Valor of the Healer (20 page)

The warning in Julian’s mind became a shriek of fear and grief and fury.
He
knows
was his only thought before reflex took over—and his fist lashed out to slam across Rab’s jaw.

Rab punched him back.

Then they were fighting.

Julian’s world narrowed to the giving and receiving of blows, to the impact of fists against flesh and bone, to a sudden hammering need to drive old memory and old hurt back down into the dark corner of his mind where they belonged. He dodged and lunged, circled and struck, and ignored the jabs of every new blow he took. Somewhere in the midst of it his opponent ceased to be his partner and became only an enemy, seemingly everywhere, fighting with the agility of a much younger man—

Feinting to Julian’s right, then pulling hard to the left and lunging at an angle he couldn’t catch—

Then a new blow cracked across his head where Tembriel had hit him, and everything vanished in agony that almost dropped him to his knees.

I
can’t
see
!

The panic of blindness alone kept him moving, propelling him forward into the source of the pain and tackling it to the leaf-strewn earth. He hauled back with his false hand, desperate to smash its weight into the pain. For an instant, as his vision returned, all he saw was a sneering face that lived in the heart of memory. Then the features changed, becoming once more
Rab
. At the last moment, before his false hand could crash into the other man’s head, Julian jolted—and Rab pushed him away with all his might. Over onto his side Julian tumbled; clarity rushed back across his thoughts.

Tykhe
,
what
am
I
doing
?

Had he really been about to kill Rab?

“Do what you will, Rook. I’m finished.”

Panting, he snapped his head up to find Rab standing, his face bloodied from the fights with him and Jannyn. The resentment and frustration in his eyes, though, were for Julian alone.

“I’ll be in Shalridan. When you come back to your senses, you’ll know where to find me.” Rab spun on his heels and stalked to his horse. “Don’t trouble yourselves to escort me. I know my way to the coast from here.”

“Go in peace.” Alarrah’s voice rose from nearby.

“Thank you ever so kindly, my lady. I’d say it’s been diverting, except it hasn’t.”

Unable to watch Rab take his leave, uncertain what he could do to call him back or even if he wanted to, Julian closed his eye and waited where he lay. His head ached. His chest heaved for air. But even over his own strained breathing he heard his partner’s retreating footsteps, the creaking of Tornach’s gear as Rab swung into his saddle, and the clop of the stallion’s hooves fading into the distance.

Then there was silence once more. Only then did the Rook lever himself to his feet, a few slow inches at a time.

“Will you follow your companion?”

Alarrah again, nearer now. Julian felt no surprise to find the she-elf beside him, and several of the others closer than they’d been before. Jannyn glowered; Tembriel frowned, seemingly less sure than her brother of what they’d just witnessed. Not a one of them had come near enough to intervene while he and Rab had tussled, and that didn’t surprise him either.

After all, the elves had no stake in whether two humans pummeled one another senseless.

“I promised the girl I’d see her safely to the elves,” he grunted.

“You’ve done that,” Tembriel pointed out, and Alarrah made no move to silence her. “She has no need of you now.”

“She’s unconscious. This doesn’t qualify as safe,” Julian said, with a knife-edged smirk. “Call it a quaint human definition.”

“I felt her power in your flesh, so I know what you’ve brought us,” Alarrah said. “The question is, human, do you?”

“She’s saved two lives. One of them is mine.”

Brows furrowed and eyes narrowed on the faces around him—what would have been openmouthed amazement for his own kind. Tembriel glanced back and forth between him and the girl in Virden’s arms, as if trying to fathom why Faanshi had granted him such a gift, and even her brother seemed unsure now. Only Alarrah showed no astonishment. If anything the healer’s gaze grew almost serene, as if Julian had merely given voice to a truth she already possessed. “A debt of honor,” she said.

“If it means anything to you coming from a human, yes.”

