FIERCE: Sixteen Authors of Fantasy

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Hello, my girl!” she called in her musical voice. “I promised your aunt clean bedsheets tonight, and her supper’s ready. Just give me a minute?” She went to the stove and piled food onto a plate, then disappeared into the hallway.

  I turned on my heel and jogged back to the cart, lifted the eagle as gently as I could, and carried it up the narrow back staircase to my rooms, taking the stairs sideways so as not to nudge the dangling wing with my knees. I bumped the wall with my shoulder and a section of wood panels popped open, startling me. The building was full of those hidden closets. Useful for children’s games and for storing spare bedding, but inconvenient now. Still, no one would miss those blankets if I made a mess of one. I shifted the eagle’s weight to one arm and grabbed an old quilt, pushed the door shut with my elbow, and continued up the stairs. The eagle twitched, then relaxed.

  The door to the old servants’ quarters was unlocked, and I pushed it open with my shoulder. The sitting room of my private sanctuary smelled of fresh lilacs that stood in an old blue vase, mixed with the sharp cedar scent of the open wardrobe. I carried the eagle across the room and set it on the table I used for my drawings and collections, then lit the lamp, turning the flame low so as not to startle it.

  Him, I thought, for no other reason than the fact that I hated calling an animal “it,” even to myself.

  The blood that streaked my jacket looked brown in the dim light. I left the bird on top of the old quilt and ran back downstairs to unload the cart, pain slamming in my forehead with every step.

  I felt bad leaving him like that, but I had to take care of other things first if I didn’t want anyone to follow me upstairs.

  I put the kettle on to boil while I carried boxes into the kitchen. Della returned in time to take the last box of preserves from me, and I poured a cup of brewed mint leaves for each of us.

  “How’s Aunt Victoria now?” I asked.

  Della blew into her mug and took a sip. “Probably as bad as you’ve seen her, but I suppose that’s to be expected. It’s been almost exactly a year since the accident, hasn’t it? I’ve had a hard time just getting her out of bed these last few days. She was glad to hear you’re visiting, but I’m afraid she won’t see anyone but me right now. The memories are overwhelming her. She gets confused.” Della rubbed her eyes with her free hand, and I regretted not coming sooner. I went to Della and wrapped my arms around her tiny waist, and she squeezed back.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  Della released me and sat at the table. “Not your fault. Not hers, either. It’s just one of those things.” She looked thoughtful, then smiled and patted the seat next to her. I sat, though I wanted to get back to my rooms. “But enough about us. How are you? And your family? And… everything?”

  I smiled into my cup. Della knew better than to ask directly about the marriage situation. “Fine, everyone’s fine. There will be news on the other thing soon, I suppose.” I wondered how Della had felt when she decided to marry Matthew, who was nearly twenty years older than her. “If it’s all right with you, I’m going to head up to bed. Do we have any heartleaf bark?”

  Della nodded. “Of course. I don’t suppose you can get it at home now.”

  “We’re out of it. I was going to stop on the way out of town, and I forgot.”

  “Oh, my dear.” Her frown deepened the lines on Della’s forehead. “You didn’t hear, then? They’ve just classified heartleaf as a highly suspicious species. Not to be collected or sold.”

  “What?” Highly suspicious was only a step below confirmed magical. Heartleaf trees would be extinct within a decade, at least in populated areas. “There’s no magic in it,” I groaned. “It’s just the only thing that helps.” I remembered the empty jar in the kitchen cupboard, and my jaw muscles tightened. “I can’t believe Mother got rid of mine!” She knew how I needed it. But I supposed a magistrate’s wife couldn’t allow illegal substances in her house, no matter how badly her family needed them.

  Della reached out and patted my arm. “Well, I suppose she felt it was the right thing. There was a letter about that a few days ago, but we ignored it. Even if they made us get rid of what we have, there’d still be three good trees on the property. Take some supper with you, dear, it’ll help.” She busied herself filling a plate with roasted meat, potatoes, boiled carrots, and a slice of buttered bread. My stomach groaned again.

