by Cindy Dees
Eben, a strong man and a skilled swordsman, dropped his opponent in under a minute. Will, using a staff, took less time to stagger his man, but longer to drop him. Sometimes he considered shifting to a long sword, or maybe an edged pike, but he’d grown up staff fighting, and it was by far his most comfortable weapon. And besides …
He incanted and gathered force damage, channeling it down his staff like a miniature lightning bolt at his foe. His opponent dropped to the ground, dying.
… he could do magic with his staff.
As a rule, Will tried not to kill his opponents. Not only did Raina squawk when he killed anyone, but Rosana didn’t like it either. For her, he usually refrained from using lethal force.
But these assailants were not usual. In addition to their terrible speed, they were highly skilled fighters and severely creeped him out.
A momentary lull fell around him and Eben with only their panting disturbing the quiet. The jann lifted a hand and signaled for silence, and Will held his breath. He tilted his head, listening, too.
“Over that way,” Will murmured. “Do you hear it?”
Eben nodded, and they took off running, bursting onto a pitched fight between several more of the silent men against Rynn and Sha’Li, with Rosana casting battle magic over their shoulders in between healing her friends.
Will and Eben plowed into the backs of the attackers. Once surrounded, the silent men fell into disarray and went down quickly enough.
“Any sign of Kendrick?” Rynn asked, impressively not out of breath.
“Hush, everyone,” Eben ordered.
They froze for a moment, and simultaneously, Sha’Li and Rynn pointed in the same direction. The group took off running again, stretching out into a line as the fastest pulled ahead and the slowest fell back.
They ran into two more pairs of the silent humans, who seemed more interested in retreating than fighting, a change in tactics for them. Steadily, the silent men led them in a concerted direction. Will couldn’t tell if they led the party toward some ambush or away from something else entirely. The silent men would engage a little, then fall back, engage for a few seconds, then fall back.
After defeating one such frustrating retreat, Rosana asked worriedly, “Where could Kendrick be? In his boar form, he’s faster than all of us.”
Will hadn’t paid a lot of attention to where they had gone in the running combat, and he looked around in the tangle of black tree limbs and dark shadows in confusion. “I have no idea where we are, let alone where he is.”
Rynn commented, “I think we’ve more or less traveled in a big circle.”
Rosana asked worriedly, “Any sign or sound of Kendrick?”
Everyone shook their heads.
It took Rynn a while to find elfsign carved on a tree beside a narrow trail they stumbled across and for him to decipher its worn runes in the dark. Will cast a bit of his remaining magic to make a light spell that danced at the ends of his fingertips for a few minutes—long enough for Rynn to figure out where they were and which direction they needed to go to return to their camp.
It took another ten minutes or so to trudge along in a single-file line on the path, which looked like little more than a deer trail, before Will spotted a speck of light through the trees, low to the ground and flickering. Their campfire.
Relieved, he followed Rynn until the paxan stopped abruptly, and Will nearly plowed into him. “What the—”
Rynn cut him off with a sharp hand gesture, but the damage was done. The small figure crouching next to the fire looked up in alarm.
Will took in the scene in dismay. Kerryl sprawled unconscious or dead beside the fire. Another figure lay barely visible on the other side of the fire on the ground, and a little girl was kneeling beside that person. In each of her hands, a tiny brazier rested, with flames rising out of each. Red flames from her right hand and misty gray flames from her left hand. A faint nimbus of magical energy surrounded her like glowing fog.
She stood up. The fog detached from whoever lay on the ground and whooshed into the little girl all at once. She inhaled a deep, delighted breath.
“Too late!” she cried out in a high, musical voice. “I got what I came for.” She scampered away from them, beyond the circle of bedrolls, dodging and jumping so lightly between and over the fallen stones it was as if her body had no weight.
Will spied the membranous glow of a planar gate between the pair of boulders he’d examined earlier. The gate was fluctuating, opening and closing like a spasming sphincter. He darted toward the girl to stop her, to ask who she was and demand to know where the gate had come from, but even as he jumped toward it and her, the gate blinked out of existence with a crash of sound and a blast of magical force that knocked him backward off his feet.
