Accidental Sorceress (Hardstorm Saga Book 2)

by Dana Marton

  For a moment, broken pride flared in his gaze. But then he looked away from me and threw back the battered cloak that had been covering him. His leggings were so tattered and torn that I could see his skin right through them as if he wore nothing.

  His legs were twisted. They had been broken in several places and had healed badly.

  “Not only will I never be able to hold a sword again, but I cannot stand, let alone walk, my lady. I have dragged myself up here clinging to Tigran’s fur. The best tiger that ever lived. He is of Bloodstorm’s bloodline, did I tell you that?”

  He did not wait for my answer before saying, “I had two hands then, but the right one had been too badly damaged. It turned black soon after we reached the chapel. I had to cut it off with my own sword, then cauterize the wound.”

  I paled, trying to imagine.

  He gave a half smile. “I tried to think of what you would do.”

  “I could not have done that,” I admitted.

  He was silent for a moment. “I cannot cling to Tigran to go back down, not one-handed, and I cannot walk either.” He gave a frustrated grunt. “Unless you can carry me down on your back, I am to die in this chapel whenever the spirit lets me go at last.”

  I kept staring at his legs. No herbs could help something like that. But if I could not carry Lord Karnagh down the mountain on his back, he could carry me down, I reasoned.

  I laid my hands upon his left leg and closed my eyes, prayed to the spirits, then said, “I might know a way to heal this.”

  He pulled away. “I will not allow it.”

  I offered a weak smile. “You sound like Batumar.”

  “I have seen what healing during the siege did to you, my lady. I cannot let you take my pain upon yourself.”

  “I shall not die. You can help me down the mountain, and then I shall heal in Brooker’s cave.”

  He raised a white eyebrow. “Brooker’s cave? What happened to Brooker’s Castle?”

  And I told him.

  When I finished, he asked, “Enough warriors to take the castle back?”

  I nodded. “Then we could leave the common folk there, in the safety of the high walls. The main force of Emperor Drakhar’s army has moved on. He only has roving bands of warriors here and there. He might not even find out until spring that he has lost the castle.

  “By then, you, my lord, and Lord Brooker could move on with two hundred warriors to lift the siege from your own castle, Regnor. Then, joined with the warrior queen’s army that holds the last free city to the south, you could push the enemy back and back, until the whole of Seberon was regained.”

  Lord Karnagh nodded. “Once the kingdom is free, we could cut off supplies to the Emperor’s army.”

  “Yes.”

  He looked at me. “I shall confess, I had at times thought it strange that you were a healer and a concubine, but now I find even stranger that you are at heart a general.”

  I laughed at that. “I know precious little of war.”

  “Yet you brought a host of five hundred people to Lord Brooker. Through enemy land.”

  “Only because it had been willed so by the spirits.”

  He watched me, contemplating all we had said. “What do the spirits will now?”

  “That you return to your people.”

  He fell silent for a long time. Then he held my gaze. “You could make it so I could walk again?”

  “With the spirits’ help.”

  His eyes brightened but then clouded again after a moment. “I could still not hold a sword.”

  No. I could not grow bones. But I said, “I led a host of five hundred through a war-torn land without a sword.”

  And he laughed again, but once more, his merriment did not last long. “Is there not another way? Can you not help without harming yourself, my lady?”

  I shook my head. Yet an idea I did not much like, pushed into my head. “Maybe it could be accomplished differently,” I admitted.

  “How so?”

  “To set the bones right and heal them the proper way, I must soften them first, move them out of their bad positions. This takes much strength,” I said, with no small amount of reluctance.

  “That will weaken you.”

  I nodded.

  He watched me, and after a while, he understood. “But if the bones were rebroken, then you could save your strength for the healing itself. It would not be as dangerous for you, then.”

  I nodded again.

  “But still dangerous?”

  “Yes.” The knitting together of bones required much from a healer.

  We sat in silence.

