Where Light Meets Shadow (13 page)

Alban shook his head. “You didn’t
have to fall off your horse to get the first look.”

Evoy grinned. “Wasn’t my idea.
That black bitch of a mare has a wicked sense of humor.”

“Let me see what she did to you
this time.”

Evoy held out his arm, and Alban
gently turned back the sleeve. There was no visible displacement of the bone,
and the swelling had not yet started. He placed his hands over the arm, and his
healer’s “sight” confirmed his initial impression. A simple break, possibly
just a hairline crack.

Nothing that truly required an
experimental technique, but also nothing that could be badly endangered by it
either.

Kieran pulled over a stool and
took the harp from its wrappings. He shifted closer until his shoulder brushed
Alban’s hip, giving him just enough contact to initiate the link. Their minds
touched, embraced, joined. Then the moment when Alban knew Kieran had sensed
another’s injury for the first time with a healer’s knowledge, smiled at the
sharp spike of his concern.

As injuries go, it is not so
bad. Your break was far worse.

Kieran put his hands to the
strings of his harp.
Show me how we fix this.

Alban took their link deeper
still, until Kieran was thinking with his knowledge, until Alban heard with a
bard’s ear the sound Evoy’s healing would take. Then they were healing and
playing together, a duet so harmonious that it was impossible to say where one
performer began and the other ended. They breathed together, and Alban could
feel the pulse of their hearts, beating in unison.

They ended together too, on the
same note—no wait, there were no notes to healing magic. Or were there? Was he
the bard or the healer? Scathlan or Leas?

He swayed a little, and the other
set aside the harp and reached up to steady him.

So if the other had the
harp, that
made him the healer. Alban, prince of the Leas.
The other was Kieran, then, the Scathlan,
his
beloved
Fool.

He jerked awake then, pulled out
of the mind-link. Mercy of the Grace, had Kieran heard that last thought?

“Are you all right?” Kieran asked
him, and then turned to Alban’s father. “Is he all right?”

Father appeared on his other
side, tilting his head to look into his eyes, brushing his awareness with the
standard healing link, so paltry and remote compared to what he had shared with
Kieran.

“Just exhausted,” Father
pronounced. “It is not unusual, especially for healers trying a procedure
unfamiliar to them.” He turned to Evoy and reached for his arm. “If I may?”

Evoy nodded permission, and
Father examined the limb with touch and with a healer’s inseeing. He raised an
eyebrow.

“If I didn’t know he fell off the
horse only this morning, I’d swear this injury was weeks old.”

Sheary insisted on throwing a
celebratory dinner for them that night. Kieran would be more embarrassed did he
not know that the Leas grasped at any excuse for a party.

Had the Scathlan ever been like
this, before the war, before the queen’s long sleep? Ready to grab at any
chance for joy? If so, would they be like this again, with the queen restored?

Throughout the dinner, he dodged
questions about the new healing technique, and how hard it would be for others
to learn. Kieran thought he would be leaving the Leas with new healing methods
in exchange for their forbearance in allowing the research. But the more
progress he made with Alban, the more he realized that, when he left, he would
be taking nothing with him and leaving nothing behind.

The duet required a mind-link
between two highly compatible individuals. He and Alban shared something
incredibly rare; even among those with the compatibility to form a mind-link,
the depth of theirs was like something out of legend. The odds of them finding
another compatible elf came to nearly nil. To find another of the right talent
that connect so deeply—that only happened once in a lifetime, and rarely even
that.

Was everything they worked so
hard for to come to naught?

Not for naught, if it woke his
queen, restored hope to his people. Once, that would have been all Kieran
wanted, all he dreamed.

Now he regretted that Alban would
be bereft of their bond once he left. He lay awake sometimes at night, thinking
about it. For himself, he would miss the bond, would miss Alban terribly, but
he
learned
young to bear loss. Alban, though, his
bright, sweet Alban was not made for sorrow.

He and Alban continued to work on
melding music and healing, finding the joining easier each time. It should
scare him, how easily he lost himself in another, but this was Alban, this was
safe. At Toryn’s suggestion, they tried their duet on an old injury. To
Kieran’s surprise, Eamon, the Leas veteran who had been with Alban that first
night on the mountain, volunteered to be their subject.