He slammed to the ground hard. He rolled and painfully pressed himself upright, aching from head to foot. Tonight, he could have used a good dose of Raina’s healing.
“Will!” Rosana cried out.
He turned quickly, his staff coming up defensively. Rynn was on his knees beside a naked man, who was beginning to moan in terrible agony. A movement in the long grass behind Rynn made Will cry out and jump forward to cover the paxan’s back. But it was another downed man, beginning to groan and regain consciousness. This time, it was Eben.
Will knelt beside the jann, helping him sit upright. “Are you okay? What happened?”
“Got jumped. Hit over the head and knocked out.” He rubbed his skull and then cried out suddenly, “Kendrick! Is he all right? Something attacked him and Kerryl.”
“Kendrick’s in human form and making noise, so he lives. I don’t know about Kerryl.”
Will called, “Rosie, could you check Kerryl and make sure he lives?”
The gypsy darted forward and commenced performing first aid on the nature guardian. In a few seconds, she announced, “He has sustained more injuries. I’ve given him the last of my healing, and it’s enough to stabilize him overnight and keep him alive, but I’m going to need help sewing shut a nasty cut on his thigh and bandaging his other wounds.”
“I’ll help,” Rynn offered.
Will gnashed his teeth. It seemed like that cursed paxan was always hovering around Rosie these days, jumping to help her lift a heavy basket or taking her pack from her when she got tired on the road. Even tonight, he’d stayed in front of Rosie like he was her personal bodyguard.
“I’ll help her with Kerryl,” Will growled, shouldering past the paxan. Will hadn’t the slightest bit of first-aid training, but he’d be cursed if he let Rynn rub shoulders with her and work forehead to forehead over the patient, trading smiles and whispers.
“Are you all right?” Rosana murmured as he dropped to his knees at Kerryl’s side. “You seem tense.” That was Rosana-speak for he was being a jerk and she was trying not to be a nag about it.
“I’m fine!” he snapped. “What do I do?”
“Hold up a torch for me so I can see to sew this wound closed.”
He grimaced and looked away in distaste as Rosana commenced sewing the nature guardian’s flesh like it was cloth, poking a needle through it and drawing the edges of the long cut together.
He must have made some sound of revulsion, because Rosana asked, grinning, “How can you be squeamish? You’re the fighter who makes these messes we healers have to deal with.”
He didn’t mind seeing blood or guts in the heat of battle, but this was disgusting. “I don’t generally slow down to study the results of my handiwork. I drop ’em and move on.”
“Welcome to my world, cleaning up after the likes of you.”
“You’re starting to sound like Raina.”
Rosana shrugged. “I considered going White Heart, but the high matriarch said I have too big a temper and would get in trouble.”
Will grinned. “Wise woman.”
Rosana stuck her tongue out at him and commenced wrapping a cloth bandage around a gash on Kerryl’s arm.
Eventually, everyone’s cut
s and bruises were salved or bandaged as required. Sha’Li gathered all of Kerryl and Kendrick’s gear and laid out their bedrolls for them. Kerryl fell asleep immediately and heavily, but Kendrick twitched and thrashed as if captured in the throes of some terrible nightmare.
Although it privately galled Will, he made no protest when Rosana finally asked Rynn to do a mind touch on Kendrick and make sure their friend was all right.
The paxan knelt beside the human. He touched Kendrick’s temple for no more than a second before he drew back his fingers sharply. Cautiously, he touched Kendrick’s face again, this time murmuring something under his breath, almost like a magic spell.
Kendrick’s eyes fluttered open. Will had never seen such anguish in anyone’s expression. Kendrick threw back his head and let out a keening cry of grief that hurt to even hear.
Rosana rushed over to him, and even Sha’Li took a step toward Kendrick.
Eben cried, “What is amiss, brother?”
“It’s gone! My gift is no more!” Kendrick wailed.
