“No,” he said, his soft words at odds with the intensity of his expression. “No, we won’t do that. Who knows what kind of help they’ve found amongst these damned hill dwellers. They’ll fight just to be fighting, you know that.”
She lowered her voice until it was almost seductive. “They’re holed up in some damp little den somewhere, licking their wounds. None of them escaped unhurt, you know that.”
“Nonetheless.” The single word stopped her next words short; with more expectation than resignation, the woman watched him. Fascinated by the depth of his dark elation, so did Kacey. “The Knife has lost too many to this cause — we’ll risk no more of our own. And we’ll have no need.”
His gaze passed over Rethia and fell on Kacey; she flinched, feeling more like a tool or convenience than a person. “Aya, lassagirl. You’re going to be quite useful after all.”
~~~~~
Goddess, what a headache.
Reandn sat in the last of the sunshine, the tight jacket open to the cooling breeze, his back to the barn and his face to the modest pastures beyond it, trying without success to gather his wits.
He hoped that come the morning, he’d rise out of this thick personal fog. For now, he seemed capable only of aimlessly scanning the fields, watching spring arrive.
By the time he got back to Little Wisdom, he’d have missed spring on Teayo’s land. In spring, Rethia lost herself in her meadow and in the woods, wandering as she pleased and never fearing attack by the forest predators. In spring, Kacey finally took some time for herself, walking the edges of their yard where the wildflowers reached for light.
In spring, when Reandn’s patrol passed through Little Wisdom, Kacey invited him on her walks. Never a planned thing, just the sudden lift of her head and a glance his way, and then he, too, would forget some of the matters that lay so heavily on his shoulders.
He hadn’t realized he’d been looking forward to it this year.
Beside him, the big sliding door opened just enough for Kalena to emerge, wearing Vaklar’s jacket — the sleeves rolled up and the waist belted with rope. No doubt it was warmer than her own tasteful coat.
Cupped in her hands and almost lost in the sleeves, she held a steaming mug of something. After a moment in which he said nothing in the way of greeting, she held out the mug. “Madehy gave this to me for you,” she said. “Or, more accurately, she shoved it out the door with the new poultices. Anyway, she said this drink would help your headache. Or, I think that’s what she mumbled.”
“Huh,” Reandn said. “Wonder what made her think I might have a headache?”
Kalena looked away from him, out at the fields. Her lips pursed slightly, exaggerating the undercut of her lower lip. “I know what you were trying to do,” she said. “I’m sorry it turned out like it did. So is Elstan, believe it or not.”
“Not,” he replied, not bothering to put much feeling into it.
She studied him. “I’ve only ever seen you full of insolence, or giving one of the others a taste of your temper when it didn’t seem the least appropriate.”
“Not appropriate as far as you were concerned, you mean,” Reandn murmured. “I always had reasons. You just never knew about them.”
She gave him a sharp look. “There was a lot I didn’t know. That the Keep dared to perpetrate such a deception is something they’ll hear about, make no mistake. But I understand that you were only following orders.”
“Generous of you.” He closed his eyes to concentrate on the feel of the fading warmth on his face, and wondered what she was up to. For a moment, he simply let the pleasant, sweet tones of her voice fall against his ears, and pretended not to notice that even in her civility, she scattered condescension and inadvertent insult. As an ambassador, she had plenty to learn.
“Are you listening?” she asked him. “Drink that potion, so you can pay better attention to me.”
Ah. He’d forgotten about it. The first sip told him why the smell was familiar; it was one of Kacey’s favorite brews for aches and pains, and she wasn’t any more successful than Kacey in hiding the bitter flavor.
“ I’m trying to say that I’ve judged you more harshly than I might, simply because you didn’t behave as a wrangler ought. Now, I understand there was good reason. You do indeed have trustworthy and admirable qualities.”
Reandn sighed. “Maybe you’d better just tell me what you want, Kalena.”
