All the while the magic closed in around him. His vision turned into a narrow tunnel — but there was less screaming, less chaos around him. His knees started to go and he saw Kalena, then — struggling against the wagon with someone who gave her a brutal backhand. From his knees he threw his boot knife; the blade sunk deeply into assailant’s back just below his ribs.
Rough hands jerked him upright as he succumbed to the magic; Reandn had just enough wits left to see a descending club. But someone roared in anger, and blood sprayed warm across his face — the hands flung him away and he fell, immediately smothered by a heavy weight.
The magic stuttered away, and in its place was the sound of someone crying, and someone else moaning, and yet another offering up the harsh, quick gasps that presaged death. Someone rolled him roughly onto his back; a sudden gust of cold wind hit his face — that and wet, cold snow.
“Any of that blood yours, then, Dan?” Efficient hands searched his soaked tunic for rents and then gave him a rough pat, apparently satisfied. Reandn’s vision returned only slowly; his ability to breathe freely remained elusive. “Nothing killin’ that I see.” Vaklar spoke with both relief and puzzlement. “Come, then, ladaboy, come on out of it, whatever fit you’re into.” Thick, calloused fingers gripped his jaw and tilted his head this way and that.
Reandn couldn’t help the groan that rippled out. Go away, dammit. He pushed at Vaklar’s hand, fumbling and weak.
“All right, then,” Vaklar said, and disappeared from Reandn’s side. “I’ve others to look to. We need your help, ladaboy, so pull yourself ’round if you can.”
Breathe, Reandn told himself. That was the important thing. Beat the poisonous magic and breathe.
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 8
Teya’s head jerked up; she wrapped her jacket more tightly around her body. Where an instant ago she had been nodding over her horse’s lulling walk, now her heart skipped up to a pounding beat. Magic flared into action to the north — magic big enough to change the natural currents drifting quietly around her. Two unknown wizards, flinging spells that never quite seemed to make it to completion. Murky spells from start to finish, unlike the crisp ring of the school masters’ magic.
She stopped her horse, dropped the reins, and quickly formed the gestures of the now-familiar spell that would probably only confirm what she already dreaded. Where’s Reandn?
Right at the heart of the magic.
How could she have let herself become so complacent, to be dozing along the road? Never mind that this horse had to last; never mind that she’d slept so poorly the night before, her sleep full of dying Wolves on a wet hillside. She gathered up her reins and moved the horse forward. With any luck, it would last her — and she was only a few days away.
Let it be close enough, she thought. Ardrith, let it be close enough.
~~~~~
Kacey drew water from the well, lifting her face to the sun of the still, warm day. What luxury it was to have newly hired full-time help — to be able to see to her patients without juggling them between laundry or cooking or cleaning or even running into Little Wisdom for foodstuffs. Why, if she’d been busy today, she could have sent Wenda to fetch this very bucket for her.
But she wasn’t busy, and the day was so lovely. She left the bucket on the stone well wall and wandered to the edge of the small woods where the shy spring wildflowers were tucked in low and close to the ground.
She wouldn’t even think about Reandn today, or worry about him, or wish he was here to see flowers with her. He was odd about things like that — always so intent on his goals, so focused on his patrol and his responsibility to them. She’d been surprised to discover he knew the wildflowers as well as Rethia, and simply never said anything about them. Oh, once in a while he’d identify one of Adela’s favorites, but not much more.
Kacey wondered if he knew what her favorites were.
Damn, she realized, crouching down to look at a soft-leaved carpet of tiny pink and white moss stars. She was thinking about him. Well, maybe that was all right, considering she was still smiling, still happy with the day.
A sudden splash by the well startled her; she jerked around and discovered Rethia by the well and the bucket now empty on the ground. Kacey narrowed her eyes — Rethia distracted was one thing, but Rethia like this meant something else altogether.
“What’s wrong?” she called, coming out of the woods. Rethia swayed in stunned silence, and Kacey ran to her. “Rethia, come back here! What’s wrong?”
