Accidental Sorceress (Hardstorm Saga Book 2) (29 page)

I ate and drank while Marga sniffed around. Then we moved on, continuing up and up. Things only turned worse the higher we reached.

The cold cut through my new furs. I had to keep my water flasks under my clothes, against my skin, so the water would not freeze. When darkness fell, we pulled under a ledge, but I could not start a fire. Trees were scarce and small; any broken branches were buried under heavy snow, frozen.

Only Marga, curled around me, kept me alive that night.

She must have been worried about me, because she did not go off to hunt at dawn.

As we walked up the frozen incline, now and then I saw tiger tracks on the trail. These Marga always carefully sniffed.

She did not rub against trees or try to mark anything with her urine. The side of the mountain was not her territory, and I suspected she did not want to be drawn into a fight as an intruder. We were simply passing through, she and I.

The following day, we did see a female tiger off in the distance, standing on a ledge, watching us. She was smaller than Marga and did not approach. I was grateful for that.

The next tiger we came across, a day later, was a large male. This one could have torn both Marga and me apart. But even if it approached growling, it did stop and sniff, then bounded forward in a more playful manner, straight toward me.

And then I recognized him. “Tigran!”

He was Lord Karnagh’s battle tiger. We had met at Karamur. He had the habit of lounging under the table at Lord Karnagh’s feet at the feasts. I had even tossed him bones now and then.

He greeted me first, then Marga, who showed her neck in submission. Then they moved as if to fight, but even as I looked on in alarm, Marga rolled on the ground, as frisky as I had ever seen her, making noises that were new to me.

She waved her paws, then finally rolled on her belly. Tigran stood over her and let out a series of roars that had me stumble back another couple of steps. Tigran grabbed Marga’s neck from the back, but his enormous canines did not seem to pierce her skin.

And then he mounted her.

I looked away, understanding at last that I was not witnessing a fight, despite all the growling.

As noisy as they were, they were fast enough. Soon Tigran was leading us forward, up and up, until we suddenly broke out of the scraggly, sparse forest.

Here a stretch of incline began with nothing but low shrubs. But beyond that, I could see a squat, snow-covered building, the only man-made thing in sight.

“The Beast Lords’ Chapel,” I told Marga, forgetting my exhaustion and the numbing cold.

We hurried forward, following Tigran.

In the back of the chapel stood twelve stone sarcophagi in a half circle, each marked with a beast lord’s name on the front, a carved, reclining tiger on top of each. Since the tigers were all different and distinct, I thought they were the replicas of the lords’ true battle tigers.

In the middle stood the largest sarcophagus, and on top of it a giant statue of a battle tiger on his feet, maw opened in a snarling roar, the animal so lifelike I drew back for a second.
Bloodstorm
, I thought.

I had been so blinded by all the sparkling snow outside that I did not at first see Lord Karnagh’s smaller figure in the dim interior, but I could hear a startled cry—Lord Karnagh’s voice.

“Lady Tera!”

And I saw a lump move on a bed of dry grasses under the altar. I rushed forward.

Tigran bounded up to me with a growl. My sudden rush toward his master had caught him off guard and raised his protective instincts, but a soft chuff from Lord Karnagh stopped him in his tracks.

I proceeded more carefully and could make out the man fully at last. When I reached him, I fell on my knees in front of him.

He was but a shadow of his former self, his hair white like an old man’s. I remembered well his golden mane, the color of his tiger, his handsome face that had set the women at Karamur atwitter when he visited. He’d had such a light and sparkle in his eyes…

He lowered his head. “I have suffered some injuries, my lady.”

With my heart in my throat, I nodded. He was missing his sword arm. Never again would he lead an army into battle.

“Has Batumar come to free my lands?” Lord Karnagh asked and looked past me, eager to see the High Lord walk in behind me.

I swallowed painfully. And I told him about Batumar, feeling colder than I had felt out in the open, in the wind.

We both had tears in our eyes by the time I finished. And then Lord Karnagh insisted that I tell him about Batumar’s wild plan to save our island.