  Della poured boiling water into a heavy mug and set a generous pinch of heartleaf bark strings next to it on the tray. “Sleep well, Rowan. I won’t wake you, but there’s plenty to be done tomorrow when you’re ready.” She kissed me on the cheek and hurried off to prepare plates for herself and Matthew, and I felt a pleasant ache in my chest. It was good to be home.

  When I returned to my rooms, the lump on the table hadn’t moved. I set the tray down next to my favorite old armchair and ate a few bites of everything while I tried to think what to do. I went to the bedroom and dug my sewing kit out from under the bed, blew the dust off of it, then carried it and the mug of hot water over to the table. There were needles in the kit, strong thread, scissors, and a pair of pointed pincers buried beneath a tangle of string and fabric scraps. I dropped the pincers into the hot water, then pulled the ruined jacket off of the eagle and tossed it into the corner of the sitting room.

  The bird watched with glazed eyes as I stripped off my heavy sweater and slipped into a long-sleeved button-up shirt. He didn’t seem able to do anything else, except twitch for a few seconds when I lifted the injured wing to examine the wound. I hesitated for a moment, waiting for an attack, but he just lay there as I began my examination.

  It was worse than I’d thought. A nasty rip through the skin and muscle of the wing left bone exposed, and I suspected a break farther down. I took the pincers and carefully removed a piece of wood that was embedded in the wound. It was splintered lengthwise, jagged at the ends. Part of the arrow’s shaft, then, but it had a strange, sickly green color that shimmered in the flickering light. I dropped it onto the table and went back to work.

  There wasn’t much bleeding now, even with the wood removed, but I didn’t know how I’d ever stitch the skin together. There were no clean edges to match up, and not enough flesh to cover the bone. I leaned back in the wooden kitchen chair and pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes.

  “Skrork?” The bird was watching me again. For the first time I noticed the green flecks scattered through the deep brown irises of his eyes. They were beautiful. Cold, but expressive, almost human. Not like our chickens, which often seemed like alien creatures to me. I could almost believe that this bird understood what I was trying to do.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’ll do what I can, but I’m no doctor.” The eagle closed his eyes and turned his head away from me. I pulled the lamp closer and cleaned the torn skin. If I could cover it and keep it clean, it might heal—but he would never fly again.

  Sharp pain twisted through my head, and I picked up a few strings of bark to chew on. It didn’t work as well as brewing them, but it was something. My eyes throbbed to the slow rhythm of my pulse.

  I tried to stand to find something to cover the wound with, but felt light-headed and sat down again, suddenly feeling ill. The room wasn’t spinning like it was supposed to if a person were fainting, but instead seemed to fade away. I could still see everything around me, but none of it seemed real. All of my focus was pulled to the eagle, its wing, the raw, bloody gash.

  Nauseating pain washed over me and slashed at my skull, but I couldn’t pull back from the lamplight to find relief in the dark. White spots filled the edges of my vision. Something pulled at me, gentle but insistent.

  The wing started to come back together. The veins knit themselves, and blood began pumping through them. My breath caught in my throat, my heart hammered. Impossible. I tried to look to the eagle’s face, but couldn’t shift my gaze away from what was happening in front of me.

  I groaned as the pressure in my head increased to an unbear
able level. My voice sounded far-off and weak.

  Tears blurred my vision, but through them I watched as the healing continued. Muscles grew together over the bone, and the sharp bend in the wing straightened under the feathers with a soft cracking sound. Skin grew over the wound, dark pink and rippled, but nearly whole.

  Grey patches bloomed out of the white lights and crowded everything else out. The world turned black, and I fell into darkness.

