FIERCE: Sixteen Authors of Fantasy

by Mercedes Lackey

  My heart skipped. “You’re better off with them.”

  “But you won’t be safe when you’re alone. We both know you can’t stay half-awake forever, and it’s only a matter of time until Severn finds you. At least I can keep watch while you sleep.” She pulled a sharp knife off of the wall and started toward the chicken coop before I could say anything else.

  I stayed outside for a few minutes before I went back in. Of course I knew I couldn’t keep going on my own forever, but it was too dangerous to keep her with me. Possibly pleasant, if things kept going as they were, but dangerous. I turned and went into the house before I could follow that thought any further.

  Kel sat on the sofa with his bare feet on the table, wiggling his toes.

  “Been a while since you’ve been on land?” I asked.

  “Yes. Everything seems to be working, though.” He folded his hands over his stomach and looked at me. I sat in a chair beside him and stared back. He tapped his thumbs together. “So,” he said.

  “So.”

  “What is this? You looked like you were going to strangle me when I showed up down there.”

  “You’ll have to excuse that. I thought you’d just tried to drown Rowan.”

  “Mmm. And she’s your… friend?”

  “I suppose she might say that.”

  “And she’s important to you.”

  I understood what he was trying to get from me. “It’s not like that. I’m not sure what it is, but it’s not that.”

  “Uh-huh.” I could tell he didn’t believe me, but at least he let it go. “I didn’t think we’d see you again.”

  “Neither did I. I meant what I said about leaving you alone. I’m not asking you to help me.”

  “That’s good. We’ve heard what’s happening. We can’t be involved with Severn.” The merfolk had reason to be aware of what humans were doing. They’d seen what we’d done to each other over the years, and they tried to be prepared in case we decided to try to harm them or their home in the same ways.

  Before I could ask, he added, “I don’t know whether Severn knows you’re here, but I haven’t heard that anyone’s looking for you, if it makes you feel any better.”

  “It doesn’t, but thank you.”

  He wiggled his toes again. “I can keep my ears open for you as long as you’re here. I just hope it doesn’t cause problems for us.” That was the closest Kel would come to questioning my decision to come back. He didn’t have to tell me that the mer elders wouldn’t be pleased to hear I’d returned. “I’m assuming it’s no coincidence that you stopped here. And I would love to know what you’re doing with Rowan.”

  It wasn’t as difficult for me to explain things to Kel as it had been to tell Rowan, either because I was starting to understand the situation better, or because he let me talk without interruptions. When I finished the story and explained why I’d helped her, leaving out any reference to my confused emotions, he smirked.

  “That’s it? You just felt like you owed her something?”

  My back stiffened. “Yes. And I appreciated her kindness. It was more than I’m accustomed to.”

  “So if she had been an unattractive, smelly old man and had done the same thing, you’d have thrown away your life in Luid, helped him escape from that boat, and nearly killed yourself trying to convince him he was a Sorcerer?” He rolled his eyes. “Sure you would have. It had nothing to do with her being a sweet, intelligent, attractive young woman with a fantastic ass and a need for someone to save her.”

  “She’s quite capable of saving herself, believe me. She just needed to be pointed in the right direction.”

  “Right. And that’s not appealing to you either.” He leaned forward and took a sip from the mug on the table in front of him. “I still have so many questions, but we’ll stick with Rowan’s problems for now. You could be right about her. So why did you bring her here?”

  “I couldn’t take her to anyone in Luid. Anyone in Tyrea, actually. There’s no one I can trust now, and until something is done about the binding, she’s in danger. If you can’t help, I’m not sure what we’ll do. I thought about taking her beyond Tyrea, to Belleisle, but I don’t think they’d help.”

  “Certainly not you. They might take Rowan, if she went alone. That may be what needs to happen. We could get more information for you, but you know that our magic only works in us. We might not be able to fix this.”

  I’d expected as much, but hearing him say it was disappointing. “Your healers are better than ours,” I said. “They might at least help the pain while everything else is being worked out. And you’ll be able to find someone who can help her.”