Afterward, we sat in silence in the dying light, the two tigers copulating at the chapel’s entrance, snapping and growling at each other.

“I have come up the mountain to die,” Lord Karnagh said. Then, not without anger, “But the spirit of the mountain will not let me.”

He paused. “There are places that have a spirit…” He looked at me questioningly, as if wondering whether I understood.

I nodded, suddenly feeling wooden.
Kratos
, I thought, and began to shiver uncontrollably, every muscle in my body screaming to flee.

“It is a good spirit at least, not a dark one,” Lord Karnagh said grudgingly. “And it did allow you to come up the mountain.”

I held my breath. Could he be right? For a moment, I closed my eyes and tried to feel for the spirit. I sensed no darkness, heard no hissing, smelled not the terrible, fetid smell of Kratos.

But I did sense
something,
a benign, feline presence, pushing against the edges of my consciousness with curiosity.

I drew in air as I opened my eyes. Maybe the spirit of the Beast Lords’ Chapel
was
a different thing from the taloned god who’d left me bereft.

“I do not know for what reason I have been kept alive.” Lord Karnagh gave a bitter grunt. “I can be no use to anybody. Mayhap the spirit of the chapel was lonely.”

I hesitated. “May I see the rest of your injuries?”

For a moment, broken pride flared in his gaze. But then he looked away from me and threw back the battered cloak that had been covering him. His leggings were so tattered and torn that I could see his skin right through them as if he wore nothing.

His legs were twisted. They had been broken in several places and had healed badly.

“Not only will I never be able to hold a sword again, but I cannot stand, let alone walk, my lady. I have dragged myself up here clinging to Tigran’s fur. The best tiger that ever lived. He is of Bloodstorm’s bloodline, did I tell you that?”

He did not wait for my answer before saying, “I had two hands then, but the right one had been too badly damaged. It turned black soon after we reached the chapel. I had to cut it off with my own sword, then cauterize the wound.”

I paled, trying to imagine.

He gave a half smile. “I tried to think of what you would do.”

“I could not have done
that
,” I admitted.

He was silent for a moment. “I cannot cling to Tigran to go back down, not one-handed, and I cannot walk either.” He gave a frustrated grunt. “Unless you can carry me down on your back, I am to die in this chapel whenever the spirit lets me go at last.”

I kept staring at his legs. No herbs could help something like that. But if I could not carry Lord Karnagh down the mountain on his back, he could carry
me
down, I reasoned.

I laid my hands upon his left leg and closed my eyes, prayed to the spirits, then said, “I might know a way to heal this.”

He pulled away. “I will not allow it.”

I offered a weak smile. “You sound like Batumar.”

“I have seen what healing during the siege did to you, my lady. I cannot let you take my pain upon yourself.”

“I shall not die. You can help me down the mountain, and then I shall heal in Brooker’s cave.”

He raised a white eyebrow. “Brooker’s cave? What happened to Brooker’s Castle?”

And I told him.

When I finished, he asked, “Enough warriors to take the castle back?”

I nodded. “Then we could leave the common folk there, in the safety of the high walls. The main force of Emperor Drakhar’s army has moved on. He only has roving bands of warriors here and there. He might not even find out until spring that he has lost the castle.

“By then, you, my lord, and Lord Brooker could move on with two hundred warriors to lift the siege from your own castle, Regnor. Then, joined with the warrior queen’s army that holds the last free city to the south, you could push the enemy back and back, until the whole of Seberon was regained.”

Lord Karnagh nodded. “Once the kingdom is free, we could cut off supplies to the Emperor’s army.”

“Yes.”

He looked at me. “I shall confess, I had at times thought it strange that you were a healer
and
a concubine, but now I find even stranger that you are at heart a general.”

I laughed at that. “I know precious little of war.”

“Yet you brought a host of five hundred people to Lord Brooker. Through enemy land.”

“Only because it had been willed so by the spirits.”

He watched me, contemplating all we had said. “What do the spirits will now?”

“That you return to your people.”

He fell silent for a long time. Then he held my gaze. “You could make it so I could walk again?”

“With the spirits’ help.”