  Chapter VI

  Aren

  HER MAGIC DISAPPEARED FROM THE room as she hit the floor, but it lingered in me, its glowing embers all that remained of the healing force that had taken me by surprise. I lifted my head and shifted my body to the edge of the table. There she lay, head cocked at an awkward angle and thick hair covering her face, chest rising and falling regularly. I closed my eyes, half-hypnotized by the strange feeling that flowed through me, pulsing outward from my injured wing. Hours before, I’d thought I was going to die, crippled, shot with an arrow that poisoned my blood and kept me from using my magic. Now I would live, if I could get away.

  Perhaps a rest first, though.

  I opened my eyes again, and blinked hard, fighting the influence of her magic, which felt so unlike my own in its warmth and gentle strength. It would have been easy to let myself drift off into it as it healed me, but I couldn’t. I was still in danger, and needed to get home. It wouldn’t be long before my body made the magic its own. I just needed to be patient.

  I forced myself to my feet, bracing my talons against the flat surface of the table. I stretched my injured wing, resisting the contented laziness that infused my muscles. It wasn’t fully healed, but that girl had done what I couldn’t. She’d cleansed my blood of the poison, and healed my wounds far more efficiently than I’d have been able to under any circumstances.

  There was no way I could open the window behind me without transforming back into my human body. I flapped to the floor and made my way through an open doorway into a tidy little bedroom, but the only window in there was closed, too.

  There was nothing else to be done. I drew on that unfamiliar magic within me and transformed, sending the eagle’s body away as I drew my own form back to myself until I crouched with my bare feet pressed against the smooth, wooden floorboards of the bedroom. The temperature in the room dropped as the process began. Focus, I told myself. Transformation was still a relatively new skill for me, and I had to be careful.

  I wrapped myself in a quilt from the bed. Not for the first time, I decided that forming clothes after transformation was going to be the next skill I studied. At twenty-three I was far more powerful and skilled in magic than anyone had expected, but I couldn’t let myself rest when there was still so much to learn.

  The tiny sitting room where I’d left her was warmer and brighter than the bedroom. I sat in a worn-out armchair and examined my arm in the lamplight. The wound had transferred, as they always did, and it still throbbed with that unfamiliar magic. I found that I could think more clearly now that I had returned to my natural form, and several conclusions fell into place.

  First, this young woman was no professional healer. The ability to heal another was among the rarest magical gifts. Besides that, anyone in my own country who regularly used magic to heal learned to strip their personal essence from the power before it left them, leaving it as blank as the ambient magic in the land around them. Their work felt nothing like this. Her magic was soft, yet powerful enough to make me feel light-headed. Her concern for me when the healing began was there, a feeling of peace and belonging that I hadn’t felt in years.

  The intimacy of it made me shudder. I didn’t want this Darmish girl’s magic and her essence to be a part of me. I hardened myself to its influence, and waited for the power to become my own. But as her influence began to fade, an ache spread through my chest, a feeling of regret which I refused to examine. The sooner I moved past it, the better.

  I looked down at the still form on the floor. “Who are you?”

  A Darmish woman with magic in her—just what I had been searching for. But the magic had hurt her. When I crouched beside her, I felt nothing. Had she not just healed me, I would have thought her just another useless, magic-less body.

  “Protected, then,” I muttered.

  It made sense. Anyone like her living in this country would have to keep that secret well-hidden from the magic hunters, their townsfolk and even their families. But from me? It should have been impossible.

  In any case, she was exactly what I’d been searching for. If I took her back to Tyrea and handed her over to Severn, my work would be done. Delivering someone like this would win Severn’s favor and once again prove my loyalty. If he trusted me enough to make me his Second, things would change for the better. My work might still occasionally involve manipulating Severn’s enemies, but at least I’d be doing it in Luid instead of in the outer provinces or this gods-forsaken land. Taking this hidden Sorceress to Severn would buy me power and wealth—and anything or anyone those resources could buy.

  And yet, this girl had saved my life at great risk to herself, and I needed to decide what that was worth.