  “Hmm. But again, I doubt Mariana and Arnav will allow you to come. You think she’d go with me if you stayed here?”

  “No,” Rowan said. I’d become so accustomed to her presence that my extended awareness didn’t alert me when she’d come back in.

  Kel looked from me to Rowan and back. He sighed. “I’ll see what I can do. But Rowan, it might come to a decision between finding a way to free your magic, or hanging around with this guy.” He swung his feet onto the floor and walked to her, then touched her cheek and looked into her eyes for a few seconds. “Give me a day or two. I’ll talk to the elders.”

  She took a step back as he released her. “You’re not staying for supper?”

  “No, I have to get home, see what I can find out about your little adventure earlier, talk to the elders. Do you mind if Aren walks me down to the dock?”

  “Take him. I have to get the food started anyway.”

  They exchanged nice-to-meet-yous, and Kel and I stepped out into the cold. I knew better than to ask what he’d seen in her. Merfolk didn’t look into people’s thoughts the way I did, but in a far less invasive way they were incredibly perceptive. I wanted to know, but prying would be rude.

  “Be careful with her,” Kel said. “She has a lot on her mind, more than a person should have to deal with all at once. Just give her time, she’ll work it out.” We reached the dock, and he stepped out of his clothes and handed them to me. I put everything in one of the wooden crates in case he needed it again. He looked out over the dull gray water. “Try to be honest with yourself about what you’re feeling for her.”

  “I don’t—”

  He held up one hand to stop me. “I know, you don’t want to feel anything. It’s against your family’s religion or something.”

  “No, I mean I can’t let anything like that happen. I told her I’d try to help her. You know as well as I do that staying with me is a bad idea.”

  Kel looked back at me and raised an eyebrow. “Do you think she’d agree?”

  I didn’t answer. I had no idea what she thought or wanted.

  “I’ll see what I can do for her,” Kel said, “if you’re sure that’s what’s best. It’ll be up to her, though.”

  “Of course. Thank you.” I turned and walked back up the path, and Kel splashed into the water behind me. I took my time walking back toward the welcoming light of the house, trying to sort through my unwelcome emotions as I went.

  Thus far, I had managed to ignore it when my body responded to her. I would do the same when I was tempted to let emotion overrule my mind. Even if I wanted her.

  Gods, I want her.

  I gritted my teeth and walked toward the house, ready to do battle with myself. It wouldn’t be for much longer, now.

  Chapter XXIV

  Aren

  I DECIDED TO CHECK ON the horses before I went in to talk to Rowan. They’d wandered off to forage again, in spite of the more than adequate supply of food we’d left them in the stable. It wasn’t snowing yet, but the air had the heavy feel of an approaching storm, and I wasn’t prepared to lose the horses if it came during the night. I made the stalls as comfortable as I could, then went searching for them.

  I found Rowan’s horse in the garden, digging up what root vegetables the summer people had left behind. I clucked my tongue and she came along easily en
ough. Mine wasn’t in the yard, so I took a lead rope and followed the only path into the woods.

  I hadn’t gone far when a rustling noise from behind a thick stand of pines stopped me. I moved quietly in case it was something other than the horse. The lake was a safe enough place in the summer, but I didn’t know what creatures might take advantage of the never-frozen water during the winter.

  It was nothing but the black and white horse, standing in a small clearing and rubbing her hairy side against a tree with a thick, twisted trunk. I clipped the rope to her halter and started to walk away, but turned back. The bright pink leaves blended in with the other autumn colors in the dim light, and I’d almost missed it. The horse had been rubbing her hide on a heartleaf tree.

  “Good girl,” I whispered, and patted her neck. Rowan would need the bark. It might bring some relief, but it was no cure. She’d have to go with Kel. I just needed to convince her of that.

  The first snowflakes fell as I returned to the house. Only a few, but there would be more.

  “How did you know?” Rowan asked as I handed her the strands of heartleaf bark. “I was just wishing I had some. Can you give me a hand with the food?”

