Wanderers 4: A Tough Act to Follow (The Wanderers)

by Richard Bamberg

  Rowle laughed bitterly.

  “After refusing to make my grandsons Wanderers, the bitch took three of you in the last fifty years. Do you think she’s trying to make up from letting my grandsons die?”

  “I can’t really speak for Verðandi,” I said.

  Rowle waved a hand dismissively. “Of course you can’t. No one can speak for that madwoman. Anyway, that’s the story of my leaving Verðandi’s service. Can you blame me?”

  “Not for that,” I said. “But you also have killed a lot of good people who didn’t deserve to die any more than your grandsons.”

  “Nonsense, each of those who fought me would have killed me if they could. I was a violation of Verðandi’s decrees. Did she tell you that she set each of them in my path?”

  I blinked, twice, and frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  “Each Wanderer’s death at my hands is because they confronted me, not the other way around. I would not have sought them out to attack, even if they weren’t my offspring.”

  “But I was there when you killed, or your dragon killed, Walt. You confronted us, not the other way around.”

  “Nonsense. I was in an isolated place toying with a kraken, when you and Walt showed up and Walt called me out.”

  “That’s not exactly the way I remember it,” I said slowly.

  “Do you deny that you were there to answer a summons from Verðandi?”

  “No, I don’t, but–”

  “Don’t you see, Raphael? She sent you there knowing that there would be a fight and that Walt would be the loser in that fight. It’s always been her doing that has gotten the Wanderers killed.”

  “But you could have left without confronting Walt,” I argued.

  “Sure, I could have, but how would that have been any different than my two grandsons dying because they retreated? Verðandi plays all of us like pawns.”

  “Granted, but we still serve her,” I said.

  “How can you, considering all that she’s done?” He raised a hand to indicate Alex. “Even this boy’s dear mother would be alive today if Verðandi had told you soon enough. Isn’t that right?”

  I hesitated and glanced toward Alex. He was staring at me with a look that men reserve for sworn enemies.

  I turned away from him and back to Rowle. “What did you tell Alex?”

  “He didn’t tell me anything, he showed me,” Alex said flatly.

  “Showed?” Tess asked.

  “Showed me Rafe sticking a sword through my Mother’s chest.”

  I winced at his words and I had trouble breathing for a few moments before I could respond. “Alex, I had no choice.”

  “Because a shade had possessed her?” he asked.

  “Exactly.”

  “Then why didn’t you kill me? I was possessed too.”

  “Because he couldn’t kill his own son,” Tess snapped. “I wouldn’t let him.”

  For the first time, Alex seemed confused. “What? What are you talking about?”

  “Look in a mirror, Alex. You are the spitting image of Rafe. You’re his son. When faced with the prospect of killing you he came up with a way to get the shade out of you.”

  Alex stared from Tess to me. “If that’s true, then why did he have to kill Mom?”

  “Because I hadn’t figured out how to get the shade out of her.” I turned toward Rowle. “Didn’t you tell him that it’s damn near impossible to get a shade out of someone without killing them.”

  Rowle met my gaze and then shook his head. “No, I admit I left that part out. It surprised me to no end that you managed to get one out of him. I don’t know that any Wanderer has ever gotten a shade out of a living person.”

  Turning back to Alex I said, “You see. He was just showing you one side of the story. He wanted you to hate me for killing Laura. Alex, I would rather have fallen on my own sword rather than kill her. I loved her.”

  Through gritted teeth, Alex asked, “If you loved her why did you desert her before I was born?”

  “She never told me she was pregnant, Alex. I would have taken care of you both, even if I couldn’t stay. The night I left, she saw me using my powers and I made a mistake that she couldn’t forgive. She didn’t want to have anything else to do with me. She forced me away, Alex. I can’t blame her for what she did or for not telling me about you. She wouldn’t have known about you until after I left and with the way we left things, she had no way to get in touch with me.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” I repeated.

  “Why did you leave her? If you loved her so much, why did you leave?”

