“Put her out first.”
Put her out? Marsh wondered. Exactly how was he going to do that?
The answer came as Roeglin settled himself beside her and looked into her eyes.
“Hey,” he said, managing to send her a smile.
“Hey,” she replied as he leaned forward, catching her eyes.
“You need to sleep,” he told her.
For a moment Marsh thought about arguing, then his eyes flashed white.
“Sleep,” he repeated. “I’ll tell you when to wake.”
He’d better, Marsh thought. She didn’t want to be trapped in some kind of magical sleep forever. If he got himself killed while he was on whatever errand… The need to sleep vanished in a wave of anxiety for Roeglin’s safety, and he rolled his eyes.
“I’ll take Gustav and Lennie,” he said, speaking quickly, and his eyes flared white again. “Now will you sleep?”
She seemed to remember someone else asking her that not too long ago. What was it with people thinking she needed to rest? Marsh shrugged.
“Sure,” she said.
She’d been going to add that he’d better come back when she fell into a sleep so deep that she did not dream. When she woke again, she was stretched out beneath two blankets between two roaring fires. Roeglin knelt beside her.
“There you are!” He looked relieved. “I thought you were ignoring me.”
“Wouldn’t dare.”
Marsh heard the gravel in her voice and tried to clear her throat. She pushed slowly onto her elbow and wished she hadn’t moved. Pain lanced across her stomach and side. Roeglin didn’t try to stop her, but slipped his arm around her shoulders and lifted a canteen to her mouth.
The liquid inside was slightly warm against her lips, and she took a cautious sip. It was sweet and bitter at the same time, and Marsh twisted her mouth away from it.
“What in Shadow’s Deep is that?”
“Something to help you heal.”
She didn’t know that voice. Marsh turned her head as the mage who’d come to her aid crouched in front of her.
“You should have let the fighters do their job.”
“I was closer.”
“You’re an idiot.”
Marsh recognized the voice and tilted her head to look up at Lennie, remembering how the woman had pulled her away from her shadowy opponent before she took another hit.
“Thanks, Lennie.” Whether she was being grateful for being pulled clear or sassing the platinum-haired fighter for her comment wasn’t clear.
“Don’t thank me yet,” Lennie said, regarding her with worried eyes. “I might have been too slow.”
Aisha gave a squeak of dismay at this, and Marsh heard Roeglin murmur assurances to the little girl. The hoshkat growled. Lennie rolled her eyes.
“I’m only telling you how it is.” She nodded toward the flask. “I’d drink all of that if I were you, and then I’d go back to sleep. You’ve got a rough ride ahead.”
“Anyone ever tell you that you suck at patient care?” Marsh quipped, trying for light-hearted but sounding slightly angry instead.
“Most of my patients prefer not to be fed shit about their chances,” Lennie snapped and turned away.
Marsh didn’t have anything to say at that. She watched the warrior until she moved out of sight, not resisting when Roeglin lifted the flask to her lips once more. This time she drank it all and then turned her gaze to the rock mage.
“You a healer too?”
He shook his head.
“Not the kind that heals by magic anyway,” he told her. “I just use the medicine we find in the world around us. You are fortunate we cultivate as much of it as we can inside our cavern’s borders.”
Caverns had borders?
Fatigue made Marsh’s head spin, and she looked at Roeglin.
“I’d better lie down again,” she said, and he helped her lower herself back to the ground.
“Magic can heal?”
To Marsh’s surprise, the question came in Lennie’s voice, but she was asleep before she heard the reply.
Of course, magic can heal, she thought. It was just a pity none of them knew how to ask it. When she woke again, it was to the sound of a lively argument being carried out not two feet from her head.
“Let me try it on myself first.”
Now, why didn’t it surprise her that Lennie was in the middle of a verbal spat?
“We can’t afford for you to lose the use of a hand.”
“And I’m not letting anyone else risk themselves if I can’t pull it off. It’s my idea, and my risk to take.”
“Look, Lennie—”
Whatever else Gustav might have been going to say was lost to an agonized yelp.