  The meal was delicious, but Rowan hardly ate anything. She was also uncharacteristically quiet, and I wondered whether she’d used up her daily allotment of questions on Kel. More likely she was thinking about one or more of the questions neither he nor I could answer. Wondering whether she’d go with the merfolk if they decided to help her, what she would do after someone fixed her problem, how any of this had happened in the first place.

  Instead of talking, we listened to the sounds of the storm building outside, the wind rushing through the trees and the icy snow tapping at the windows.

  “I think I’m going to use the bark and go to bed,” she said after the table was cleared. “Do you mind washing up?”

  “Of course not.”

  She poured hot water into a teapot, then added some to a jug that looked like it had come from one of the upstairs washbasins. “I’m going to try sleeping upstairs,” she explained. “The fires have been burning all day, and I’ll take blankets from the other upstairs bed. I’ll come down if it’s too cold.”

  She carried the jug upstairs, and returned as I was finishing with the dishes. She wore a blue, pinstriped nightshirt, thick wool socks, and had her hair brushed and pulled forward over one shoulder, her face freshly washed. She looked down and grimaced. “What do you think?”

  I thought she could probably make an old grain sack look good if she decided to wear one, but didn’t say so. “Your cousin would be horrified.”

  “No doubt.” She smiled, but when she came closer I saw that her eyes had that distant, glassy look again.

  She was quiet again while she drank her tea, and seemed troubled. I wanted to reach out to touch her face, to smooth the tension from her brow, to tell her that she was going to get through this and it would all work out. Instead, I sat across from her and watched the snow falling outside the window. Nothing I did would help.

  When the medicine was gone, she stood and said, “Well, I’m going to—whoa.” She dropped back into the chair. “Are you sure that was heartleaf? I feel like a big fluffy cloud just punched me in the face.”

  “Oh, I forgot.” I tried not to laugh. “The trees here are stronger, remember? You probably should have used a bit less.”

  “Oh, the thing with the dragons and more magic here,” she said, and waved a hand through the air in front of her. “I’ll get used to it.”

  “Is it helping the pain?”

  She tilted her head to one side. “Not yet, but I don’t care about it so much. I’m sleepy, though.” She stood and almost fell over again. I pushed my chair away and grabbed her arm to steady her.

  “Let me help you upstairs,” I said. “You can lie down, but I don’t think you should go to sleep until this wears off a little.”

  “I’m fine. My legs are just a little, you know.” She flapped her hands around to demonstrate. They were, too. We were only half-way up the stairs when they went out from under her again. I bent and scooped her up to carry her the rest of the way. She reached up and touched my face. “You’re pretty.”

  “Thanks.” It would have hurt her feelings if I’d laughed, but it was difficult not to. She sounded so sincere. I carried her to the bedroom and set her down on the bed, where she wiggled under the heavy quilt.

  I lit the glass-chimney oil lamp next to the bed and turned to leave. “Don’t fall asleep, I’m just getting more blankets.” The house wasn’t insulated against winter weather, and even with the door open to the warmth downstairs the air was cold.

  She looked slightly more alert when I returned, but I still didn’t like the idea of her sleeping right away. I remembered the way she’d looked wearing that red towel by the lake, and my mind was flooded with ideas of ways to keep her awake, none of which were at all appropriate for the situation.

  Just stop, I told myself. You only want her because you can’t have her.

  Rowan shifted to make room on the bed. “Come here,” she said. “If you want me to stay awake, you need to help.”

  My heart skipped a beat.

  “Tell me a story.”

  That’s probably a better idea.

  I sat on top of the blankets she’d pulled up to her chest. “I’m not good at it, but I’ll try. What do you want to hear?” I thought I could probably remember a story I’d heard when I was younger, or I’d find something in that children’s book downstairs. Or perhaps some Tyrean history. To a person as unaccustomed to magic as she was, this land’s past would probably sound like one of her beloved fairy tales.

  “Can I have any story?” She yawned, wrinkling her nose.