They could not completely heal
the damage, not with a wound so old and so deep, but Eamon limped less after,
and reported after several treatments that his leg no longer pained him so much
on cold mornings. It felt good, so good, to make things better, to lessen pain
and promote healing. Better, even, than calling forth beauty and joy with a
tune. He wished this union, and the magic that came with it, would never have
to end.

Kieran’s own injuries were
healing quickly. A side effect of their work, or so Alban told him. All that
healing energy also healed the healer. The weather warmed, and the snows had
begun to melt. Soon it would be possible to return to his people.

The problem remained of how to
use what he had learned to wake the queen. He needed Alban with him to heal
with music. He would not risk his friend by bringing him among Scathlan, even
if Alban could be persuaded. He fell asleep thinking about the problem one
night, and for the first time in a long time dreamed his queen’s dreams.

Woke to Alban on his bed, shaking
him, calling his name.

“I could hear you screaming,”
Alban said, when Kieran opened his eyes. “In my mind, I could hear you
screaming. Terrible, it was so terrible.”

Kieran pulled him into a tight
embrace to comfort them both, Alban’s hair soft and silky beneath his cheek. He
pressed a kiss to the top of his head. Alban shifted in his arms and caught his
lips in a desperate, open-mouthed kiss. Kieran responded with the passion of a
man drowning.

And then pulled away with regret.
“We can’t. You know we can’t. Aren’t things complicated enough already?”

Alban drew breath to protest, and
Kieran braced for his words, determined not to be persuaded to follow where his
own heart and body wanted to go. But Alban subsided with a sigh.

“At least let me stay here
tonight,” Alban said after a few moments.

“Alban—”

“Just to sleep,” the Leas cut him
off. “What I felt in the dream...so hopeless, so horribly, achingly empty.”

Kieran could think of so many
reasons why this was a bad idea, starting with what Toryn would do to him if he
found out. But having suffered the queen’s dreams so many nights himself, he
could not leave Alban alone with the memory.

“Just to sleep,” he echoed.

When he pulled Alban into his
arms, he contrived to wedge the heavy fold of blanket between their lower
bodies. It helped. A little. A very little.

#

He woke to the sound of a knock
on the door to Alban’s room. Alban’s empty room. In his arms, Alban startled
awake and raised his face to Kieran’s.

Sweet Grace. He was dead, and he
hadn’t even done anything wrong.

Another knock, and a young
woman’s voice calling softly for her prince.

“She’s to leave breakfast for
both of us with me,” Alban murmured in his ear. He slipped into the mind-link.
Keep
still. She will assume we’re asleep in our own rooms and leave the tray.

Yet Kieran could feel the flicker
of doubt in Alban’s thoughts, blending with the dread of his father finding out
where he had spent the night.

Another knock. Alban flinched in
his arms. Then the sound of the tray being set down. The sound of footsteps in the
hall. Kieran held his breath. Did the steps hesitate, just a bit, at his door?
No, of course not, there would be no reason for her to suspect.

The steps turned down the
staircase and faded. He hugged Alban closer, but resisted the urge to press a
kiss to the bare skin of his neck. Kieran felt the muscles of Alban’s back
uncoil, felt the heartbeat beneath his hand slow. In the mind-link, they
counted a hundred breaths together before Alban slipped from his mind and his
bed.

“I’ll go get our breakfast, shall
I?” Alban asked with false cheer.

Oh, my Prince of Light, that
was too close. Never again. I may be the reckless Fool, but I cannot allow you
to drag yourself into danger with me.

The situation could have been
much, much worse. They were both decently dressed and leaning over the book,
arguing about the interpretation of a particular paragraph when Alban’s father
knocked on the door, then opened the door as soon as Kieran called out, “Yes?”

Toryn, usually so regal and
controlled, panted from running, his face pale and grave. “There’s been a
hunting accident. The injuries are beyond anything I can mend with conventional
healing. It’s time to put the bardic healing to a true test.”

“Are you sure?” Kieran didn’t
think he was ready, not for something where a life hung in the balance.

“I’ve seen what the two of you
can do. I think it’s worth the risk.” Toryn’s mouth thinned into a frown.
“Honestly, I don’t think you can do any damage. If the bardic healing doesn’t
help, we’ve lost him anyway.”

“Who?” Alban asked.