His eyes brightened but then clouded again after a moment. “I could still not hold a sword.”

No.
I could not grow bones. But I said, “I led a host of five hundred through a war-torn land without a sword.”

And he laughed again, but once more, his merriment did not last long. “Is there not another way? Can you not help without harming yourself, my lady?”

I shook my head. Yet an idea I did not much like, pushed into my head. “Maybe it could be accomplished differently,” I admitted.

“How so?”

“To set the bones right and heal them the proper way, I must soften them first, move them out of their bad positions. This takes much strength,” I said, with no small amount of reluctance.

“That will weaken you.”

I nodded.

He watched me, and after a while, he understood. “But if the bones were rebroken, then you could save your strength for the healing itself. It would not be as dangerous for you, then.”

I nodded again.

“But still dangerous?”

“Yes.” The knitting together of bones required much from a healer.

We sat in silence.

I pulled out my food sack and shared some food with him, hard biscuits and cheese, which he ate with haste. I suspected Tigran had fed him nothing but snow hares since they had come up the mountain.

“You have a tiger,” he remarked.

“I do not know how.” I shook my head. “My mother was a pureblood Shahala; my father…Barmorid,” I admitted. “A Kadar.” A well-known Kadar at that, the High Lord before Batumar.

Lord Karnagh looked at me with much interest. “Barmorid was the son of a Kadar warlord by his Selorm concubine, if I remember right.” He thought some more. “One of those times when the Kadar came to our aid. Our people have traded favors for centuries. Barmorid returned home with payment in gold and a Selorm princess to strengthen the alliance.”

I blinked.

Lord Karnagh smiled, pleased. “We might be related. I would have to look it up in the annals of our people. If the enemy has not burned every scroll when they took our castles.”

How strange that thought was, that I might yet have living family. I hid that small flicker of hope deep inside me. “But even Selorm women do not bond with tigers.”

“You are no ordinary woman, my lady.” He fell back again into deep thought as we finished eating. “In this healing…I want no harm to come to you at all. And beyond that, I fear Batumar’s spirit will find me in a battlefield and slay me.”

“I am a healer. I am supposed to heal.”

“I am a warrior. I am supposed to die from deadly battle wounds,” he countered.

“Not when a healer is readily available.”

He scoffed. Glared. Then, “You will not die?”

“I will not,” I promised. “Your people need you.
My
people need you,” I added quietly.

And after a long while, he nodded.

“I will need a moment.” I went to the doorway and lowered myself to my knees as I looked to the sky.

Why would the spirits bring me here if not to heal Lord Karnagh? And if they brought me here for that purpose, then they would not withhold my healing powers from me. Since the battle at the ancient temple, I had healed only with herbs, but now a skill beyond herbs was needed.

I thought of my mother until I had her face and voice and smell firmly in my mind. I let her kindness and love fill me, then I prayed and prayed. And I felt a flickering of my healing power awaken.

I gave thanks to the spirits and went back inside.

Lord Karnagh dragged himself to the steps that led to the altar.

“Let us break the bones, then.” He stretched his legs out over the steps, then reached for a fallen block of stone with his one good arm.

“Tigran,” he called out. “To hunt.”

The great tiger looked at us, but then turned around and bounded out. Marga remained.

“If I cry out, Tigran might think you are attacking me, my lady,” Lord Karnagh explained.

He held the stone over his right leg, the bone bumpy, the muscles mangled already. He swallowed hard. “I do not know where to strike.”

I selected some herbs from my belt and traded them for the stone. “Chew on those while I decide what needs to be done.”

He shoved a handful of herbs into his mouth. He chewed, swallowed, chewed again. When I saw his eyes becoming cloudy, I hefted the stone suddenly. I broke his thigh bone first, without warning.

He groaned.

The stone came down again.

Sweat rolled down both our faces.

I moved over to the other leg, hesitated.

But he growled, “Do it, my lady.”

And I slammed the stone into his leg with all my strength.

When, at long last, I could cast that stone aside and lay my hands on the broken bones, the pain that hit me was so fierce, I swayed. I could not stay kneeling next to him. I had to sit.