  “Any one I can remember.”

  “Any one,” she mumbled, and closed her eyes. I thought she was falling asleep, but her eyes snapped open again and slowly focused on my face. “I want yours. You never say much about your past. I want to hear your story.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea. How about something with a dragon, or a princess or something?”

  She shook her head, and a section of her hair fell over one eye. “You said any story you could remember. And don’t say you don’t remember, because I know you do. Besides, the princesses in stories are all useless.” She yawned again. “Always need a prince to save them.”

  “You obviously haven’t met any Tyrean princesses.”

  “Nope. Your story.”

  It was almost the same trick she’d pulled with the dragon, and I’d fallen for it. “It’s not important.” I brushed her hair back behind her ear, and she shivered.

  “It is to me. Please?”

  I wondered whether there was a polite way to ask her to stop saying things that made me feel so warm and pleasant, and decided there wasn’t. I almost started with “once upon a time,” but remembered that those stories always ended with a “happily ever after.” I left it out. No one in my story had one of those. “The first thing you need to understand,” I said instead, and Rowan settled deeper under the blankets and rested her head on my arm. “Don’t go to sleep.”

  “I’m not. This is worth staying awake for.”

  “The first thing you need to understand is that marriages in the ruling family of Tyrea can be more complicated than they are in your country.”

  She lifted her head. “Oh my God, you’re married.”

  “No. Stop interrupting. Magic is a very good thing, but it causes a few problems. One is that two people who both have strong magic can’t have children together. We don’t know why, it just doesn’t work. It’s not usually a problem, because there are very few true Sorceresses. A Potioner could have children with whoever she chooses, but if the father is a Sorcerer, the child will most likely have nothing of either type of magic. If a family is going to stay in power, there needs to be an heir with strong magic, so a king will take several wives, all without magic themselves, but it’s somewhere in their family
lines. My mother was my father’s fourth secondary wife.”

  “Secondary?”

  “There’s only one queen. All others are secondaries. Likewise if a Sorceress rules, as my grandmother did. Several husbands, one primary.”

  “It’s all so romantic,” she muttered, and settled back down against my arm.

  “Love isn’t a consideration. In fact, it’s discouraged. A ruler has more important things to think about, and love for wives or family is a dangerous distraction. It makes people do stupid things. Makes them weak.”

  She didn’t seem to have anything to say to that, so I continued. “A king takes three secondary wives. It’s enough to nearly guarantee at least one child with strong magic, if he’s chosen his wives carefully. The selections are complicated, businesslike. My father met my mother when he was traveling in the Eastern provinces, long after he’d married the others. He took her as a fourth secondary wife, and justified it by saying that there was no child from his third marriage.”

  The wording of that had always bothered me. No one ever said that they’d had no children, only that there weren’t any by the time my mother came along. “I’m told she was quite beautiful, and a kinder, more innocent sort of person than should ever have been brought to court. The other wives hated her. She was from too far away, and they were jealous of her.”

  “Because he loved her.”

  “I think he did, at least as much as he was capable. I was born a little over a year later, and she died three years after that. But that story can wait for another time. You could probably sleep now.”

  “It’s okay if you can’t talk about it.”

  I sighed. “I can, if you really want to know.”

  She nodded without looking up.

  “Severn is the queen’s son, and twenty years older than me. He had—still has—a lot of firm ideas about how things should be, and he’s had a burning desire for power for as long as I’ve known him. He knew that our father favored my mother over his, and hated her for it. He watched her carefully, and managed to intercept letters between her and some enemy of my father’s. Instead of exposing her, Severn and his mother went to the king privately with the information. Severn threatened to make my mother’s actions public if she didn’t do something. The queen and Severn were planning to visit her family—the queen’s, not my mother’s. When they returned, they wanted to find the last wife not imprisoned, but dead, as proof of the king’s strength and as punishment for what she’d done. After all, an extra secondary wife who had already produced a child shouldn’t have mattered to him. My father had to choose between losing his throne to Severn, or killing her.”