“What in all the Deep!”
Lennie was clearly not impressed.
“Now neither of you need to do it.” Roeglin sounded like he was in a lot of pain. “And I don’t need my hand to be useful.”
Lennie let loose with a description of his heritage that involved a lot of fornication and a physically impossible mismatch. It made Roeglin laugh. The sound was followed by the sound of him hitting the floor, and Marsh struggled to open her eyes. She was in time to watch Lennie drop to her knees beside the mage, uttering another heartfelt expletive as she did so.
“Give me your hand.”
Turning her head allowed Marsh to watch as Lennie took Roeglin’s hand and carefully unfolded the fingers. Blood flowed over his palm, and Marsh wanted to protest as both Tamlin and Aisha crowded closer. One of the rock mage’s knelt beside them, his face creased with concern. Try as she might, Marsh didn’t recognize him.
She saw Lennie lift her face to Tamlin.
“You say we all have magic, right?”
The boy nodded, his face pale beneath its crown of dark hair. Lennie pressed her lips together and turned back to Roeglin’s hand.
“Helluva way to find out if I can actually do anything with it.”
“You have to want to,” the boy told her and Aisha nodded vigorously beside him, her blue eyes never leaving the gash in Roeglin’s hand.
By the Deep! What had the man done to himself? Sliced his palm open so Lennie could prove a point? Marsh stared.
“You have to want it,” Tamlin repeated, and Lennie cast him a determined look.
“Oh, I want it, boy. I’ve had too many good people die on me and not been able to do a damn thing about it. I just don’t know how to start.”
“Think of what my hand should look like,” Roeglin suggested, his voice harsh with pain. “It’s how I call the shadow.”
“Me too,” Brigitte chimed in. “I need blades, I call blades. I want a spear, I think of a spear and just how much I need it.”
Lennie looked from one to the other of them.
“And neither of you ever wondered how to fix what you were busy breaking?”
“It never occurred to us that we could,” Brigitte admitted.
“I wish one of you would fix this,” Roeglin said. “I can’t focus enough to even begin.”
That got Lennie’s attention. She took a deep breath and spread his hand wide.
“These should be attached,” she murmured, using her other hand to touch the wound.
Roeglin whimpered and then went limp.
“That should make it easier,” the closest rock mage muttered, and Lennie glared at him.
“I’ll try that again.”
As she moved her finger, Aisha crept closer. The child was chewing on her lower lip and watching Lennie’s every move. From where she was lying, Marsh watched too. At first, nothing happened and Lennie gave a moan of frustration, but instead of giving up or turning on Tamlin, she kept her eyes on Roeglin’s hand.
“No one’s going to get hurt on my behalf,” she muttered. “No one. The tendons should be whole. Please, Mother of the Dark, have mercy.”
Light gathered around Lennie’s fingertips and the guard’s eyes widened, flaring briefly green. Aisha bounced on her to
es.
“Again!” the little girl cried.
“Again?” Lennie’s voice had a slightly faded quality.
“Again,” Aisha repeated, firmly.
Lennie sighed.
“I don’t know if I can.”
“You have to want to,” Tamlin said, and the rock mage added, “Unless you want to give up now and leave the man a cripple.”
“No!”
Lennie traced her fingers over Roeglin’s palm.
“Mother of the Dark, Shadow’s Heart and Shadow’s Deep, let me do this. No one else has to die beside me. No one.”
This time the green light was much brighter, leaping from her fingers to flow over Roeglin’s palm and making her eyes burn with emerald fire.
“I can do this,” she murmured, her voice fierce with determination. “Shadow Mother! The world cannot all be a shroud.”
She succeeded if Aisha’s excited jiggle was anything to go by, and the rock mage breathed a sigh of relief before he looked at Tamlin.
“You know, boy, not everyone can call the magic within…”
Lennie stared at him in horror.
“Well, it’s a Shadow’s-cursed good thing that no one told me that when I was busy believing I could.”
Tamlin frowned, giving the mage a troubled look.
“But the magic is inside everyone,” he insisted. “I know it is.”