At that her sister’s eyes widened, though they were huge already and dominated her face with the intensity of their mingled bright blue and rich brown color. Kacey took her shoulders, shook her — and then Rethia was there again, giving her wet feet a quick, bewildered glance.
“Father? Is Father all right?”
Rethia blinked. “Fine...”
“Then what?” Kacey all but shouted. And then she realized, because when had she ever been successful in keeping that man out of her thoughts? Not since the moment Reandn, delirious, had mistaken her for dead Adela and drawn her into a kiss she could still feel on her lips today if she thought about it. When she thought about it.
“Not —” she said, and tried starting again, finding she could say it if she thought not of Reandn, but of the amulet. “Not the amulet — tell me it’s not the amulet.”
“It’s not,” Rethia said, whispering again. “It’s Danny.”
Kacey, vexed and beside herself, bit the inside of her lip and took a deep breath. “I can’t do this today, Rethia. Just tell me.”
Rethia looked a little bewildered herself. “He hasn’t broken the amulet — he’s calling me. Oh, not calling me, just — I just feel it. I’ve got to go.”
“But what happened? Is he all right? Is it magic, did it get to him?”
“I don’t know. I just know he needs help.”
“But then... it might not be magic at all. There’s nothing we can do about fighting but get killed.” Kacey hardly believed her own words. What she wanted to do most was grab Rethia’s hand and refuse to let go, so that when the Solace wizard sent Rethia to that little town of Pasdon, there’d be no choice but to send Kacey, too.
Rethia gave her a look. “He’s been in plenty of fights in the last two years. I never felt them, did I?”
No. And they’d been much closer, too. “All right then,” Kacey replied, and added what she should have said in the first place. “I’m coming, too.”
~~~~~
A drop of mushy rain hit Reandn’s face and he came suddenly and abruptly to his full senses.
Still alive, still breathing. He dragged his sleeve across his watery eyes and reeled under the odor of fresh blood. He was soaked to the elbows with it, his entire tunic splotched and dripping.
Vaklar’s voice filtered through the crying and moaning, and over the hoofbeats of uneasy and shifting untied horses. Reandn took the deepest breath he could, rolled onto one knee, and pulled himself up the side of the wagon. The gusting wind hit him full on, plastering the clammy tunic against his skin.
Past the end of the wagon, Damen lay twisted and still and awkward, an arrow protruding through his chest. At Reandn’s feet, a number of men and women sprawled just as awkwardly, just as dead. One of them had Reandn’s knife sticking out the side of his throat; carefully, he leaned down to yank it free.
Up ahead, Kalena’s voice rose in stubborn fear; Vaklar cut her off. “They’ll be back,” he said clearly, intractably. “We can’t be here.”
Leaning heavily on the wagon, Reandn made it to the front wheel; Vaklar looked him over and nodded with satisfaction. Kalena knelt with Varina in her arms, barely conscious. Yuliyana lay on the ground between them; Vaklar had cut her tunic away and now handled her as he would a baby, wrapping her arm and upper chest with the bright cloth of the tent’s accent silks, completely unheeding of her nakedness. On his other side, Kiryl lay deathly still, bleeding from a number of minor wounds, garish silk windin
g around his head and half his face. The spitting slushy rain left the other half of his face glistening wet.
“Where —?” Reandn started — where are the others? — but Vaklar didn’t let him finish.
“Sit down here with the rest of us a moment, Dan. Nice to see you on your feet, mind, but I’m thinking you won’t stay there long. I’ve moved them. We didn’t need have them among us just now.”
Moved them... .
“All of them?” Reandn asked, his words sounding just as strangled as they felt.
“Aya,” Vaklar said, assessing his work on Yuliyana with a critical eye and, as an afterthought, taking a wrap around her breasts for scant modesty. “Not your Elstan; he’s up front with Nican.”
No, Elstan was coming up beside the cart, his hands bloodied but very little else of him. “Dan,” he said, his voice cold. “Vaklar said you seemed to be alive. I’m surprised you’re even back among us, considering how well you don’t handle that horse of yours.”