Everyone stared at him, but it was Will who muttered, “We’d better wake Kerryl.”
The nature guardian was nearly as distraught as Kendrick, and the pair huddled together, alternately grieving and ranting.
For his part, Eben seemed thrilled. He’d long wanted Kendrick to leave Kerryl and get rid of his were-curse. After Sha’Li and Raina, with help from a unicorn, had successfully rid Hyland’s scout, Tarryn, of the were-curse last fall, Eben had been fretting about how to convince Kendrick to do the same.
Will understood Kendrick’s position, though. He knew how conflicted he would be if someone took Bloodroot from him. He’d lived with the spirit for so long that it was almost a part of him and he a part of it. It would feel like part of him had been amputated if someone took away the tree lord.
Speaking of which, “Who was that child earlier?” he asked no one in particular.
Rynn and Eben both whipped around to stare at him. “What child?” they demanded in unison.
“The one who was kneeling over Kendrick before. As soon as she saw me, she ran away and left through a planar gate of some kind.”
The others stared at him as if he’d grown a second head. Hadn’t they seen her? It dawned on him that he must have outpaced the others by a good bit in running back to the clearing. He’d have been the only one to see her, then.
“Why didn’t you mention this before?” Rosana asked.
“It didn’t come up. We’ve been busy getting everyone stabilized and patched up. This is the first time I’ve stopped to think about it, and I assumed everyone had seen her.”
Rynn said, “It must have been the child from the dream plane. Vesper. How did she take Kendrick’s power?”
Will answered, “It looked like she was performing some sort of magic ritual. She held two small, hand-sized braziers with flames in each. A fog of some kind hung between her and Kendrick. When she fled, the fog followed her and disappeared into her.”
Rynn sucked in a sharp breath. “Do you have any idea what it means if she’s found a way to come to this plane, even temporarily? Stars, the power she’ll have if she has managed to absorb Kendrick’s were-curse into herself.” It was the most distraught Will had ever seen Rynn. The paxan paced round and round the fire, muttering to himself about the repercussions of this disaster.
After a while, Eben finally stood up, blocking Rynn’s agitated path. “Be at ease, friend. Vesper’s on our side.”
Rynn made a sound of incredulity.
Eben argued, “She kept her word and helped us fix Kendrick, didn’t she?”
“I didn’t want to be fixed!” Kendrick exclaimed.
“Nonetheless, brother, she promised to help me fix you, and she did. What’s wrong with that?”
“How do I get it back?” Kendrick interrupted. “Make her help us with that.”
“You won’t get your curse back. Not from her,” Rynn interjected.
Eben retorted hotly, “You always see the worst in people, Rynn!”
The paxan snorted. “And you are naïve to a fault, Eben. It’s high time you grew up and saw the world as it really is. Vesper is dangerous. She’s more powerful than all of us combined, and we do not know what she schemes at. One thing I do know—she did not take Kendrick’s curse out of the goodness of her heart. And although I don’t know the whole reason why she took that specifically, she unquestionably made herself stronger in the process.”
Kerryl offered, “I know why she took it.”
They all looked at him expectantly.
CHAPTER
18
Raina, no stranger to dryads and their effect on men, leaped forward to speak for the four men with her. “Well met, Lady Callisia. We are friends of Rowan. She gave us a wand from her own tree to use if we ever got into trouble.”
Kadir muttered from behind her, “How did you know what it was and where it came from?”
Gawaine had recognized the wand in one of her dreaming visits to him and regaled her with hilarious tales of Rowan and her fellow dryads bringing low great, tough male warriors who thought themselves immune to the charms of mere forest sprites.
Raina explained, “We just escaped someone who was trying to kill us and used the wand rather haphazardly. Can you tell us where we are, exactly?”
“I’ve heard your kind call this place the Machaira.”
Raina stared at the dryad. The wand had taken them from Alchizzadon, which she believed to be somewhere to the south and west of the Sorrow Wold, all the way to the northern shore of the Estarran Sea? It was going to take her months to make her way back to the Sorrow Wold. Worse, she’d left it with her friends that, if she had not returned from Alchizzadon in a few days, they should continue on without her. How she would find them now, she had no idea.