  I stood to open the window, and breathed in the cool night air. My brothers would call me a fool for even considering leaving her here. They’d have taken her in just to prove they didn’t owe anything to anyone. Compassion was weakness, as was gratitude to those below our station, and my family had seen too much weakness in me when I was a child. I’d worked to harden myself to fear and love and everything else that makes one vulnerable, but suddenly found myself struggling again.

  Wealth and power and freedom were within my grasp, and I was considering letting it go so a stranger could live. Idiot.

  I flexed my arm again and felt its weakness. It would be too difficult to take her back in my current state, I decided. I would leave her, at least for now. If she was lucky, I’d find another.

  The stairs creaked outside of the closed door.

  Damn it. I’d forgotten to send my awareness out, lulled by that warm magic into a feeling of safety. I moved silently to the door and leaned against it. A single presence approached, female. Not threatening, but I doubted she’d be pleased to find a naked stranger in the house and the girl lying half-dead on the floor.

  A knock. “Rowan? Are you awake? I’m off to bed, if you need anything.” A soft voice, concerned but not overly so. When no answer came, she turned to leave. As soon as she left the stairwell, I locked the door.

  “Rowan, is it?” I asked. The girl on the floor didn’t answer.

  The wagon ride had been torture. Every bump in the road sent fire burning through my veins, courtesy of the poison in my wounded wing. Still, I had listened, and heard much of her conversation with the hunters. Dorset Langley. I knew that name, though I’d never met the man. His reputation as a magic hunter reached far beyond his country’s borders. And she was to marry his son.

  “Why ever would you do a thing like that?” In their country those who fought against magic were heroes, and she would be marrying into a wealthy and powerful family. But as a magic-user, perhaps even a Sorceress, she was putting her life in danger to do it. So either she valued social status above her own life, or she felt confident enough in her ability to hide the magic that she thought it was worth the risk.

  “Or she doesn’t know what she is.” An interesting idea.

  I sat again and pulled my hands through my tangled hair, then tied the mess behind my neck with one of the strings from the sewing basket. As I ate what was left of the girl’s supper, I glanced around the room to see what I could learn about her.

  Illustrated books about nature lay stacked on one shelf, though I suspected they omitted many of the creatures we were familiar with on the other side of the mountains. There was fiction there, too, bound in leather and paper, probably nothing I would recognize. Scholars in Tyrea studied Darmish culture, such as it was, and I’d learned enough to know that their stories were like their land: scrubbed clean of magic. />
  And interest, I thought.

  When I stood again, the heavy quilt I wore knocked the girl’s travel bag onto its side, and another book slid out onto the floor.

  As I flipped through the brittle old pages, I smiled. “That’s more like it,” I told her, and tried not to laugh. In my country, these were children’s stories. There was a girl with a fairy godmother, as if the fairies would have any interest in the position. The prince turned into a monster and restored by love came next, followed by talking animals, burnt witches, and magic of the lightest and gentlest sort. But, I reminded myself, things were different here. The Darmish didn’t allow their children to be exposed to these stories, which they considered heretical. Just possessing this book would get my unlikely rescuer into serious trouble if it were discovered.

  She was a mystery, but one I couldn’t dwell on for long. When I extended my awareness again, the house was quiet. It would be safe to leave. But as I stepped past the body on the floor, she moved. Not much, just a slight arch of the back. Her head turned to one side, and the waves of tangled reddish hair fell back from her face.

  She was lovely. I’d caught a glimpse of that when I was in eagle form, but had been unable to appreciate it fully. Now, in human form and with the pain receding, I could see it. The memory of her thick eyebrows knitting together over clear and intelligent eyes increased my pulse, as did the thought of her well-proportioned torso as she struggled out of her heavy sweater. No woman in my home city of Luid would have allowed herself to be seen in such an unkempt state, but there was something appealing about this girl’s clean face and wild hair. Too appealing.

  “Definitely time to go,” I whispered.

  I should have been able to leave her there. She’d served her purpose. If a night on the floor was the worst she suffered from meeting me, she would be better off than most. And yet, I couldn’t do it.