by Cindy Dees
Raina had grown up assuming that, because they lived so close to the land, the spirits of the common peasants would somehow be strengthened by the link. But, she was surprised to discover that the exact opposite was apparently the case. It was not the land that drained them, but rather their families. It was as if a piece of both Arv’s and Mag’s spirits had left them and entered each of their surviving children. Raina wondered in between lifting, carrying, cooking, and cleaning if this phenomenon explained why common people so often failed to resurrect.
As interesting and exhausting as sampling the life of peasants was, Raina’s thoughts were mostly elsewhere. Her initial fury had dimmed, leaving behind a vague sense of guilt. Her mother’s rage at being disobeyed aside, Charlotte must be worried sick about her. And Raina had no doubt her father was furious. He was an intelligent man, and based on her comments to him just before Kadir had shown up at the barn, he would figure out that he’d been tricked by Charlotte and the mages. Her mother would have some explaining to do, and Raina wasn’t the least bit sympathetic. Her mother deserved to answer for her actions.
Raina only felt bad that her father would be hurt and angry at being deceived. He would blame himself for her flight as well. He was responsible for the security of the castle and all those within it. Knowing his rigid knight’s sense of honor, she realized he would deem himself to have failed her. And Justin, so much like her father in temperament, would react the exact same way.
Ahh, Justin. The mere thought of him was enough to bring tears to her eyes. They had been inseparable for nearly their entire lives. Although their duties had pulled them more apart in recent years, she’d always known he was close by, always ready to take care of her, to make her laugh or make her hurts go away. Being away from him like this felt as if part of her had been torn out, leaving a gaping wound that would not heal. When the fire had burned low and Mag, Arv, and the children lay snoring in their blankets, she had allowed herself to cry for him, sobbing silently into the crook of her elbow.
He would be distraught that he hadn’t taken her seriously when she came to him for help. He would kick himself for not following her, for not stopping her from running away or at least making her take him with her. Reluctantly, she admitted to herself that maybe a tiny part of her feelings of anger and betrayal was aimed at him for those very reasons.
She tried through the next day to make suggestions here and there to ease her hosts’ lot—a clever way to rig the well with pulleys to make hauling up buckets of water easier, a simple bellows to help start and stoke fires, hinging the hook in the side of the fireplace to swing heavy kettles of hot stew or boiling water more safely off the fire.
When he wasn’t out hunting and bringing back a brace of rabbits or quail for supper, Cicero spent his time building furniture for the family. A real table and benches to go with it, and a clever rocking chair made of willow branches he soaked in water, bent into place, and then lashed into shape.
Raina figured out how much magic it took to heal a goat versus a cow, and how much to mend a child’s cut finger. And she gained a deep respect for the dogged determination of these common people to simply survive. She’d had no idea how truly privileged a life she’d led before.
Grit lodged under her fingernails, she braided her hair to keep its greasy locks out of her sunburned face, and her white dress had faded to dull gray with ground-in dust and sweat. She was going to dream this night of a hot bath in a real bathtub.
But she got no chance. Only a few minutes after the household had settled down for the night, Cicero’s low, charged voice came out of the hovel’s darkness. “Someone approaches.”
In the glow of the banked fire, Raina spied him gliding to the door, sword in hand. Arv joined him in a moment carrying a wicked-looking axe.
“Douse the fire,” Cicero ordered.
Raina was the closest adult to the fireplace and she jumped up with alacrity to throw the bucket of water on the embers. A great, hissing cloud of steam rose up.
Mag gathered the children in a huddle in the corner and shushed their frightened whispers.
“They draw near,” Cicero reported under his breath. “Ready yourself, Arv.”
In the expectant silence, Raina finally heard what had alarmed her companion. Stomping feet, jingling armor, and the confident rattle of weapons. Lots of them. It sounded like a large party jogging in formation. A rhythmic grunting accompanied the pounding footsteps. “Huh … huh … huh … huh.”