  “You know why, Alex. I’m a Wanderer; we always leave. But I had intended to take your mother with me. It was against everything I’d ever been taught, but that’s how much I loved her. I was about to tell her everything about me and beg her to come with me.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tess and Cris were each staring at me.

  “What stopped you?” Alex asked.

  “Before I could explain things, the business that Verðandi had sent me to take care of erupted through a portal. I had to get your mother to safety while I took care of it, but she freaked out when Beast transformed and wouldn’t listen to reason. The only thing I could think of to keep her safe was to put a compulsion on her to make her get on Beast and fly to safety.

  “When the danger passed and I dropped the compulsion, she hated that I had controlled her mind. Laura was always a strong willed woman. She wanted me to get out, to leave, and never come back. I could have put another compulsion on her to make her forget everything she’d seen and let me start over with her. But if she’d ever found out about that compulsion, she’d never have forgiven me. Rather, I erased her memory of me doing anything extraordinary and left her with the impression that while our time had been nice, it was just a summer fling. That she hadn’t really been in love with me as much as I had been in love with her.

  “I rode away and always regretted having to leave her, but it was the best for her. I just wished I’d known about you, I could have at least visited.” When I finished, I waited for Alex to make some statement, but he just stared at me. Confusion and conflicting emotions played across his face.

  Tess laid a hand on Alex’s thigh and he turned on her. “You knew all this?”

  She nodded. “Except for how they separated. Rafe never told me that part. But I was there, Alex, when your mother died. It’s as Rafe says. He hasn’t been the same since killing that shade. You can’t really think of it as being your mother any more. Once the shade had her body, she was basically gone already.”

  “But he got the shade out of me.”

  “Yes, he tried something he’d never tried before and it worked. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here. He saved your life, Alex.”

  Alex stood and went to the fireplace, standing with his back to the room, and not speaking.

  I felt a hand on my own thigh and turned to see Cris watching me. She was a therapist. Did she have some suggestion for how to handle this?

  As if reading my mind, Cris shook her head sadly.

  I started to turn back to Rowle, but Tess stood up and looked my way. I nodded and she went to stand beside Alex in front of the hearth.

  “Rowle, I still think Alex would be best off with me. He’s my family. He will still have to decide whether he remains a servant of Fate or goes off on his own when his training is done, but he should be given that opportunity.”

  “Didn’t I say I was willing to let him decide for himself when his training was done?”

  “Yes, but he’s my son. I never knew I had a son until a few months ago. You had children. You say you got to watch them grow up.”

  “Only from afar,” Rowle said.

  “I’ve not even had that. Come on, let him go with us.”

  Rowle looked at Alex. Tess was holding his hand and whispering something in his ear. “That’s his choice to make, Raphael. I won’t hold the boy against his will, but he is also my family.
Just as you are. Don’t you think I care about him?”

  I shook my head. “It’s not that, I do think you care about him, but is that enough? Tell me, Rowle. How come you never approached me when I was Walt’s apprentice? You could have told me about our relationship. It might have changed everything that’s happened for the last four decades.”

  “I considered it. I often thought of doing just that, but–” he abruptly broke off and clutched at his chest. Before I could react, he mouthed a spell and then I felt the power of a healing tat activate on his body.

  Cris leaned forward past me and stared at his pale face. “Are you all right, Rowle?”

  He massaged his chest and then nodded toward Cris. “Yes, lady. Thank you for your concern, but I’m afraid all my battles have caught up with me.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  Rowle set his glass down and opened the smoking jacket he wore. There, just above his heart, a small dowel of wood protruded from his chest.

  “Is that what I think it is?” I asked.

  Rowle nodded. “Yes, that Apprentice of yours will be the death of me yet.”

  I looked at the stub of Tess’s crossbow bolt, buried in Rowle’s chest, and wondered how he could be alive.

  Chapter 41

  therese

  With Alex’s hand in mine, I tried to forge a meshing, but he was being difficult.