Though her lips barely curved, it was the closest expression to a smile that Julian had seen Alarrah wear. “If it means anything to you coming from an elf, it does. Ride with us if you will to see your debt of honor through.”

“I ride by that one,” Julian said, nodding toward Virden, “so that if Faanshi wakes, she can see me.”

“She won’t wake until our journey’s done; it’s safer that way for her. The Wards on Dolmerrath aren’t easily borne by untrained mages.” Alarrah studied him. “Or by humans. It would be best if you let me put you to sleep along with Faanshi.”

Each ache along Julian’s frame redoubled at the prospect of imminent relief, though he couldn’t afford the temptation, not when he’d named himself the girl’s guardian. He hadn’t used the word—his mind skittered around it even now—but it wouldn’t be dismissed. “Blind me and deafen me if you must, but no more.”

“At the very least, permit me to mend your head.”

She remained impassive, and yet he couldn’t shake the sense that she thought him far more foolish than brave. On the other hand, he hurt far too much to care.

“Do it.”

Her touch was brief, the warmth of her power briefer still, rising and fading almost before he could perceive either. The magic did nothing for the blood where Tembriel’s rock had struck, or for the rest of the aches that plagued him. It chased the hurt out of his head, however, and that was enough.

As she moved from him once more, Alarrah called out orders to her companions, sending them off in ones and twos toward horses he could only just glimpse in the trees. But a tight-lipped Tembriel brought mounts forward for Virden and his unconscious burden—and for the wounded Jannyn, who mounted with his sister’s aid, and who didn’t hide his disdain as Julian followed Virden to his horse.

“She doesn’t need you, human. Neither do we. What good can a maimed protector do?”

Behind him, barely louder than a whisper, Tembriel snickered. Julian ignored brother and sister alike and held out his arms for the girl. “Give her to me and mount up. I’ll hand her back to you.”

With clear reluctance, Virden nodded. It took them but moments to shift Faanshi’s weight between them, and less than that for the elf to spring into the saddle and take her back. Julian strode to Morrigh. His stallion was quieter now, wariness still palpable in his carriage around unfamiliar horses, though the alarm of the sudden ambush had left him. He blew out a soft noise of approval at his rider’s climbing into the saddle.

When he was ahorse, Julian deigned to look Jannyn’s way.

“Malign mankind all you like, but remember three things, lad.” He had no idea how old Jannyn was—older than he most likely, and therefore quite liable to be irked by a human word like
lad
. “It was humans who liberated this oh-so-valuable healer, humans who brought her to you—” Annoyance flared across Jannyn’s face, and before he could reply Julian leaned over in his saddle to finish, smiling without humor, “And a human who drew your blood today.”

More whispers of laughter broke out around him, including a grudging little chuckle from Tembriel that won her a scathing retort in Elvish from her brother. Julian turned his back to them both and nudged Morrigh into flanking Virden’s mare. That put the elf on his blind side, which felt wrong. He’d have to keep turning his head, not only to keep Faanshi in his line of sight, but also to remind himself that it wasn’t Rab and Tornach beside whom he’d be riding now.

He tried to tell himself it wouldn’t matter.

He didn’t believe it.

Alarrah drew her mount up on Morrigh’s other side and beckoned for his attention. “Your horse will follow mine—don’t concern yourself with guiding him. These are for your ears.” She held out two balls of soft wax for his inspection, and with them, a strip of green linen. “This is for your eye.”

“I’ll hold Morrigh’s safety on your head,” he warned. “Along with Faanshi’s.”

“By the Mother of Stars, both their lives will be as mine.”

That vow, he supposed, was the best assurance he would get. He hauled in a breath, released it and then bowed his head toward the she-elf. “Do it,” he said once again.

“When your Morrigh moves, let him. Put all your will into staying in the saddle. You’ll need that to pass through the Wards.” With that she pressed the wax into each of his ears and wound the strip of cloth about his head, while he fought to keep from flinching at the cocooning of his senses.