  I pulled out my food sack and shared some food with him, hard biscuits and cheese, which he ate with haste. I suspected Tigran had fed him nothing but snow hares since they had come up the mountain.

  “You have a tiger,” he remarked.

  “I do not know how.” I shook my head. “My mother was a pureblood Shahala; my father…Barmorid,” I admitted. “A Kadar.” A well-known Kadar at that, the High Lord before Batumar.

  Lord Karnagh looked at me with much interest. “Barmorid was the son of a Kadar warlord by his Selorm concubine, if I remember right.” He thought some more. “One of those times when the Kadar came to our aid. Our people have traded favors for centuries. Barmorid returned home with payment in gold and a Selorm princess to strengthen the alliance.”

  I blinked.

  Lord Karnagh smiled, pleased. “We might be related. I would have to look it up in the annals of our people. If the enemy has not burned every scroll when they took our castles.”

  How strange that thought was, that I might yet have living family. I hid that small flicker of hope deep inside me. “But even Selorm women do not bond with tigers.”

  “You are no ordinary woman, my lady.” He fell back again into deep thought as we finished eating. “In this healing…I want no harm to come to you at all. And beyond that, I fear Batumar’s spirit will find me in a battlefield and slay me.”

  “I am a healer. I am supposed to heal.”

  “I am a warrior. I am supposed to die from deadly battle wounds,” he countered.

  “Not when a healer is readily available.”

  He scoffed. Glared. Then, “You will not die?”

  “I will not,” I promised. “Your people need you. My people need you,” I added quietly.

  And after a long while, he nodded.

  “I will need a moment.” I went to the doorway and lowered myself to my knees as I looked to the sky.

  Why would the spirits bring me here if not to heal Lord Karnagh? And if they brought me here for that purpose, then they would not withhold my healing powers from me. Since the battle at the ancient temple, I had healed only with herbs, but now a skill beyond herbs was needed.

  I thought of my mother until I had her face and voice and smell firmly in my mind. I let her kindness and love fill me, then I prayed and prayed. And I felt a flickering of my healing power awaken.

  I gave thanks to the spirits and went back inside.

  Lord Karnagh dragged himself to the steps that led to the altar.

  “Let us break the bones, then.” He stretched his legs out over the steps, then reached for a fallen block of stone with his one good arm.

  “Tigran,” he called out. “To hunt.”

  The great tiger looked at us, but then turned around and bounded out. Marga remained.

  “If I cry out, Tigran might think you are attacking me, my lady,” Lord Karnagh explained.

  He held the stone over his right leg, the bone bumpy, the muscles mangled already. He swallowed hard. “I do not know where to strike.”

  I selected some herbs from my belt and traded them for the stone. “Chew on those while I decide what needs to be done.”

  He shoved a handful of herbs into his mouth. He chewed, swallowed, chewed again. When I saw his eyes becoming cloudy, I hefted the stone suddenly. I broke his thigh bone first, without warning.

  He groaned.

&
nbsp; The stone came down again.

  Sweat rolled down both our faces.

  I moved over to the other leg, hesitated.

  But he growled, “Do it, my lady.”

  And I slammed the stone into his leg with all my strength.

  When, at long last, I could cast that stone aside and lay my hands on the broken bones, the pain that hit me was so fierce, I swayed. I could not stay kneeling next to him. I had to sit.

  Even with the badly healed fractures rebroken, I still had to do some softening. Pain flowed into me like a flooding river, washing away thoughts, our surroundings, whether it was night or day.

  I knew nothing but pain.

  And even as all that agony filled me, my strength flowed out. I had some of my healing spirit back, but not enough.

  Handhold by handhold, I took Lord Karnagh’s injuries upon me, knitting his bones and muscles. Healing the injuries once they were inside me was easier than in another body, but far more painful for me.

