. But anything was better than waiting back in the town, unable to help or even know what was going on.
He located the side path where Nirel had turned. It led steeply up the mountainside, winding through thick forest and around rocky outcroppings. He was forced to let Thistle slow to a walk. He saw evidence of the search party’s passage—footprints and hoofprints in the dust, broken branches, piles of horse dung.
The woods were quiet except for an occasional birdcall. Thistle tired. Josiah slid off and walked beside her, listening. They went higher and higher up the mountain.
After a long time, Josiah heard voices ahead of him, and the thud of hooves. He hung back, reluctant to join the searchers. He might have followed the letter of Elkan’s instructions, but he’d thoroughly violated the spirit. He didn’t want to face Elkan’s anger, so he followed just within earshot.
The searchers must not have found Nirel yet, for they kept a steady pace. Thistle plodded along the path, tired enough to be obedient and quiet. After nearly an hour, they came to a fork in the path. One branch led further up the mountain, and the other wound down into a valley. The searchers’ tracks led up; the window must have shown Nirel going that way. Josiah led Thistle up the path after them.
Not far past the split they came to a level spot. Josiah stopped and leaned on Thistle, panting. Nirel must be moving awfully fast to stay ahead of the searchers all this time. The land here was so steep and broken someone on foot could make just as good time as those on horses. Maybe even better.
Thistle grabbed a mouthful of greenery. Josiah looked back the way they had come. It was long past noon. Even if they found Nirel soon, it would be sunset before they made it back to town.
Back at the fork in the trail, something rustled high in a tree. A branch swayed, then another lower down.
Josiah held his breath. It might be only a squirrel, but maybe… He crowded Thistle into the brush beside the path.
A pair of boots appeared beneath the tree’s foliage, followed by the rest of Nirel. She hung by her hands and dropped the few remaining feet to the ground. She landed in a crouch, scanned around her for her pursuers, and set off at a brisk pace down the other trail.
Josiah rushed after her, dragging the startled Thistle behind. The donkey brayed and tried to balk, but Josiah’s urgent momentum carried her along. She trotted at his heels, ears laid back.
Hearing them, Nirel shot a look over her shoulder and took off running.
“Nirel, wait,” Josiah called between panting breaths, though not too loudly. He didn’t want the search party to find them until he’d had a chance to talk to her. Not that he knew what he’d say.
Nirel was fast, but she was tired. The gap between them closed. She stopped and turned to face Josiah where the path dipped to a shallow ford across a narrow stream. She scowled at him, turned her back in contempt, and dropped to her knees to scoop up water and drink.
“So you caught me,” she said between mouthfuls. Though she tried to maintain her composure, she couldn’t help but gulp thirstily. Josiah’s own mouth was dry after the long journey. He knelt beside her and plunged his hands into the icy water. It tasted fresh and clean. He wiped away the drops that dribbled down his chin.
“I’m sorry, Nirel,” he ventured. Her body was tense and he was afraid she might bolt again at any moment. “I know you want to find your father, but you can’t. You’ve got to come back with us. Elkan and the others will track you here soon. Even if you run again you won’t be able to get away from them. And what would you do if you did find him? He’s joined up with a gang of bandits. You wouldn’t be safe.”
She snorted. “I’m not afraid of them. They used to come to our farm all the time.” She looked longingly down the path and back up the way they’d come. For the first time her shoulders sagged, just a little. “I gave the wizard the slip once; I can do it again. Just don’t tell him you saw me. Lead him off in the other direction.” She gave him a dark look. “I’ll be all happy and grateful if you do. That’s what you want, isn’t it? You could probably even get me to kiss you again, if that’s what it takes.”
Aghast, Josiah scrambled to his feet. “That’s not— I wouldn’t—” He shook his head. “Besides, it wouldn’t work anyway. All Elkan has to do is look and see where we are. He’ll probably be here any min—”
Beside them, Thistle had dropped her head to drink at the stream. Now she flung her head up, whites of her eyes showing, ears back. She let out a screaming bray and gathered herself to bolt, but in that instant a huge tawny shape sprang from the brush beside the trail and leapt for her.
To Josiah, everything was a confusion of images and sensations: Thistle’s flashing hooves and bared teeth, dagger sharp claws on the beast’s enormous paw, snarls and snaps and screams. He thrust Nirel behind him and backed away. But he couldn’t abandon Thistle to be slaughtered, so he shoved Nirel farther back and stumbled toward the battling animals, yelling and waving his hands.
He vaguely registered the sound of shouts, hoofbeats, and running feet, but he didn’t grasp what they meant until an arrow ripped past him and plunged into the foliage. Another skimmed past bleeding claw scores on Thistle’s flank and just missed the beast’s flexing shoulder.
The search party, Josiah realized, relief flooding him. The watchers who’d accompanied Elkan and Sar were armed with bows and maybe even spears. They would kill the beast, or at least drive it away. Josiah grabbed Thistle’s bridle and tried to drag her away from her attacker so the watchers would have more room to shoot.