“Meira Kalena to you,” she said sharply, and then modified her manner to something more appeasing. “Well. I suppose I’d better practice my demeanor before I reach the Keep.”
“Just think of it as getting your own way when no one realizes it’s what you’re doing.”
“As if I need advice from you,” she said. “Do you think I wasn’t tutored before I left?”
“Of course,” he said, as if he hadn’t heard her, “you could try being nice more often. Then people wouldn’t notice when you were doing it to get your own way.”
“You,” she said tightly, “are very difficult.”
He opened his eyes to confirm that what he’d heard was indeed the sound of her soft boot tapping against the turf. Yes, indeed. He gave her a tired grin and said, “I know. Being nice isn’t my strong point, either.”
She stared at him for a long moment, pointedly shifting her gaze to the aching lump of a cut on his dark brow. “That’s going to scar quite fiercely, I should think.”
Reandn drank more of the bitter tea.
After a few more long, silent moments, Kalena gave an audible sigh and said, “ Obviously you realize we must work together to survive. I can see that, and I think our erstwhile wizard finally sees it, too.”
“Vaklar’s always seen it,” Reandn said. “If it comes down to the two of us, we can still get you to the Keep safely, as long as Elstan doesn’t bounce magic or horseshoes off my head.”
“That’s just it,” Kalena said. “I don’t want to go to the Keep. I want to go home.”
Ah yes. Back to that. “I have my orders.”
“To keep me safe? If our attackers are from the Knife, my safety lies at home. Surely you can see that. But Vaklar is determined to honor his fallen by completing his original assignment.”
Over the curve of the mug, Reandn said softly, “They were your fallen, too.”
Her lips tightened over her teeth; her upper incisors peeked out. “Vaklar respects you. You can convince him I’m right.”
But you’re not. These people had a wizard; the Knife would never use the very magic it abhorred. And the Knife wasn’t known for its fighting skills; its members tended to employ arson or rigged accidents or knives in the dark.
“Are you paying attention to me?” Kalena said, and that foot started tapping again.
“More than you’d probably like,” Reandn muttered. He took a deep breath, gulped the last of the tea, and let his wrist rest on his knee with the mug dangling out of his hand. “I’m guessing it hasn’t occurred to you that I might have my own reasons for completing this assignment.”
The setting sun limned her surprised expression, speaking more eloquently than any words she might have used.
The Wolves, he thought to himself, but was startled to discover that there was a more important reason at the forefront of his thoughts. “I made promises, Kalena. I’ll not break them because you’re frightened.”
“How dare you —” she started, but faded off, watching Reandn with a mixture of curiosity and trepidation.
Had he felt —? He frowned, concentrating, and it only added weight to his unhappy brow. Had he —?
Another quiet slap of magic made him start and drop the mug.
“What is it?” Kalena asked warily, glancing around.
Reandn climbed to his feet, one steadying hand on the barn — waiting for the magic to wreak its havoc, knowing he had to figure out where the threat came from while he could.
But it didn’t wreak havoc at all. It continued to dance around him and skip on its way, almost as di
sconcerting as if it had taken him down.
“Dan,” Kalena said. “What —”
“Magic,” he interrupted quietly, still fully caught up in deciphering the enigma.
The call came faintly, from the other side of the barn, from a voice not used to shouting. “Get in the barn!”
Madehy? Reandn exchanged a puzzled glance with Kalena, who only looked baffled. “Do it,” he told her, nodding at the barn door. “And send Vaklar out.”
She went, but not without a number of perplexed and resentful backward glances. As soon as he was sure of her, he returned his gaze to the fields — the origin of the inexplicable currents. Was there movement on the far edges? A widespread ripple?
Madehy came running around the end of the barn at top speed. She didn’t even appear to notice him, not at first. Not until she hesitated to climb over the post and rail fence — about the time Reandn convinced himself that the movement he’d seen was real, and growing closer. When she discovered him, she turned on him. “Didn’t you hear me? Get in the barn!”