  I did not mind giving my strength. Batumar was gone. My unborn babe was gone. In my numb grief over Batumar, I had not felt the new life inside me that early. I would have felt it in a handful more days, I thought. But more days the babe had not been given.

  I wanted to go and be with them, the ones I lost but still loved. Lord Karnagh would be a better leader of troops than I, and I was certain that after freeing his own lands, he would hurry to my people’s aid. So I healed him.

  At that point, if Tigran returned and ripped me apart, it could not have hurt more; indeed, death would have been a welcome release from the pain.

  When the chapel began spinning around me, I fell back and closed my eyes. In my heart, I sang to the spirits. Or tried. For the first time, I could not think of the words. Too much pain filled my mind.

  The long climb up the frozen mountain had left me weakened. I had not eaten well since… I have overestimated my strength, I thought, even as darkness claimed me.

  When I woke, Marga stood over me, licking my face. Lord Karnagh peered at me with an anxious expression. He spoke, but I could not hear his words. Behind him, Tigran looked at me solemnly with the eyes of an ancient spirit.

  I could see the dark sky through the doorway. Night had come. I blinked. I had not felt the passage of time.

  My legs felt as if they had been chewed to shreds, even the bones—as if some wild beast had sucked out the marrow.

  My head spun. Darkness tried to claim me again. And I realized at last that I might not have enough strength to heal myself.

  “You must leave me,” I whispered to Lord Karnagh. “It is more important that you return.”

  He pushed to his feet, having to hang on to the altar for support, and scowled. “Not without you, my lady.”

  And then nothing but darkness again.

  The next time I woke, I lay across Lord Karnagh’s shoulders. The sky was light, and we were climbing down the mountain, his steps unsteady. I might have healed his bones, but he had to rebuild the strength in his muscles. He should not have been carrying me. But I did not have the strength to tell him this.

  The world fell away again.

  The next time I opened my eyes, I lay on Tigran’s back. After that, I woke on Marga, who walked with me most gently.

  Then I opened my eyes, and I was in a cave. Only for a moment, I thought we were back in the Beast Lords’ Chapel and I had imagined the whole journey down the mountain. But no, I could hear children. We were in Brooker’s cave. I was lying by the fire in the small chamber.

  Orz stood at the opening with his back to me, his sword unsheathed, growling in warning like a tiger.

  Beyond him, I spotted Tomron’s shape.

  “My lady?” Tomron called when he saw my eyes opened.

  Past him, the cave was nearly empty save for a handful of mothers and their children. Marga padded by Orz, ignoring his sword and growl, and came to lick my face, then lay down next to me.

  “My lady?” Tomron said again.

  “Orz. Please let him in.”

  Orz came and sat by my feet, letting his naked sword rest on his folded legs.

  Tomron carefully edged in and stayed far away from him, as if Orz had turned into a wild creature. I wondered what he had done while I had been sleeping.

  People stopped by the opening, stared at me, then moved on. But then more people came.

  “Why are they looking at me like that?”

  Tomron smiled, keeping a careful eye on the hollow. “They had heard of sorceresses, my lady. But few have ever seen one. And they had neither seen nor heard of a sorceress who could bring a man back from the dead.”

  “Lord Karnagh was very much alive when I found him,” I assured him weakly.

  But Tomron shook his head. “They all believe he had been but a spirit. You have gone up the mountain, through the forest of the wild tigers, to the Beast Lords’ Chapel, a place no man had dared approach in an age. And there you made a deal with the spirits for his return. You gave the spirits your strength for his life.”

  As even shaking my head was beyond me, I could only groan at such nonsense.

  “There are already songs being sung about your great deed around the campfires,” he said as if that was that. Once something had been sung in a song, it could not be refuted.

  “Will you live?” he asked after a while.

  Orz stilled, listening intently at my feet.

  I checked the pain. Better. I did not think the darkness would claim me again. I tried to move my legs. They shifted under the furs, although I did not feel it wise to test them yet with trying to stand. “I will.”