Those are not humans incoming. Covering her hands with her cloak, she drew magical energy to herself. She only knew healing spells, but she could keep Cicero and Arv alive in the doorway for a while, mayhap. She’d heard her father refer to the usefulness of backpack healers in combat before. A vague plan of standing at Cicero’s and Arv’s backs with a hand on each of them and pumping healing into them as they fought took shape in her head.
She crept in the blackness from her place by the fire over to join the men. She mostly felt Cicero’s nod of acceptance of her unspoken offer to help.
The attackers were coming from the south moving fast to the north. It sounded as if they had just topped the rise a hundred yards or so beyond the hut. Not following a road then, but rather traveling like an arrow over whatever terrain presented itself.
“Huh … Huh … Huh … Huh.” The grunts grew distinct enough she could almost smell the fetid heat coming out of inhuman throats.
“Orcs,” Arv breathed.
Cicero spared the crofter a momentary, appalled stare and then went back to concentrating fiercely on the door and what his ears were telling him. “At least twenty of them,” he whispered.
“Huh. Huh. Huh. Huh.”
The sound became almost painful it was so loud and close. Cicero and Arv braced themselves for the assault, and in her terror Raina drew massive magical energy to herself, more than she’d ever pulled before. Much more. She even registered pulling spiritual energy to herself from each of the people in the hut, now.
“Huh … Huh … Huh … Huh.” The grunts were not quite as loud as they had been a moment ago.
“Huh … huh … huh … huh.” The orcs were definitely drawing away from the hut.
Arv and Cicero traded perplexed looks. Cicero murmured, “Do orcs often pass by crofters’ huts without attacking?”
“Not as I’ve ever ’eard.”
“Unbar the door. Let me out,” Cicero bit out.
Arv wrestled the heavy bar from its iron sockets on either side of the door. Before the hefty oak had barely cleared the holders, Cicero had slipped outside and, as quiet and insubstantial as a shadow, disappeared into the night after the retreating orcs.
Raina helped Arv re-bar the door, and the family went to bed once more. This night they would risk no fire and sleep in a cold hut. She stretched out under Moto’s cloak on a straw mat on the floor like everyone else. It made her hip bones and shoulders ache, but she didn’t complain. These people had a hard life and teetered perpetually on the ragged edge of starvation or death. That reality was more starkly clear than ever to Raina after their near miss with the orcs. Sleep was slow in coming, and when she dreamed it was not of baths but of bloody battles.
A long, low moan drew her from her exhausted slumber some time later, however. The sound was unmistakable. Mag’s babe is coming.
A deep chill hung in the air. Arv was already rolling off his and Mag’s pallet. He moved to the fireplace and Raina heard him laying a fire by feel in the dark. He gave the new bellows Cicero had fashioned a few pumps, and a tiny flame jumped among the tinder.
“When you’ve got that going, boil me a pot of water,” Raina directed him. “Everything that touches Mag or the babe must be dipped in the boiling water to banish diseases upon it. Every towel. Every rag. Understood?”
Arv nodded.
The labor was quick, for Mag had already birthed many children. The babe, a fat boy, came feetfirst and squalled his way into the world lustily. But Raina worried about Mag. She’d fel
t the moment when a portion of Mag’s flagging spirit passed into the child, and the women had not much more within her to give. A certain hopelessness passed from mother to child in that moment as well, linked spirit to spirit. It was a knowing sunk into the bones, planted firmly within their spirits, that aspiration for any more than this pitiful lot in life was futile.
The afterbirth did not pass quickly; and when it finally did, it was torn and incomplete. Mag continued to bleed as well.
Arv peered over Raina’s shoulder at the seepage. “Ye oughter pack the birth canal wit’ sawdust and mud. ’Twill set up hard like mortar and cork the bleeding.”
Raina snorted. “And introduce infection and kill her.”