For an instant he stared into the creature’s eyes, large and golden in a laughing cat’s face, long tongue lolling past ivory fangs. Its ears pricked forward, gracefully pointed tips tufted with bits of dark fur. Inside one translucent shell-pink curve an ash-gray mark was smudged, an oval just the size and shape of a fingerprint.
An arrow
thunked into the huge cat’s flank. It twisted with a scream of pain. Only then did Josiah realize what he’d seen.
“Wait! Stop! Elkan!” he yelled. He threw himself forward, interposing himself between the beast and the arrows that continued to rain at it. “Elkan! Sar! He’s Mother-touched, Elkan! Stop, please, stop shooting!”
A line of fire streaked across his scalp. He flung his arms around the wild beast’s neck. The arrow that would have struck its throat slammed into his upper arm.
Thirteen
Josiah cried out in pain and hunched his body to shield the cat’s head, heedless of the teeth that could easily have torn great chunks from his flesh, but didn’t. “Elkan,” he begged. “Sar. Make them stop…”
An arrow appeared in front of his eyes, frozen in mid-flight, surrounded by golden light. It clattered to the ground with a handful of others. Josiah heard Elkan shouting and Sar braying.
The beast’s fur was soft under his hands, its muscles hard beneath its skin. Josiah dropped to his knees, dizzy. The cat settled into a crouch and whined at him, its long tail lashing. “Don’t worry,” Josiah murmured, clinging to the creature as the ground tilted alarmingly. “Elkan will heal us. He’s a wizard. But you probably know that already…” He laid his head on the cat’s shoulder, and its long pink tongue rasped across his cheek.
It seemed like a very long time before Sar’s large velvet nostrils nuzzled his face. The soft golden glow that enveloped him came as such a blessed relief from the pain, he nearly sobbed. But after a moment he struggled to sit up.
“He’s Mother-touched, Elkan, look, there’s the mark in his ear. I couldn’t let them kill him. He’s not hurt too much is he? I saw an arrow hit him. You said there weren’t enough Mother-touched animals, that wild ones might find you…”
“Yes. You did well, Josiah.” Elkan’s voice was gentle. “Hush now. I need to cut the arrow out before we can heal you. Just be still.”
Josiah twisted to look at the fletched shaft protruding from his arm. His head swam, and he swallowed, looking away. “What about Thistle? She was bleeding…” At least Nirel hadn’t been injured.
“She’s fine. We’ll take care of her when we’re done with you. Now be still. We’ve got a lot of healing to do. We’d rather not spend the energy to put you to sleep as well, but we will if you make us.”
Sar snorted in agreement. Contrite, Josiah clamped his mouth shut. He dared another glance at his arm. Elkan drew a slender, sharp knife from its sheath on his belt. Josiah tensed.
“We can dim the pain a great deal, but this will still hurt. I’ll work as quickly as I can.” Josiah looked away and braced himself, biting his lip.
Elkan worked with sure strokes. Josiah felt the knife cutting, but it hurt far less than the arrow had. In a moment the barbed head was free.
Elkan set the shaft aside. “Now we can heal the damage. Hold on just a bit longer; the hardest part is over.”
Josiah nodded. He dared to look again at the wound. Golden radiance surrounded it, and it mended itself before his eyes. The sensation was warm and pleasurable. The last vestiges of pain evaporated as if they’d never been.
Wizard and familiar shifted their attention to his scalp. That arrow had only grazed him, laying open a long but shallow slice. Blood was everywhere, trickling annoyingly down Josiah’s neck and into his ears, but Elkan assured him the damage was only superficial. “It would take a lot more than that to damage your thick skull.” Elkan grinned wryly. “The scar won’t even show.”
Finished with Josiah, Elkan and Sar turned to the giant cat, who all this time had lain perfectly still and watched Elkan and Sar work with fascinated golden eyes. Josiah caressed it behind the ears. It whined softly, deep in its throat, and rolled to its side, exposing the arrow buried in its flank for Elkan’s inspection.
Josiah scooted around and sat cross-legged so the cat could lay its head in his lap. Sar briefly touched noses with it and blew gently.
The cat relaxed and closed its eyes. Josiah watched, intrigued. “Can Sar talk to him?”
Elkan went to the stream and washed his knife, rinsing it thoroughly until all traces of Josiah’s blood were gone. “Not really. Mother-touched animals can only speak with their own bondmate. But they manage to make themselves understood to each other well enough. Animals communicate mostly through body language anyway.” He returned to the cat’s side. Sar shifted around so Elkan could lean on him, leaving both hands free to work. He pulled the flesh tight as he made the neat incision. This arrow was lodged deeper than Josiah’s had been. But finally it was out, and the real work of healing could begin. Elkan set knife and arrow aside and spread both hands over the wound. A low, deep rumble started within the cat, strengthening until Josiah’s whole body vibrated with the purr.
