Shadow Magic (48 page)

He gasped, as though breathing had become difficult for him, and his hand clenched tight, grasping at my shirt against the advent of some unseen enemy.

“No,” he moaned, low dread tainting his voice. “Don’t… It isn’t…”

In his illnesses as a child, the fever had sometimes given my lord deliriums, so that for a period of time he was entirely lost to me. There, he wandered in some land of his fevered brain’s devising where I could not follow, and therefore could not protect him.

“I am here,” I said, praying that it wasn’t
me
his fever had conjured, someone meant to protect him now turned against him. “It’s all right. You should have some… water.”

There was a great river that stood between our destination and us. We would have to cross it in order to reach my sister’s house, and I’d meant to tackle that obstacle when we came to it later, but now I thought that perhaps it would serve us best to try and reach it that night. Without the powders, teas, and medicines available at the palace, I was rather at a loss as to how to bring Mamoru’s fever down. With his constitution, there was no telling what lasting damage might be done to his body if he remained so hot. He burned where I touched him, through the rough homespun cloth, torn here and there.

I dared to touch his arm, where the blood had dried against the fabric, as though by covering the wound I could heal it.

“Kouje,” he gasped, and I felt my heart leap like a startled animal.

“My lord,” I murmured, too close for anyone else, even the birds, to hear. “I think we should try to get to the river.”

“The trees are moving,” he moaned, gazing at me without seeing me.

“That’s just the wind,” I said, and took him in my arms to stand us both up.

My lord was terribly thin, though he hadn’t once complained about the sparse meals we’d grown accustomed to on the road. Carrying him was like holding a bundle of sticks, already set to blazing with the illness in his blood. How long had it been since Mamoru had last been taken with fever? I couldn’t remember. The physicians had all said he’d grown out of it—once he weathered his thirteenth winter, he’d long since outlived their predictions—and indeed he’d fought capably enough in the mountain campaigns without ever falling ill.

It was enough to make me wonder—as I had never allowed myself to before—whether or not my lord’s illnesses had been entirely organic. If Iseul was capable of calling him traitor, who knew at what point he had begun to feel animosity for his brother?

I placed him on the horse, then mounted behind him so that I might catch him if he fell. The horse would never forgive me for not only depriving him of his rest, but also doubling his load, but I hoped the beast might manage to hold out a little longer. That it too might recognize its duty to Mamoru and push itself past its own natural limits, as I had tried to do.

Perhaps the horse would be more successful than I’d been.

Mamoru fell into a fitful sleep as we rode, muttering nonsense and clutching at whatever he could grasp with his small fingers, so that I found it hard to concentrate on the task at hand when I could not take my hands from the reins to comfort him. The sound of the horse’s hooves against the ground echoed loudly beneath us, our only company. The entire scene was like one from a dream.

Of course, the terrible thing about that sort of fever was that even if I could have put all my attentions to comforting him, he would likely not recognize the effort. He might not even know me.

Better, then, to head for the river, where I might at least do some good by bringing down his fever in water that ran frigid from the mountains to the sea.

It was a warm night, at least. The comfort I derived from knowing that Mamoru would have certainly taken sick from sleeping outdoors in the winter was a meager one, because if it was
not
the weather, then what was it? I thought again of my suspicions, dark as a shadow over my heart. If Iseul had caused Mamoru’s sickness in the past, then by
now he was surely comfortable with the art of blood magic. I could not confirm what I thought against my lord’s fevered state, however, and it was pointless to think of such things when I could not resolve them.

I felt the sharp pang of guilt again, of having harmed someone I’d sworn to protect. What I’d done had been as wrong as a fish taking flight, and as in all cases of nature’s laws being flouted, there
would
be a price to pay.

I had only hoped to make that payment with my sworn life. I’d never guessed that the gods would choose to punish
Mamoru
for such a thing. He was as blameless as a new day, fresh with promise and none of the weight of yesterday’s mistakes hanging over him. He did not deserve such unworthy servants, who were
not
so blameless as he.