Roeglin came to with a gasp before the mage could say anything else. He raised his hand in front of his face and studied it carefully.
“Oh, thank the shadows that’s over,” he said and got unsteadily to his feet. “Remind me never to try that again.”
He spun on the spot, staring at his palm.
“Never,” he repeated and came to a stop when he saw Marsh’s eyes were open. “Hey, look who’s awake?”
Marsh managed a trembly smile, but it faded quickly when she tried to move. She’d been so busy watching the drama play out between Lennie and Roeglin that she hadn’t registered the fire burning over the skin around her wound.
Roeglin came over to crouch beside her.
“How are you doing?”
“You tell me, because I don’t feel so good.”
“Lennie.” Roeglin looked over his shoulder, but Marsh could already see that the warrior wasn’t going to be any good.
Lennie looked drained, her face pale and the heat signature from her skin noticeably cooler. Marsh shook her head.
“She needs to rest.” She turned to the children for support. “Isn’t that right, kids?”
“Marsh!” Aisha was clearly glad to see her awake.
Tamlin cast a glance at Lennie.
“Yeah.” He seemed strangely despondent, even though he’d been the one to encourage the woman to try. “She really does.”
“I’ll be fine,” Lennie protested and tried to get to her feet.
The rock mage was close enough to catch her when she collapsed. Lennie looked grieved.
“What in the Deep is wrong with me?” she asked, then looked at Marsh. “I can do it. I have to…”
The mage laid a hand on her shoulder.
“You have to rest,” he said, “or you won’t be able to do anything.”
“Think of your child,” Gustav urged when Lennie tried to get up. “Jorj does not want either of you to join him so soon.”
That stopped her, and Marsh guessed that Jorj was the husband Lennie had lost in the caravan from which Marsh had escaped.
“But…” Lennie began. Her eyes darted to Marsh, and then back to Gustav and the rock mage.
The latter laid a hand on her shoulder.
“There will be a later,” he said, and Lennie seemed about to protest that until he added, “I will see to it.”
Again Lennie slid Marsh a worried look, but this time she nodded and let Gustav help her to her feet. Tamlin watched the guard settle the woman by the fire, then came and sat beside Marsh. It was the most subdued she had ever seen him.
“What’s up?” Marsh asked him, because clearly, something was. Tamlin just shook his head and cast Roeglin a miserable look.
Marsh shivered, feeling cold despite the warmth coming off her skin. It didn’t take her long to figure out what was wrong.
“So,” she asked, “how bad am I?”
Roeglin gave her a careful look.
“You’re going downhill.”
“Nice… How long?”
“Since this morning.”
Marsh shook her head.
“How long have we got to change it?”
His face closed over as if a shutter had been pulled.
“Uh huh. And Lennie’s only just learned she might make a difference, and now she’s learned she can’t.”
Roeglin broke eye contact and looked out into the cavern, his throat working as if he were trying to swallow something…or maybe not give in to the urge to cry. She slowly reached out from under the blanket, her arm as heavy as lead, and laid her hand on his knee.
“Not your fault.”
Movement caught her eye—Aisha coming over to stand beside Roeglin, her small face pinched with worry. Before she could say anything, the rock mage arrived with another flask.
“I need to change the dressings,” he said, his face a professional mask although his eyes were sad.
“Tamlin says we all have the magic,” Marsh told him, and his expression froze. “You could try.”
The man’s face softened into regret, and he shook his head.
“I…can’t,” he said, and from the look on his face, there was nothing she could say to convince him otherwise.
He tried to explain why.
“It’s not my gift. No man can call every magical effect to hand.” He glanced at Lennie. “No matter how badly they want it. The herbs are my limit. I am sorry.”
Well, at least he was sorry. Marsh managed to drink some of the tonic he’d brought, but she faded out of consciousness as he lifted the dressing. Aisha gasped in shock.
The rock mage was gone, and the camp was quiet when Marsh drifted back into consciousness to the feel of small hands fidgeting at the bandages.
“Hey,” she said, only to be abruptly shushed.