“Sheary.”

Kieran shuddered as though
someone had drenched him with cold water.

He said nothing as he followed
Toryn and Alban to Sheary’s rooms, through the sitting room too large and empty
without a group of laughing, drinking Leas and into the bedroom, where Alban’s
cousin lay, still in his muddy hunting clothes. The wet gurgle of his breath
filled the room. Half of his chest had been stove in, and white bone stood out
against bloody torn flesh. Suddenly, Kieran was a child again in the Scathlan
infirmary, seeing the wreck of his father’s body.

The room spun, and he put a hand
on Alban’s shoulder to steady himself. He found that he couldn’t breathe.

“Kieran?” Alban’s voice came from
very far away.

“I can’t do this,” he whispered.

“Then he will die,” Toryn said,
calm and implacable.

Laughing Sheary, the first Leas
who accepted him without being duty-bound to do so. Even Alban had first seen
him only as an unpleasant responsibility.

“No,” he said. “Just give me a
minute.” He forced a deep breath, and then another. “All right. All right.”

If ever the Grace worked through
his music, let her do it now.

Kieran sat by Sheary’s bed,
looking at his face, deathly pale with blue-tinged lips but still less horrible
than seeing the ruined chest. He couldn’t let himself think about the scent of
blood, of how much it smelled like a slaughterhouse, or he’d lose his nerve
once more.

He unwrapped his harp. Alban put
his hands on his shoulders and slipped into his mind, braiding their thoughts,
merging their souls. He thought Alban would take the lead and he would be drawn
along, but the moment he put his hands to the strings the music took him
utterly, drew him along, drew them along. Alban’s healing knowledge and talent
was there, part of the music in the same sense that the rhythm of his breath
and heartbeat was part of the music.

A small part of his rational mind
told him that he had lost control as he had promised Alban he never would
again, lost control in a most dangerous circumstance. But then he heard Alban.
No,
you’re doing fine, I’m watching, and the healing is happening like it needs to.
Keep going. I’ll pull us back if we are going too far.

He trusted Alban, trusted the
music,
trusted
the Grace that pulsed through him like
the blood in his veins. Time ceased to have meaning until he again heard Alban
through the link.

You’ve done as much as you
could. You saved his life. It’s time to finish the tune.

One last refrain, and then he
stilled the strings. When he opened his eyes, Sheary breathed normally and
smiled up at him, still pale but
alive.

“Kieran,” he whispered. “I was
simply
dying
to hear you play again.”

#

Kieran had been amazing. Alban
had no other word for it. It had been like a mirror-image of the day Kieran had
called up the storm—breathtaking magic unleashing the powers of light and
healing instead of wild destruction. This time Alban had been in the magic with
Kieran, his knowledge informing the tune, his talent feeding its power.

He had seen another side to Kieran
too. Felt his horror at Sheary’s injuries, his determination that Sheary not
die. He had long suspected that the reckless fool masked a deeper, more serious
soul. Now that he had seen what had been hidden, he loved Kieran all the more,
both the recklessness and the wisdom, and the sorrowful, lonely vulnerability
that he had glimpsed last night.

Last night. Alban thought he had
felt an answering passion in his kiss, but then Kieran had pushed him away.
We
cannot.
A reminder of the impermanence of whatever this was that they had
together. But Kieran had made no secret of his string of one-night liaisons
between the Shadowed Lands and here. Did he mean less to Kieran than some
random bar maid or farmer’s son?

Healing had drained him; there
would be a better time to try to puzzle it out. Kieran fumbled with the
wrappings of his harp, too tired to put it away properly. Alban tried to help,
but his own hands were clumsy, his limbs weak.

Father pulled him away gently and
pressed him into a chair. He then knelt by Kieran’s chair, took the harp from
him, and wrapped it.

“I am glad my son found you in
the snow, Scathlan. You have more than repaid us for our hospitality.”

Father helped Kieran back to his
room. Alban had enough trouble making the trip himself, keeping one hand on the
wall the whole way. Father suggested that he rest, and he’d come back for him,
but Alban didn’t want to leave Kieran.

At least not until they reached
their rooms. Father might be grateful to Kieran at the moment, but he wouldn’t
be sanguine about him sharing a bed with his son. Even to sleep, which is all
either of them were capable of at the moment.