I was so caught up in my own thoughts that I didn’t notice it when we came to the river. It was only the sudden splash of water that caught my attention, as in the dark the horse hadn’t seen it either. Mamoru chose that moment to cry out from the fever, and our horse shied in surprise and confusion. I tugged hard on the reins to keep him from bucking.

“Mamoru,” I murmured, then, since there was no one to hear us, “my lord. We have reached the river.”

He made a noise like an animal in pain, and turned his bright, glassy gaze up toward mine. “It’s
hot,”
he complained softly, “all over. I can’t…” His head dipped, and fell against my shoulder. “Kouje?”

“It’s fine,” I told him, fighting to believe it myself. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

I helped him down from the horse, his body swaying like a doll’s, limp and pale. He was still dressed like a servant.

“Easy now,” I said, edging us both toward the riverbank.

It was a warm night, I reminded myself, and there was no time to think of myself. I waded in fully clothed, with Mamoru held close against my chest. He thrashed in my hold like a fish for a moment, and then went still again as the water washed over him, cold even in the summertime. The Suijin River was one of the larger ones in Xi’an, so wide that the far bank was nearly invisible in the dark, and so long that it crossed over the Cobalts and into Volstov before it once again met with the ocean. I wondered if they had another name for it there, across the mountains, and if the river god ever became confused at having more than one name for the same body of water.

“It’s cold,” Mamoru said.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Don’t let the fish eat my toes,” he pleaded.

“I won’t,” I promised, and recalled that morning in the forest, when the catfish had so startled him. It seemed an unthinkable length of time when I looked back, though it had been no more than three weeks. Not such a great length of time, though it was long enough for our story to have caught the imaginations and satiric attention of the playwrights. It was as though my lord and I were no longer real people, living and breathing among them, but something lofty and far off, removed from the world and entered into legend.

Had the loyal retainer stood as tall as the mountains when he stood on the bridge to defend his lord against a dishonorable death? Had he truly been the figure worthy of legend that my father had talked about?

Or had he been like me: tired and watchful, always suspicious of a stranger, and even more so of a good turn of luck? Had he ever stood in a river alongside his lord, soaking wet, just praying that the fever might go down, that they might make it safely to their destination with no further complications, no more obstacles to block their path?

I wondered when he’d realized that they weren’t going to reach their destination. Then I thought of Mamoru’s stubbornness, and I wondered how the legendary retainer had managed to convince his lord to leave him there on the bridge in the first place.

Perhaps we weren’t the stuff of legends after all.

“It hurts,” Mamoru whispered, crumpling suddenly as though he’d been struck.

I moved once more to hold him up.

“It hurts
all over,”
he said, looking up at me with pleading in his eyes. “I can’t bear it. I
can’t
. It’s too much.”

“The water will help,” I said, willing the conviction into my voice. “It is uncomfortable because you are so warm, and the cold is such a shock, but it will help,” I promised. “Trust me.”

Mamoru swallowed, and made a noise of protest in his throat, but he didn’t attempt to argue. I held him as I had when he’d been a child starved for attention, and myself not yet old enough to keep from allowing him his indulgences. I could feel him shivering despite the heat still in his body, and I felt the beginnings of fear flicker to life deep in my heart. We were still too far from my sister’s house for him to be so
ill. If I could coax the fever down, then that would be one thing, but if I could not…

The problem was that I couldn’t shake my gut instinct—that this had something to do with Iseul. I did not want to believe that such a thing was possible, that it would be so simple for one brother to turn against the other in such a final way—using forbidden arts—but then, Iseul had already turned his heart and his hand against Mamoru. What else could I expect?

“You’ll be all right,” I told him.

I had no way to render what I offered, but I promised it nonetheless. It was part of my own stubbornness and pride—the very same flaws that had caused me to imagine I, of all men, could protect my prince outside the palace. These were the very same flaws that had inspired me to tell him:
Run
.

