The Swordmage Trilogy: Volume 02 - The Darkest Hour (14 page)

             
The air in the infirmary was thick with the smell of antiseptic spirits. It reminded him of the hall in Blackbeach where they had taken the bodies of the boys he had killed. Wynn had vowed never to enter such a place again. Yet here he was, keeping an uneasy vigil over the woman who had saved his life. It seemed the least he could do. After all, it was his fault that she was in the bed in the first place.

             
No matter how many times he revisited the previous night’s events in his head, he couldn’t come up with a single way in which he had done anything but get her hurt. To be fair, Tia hadn’t fully conveyed the mind-numbing horror of being face-to-face with a real, live Xarundi. To hear about the beasts was one thing. To watch in helpless terror as it tore apart every living thing in its path was another matter altogether.

             
Still, she had asked him to fight, and instead, he had frozen in place, too terrified to do more than huddle against the wall and hope that the entire ordeal would be over soon. If only he had fought, maybe his face wouldn’t hurt so much, maybe he’d still have his eye, and maybe the girl laying in the bed next to him could not have only saved herself, but others in the city who had needed her help as well.

             
The side of his face throbbed like a distant drumbeat. He tentatively touched the bandages there. His fingers came away sticky, stained with blood that had seeped through the gauze. The healers had offered him medicine for the pain, but he had politely, if firmly, refused. The pain was a good reminder that the next time Tia asked him to fight, maybe he should do it.

             
There was a commotion at the end of the long hall and Wynn turned his body so he could see clearly with his remaining eye. The clerics had just drawn a bloodstained sheet over the face of someone laying on the table. A woman, a commoner judging by her plain linen dress, threw herself over the body, her wails echoing across the infirmary. How many more would die, Wynn wondered bitterly.

             
Even as small as he felt, there was something inside him that was even worse. It was the insistent little voice that asked what if? What if Tiadaria had never come to Ethergate? What if the Xarundi hadn’t come looking for her? It wasn’t as if the city hadn’t fought off its fair share of attacks in the past, but never had the cost been so high. The rational part of him knew she wasn’t really to blame, but the rational side of him hadn’t done him much good lately.

             
Tiadaria shifted and Wynn’s attention was instantly focused back on the bed. He watched her eyes. They fluttered a bit under the lids, but she didn’t wake. He wanted to grab her, shake her, and do anything that might bring her back. He wasn’t sure what to do. So rather than make things worse, he settled on doing nothing. Brooding, he slumped back in his chair and watched her.

             
The steady throbbing in his head had almost lulled him to sleep when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned his head, then followed a moment later with his full body. He was still struggling to adapt to his newly acquired handicap. The man who stood behind him was of medium build and height, with a head of thick, curly brown hair. The look of compassion he turned on Wynn was enough to make the apprentice look away in embarrassment.

             
“Apprentice Wynn?” The stranger’s voice was a mellow baritone, far more soothing than Wynn wanted or felt he deserved.

             
“Yes?”

             
“I’ve brought a message for Lady Tiadaria. The cleric at the door said you’d been with her all night.”

             
“And will be until she wakes,” he said harshly, as if somehow the stranger’s statement implied that Wynn should be elsewhere.

             
“That’s good,” the man said, snaking his foot around the leg of a nearby stool and drawing it next to the apprentice’s chair. “Tia would like that.”

             
The familiarity of his tone caught Wynn off guard. “You know her?”

             
Offering a slow, sad smile the man nodded. “Yes. We fought together against the Xarundi at Dragonfell. My name is Cabot. I wish we were meeting under better circumstances.”

             
Wynn grunted and offered no other reply. Cabot didn’t seem overly inclined to continue the conversation, which suited the apprentice just fine. In fact, Wynn had almost forgotten about Cabot’s presence when he spoke again.

             
“I feel like I can trust you to deliver this in my absence.” Cabot produced a sealed letter from inside his doublet. He offered it to Wynn, who took it with numb fingers.

             
“This is from Faxon?” Wynn asked, recognizing the seal and the extravagant blue wax.

             
“Yes,” Cabot replied with a smile. “For Lady Tiadaria.” He tapped the scrawled name over the seal.

             
“I’m not in the habit of reading other people’s mail,” Wynn retorted hotly.

             
“I am,” Cabot said, slowly getting to his feet. “I work for Imperium Intelligence. Please see that Tiadaria gets that letter as soon as she wakes.” Cabot turned to leave, then stopped and looked back at Wynn over his shoulder. “The Xarundi would have come to Ethergate sooner or later, Wynn. Tiadaria wasn’t the only thing of interest to them here, it would seem.”

             
Wynn jerked upright in surprise. “The gargoyle?” He had only just found out about the theft himself. A knot of quintessentialists had passed through the infirmary discussing the gargoyle. He wondered how Cabot could know of its disappearance already.

             
Cabot nodded. “We live in interesting times.” He walked off, leaving Wynn to contemplate exactly how interesting they were. Cabot seemed vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. He was still trying to puzzle out the connection when Tia spoke.

             
“Did I hear Cabot?” Tia’s voice was soft and slow and for a moment, Wynn wasn’t sure he had heard it at all. Her eyes were still closed.

             
“Are you awake?” Wynn pulled his chair closer to the bed. “Tia?”

             
“I’m awake,” she said with a grimace. “Please don’t yell. My head is killing me. So was Cabot really here?”