  We stood in front of the enormous hearth, the heat from the fire felt warm against my face and on the exposed skin of my hands, but the rest of it was blocked by the spells Rafe and I had put on my leathers. I wasn’t sure how Alex was standing there without backing away, but I assumed it was just that Wanderers’ indifference to temperature.

  While I pushed Alex to mesh with me, the sound of conversation between the others died away and the only thing I could hear was my pulse in my ears. More minutes passed and then he opened his mind up and we gradually synced pulses and breath as our emotions, auras, and thoughts meshed. I could at last share his pain of losing his mother, feel the agonizing heartache of never seeing her again, and the anger of knowing Raphael had been the one that killed her.

  *Alex, please, I was there. Rafe did everything he could to save your Mom. He loved Laura. I think he would have died in her place if he could have.*

  *But he couldn’t think of how to save her, even though it was only minutes before he forced the shade out of me.*

  *That’s right and it has troubled him to no end since then. Our daily training requires daily meshing and I’ve felt how he was affected by not saving her. It’s been killing him. He’s not his usual jovial self except for those times when he’s busy and the memory isn’t in the front of his thoughts.*

  I felt the roiling turmoil of Alex’s emotions as his love for his mother was overshadowed by his hate for the one that killed her.

  *Alex, you know that Rafe may have held the sword that killed Laura, but it was the shade that actually killed her. Once it was in her, she was dead.*

  *And yet, I live. The shade did not kill me.*

  *Would you rather Rafe had killed you too?*

  For a moment, I wasn’t sure how he was going to respond. Then I felt him give an emotional shake of his head. *No, that wouldn’t have helped her and she wouldn’t like it if I talked like that.*

  I turned toward him and drew his face down to mine. We kissed, softly at first, but then I felt his hunger. Our emotions fed off of the other’s and our passion grew. My fingers tugged at his shirttail and then slid upwards across the bare skin of his back. His hands moved to the sides of my head and held me tightly as our kiss deepened and our desire flared.

  I heard a throat clearing and remembered where we were.

  The two of us broke the kiss simultaneously and sheepishly took a step backward from each other. Our pulses were pounding in both our ears and while I tried to maintain the meshing, Alex was not experienced enough to hold onto it once we separated.

  Breathing hard, I put my back to the fire and faced the others.

  Cris had a sly grin on her face and Rafe looked like he’d just finished rolling his eyes at me. Rowle, I couldn’t read. His face had a dispassionate air to it and I didn’t know him well enough to guess at his thoughts.

  “Ah, excuse us. We, ah…” Alex stammered.

  Rowle made a dismissive gesture with his right hand. “Don’t let our presence trouble you. You are both Wanderers, you needn’t concern yourselves with our approval. However, you may excuse yourselves if you feel you must.”

  I started to say something cocky, I think being around Rafe had worn off on me, when I noticed Rowle’s smoking jacket was open and that near the center of his chest was what looked like a wooden dowel, the same size as my crossbow shafts.

  I was struck speechless. The broadhead I’d shot him with, it was still lodged in his chest?

  He noticed my wild-eyed expression, made another dismissive gesture with his hand, and then pulled his jacket closed. “Don’t let this bother you. It was a great shot, even though I wished it were aimed at someone else. That was then and you had every right to shoot me.”

  He paused and chuckled mirthlessly. “If I’d known how that day was going to turn out, I think I would have been elsewhere.”

  What the hell do you say to someone who has your bolt stuck in his chest?

  “Ah, I…” I stopped, took a breath, and started again. “Can’t you remove it?”

  “I have tried, but the best I’ve been able to do is keep it from penetrating farther. I’ve seen the Amazons’ bolts, but I’ve never seen them like this. Their bolts are amazing and I don’t know just how they prepare their steel to make them magical enough to penetrate shields, but all of the ones I’ve seen either hit their target or not. They don’t keep trying for months.”

  “I don’t understand, Rowle,” Rafe said. “What do you mean?”