  “Good.” Tomron nodded solemnly, some of the furrows on his forehead smoothing out. “For the people believe you are a sorceress sent by the spirits to save the world.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  (Leader of the Free People)

  The fire burned low in Lord Brooker’s small cave chamber, but it filled the space with warmth. I lay on my bed of furs that protected me from the cold, hard cave floor, two more furs piled on top of me—the pelts of silver wolves.

  “More water, my lady?” a striking young woman asked, slim as a doe, graceful, her ebony hair a mass of curls, her eyes full of compassion.

  “Thank you.” I sat up and accepted the cup, and she went back to her cooking at the fire.

  Orz sat by my side, within reach. Marga was out hunting.

  I had been back from the Beast Lords’ Chapel for seven days.

  A few steps away, Lord Brooker, Lord Karnagh, and Tomron sat cross-legged, discussing strategy. They were talking about the secret tunnel that led inside Brooker’s Castle.

  “The opening of the tunnel is in a copper mine a day’s march from here,” Lord Brooker said. “If we leave the women and children, the old and the sick here, the fighting men could reach it even faster.”

  Tomron and Lord Karnagh glanced my way.

  Lord Karnagh said, “We cannot leave anyone behind unprotected,” at the same time as Tomron protested, with full respect. The other two were lords, Tomron but a captain.

  Next to me, Orz stiffened.

  “But if we leave part of the fighting force behind,” Lord Brooker responded, “we might not have enough strength left to retake the castle.” Then he added, “And if we all go, we will go more slowly. We might have to spend the night in the open.”

  At this, the men fell silent. The north wind blew outside. An icy chill ruled the cave everywhere but near the many fires. Out in the open, few could survive the long, dark night if we caught a hard freeze.

  “When?” Lord Brooker asked.

  Again, Tomron and Lord Karnagh looked at me.

  I sat up to prove my strength, then stood on shaky legs.

  “Three days hence,” Lord Karnagh said. “We bring nothing but our weapons, furs, and blankets.”

  Lord Brooker nodded. “And a day’s worth of food and water.” He looked toward the mass of people who filled every nook of the cave. “In the meanwhile, all able-bod
ied men must hunt, every time the weather allows it.”

  Then they discussed what would happen once they breached the castle, the position of guard posts, the location of the armory, what our men would have to take over first, all while the women and children, the old and the sick, kept hidden in the tunnel.

  Lord Karnagh came to me once their meeting ended. I had sat back down by then, and he sat next to me. “You had promised me that my healing would not damage you badly.”

  His voice was roughened, his eyes filled with worry.

  “I will recover.”

  “Why would you take such a risk?”

  How could I explain? “Have you ever heard the Shahala myth of our world’s creation, my lord?”

  He shook his head.

  “In the beginning, there was nothing,” I began. “And in this nothing, the Great Mother floated. To ease her loneliness, she gave birth to the planets and the stars. They floated from her body and scattered across the universe.”

  In my mind, I could hear my mother’s voice as she had told me this story many times over.

  I continued. “Tired she was from her labors and slept for the first time. And when she slept, she dreamed. She dreamed of plants and animals and people, nations and races. And when she woke, she saw that all she dreamed had come into being.”

  Lord Karnagh listened.

  “But as time passed,” I said, “all she created did not please her, for her creations lacked spirit. So like a mighty wind, she rose and swept through all there is. And all who breathed her gained spirit, until the last of her was gone into the last of her creations.”

  We sat in silence.

  At last, I said, “It is not that I do not know that overusing my healing spirit is harmful to my own body… I am not, on purpose, wasteful with the gift. But the Guardians think I am the one to end this war. Even if the last of my spirit has to go into my people and those I care for, those who can bring about the Emperor’s defeat… I would but fulfill my destiny.”

  He shook his head, lips pressed together.

  I held his gaze, willing him to understand. “If I die, but the world should live free, would that not be a victory?”

  * * *