Although she knew Arv’s crude remedy wouldn’t work, she worried that Mag was too weakened by the birth to withstand the stress of magical healing. It had been known to send certain people into shock and even death. Her teaching in birth magic was that women had to rest and recuperate for at least a full day before they could stand magical healing, Her instructors thought it had something to do with the mother giving a piece of her spirit to the babe at the time of birth. Until that portion of the mother’s spirit recovered, magic was dangerous.
Over the next few hours, Mag weakened and grew pale. Before Raina’s eyes, the woman was slipping away. And there wasn’t a thing Raina could do about it. Helpless frustration burned in her gut. Mag smiled wanly and told her not to worry, but Raina knew better. She felt the woman’s spirit slipping away inch by inch when it should be coming back.
With dawn’s pale light came no sign of Cicero. Worry for his safety jarred against her confidence in his skill at avoiding detection.
Raina sent the children to a neighbor’s croft to share the news of the passing orcs and the birth of their brother—and to get them out of the hut before their mother died in front of them. For Mag could not last much longer. Arv paced and drank the local rotgut until he was a blubbering mess. Raina finally tossed him out as well with orders to drink himself into a stupor in the barn.
By midmorning, Mag lost consciousness and her heartbeat became so faint that Raina could barely hear it, even when she pressed her ear directly on the woman’s chest. Frantic with her inability to help, Raina crouched beside the woman, her fingers pressed against the life pulse in Mag’s throat.
And then it stopped.
Raina felt about urgently. Checked the life point in Mag’s wrist. Listened to her chest. Put her hand over Mag’s mouth to feel for breath. Nothing.
Stars above! Mag had died. She couldn’t let her slip away like this! Her children needed her! Mag’s spirit could not possibly be strong enough to make the journey to Dupree, resurrect there, and come back. Her permanent death would be disastrous for this family, the very thing Arv was desperate to avoid by asking Raina to stay for this birth.
She had to do something!
There might be a way.…
A very high-level magic cast by powerful healers …
Did she dare try it?
She’d never cast the spell.…
But she’d studied a scroll describing it and she’d seen it cast. Had memorized the incant …
… and Mag was already dead.
She had nothing to lose by trying.
* * *
Gabrielle breathed a sigh of relief as she stepped outside. The Imperial gardens were as grandiose as the rest of the palace, but at least out here there were trees and blue sky and the freedom of crisp mountain air moving in and out of her lungs. An urge to cast off her confining clothes and dance barefoot upon the greensward surged through her.
The Garden of Nations—which contained a plot for each of the kingdoms of Koth with native plants and laid out in the fashion of that country’s culture—called to her. Haraland’s garden never failed to relax her with its grassy walkways between fragrant lilacs and magnificent rose beds. But for some reason, today her steps took her to a part of the garden she’d never seen before.
Out here, away from the oppressive presence of the Emperor, she allowed the resentment she usually held at bay to surge forward. Most of her life had been spent navigating kings and courts and politics with grace and finesse. But nothing could have prepared her for the Emperor and the intrigue-laden morass with which he surrounded himself. It was almost as if he encouraged the maneuvering and backstabbing as a way of keeping his subjects occupied and distracted.
Her greatest blessing was Regalo. He was kind and loyal and loving. He wanted children, but she was loathe to bring any child into the world to grow into a pawn under the Emperor’s heavy hand. Regalo told her she must have faith and take a chance on their children finding happiness. Mayhap if they went back to Haraland for a while … Then she might consider taking the risk of bearing a child.
In a tiny act of rebellion against the Empire, she did give in to her urge to dance in the emperor’s garden. Although she left most of her clothes on. How long she cavorted like a young girl she could not say. Until she was out of breath and her hair was coming out of its pins.
She looked around, panting, and was startled to realize she had no idea where she was. It looked like a natural forest thick with trees and underbrush. Only thin streaks of sunlight wended through the greenery, creating a mysterious atmosphere. She thought she saw a large, cloaked figure retreating rapidly, bat-like, around a bend in the path, but it was no doubt just a trick of the shadows.