“Hearing and listening are two different things,” he said. “And I’m not sure you should go out there.”
She snorted at him, barely audible over the growing rumble in the background. “One day in my yard and suddenly you know my life better than I do. Get in the barn.”
“Dan?” Vaklar stood in the half-open doorway, frowning, a sleepy Teya beside him. “What’s happening, then?”
Reandn squinted out into the field, finally able to make out a mass of moving bodies, pounding forward and down into the slight dip in the far field, surging over the fence between fields, bringing with them a growing rumble. Slanting sunlight glanced blindingly from inexplicable, scattered reflection points. “I’m not sure,” he told Vaklar, his alarm growing.
“I warned you,” Madehy said, and hopped over the fence to run out into the field. She stood with her arms outstretched and her head thrown back, drinking in...
The magic? For while the currents still went around him instead of through him, magic there was aplenty.
No surprise, then, that Elstan poked his head out of the barn, shoving the door open a little wider. “Who’s —” he started, stopping at the sight of Madehy in the field and the imposing mass of animals charging straight for her. “Get her out of there!”
Too late for that. She warned us. And then she’d run out there in the midst of them.
For he understood, now. Of all of them, he’d seen this before.
It had looked much different then, with him on his knees — holding onto Kacey, trying to protect her from the dancing hooves of charging unicorns. Now, glancing sunlight resolved into raised, iridescent horns, and the mass of dark color separated into the individual forms of the massive beasts.
They might have been huge draft horses, had their coloration not all been subtly wrong — palominos that were more fawn than blond, chestnuts more auburn than fiery red, hair that seemed to darken instead of reflect diffuse light as it curved over muscle and bone.
No, they weren’t horses. If their horns — pearly or ebony or deepest brown, shorter than one might have expected for an animal so large, and entirely functional — weren’t convincing enough, there was the unusual circumference of bone in their legs and the wickedly curved claw set above the fetlock on the inside of each foreleg.
And then there was the look in their eyes — gleaming with intelligence, brooking no insult, offering no mercy, suffering no fools. They were sturdy and powerful creatures built for carrying magic, for generating magic... for protecting it.
They’d left this world once. Hunted and harried, they’d scorned foolish humanity and found themselves a safer place.
But thanks to Rethia, they’d come back. And now they bore down on the petite young woman who stood directly in their path.
“Madehy!” Reandn shouted, breaking into a run and then breaking off again just as quickly, because it was too late, they were here — and because there was nothing of fear in Madehy’s expression at all. Varina cried out in dismay, hiding her face —
He’d never supposed such massive beasts could be so agile. Turning sharply aside only an arm’s length before her, the unicorns split, thundering by to brush their sides against her outstretched arms. Those who’d missed her touch the first time circled around to make the run again, and the thundering unity of the herd broke into clusters of movement.
Never did they collide, or squeal and kick. Never did they bump or brush her. And they all made way for the biggest of them, the one who trotted directly to her with hooves lifted high in an expression of spirit and power.
Somehow it only seemed right that the beast was so boldly colored, a pattern of deep bark brown splashed over white. After looking into her marbled eyes, the animal was nothing but familiar — and after seeing Rethia convene with the huge unicorn whose exact walnut hues echoed the brown rims in her own blue eyes, it was nothing less than he should have expected.
“Oh,” Kalena said, sounding breathless, “if only the Knife could see this! They’d never fight the magic again!”
Vaklar growled, “Fanatics aren’t swayed by beauty.”
Elstan’s voice came a little too eager. “If she has this sort of control over them, maybe I can study them. We know so little about them, and if I was the one —”
Reandn couldn’t help his laughter, though he didn’t take his eyes off the amazing scene in Madehy’s field — she had her arms around the stud’s arching neck, and he wouldn’t have imagined such tolerance from any unicorn. “What makes you think she has control over them?”