“Bloody damn mouthy little man, you are then, Elstan,” Vaklar said, standing to wipe his hands on his thighs — for what little good it did. Like Reandn, the guard’s clothes were washed with blood, some of it his own.
Reandn suddenly felt the stiffness of the dried blood in his hair, the pull of it drying on his skin; he scrubbed his hands on the ground, removing what he could against the damp grasses.
Vaklar nodded at him. “That was some hellish riding, it was. And tell you this — had the horse not run off, Dan would be like Damen — with an arrow in his back.” To Reandn, he said, “The rocks were distraction, then. Rile up the horses while they closed up around us.”
“And then... they gave up? With only a few of us left on our feet?”
Vaklar wiped his fingers over eyes gone suddenly weary, as much with grief as fatigue. “They lost enough of their own. Panicked, like. Not career fighters. But it’s what I’ve been trying tell the meira — they’ll be back, aya. Soon.”
Soon. Reandn knew better than to think he’d be able to fight again. Even now, the magic surged up to grey the edges of his sight. “Elstan,” he said. “Do that again, and I’ll break all your fingers.”
Elstan’s voice was high and had a brittle edge. “What do you think saved us?”
“Magic!” Vaklar said. “I thought I felt it! That’ll take some explaining, ladaboy.” But after one piercing glance at Elstan, he moved to the cart and began tossing supplies.
“Not your magic,” Reandn said, answering Elstan’s question. “I know the feel of a spell completed, and you didn’t manage much of that.”
“Neither did the other wizard,” Elstan said stiffly, and he was right at that. “Besides, I’ve told you before, there’s something interfering —”
Vaklar snorted, pausing in his task. “Elstan, boy, I’m sore tired of your voice just now. Put yourself to work rounding up the horses — they’re plenty more than we need as mounts, but we’ll need pack animals.”
“But he —”
“I’m not hearing it! He turned this fight for us. Think me you’d have climbed back up that mountain to return to this slaughter?” Elstan opened his mouth and the older man brutally cut him off. “Naya, Don’t even try. Go round up the horses!”
For once, Reandn felt a twinge of sympathy for the wizard — albeit a quickly passing one. He grabbed the side of the wagon as a wave of dizziness caught him. “You’re leaving the wagon.”
Vaklar nodded. “The cart’ll carry our wounded. And that wagon’s too big for this road. Not fast enough.”
“But my tent!” Kalena objected, though she seemed more dazed than outraged. “My things... .”
“Your life is what you have now, Meira, and give thanks to the goddess Ardrith for it.” Vaklar appeared entirely unmoved by her distress; the only things in the cart were the bedding, the small Keland tent, and the food packs.
“Seems to me the tent is already lost,” Reandn said, nodding at the bright canvas and silk bandages on the wounded.
“You keep your place!” Kalena snapped at him, tightening her arms around Varina as if protecting her from Reandn.
“Dan,” Vaklar said, “I don’t know what’s with you, but you’re not in any shape to help here. Your Elstan was up with Nican, said he lived yet. Don’t know if it still holds true — but an’ you can make it to him, do it.”
Reandn’s surge of hope died quickly, for there was none of it in Vaklar’s voice. With careful steps he walked through the survivors and around the cart, and found Nican covered with a cloak and blinking slowly into the wet falling snow. Whatever grievous wounds he bore were hidden by the cloak, but the scent of opened bowel could not be so easily hidden.
Nican didn’t notice him until Reandn crouched beside him, one hand touching the ground to keep himself from tipping over. Didn’t notice him even then, not right away. Reandn watched his face a moment, glad to find Nican peaceful. Eventually, Nican looked straight at him and said, “Dan. What of Damen? Elstan couldn’t say. Or wouldn’t.”
“Couldn’t, probably. I never saw him anywhere near us. But Damen... Damen’s gone.”
“They started it back there,” Nican said, as though pondering it all. “Up here they had their wizard.” He raked a sharpening gaze over Reandn. “I told him to use his magic, Dan. I’m sorry. Had to let him try.”
“Yes, you did. I made it through.”
“Did your share of the fighting, I see.”