How did she come to be here? She looked around in distress. With her breathing problems, she dared not stray too far from the palace and its healers.
“Your Highness. How dost thee fare this fine day?”
She looked up sharply and saw another figure approaching quickly from the other direction. This one was not furtive and shadowed, however. Quite the opposite. He was dressed in a shining white shirt of satin that seemed to glow in the forest glade. He passed by her guard, who nodded in recognition and let the newcomer pass.
A shockingly handsome elf came to a halt and executed a short bow before her. He was kindari, with russet hair the color of oak leaves in autumn. His face was covered by a finely drawn scrollwork of red-brown lines reminiscent of a darvan. The stag’s antler’s swirled around his eyes and across his forehead. She had seen him at court before, and his blazon, embroidered over his heart, was of a magnificent stag. As always, when she looked at an elf she had seen long ago she got the impression of time standing still for him while she aged doubly fast.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured courteously, “I do not believe we have been introduced.”
“A grievous oversight on my part,” the elf replied with a smile so dazzling she actually felt a bit befuddled. “I am Talissar.”
Ahh. She knew the name. He was consort to the Queen of Quantaine. His good looks and charm were gossiped about frequently at court. Queen Lyssandra, a silvani—high elf—was said to keep him at home in Quantaine most of the time for fear that he would be stolen away from her at court. Now and again, rumor linked Talissar with Princess Endellian herself. Gabrielle could see why the heir to the throne might favor this one. He was exquisite.
Belatedly, she realized she was staring at the fellow. “I apologize for staring, good sir. You are as beautiful as the court gossips say. You must get tired of people ogling you.”
His smile softened. Took on a genuine warmth. “My humble thanks. That is the kindest compliment I have heard in a long while.”
“Well, you are in the Imperial Seat, after all,” she replied dryly, the implication clear that kindness was not a sentiment oft practiced there.
He laughed, the sound of his humor as warm as a carillon of chiming bells. My, my. No wonder Queen Lyssandra had made him her official companion.
“Beist thee well, Your Highness?” he asked her in thinly disguised concern.
Startled, she replied, “Why, yes. I am fine. Thank you for asking.” Was some rumor afoot that she was ill? It was a strange question for a stranger to ask. “Walk with me?” she invited politely.
&
nbsp; He held out his left forearm formally to her. “My pleasure.”
She laid her fingers lightly upon his embroidered shirtsleeve. The fabric was impossibly smooth under her fingertips. He surprised her by plunging deeper into the trees along a narrow path that did not look as if it had been tended in a while.
“What is this place?” she asked curiously.
“We wander a portion of the Quantainian garden. If such natural woods makest thee uncomfortable, we shall return forthwith to the rose gardens of Haraland,” he declared.
She glanced over her shoulder at her bodyguard trailing along a few paces back. “This glade is pretty. I am merely surprised and not discomfited. I confess, I have never seen this part of the garden.”
He asked cautiously, “Thee hast never strolled aimlessly and looked up to find thyself here before, then?”
Odd. That was exactly how it had happened today. “No, never.”
“Camest thee here alone?”
“If you do not count my guard, that would be correct.”
He frowned. “Hmm.”
“What is amiss, Lord Talissar?”
He shook his head as if to clear an absurd notion from it. “Thee hadst about thyself the look of a person operating under…”—he hesitated and then plunged ahead, “… “a subliminal compulsion. Thee hast never been alone in the company of a Kothite High Lord, perchance?”
She would never put herself in such a compromising situation! She was a married woman. A queen. Devoted to her husband. “I would never dally with anyone at court!” she exclaimed, offended.
He held up his hands in apology. “I in no way meant to offend nor to impugn thine honor, Your Highness. One hast but to spend but a few moments in the presence of thee and thy husband to know thee wouldst never betray him.”
“Then why the questions?” she pressed. It was entirely incongruous of this sophisticated man to bring up such unpleasant innuendos randomly.