In the meantime, she had a dryad to make nice with. Raina knew from previous experience with them that the forest creatures were partial to men and could get very touchy with human females who said the wrong thing.
“You’ve been kind enough to introduce yourself, Lady Callisia, and we should do the same,” Raina said courteously. “My name is Raina, and I’m a healer. This gentleman is Proctor Kadir. He’s a very important mage and the keeper of the Wand of Rowan. This is my longtime friend and also a mage, Justin Morland. This elf is Cicero, a kindari warrior. And this gentleman”—she gestured at the bearded, filthy, alleged Royal Order of the Heart member in rags—“is…”
She didn’t actually know the prisoner’s name.
He bowed gracefully, surprising Raina. He was a big, burly man, every bit as large in stature as Kadir, and spoke in a deep, mellifluous voice. “Sir Lakanos of the Fen, Knight of the Royal Order of the Sun, at your service, my lady.”
A knight? Raina was shocked speechless. Everyone stared at him, and he fingered his beard ruefully.
“You are Royal Order of the Sun?” Kadir exclaimed. “How on Urth did you manage to gain entrance to the mages’ tower?”
The knight, Sir Lakanos, shrugged. “I was taken there as a prisoner and being held until someone got around to stealing my spirit or killing me, I expect.”
Raina wondered if there wasn’t more to the story than that. How had he known the mages existed or crossed paths with them in the first place? Was he some sort of spy, put there by Lord Justinius? Or had it really been sheer luck that placed him in the tower when she’d arrived? Knowing Justinius, he’d engineered his knight’s capture to make sure Raina had his order’s protection while she was there or had known Lakanos was already there. It would explain why the Royal Order of the Sun had agreed to let her visit Alchizzadon without a knight escort in the first place.
Lakanos was speaking again. “Then you came to the tower, Emissary, and my duty required me to protect you. I am only sorry I did not realize Elfonse and his cronies would move so quickly to destroy you, else I would have found a way to stay closer to you.”
“You got there in time to help us escape alive, sir knight
. You were close enough. And thanks be for that,” Raina said gratefully.
Callisia purred a little as she sidled up to Lakanos. “You need a bath. And a shave. But you’re pretty underneath all that dirt and hair.”
“I would not say no to a bath,” Lakanos said politely. “But I beg of you, please do not test my willpower. In the hands of one as beautiful as you, I would be as helpless as a babe.”
Callisia giggled in the musical tones Raina remembered all too well from two years ago. Without Will present—he was immune to the charms of dryads, much to their chagrin—it would fall to her to rescue her male companions should the dryad get a notion to play games with any of them.
Raina looked around the beautiful and otherworldly grove in which they stood. “I have a pouch full of tasty herbs. I would be delighted to cook something wonderful for you to show our gratitude for your kindness, Lady Callisia.”
The dryad trailed delicate fingers down Raina’s cheek. “I like you, human Rain child. You may cook while I see to these delicious men.”
As Raina had expected. If she offered to play servant and stay out of the way, the dryad wouldn’t bother her. She asked politely after a kettle, and another dryad appeared from behind a large tree, pot in hand. Some sort of vegetable broth was already inside it, and Raina gave it an experimental taste. It was cold and bland, both of which she could remedy.
With the new dryad’s help, she had a fire going in a few minutes and the broth seasoned. Raina sat down by the fire to contemplate her next move. And that was when she became aware of the voices in her head forming words just beyond her understanding. She’d heard them like this when her magics were just coming into their own. Gawaine told her they were echoes of spirits tied to Haelos, from whom she drew her magical energy.
She performed the technique Gawaine had shown her to quiet the voices. Except tonight, it did the opposite. A flood of many different emotions, all jumbled together, rolled over her. She got the distinct impression the emotions belonged to the disembodied spirits chattering in her head. So overwhelmed was she that a tear slipped down her cheek, startling her. Raina swatted it away impatiently.