“Sleep,” Aisha told her. “I fix.”
She’d what?
“You—”
“Sshh!”
Marsh shushed, her eyelids almost too heavy to lift as she struggled to see what Aisha was doing. It didn’t take the little girl long to fidget the bandages free—or Marsh to work out what she was going to try. Everyone had magic, right? They only had to believe; wasn’t that what Tamlin had said? And who believed better than a child?
Where in all the Deep had the kid learned that stuff anyway? She’d like to take whoever had taught him that and give them a good shaking—and then she’d like to give Tams a good shaking for saying it somewhere his little sister could hear it.
“Aysh…”
“Sshh!” Aisha sounded even fiercer than before. “You’ll wake them.”
The little brat had made short work of the bandages and was now looking down at the wound, her nose wrinkled in disgust.
“I have to bring the light.”
“Bring the light?”
“Like Lennie.”
Sure, kid, Marsh thought. You do that.
Her eyes were getting too heavy to hold open, so she closed them for just a minute. For…
She woke to voices—quiet voices, Aisha talking to someone else. By the Deep, she hoped it was a grownup.
“You sleep,” Lennie was saying. “It’s my turn.”
“Not finished.” Aisha sounded torn between tiredness and determination.
“No, but—”
“You need a cookie.”
Marsh was glad to hear Brigitte’s voice, even if the mage’s traditional solution made her want to laugh. A cookie… Like that would work.
“Cookie?”
Marsh felt the small warm patches that were Aisha’s hands lift off her stomach.
Oka
aay. Apparently, it would. She flinched as two much larger hands replaced Aisha’s light touch.
“Sshh!” Lennie’s voice was like a louder echo of Aisha’s. “Kid made a start, but you need a bit more to pull clear.”
Pull clear of what? Marsh felt fatigue dragging her down. Whatever the Shadows required, right? Even if she didn’t want to join them just yet. Whatever they…
She gasped as fingers gently probed the edges of the wound.
“Shadow’s Heart and Shadow’s Queen,” Lennie murmured, and Marsh wondered how the old stories could mean so much to the hardened warrior. After all, neither Shadow’s Heart nor its Queen had protected her Jorj.
Warmth spread across her stomach and down her side, and some of the pain eased. Green light carried her back into the depths of sleep, and Marsh rested.
23
The Vagaries of Magic
The next time Marsh woke, it was to the warmth of bodies curled around her. She lay still for a moment, registering the smell of animal musk and the weight of someone’s arm across her chest and shoulder. Her sleeping companions effectively pinned her beneath the blankets, and she very much needed to get out of bed.
Marsh wriggled experimentally, and the arm over her drew her closer.
“Hey!”
She’d meant it to be a shout, but it came out as a hoarse whisper. A second arm snaked around her, pulling her into the curves of a woman’s body. Marsh tried to disentangle herself, but the arms only pulled her closer.
“Dammit! Let me up!”
Just like that, the arms let her go.
“Sorry.” Lennie sounded as shocked as Marsh felt.
“I… It’s okay, I just need to…”
“Latrine is to the left of the trail. Make sure you pull the curtain closed. No one wants to watch.”
Well, that was good to know. Marsh got to her feet and let her eyes adjust to the light levels. It wasn’t as dark as she thought. Someone had ringed the campsite with glows, so the latrine was easy to spot. It consisted of a low stone wall with blanket partitions. Marsh moved stiffly toward it, wondering how long she’d slept as she scanned the cavern around her.
The tall calla shrooms shrouded the ground beneath them in shadow but did not hide the soft luminescence of the fungi growing around their feet. Fire beetles darted between the growths, and Marsh caught the sharp scent of ditch mint mingled with other less familiar smells. She did not stop to savor the night air, however, but went about her business as swiftly as her sore muscles would allow.
Magic Below Paris Complete Series Boxed Set (Books 1 - 8): Trading Into Shadow, Trading Into Darkness, Trading Close to Light, Trading By Firelight, Trading by Shroomlight, plus 3 more Page 21