When we were both numb from the water, and long past the moment I’d grown accustomed to the sound of my teeth chattering, Mamoru stilled and his breathing evened. I pressed my wet cheek against his and listened, closely, for each rasp.

“I’m better,” Mamoru whispered.

We’d see about that.

I took him up onto shore nonetheless and wrapped him in the silk. It would soon be ruined, soaked through and stained forever; no longer would it give us away to any man who knew his cloth.

The sun was beginning to rise as I set out, following the course of the river. I listened closely to each sound Mamoru made, but he slept soundly upon the horse, his cheeks only the barest pink. He was no longer as burning hot as he had been the night before, but I refused to let my guard down. Following the river only took us a few miles out of our way, and for now, it was the only cure I had should the fever return.

That night, it did.

It was as soon as the sun dipped beneath the mountain horizon that his teeth began to chatter. Almost immediately I could feel his skin begin to burn, as though some furnace had been ignited within his chest, pumping his blood molten hot through his limbs. In the fading light his cheeks were flushed red, but around his mouth the skin was deadly white.

I dismounted and pulled him after me, and once more we spent hours in the river as the water lashed around me and I held on tight.

He struggled to free himself—if he did, he would drown—as though I were the unlucky fisherman who fell in love with a mermaid and sought to keep her as his wife. He was slippery and strong enough that I had trouble keeping my hold firm, but I wrapped my fingers in his sleeves and stood strong against him.

“Let me free,” he pleaded—begged—commanded. “I know how to swim, Kouje, I’ll be all right.”

“I cannot agree to that,” I replied.

He abandoned begging. Speaking became too much for him. At long last, his arms and legs tired of beating and kicking and he stilled, only to shake now and then with a shiver or a sob.

“Please,” he said, once, his voice rough with effort.

“I cannot,” I said again.

After that, he saw it was no use, and whatever demon had taken hold of him relinquished. It was only me against the fever then, but that was the worse of the two enemies. I lost track of all time as I held him in the water, until at last I felt him go limp and knew he was sleeping.

Again, I wrapped him in the silk. This time, I waited upon the shores of the Suijin for the sun to rise before I mounted up and spurred the weary horse onward.

We were drawing ever closer to the mountains, and when we came to a shallow part of the river, we waded across the water to Honganje province itself. It was what we’d both been waiting for, but now I couldn’t wake Mamoru to tell him we’d arrived. If I had, I’d have no assurance that he’d understand me—no assurance that the fever would not take that opportunity to strike again.

Once again, I followed the river. Once again, the fever returned as soon as the sun set.

During the day, it was not so difficult to hold the illness back, but once darkness fell upon us there was nothing I could do but wade into the river and wait.

Mamoru did not struggle so much this time as he had the last. It was easier to keep him from slipping away from me, yet that was no turn of good luck.

“You’ll kill me in the water like this,” Mamoru whispered, deceptive and cold, his eyes white-hot slits. He observed me from behind a face like a mask, and I knew it was the fever speaking. It assumed it knew my
lord better than I did. It assumed it could outsmart us with its sly words. “You know how weak I am, Kouje. Do you think I can make it much longer?”

“We shall have to see,” I said.

Mamoru let out a sharp cry, as though I’d pierced his stomach with a blade. It lingered on the air, over the sound of the rushing water, for a long moment; too long.

Then, from somewhere beyond the riverbank, I heard an answering shout.

It was no echo.

I cursed the moon, the sun, winter, and summer; I cursed my father and my mother, the very day I was born. I cursed until I had run out of curses, but all the while I was dragging Mamoru—who’d found new strength to kick and bite and claw and shout—out of the water and up onto the horse.

The horse reared and whinnied, one last act of defiance, before I jammed my boots into his flanks and he tore off alongside the river, slipping occasionally upon the wet pebbles that lined the bank.

I could only imagine the men following us, chasing the lone cry in the night. Bandits, or worse—state officials, soldiers, Iseul’s men, closing in on us.