The golden light dispersed. Elkan pushed his hair back from his face with the back of one bloody hand, breathing deeply. He patted the cat’s flank. “There you go, girl. Good as new.”
“Girl?” Josiah blurted. He glanced, blushing, at the appropriate part of the cat’s body. The cat rolled to her belly and gathered her legs underneath her. Her tongue lolled out of her wide mouth as she looked at Josiah, and he felt sure she was laughing at him.
“Yes.” Elkan took no notice of his discomfiture. “She’s young, probably not much more than a year old. Likely she was drawn to our presence but wary of entering the town. When we ventured into the woods, she sought us. But she could hardly ignore the prospect of a good meal when it crossed her path.” He finished washing in the stream and went to Thistle’s side. One of the watchers held her bridle. Her eyes were fixed on the cat, her body tense and trembling, but she quieted under Elkan’s touch and soothing words. Sar put his nose to hers and she calmed further.
Josiah looked apprehensively at the mountain cat. She was nearly as long as Thistle and could easily have brought her down if Josiah and the watchers hadn’t intervened. What was her normal prey? Deer and wild goats? Josiah had only ever heard a few vague and contradictory tales of the great cats of the mountains. He couldn’t really be afraid of her anymore, not with the way she leaned trustingly against him and rubbed her broad head against his hand, asking for petting. But she was huge, and probably hungry, and the evidence of what her claws could do was only now fading away under Elkan’s hand.
“Will it be safe, do you think, to have her with us? Can Sar communicate with her well enough so she won’t try to eat Thistle again?” He pictured the giant beast pacing by Elkan’s side, back to Admon’s house. “How will everyone react?” The watchers still eyed her warily, and more than one of them had a hand on bow or knife.
Elkan stroked the smooth expanse of Thistle’s flank. Only barely visible ripples in her fur showed where the slashes had been. He ran a hand through his hair and rubbed the back of his neck. “She’ll understand, I’m sure. It’s common for predators to be Mother-touched. Wolves, bears, wildcats—though I’ve never seen one as big as this. I’ve known many, and it’s never been a problem. But I don’t have much experience with them before they’re bonded…”
He took a deep breath. “The Mother brought us together. We’ll just have to deal with her as best we can. She’ll come with us back to Elathir.” Elkan led Thistle to the stream and washed the blood from her flank. “Josiah, take her downstream and clean the two of you up. It will take a while for Thistle to relax.”
Josiah complied. “Does she have a name, do you think?” It felt good to wash the sticky, drying blood from his hair. His tunic was a mess, bloodstained and rent. At least it was his old one. The arrow had pierced it not far from where his mother had mended the hole torn by the fulling stock, the day he first met Elkan.
“Naming is a human convention. Animals don’t generally use them among themselves. We can give her whatever name we wish; maybe you could think of a good one.” Elkan glanced at the sun, which was halfway down the sky, warm gold beams slanting through the branches. “Can I ask you to do something for me, Josiah? I know I can trust
you. Someone needs to take her back to Tathorlith, buy her some meat, get her settled.” He dug some coins from his belt pouch and pressed them into Josiah’s hand. “I should do it, people will be nervous if it’s just you with her, but it’s getting late, and if we don’t find Nirel before dark I’m afraid we’ll lose her trail. The moon’s nearly new, and a window’s little use if there’s no light to see by.”
“But Nirel’s right here.” Josiah looked around frantically, realizing that Nirel was not, in fact, among the cluster of watchers. When had he seen her last? He’d shoved her away from the mountain cat, just before the watchers started shooting…
“You saw her?” Elkan grabbed his shoulders. “Where? Why didn’t you tell us?”
“I thought the watchers had her. I caught up to her, and we were talking when the cat attacked. She doubled back and hid in a tree until you passed.”
“I know. We got to the place where she turned back. It was stupid of me not to have kept an eye on where she was in the present, but I thought she was still too far away.” Elkan sighed and beckoned Sar over. “One more time, Sar. How long has it been since the attack? Nearly an hour, I think.”
The golden glow was slow to form above his hand. The window picked up the events by the stream just as Elkan arrived. Josiah watched the arrows streak backwards to the watcher’s bows. He gulped as he saw the arrow wrench itself free of his own arm and retreat. Then he lurched backward from the cat toward Thistle, and back again to where Nirel stumbled into his shoving hands. If he hadn’t been so worried, it would have been funny.
The window focused on Nirel and switched to a forward progression. She staggered away from Josiah’s shove, staring terrified as the enormous cat swiped at the rearing donkey. At the sound of approaching hoofbeats and shouts she jerked around, then ducked into the underbrush, squeezing between densely packed branches and through tangled thickets. Once she was well away she returned to the the stream, splashing uphill through the shallow water. Time accelerated, showing her speeded-up progress, until the image grew hazy and began to break up. It slowed to show a last glimpse of her. She’d left the stream and was making her way though the trackless woods, continuing doggedly even though she drooped with weariness.
The Fuller's Apprentice (The Chronicles of Tevenar Book 1) Page 18