“What I could. But Vaklar’s alive, and he’s holding things together. We’ll be away from this place as fast as we can; we’ll get Kalena to safety.” Reandn kept his doubts well-hidden, but his weakness wasn’t so easy. As strong as he meant his words to be, they still came through the wheeze of his tight chest. Nican, he hoped, was beyond noticing.
“Not to worry about carting me around,” Nican said. “I don’t think I’ll take that long to die.”
Reandn snorted at him, but it was a mild sound. “Cold son-of-a-bitch.”
“Aya,” Nican said, a fair imitation of Vaklar. His eyes started to roll up, and Reandn grabbed his shoulder, pulling him back.
“Go with Tenaebra,” he said, sounding much fiercer than he meant to. “I’ll do the Binding for you and Damen.”
“Binding,” Nican said clearly, as if the one word on its own had the strength to hold him. “You know... the Binding. Who —?”
Reandn grinned at him, a fierce look that Wolves — and Hounds — on the hunt often exchanged. “Reandn,” he said. “Wolf Remote First.”
Nican grinned back, a weak expression full of relief and wry amusement. “Too damn cocky for a wrangler,” he said, and died.
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 9
“I don’t think I can do this.” Tellan slumped onto Kacey’s tall stool behind the workbench.
At the end of the sick room, their only patient made an obvious attempt to eavesdrop. Kacey spared the man a glance, thought perhaps it was time he had an enema, and took Tellan’s arm to turn his back to the row of beds. “Of course you can do it,” she said. “You know how, don’t you?”
“Well, yes,” Tellan said, apparently to both questions. He wiggled on the stool. “But, Kacey —”
“What?” she said, impatience sparking in her voice. “What?”
“It’s just that... well, if I do this... I mean —”
Rethia leaned over the workbench and inserted her first words into the conversation. “He’s got to go back to Solace soon.”
That’s right, he did. A season of work in the field alternating with coursework that build on his practical experience. That look on his face, those nerves — they weren’t over accomplishing what she’d asked. They were for facing his masters after he’d done it.
Kacey smiled at him, and Tellan drew back from her, wary. “Tellan, dear,” she said, oh-so-reasonable. “It’s face them, later... or face me, now.”
Rethia said nothing, which also spoke volumes. Two wicker-bottomed satchels, filled with herbs and salves and banda
ges sat on the floor beside her, along with a satchel of basic cooking supplies. Not to mention soap, two precious toothbrushes, and personal supplies that Kacey was sure one of them would need as soon as they embarked on a trip where it would be hard to get such things on the spur of the moment.
They, she thought fiercely to herself, and let the fierceness show on her face, watching Tellan react to it. Kacey no longer had any intention of staying here at home while her sister and her — and Reandn — dealt with whatever had happened out near the pass.
Convincing Tellan was only the first step. Writing a note to Teayo went easily enough; the clinic was all but empty. The real problem would be charming her way onto the second leg of the journey, the spell from Solace to Pasdon. “Well?” she said to Tellan. “Which’ll it be?”
“No matter what I do, I’m going to be sorry,” Tellan muttered.
“Call it the price of being able to play with magic,” Kacey suggested in a pointed tone. “And do it.”
Tellan sighed hugely, an annoyed sound, and Kacey knew she’d won. “Are you really ready to go?”
Kacey gestured at the satchels. “Don’t we look it?”
Tellan raised an eyebrow at her, looking a bit imperious. She let him have it, considering. “Not to put too fine a point on it, but I mean, are you really ready?”
“Oh!” Rethia said, understanding. “At Solace they told me it’s a good idea to use the backhouse first. Just in case.”
“Fine,” Kacey grumbled. Together, she and Rethia hurried to the backhouse. When they returned, they found Tellan waiting for them outside the house.
Now that she’d managed to convince the apprentice to prepare her for this strange journey, all Kacey could think of was the way Reandn reacted any time the subject of the wizard’s road came up. Anger, of course, and blunt condemnation. But she knew him well, now, probably better than he’d like, and she knew what lurked in his grey eyes behind that flash of anger.
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