“Reandn,” Teya interrupted, “I think you’d better get in here —”
In the field, the unicorns — there must have been fifty of them, capering and wheeling and even deigning to lower their head to snatch at grass — were beginning to circle, to build up speed. Somehow Reandn had assumed they would go back the way they came, but now —
“Reandn,” Teya said, loud and demanding above their renewed movement, while Reandn straightened, going to Wolf on alert. “Reandn!”
— they’d picked up an easy canter and broken off from the circle to head straight for the fence and over it. Straight for Reandn.
No, he thought, taking a step toward them. I know you. I know you all.
“ — kill you!” Teya’s words, broken and nearly lost in the rumble.
If they wanted him, ducking into a barn wouldn’t stop them.
Reandn stood, lifting his head in the very same way they lifted theirs — and in an instant they’d reached him, splitting around him as they’d split for Madehy, ignoring Kalena’s squeal as the tight quarters brought them in close to the barn.
Reandnd stood completely, Wolfishly still while they thrust their muzzles at him and lipped at his clothes, snorting and snuffling and behaving for all the world like curious horses — except not once did they jostle him. Their currents of magic went neatly around him, brushing him with cool, shivery caresses — and beneath it all, something else touched him. An eager intent, their desire to communicate... something.
What?
The splotched unicorn stood at the fringe of it all, waiting — waiting until he caught Reandn’s gaze, and then holding it in a long look from his dark eye — a look so full of meaning, of challenge and acknowledgement and even traces of fury that Reandn couldn’t have broken its hold over him if he’d tried.
But he didn’t. He had his own things to say, his own challenges, and even a silent snarl of victory — I have lived through what your magic did to me.
And then it was over. The stud shook his head, his ears back and his eyes rolled in threat. We’ll see, the gesture seemed to say, and the creature lifted his head to give a short series of melodic whistles.
The herd moved away from Reandn, past the barn and around it, trotting in a bold and leisurely manner; he twisted to follow its progress as the unicorns melted away into the trees, disappearing so quickly and thoroughly that he couldn’t say they hadn�
��t done it with magic.
When he turned back, he found Madehy before him, planted with her hands on her hips and suspicious disbelief in her eyes. “Why are you still alive?”
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 13
“They ought to have killed you,” Madehy insisted, her expression passing through wary surprise, and resentment, and — deepest yet — curiosity.
Teya had a pretty good idea why they hadn’t, but to judge by the baffled expressions around her — and the demand on Vaklar’s face — she was the only one.
Reandn stood apart from them, his gaze fastened on the spot where the unicorns had disappeared. And then he seemed to come back to himself. He looked from one to another of them, and he opened his mouth... and then deliberately closed it again, giving them only the faint shake of his head.
Teya couldn’t stand it any longer. “Are you all right?”
In answer, Reandn looked down at himself and spread his arms away from his body, gesturing see for yourself.
“I don’t mean like that.” Teya held her hand out, fingers fanned against the currents of magic; her irritation faded away, replaced by fascination. “Unicorn winds,” she said, full of wonder. “Pure magic.”
“They... sent it around me,” he said, looking at her over Madehy’s head as if the healer wasn’t standing there with her fists balled up on her hips, waiting.
At least, until Madehy gasped, taking an involuntary step forward as she reached for Reandn’s face — stopping just short of him. Abruptly, she snatched her hand away, holding it close as if she’d just narrowly avoided some terrible danger — but her gaze didn’t waver from his face.
“Your head —” Kalena started.
Reandn glanced to Teya, and she sucked in a breath as she understood. Where the angry, scabbing gash had split his brow, she saw nothing more than a whitely distinct scar, covered by a few grey hairs in that dark eyebrow. She touched her own brow where it mirrored his, and he reached up to discover the healed cut.
“I guess they didn’t hurt me at all.” He gave her a quick grin, though under it she could see his disconcerted uncertainty.
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