Wrapped in green-tinged darkness and silence, he felt his horse move beneath him. Like Rab’s absence, it seemed wrong, as though he rode in the grip of a formless dream. Initially he sensed nothing but the sporadic sunlight on his head and the shifts of Morrigh’s powerful frame. Then, more subtly, came eventual layers of smells that flavored the air with every breath. Wind against his face. Horses. Sun-warmed leather. His sweat intermingled with the tang of the blood in his hair.

For a time Julian strove to track which way Morrigh turned on the trail, how that changed the angle of the sun’s heat upon him—anything to keep his mind engaged, to distract himself from the gnawing memory of Rab’s departure. For a time, it worked. A salty taste rose in the air and nudged aside other scents of his surroundings, and he seized upon that. No matter how often his guides might bend their path, there were ultimately only two directions that wouldn’t lead back into the rest of Kilmerry Province, west and north. They were riding toward the sea.

With that ocean smell, however, something else arose.

It began as nervousness that he dismissed at first as nothing more than unease at riding blind. Julian hated that weakness, but he’d felt it before and would weather it now. Yet despite his resolution the nervousness grew, sending tendrils across his mind and choking all other thoughts.

They’ll
shoot
you
—

Unseen enemies were enemies who could take him down. His instincts knew it, and they shrilled an alarm that nearly drove his hand off Morrigh’s reins to his closest blade. With an effort he forced himself to relax, lest Morrigh perceive his mood. Unable to direct his mount, he couldn’t let him be distracted from whatever charm Alarrah had worked to convince him to follow her horse. And at any rate, if the elves had wanted him dead, they would have shot him already.

They’ll
shoot
her
—

That was harder. Wrath spilled through him, and he twisted left in the saddle, his hand shooting up toward the cloth that blocked his sight. For an instant he yearned to break Alarrah’s neck for lying to him as she’d pledged her life as surety for the girl’s. Then Morrigh faltered, and Julian caught himself again. Shaken, he fumbled for the comfort of his horse’s neck, twisting his fingers into the mane and slumping forward as he fought to steady his breath.

The Wards. They were crossing the Wards.

Knowing that should have helped. But it gave him only a brief space of clarity before knives of fear cut deeper and faster into his awareness, leaving less and less time to regain rational ground.

They’ll
shoot
you
—

They’ll
shoot
her
—

He
won’t
make
it
to
Shalridan
—
they’ll
stop
him
,
they’ll
kill
him
because
you
aren’t
there
—

Guilt and panic nearly undid him, and it was all Julian could do to keep from ripping off the blindfold, wheeling Morrigh around and plunging headlong through the forest in pursuit of his partner. He could no longer tell which way Rab had gone, but that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except the growing need to be
away
. Only by swift, brutal summoning of Rab’s last bitter words, rekindling his own anger, could he fight the panic off. Rab had made his choice. So had he.

The anger gave him only seconds of reprieve, though, before the Wards redoubled their assault.

He
knows
what
you
did
—

She’ll
find
out
what
you
did
—

They’ll
find
you
,
they’ll
catch
you
,
they’ll
take
your
other
hand
,
they’ll
put
out
your
other
eye
—

A howl of protest surged from deep within him, and the struggle to keep it from escaping nearly made him retch. Agony stung his right wrist and the place where his left eye had been. A fragment of his consciousness latched upon a defense and threw up a memory like a shield, frail but gleaming, against the onslaught of fright.

Her fingertips against his cheek, their touch as delicate as feathers. Her voice given strength by something he barely recognized as empathy—for him. The light that haloed her hand, painful in its purity and the searing promise of an absolution he could neither allow himself nor resist.

He didn’t know when she’d become a talisman to a part of him that had lain broken and never truly buried. But the memory of her contact shored up his splintering will, protecting that last vital portion of his being against the press of the magic invading his thoughts.

Her voice was the last thing he heard as the Wards drove him down into oblivion.