             
“He was.” Wynn kept his voice barely above a whisper. “He brought a letter for you, from Faxon.”

             
“Can you read it to me?” There was a pause, then Tia gasped. “I’m sorry, Wynn. I…”

             
“It’s okay, Tia. I still have one good eye.” He broke the seal, shaking the letter open. It was the first time he had to try to read. It wasn’t so bad, but it would take some getting used to. “It reads:

             
“Dear Tiadaria,

             
“Bad news spreads like wildfire. The attack on Ethergate is all anyone is talking about here in Blackbeach. I’m coming as soon as I can, but I think we both know that this attack was no coincidence.

             
“I’m sending Cabot on with this letter. My reasons for this are twofold: first, I wanted you to know I’m on my way. Second, I wanted you to have someone you could rely on--”

             
Wynn faltered here. Surely there was no way that Faxon could have heard about his shameful cowardice so quickly. He recovered his composure and continued.

             
“I wanted you to have someone you could rely on in the city until I arrive. Please keep Wynn safe. He’s a good lad, but not much of a fighter. I’ll be there soon. Stay put. Faxon.”

             
Wynn glanced over the letter again before adding, “He underlined stay put.”

             
Tiadaria laughed. If the laughter had a bit of a hysterical edge to it, neither of them would mention it. She opened her eyes and looked at him, her face a mask of sorrow as she saw his stained bandages.

             
“Oh Wynn,” she sighed, her voice cracking and dangerously close to a sob. “I’m so sorry.”

             
Wynn ducked his head. Her grief only made him feel that much worse. He had failed her and yet she was the one saying she was sorry. Mastering a fear that had nothing to do with what they had been through the previous night, he reached out and took her hand. Link-shock jumped between them and Tiadaria tried to pull away, but he held her firmly.

             
“I should be apologizing to you,” he said, his voice rough. “If I had fought--”

             
“If you had fought, it wouldn’t have made any difference. We might both be dead. We’re not. We survived.” She freed her hand from his and laid it gently against the bandages. The look in her eyes made Wynn’s heart skip.

             
He placed his hand on hers and gently forced it back to the bed. “I’ll be fine, Tia. I have a spare eye, and besides, the healer said that the scars will make me look rugged and manly.”

             
“Well then,” she said with a hint of her normal humor. “Things went according to plan then, huh?”

             
Wynn gave her a puzzled look and Tia sighed with exasperation. She really had to do something about his sense of humor, or more accurately, the lack thereof. He wasn’t that much older than she was, there was no reason for him to be so serious and humorless.

             
“I was kidding you, Wynn. You know, as if you planned the whole thing to get yourself some manly scars.”

             
“Has anyone ever told you that you have the strangest sense of humor?”

             
Tia smiled tolerantly. “Life is pretty strange, Wynn. Might as well laugh about it while we can.”

             
“I guess.” He glanced around the infirmary. “Doesn’t seem like there is much to laugh about in here.”

             
“No,” she agreed. “Things are pretty serious in here. Hey! Wait a minute! You said that Cabot had brought that letter from Faxon, but he’s still in Blackbeach. It took me more than a week to get here.”

             
Wynn snorted. “He probably took the gate.”

             
“What gate?” Now it was Tiadaria’s turn to look puzzled.

             
“The ether gate,” he said, rolling his eyes. “It’s much faster to get here from Blackbeach that way. More dangerous though, and not fun. At all.”

             
“Wait, wait, wait. You mean to tell me that there is a way to get directly from Blackbeach to Ethergate?”

             
“Of course.” Wynn seemed completely oblivious to her agitation.

             
“And this mode of travel that connects Blackbeach to Ethergate is called the ether gate? A little on the nose, don’t you think?”

             
“Well, calling it the City of Sparkling Magical Teleportation was deemed a waste of words.”

             
Tia gaped at him, momentarily at a loss for words. “Wynn! Did you just make a joke?”

             
“Depends. Was it funny?”

             
Tia laughed. “Yeah. Yeah, it was.”

             
“Then I guess so.” Wynn ducked his head as one of the clerics shot him a sour glance. It wasn’t hard to decipher that look. “You need to rest, Tia,” he said, passing along the unspoken message.

             
“I think that’s a good idea.” She sighed. “Will you stay with me?”

             
“Of course.”

             
Wynn watched over her until she fell into a fitful sleep. He dozed in the chair beside her bed. He woke when she woke, slept when she slept, and ate when she ate. In between, they pointedly did not talk about the relic or the attack.

             
When the sun went down, one of the healers brought Wynn a cot. It was hard and narrow, but it let him remain at Tia’s side. He lay down, and eventually, fell into a fitful sleep.

* * *

              “Twice! Twice the vermin wench has beaten the warriors of the Chosen. It is shameful. A disgrace! An outrage!”

Zarfensis remained silent. He knew that it was better for Xenir to burn off his anger and frustration through vitriol rath
er than try to answer any of his heated comments. In truth, Zarfensis felt much the same way and he knew that Chrin had had some harsh words for the Warleader when they had returned to the Warrens.

             
In fact, the only thing that tempered the High Priest’s rage was the small piece of living stone that he held in his belt pouch. It was an unexpected, but incredibly valuable gift. The Swordmage could have slaughtered Chrin and the rest of the warriors and it would have been worth the losses. A gargoyle! Zarfensis doubted the vermin knew what a treasure they had held in their reliquary.