  Rowle indicated his chest. “This broadhead not only refuses to be withdrawn, but it keeps trying to slide deeper toward my heart. I have tried everything I could think of to remove it and it won’t budge. Any spell that I haven’t tried would have done more damage to me than the bolt already has, so I’ve resigned myself to just keeping it from moving deeper.”

  Rafe looked to me and then back to Rowle. “I don’t understand how that’s possible.”

  “Neither do I, Raphael. Neither do I. I had hoped that you might tell me what you did to this thing so that I’d have a chance of removing it once and for all. It is quite disappointing that you don’t know.”

  “Have you thought of just having it cut out?” Cris asked.

  Rowle turned to her. His eyes were soft, as though he were talking to a child. “I’ve considered it, Cris, however, a Wanderer resorting to a man with a knife to fix what’s wrong? It wouldn’t be seemly.”

  “That’s an odd attitude to take, considering you’ve already tried everything you can think of. Cris is right, you should see a surgeon,” Rafe said.

  Rowle shook his head. “No, if I’m going to have someone slice into my chest, it’ll have to be someone I trust.” He smiled ruefully at Rafe. “Like what your dear Laura did to you.”

  “What?” Alex exclaimed.

  We all turned to look at Alex. I had forgotten that no one had told him about the shade who possessed Laura stabbing Rafe with his own knife. I knew Rafe had told Cris and I guessed Rowle would find out about such things, but he hadn’t told Alex. Was it to keep him from having more sympathy toward his father?

  “Yes, Alex,” Rowle said. “I hadn’t really planned on telling you this soon, but while the shade had possession of your mother, it used Rafe’s trust of her to stab him with his own knife. If it hadn’t been for the heroic efforts of his apprentice, he never could have slain your mother because he would have been dead.”

  Alex looked from Rowle to me; he studied my face for a few seconds, and then turned his gaze on Rafe. “Is that true, Mom tried to kill you?”

  “Not tried and it wasn’t your mother. It was the shade th
at had taken her.”

  “What do you mean not tried?” Alex asked.

  “The shade did a thorough job of killing me, but it left without making sure I stayed dead. Tess and Beast got to me in time. They restarted my heart and got a healing spell on me to bring me back.” As Rafe finished, he looked toward me and even across the room, I could feel the wave of emotion coming from him. I gave him a half smile and felt moisture welling up in my eyes as I remembered how close I’d come to losing him before we’d really gotten to know each other.

  “I…I didn’t know,” Alex said.

  Cris put her arm around Rafe’s shoulder and held him tightly.

  “It wasn’t your mother, Alex. It was the thing that took her. Laura would never have hurt me anymore than I would have hurt her,” Rafe said.

  “And yet you killed her,” Alex said with much less of the anger he’d displayed earlier.

  “That wasn’t her. The malicious thing inside her had her trapped. She would have stayed that way, watching it use her body for despicable evil until her body died and the shade went back to its dimension. It’s the nature of a shade. My killing it kept it from hurting anyone else.”

  “I don’t remember anything of what happened while I was possessed,” Alex said.

  “I know, Alex. That night, while you and Tess slept, I cast a compulsion on you to make you forget everything about the shade. I thought it was the best thing for you.”

  “You screwed with my mind?” Alex said.

  “Only a little. I remembered how upset it had made Laura when I did it to protect her, but having the memories of that creature inside you would not have been pleasant. I thought I owed it to Laura to protect her son.”

  “The son of both of you,” Alex corrected.

  Rafe nodded. “That was only hours after I realized you were mine. I’m sorry, but I never knew.”

  My hand found Alex’s and our fingers interlaced.

  I tried to push a meshing on him, but he was too distracted to even notice my attempt.

  Rowle cleared his throat and rose to his feet. “Raphael, I fear that I tire more easily with Tess’s bolt in my chest.” He gave me a smile that was sad. “You should be proud of taking down a Wanderer. So many others tried and failed. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to retire for the evening.”