Where Light Meets Shadow (2 page)

“Whatever you want from me,
you’ll not get it. I’d rather die.”

For certain, the Scathlan had a
bard’s flair for the dramatic. “I can’t imagine wanting anything from your
kind. But tempting as it may be, I can’t let even a Scathlan elf freeze to
death. My name is Alban, since you didn’t ask, and I am prince of the Leas. You
will be a guest in my father’s hall.”

“Guest? Prisoner, rather. At
least speak the truth.”

Alban’s tenuous hold on his
temper started to slip. “Believe me or don’t, it makes no difference to me. But
I can’t leave you here to die, and there is no other option. If there were a
mortal village anywhere near, I’d be only too happy to dump you at the inn with
enough coin to cover a bed and meals.”

The wind gusted, blowing snow
into his face. He shivered. Past time to end this conversation and return to
the warmth of his father’s hall.

Alban took a step toward the
stranger, reaching out to help him to his feet.

The stranger crawled backward,
struggled to his knees, and awkwardly drew his sword.

Alban stopped, more in
astonishment than fear. The Scathlan had courage. Not much sense, but courage
to spare.

He shook his head. “What do you
intend to do with that? You’re outnumbered and you’re injured.”

“I will join my family in death
before I allow myself to be captured.”

The stranger’s sword hand
shook—in cold, in fear, in weakness, or likely in some combination of all
three. Still, the blade was sharp, and Alban wasn’t about to go against him
bare-handed. He drew his own sword.

Eamon grabbed his arm. “My
prince, he may be armed, but he’s clearly not capable of defending himself.”

Alban shook off the restraining
hand. He planned to disarm, not to injure, but he wasn’t about to telegraph his
intent.

He took a centering breath. Eamon
had taught him swordsmanship, but Alban had never before faced someone over
sharpened steel who intended him real harm. Although the Scathlan didn’t look
like he was in any shape to present much challenge, still there was risk.

Also, he could injure the
stranger further without meaning to. Despite his feelings toward Scathlan in
general and the mouthy bard in particular, Alban really didn’t want to draw
blood.

The Scathlan stared at Alban’s
sword with wide, frightened eyes.

Alban made one last attempt.
“Come, be reasonable. There’s no way you can win this. Put down your sword,
I’ll put down mine, and we’ll all get out of the cold sooner.”

The stranger uttered an obscenity
that he had surely picked up from his time among mortals.

“Now, then,” Alban said. “Is that
any way to be, when we’re only trying to help—
”

On the last word, he slid his own
blade inside the stranger’s and shoved it to the outside, up, and around,
sending the stranger’s sword flying across the snow to clatter against exposed
rock.

Misdirection was a low trick, one
that Alban’s cousin Sheary excelled at in practice duels. Alban was pleased to
have carried it off so well.

Alban held the tip of his sword
against the stranger’s throat, giving him a chance to contemplate his own
mortality. Then he lowered his blade and tried for a friendly smile.

“I hope we have established that
you are coming with us,” Alban said. “I would like to treat you as a guest. If
I have to, I will bind you as a prisoner.”

The stranger glared at him, lips
drawn thin in rage and fear.

“Will you let us help you?” Alban
persisted.

“I have no choice.”

The stranger sounded bleak, as
though they were taking him to an execution instead of to shelter. Did he
really hate the Leas so much that he would rather die than accept their aid?

He reached out a hand to help the
stranger up. The Scathlan hesitated, then took it, and Alban tugged him to his
feet. The stranger let out a strangled yelp. Alban startled and nearly let him
fall, but the stranger grabbed onto him for support.

Alban shifted to a more secure
hold. “What—”

“Hurts,” the stranger ground out
between clenched teeth. “Ankle.” He gasped a bit, then caught his breath. “I
barely felt it when I fell. It started to hurt pretty badly when I tried to get
up on my own, and when you pulled me to my feet. . .”

“How is it now?”

“I’ll live. Not much choice, is
there?”

“Should we take a look now?”
Alban addressed the question to the stranger, but he shot a look to Eamon, as
well.

“No,” the stranger gasped.
“Please. You’d have to cut the boot off and, the way it feels, the boot may be
the only thing holding the bones together.”

“Are you sure?” Alban wanted to
do
something
in the face of the stranger’s obvious pain.

“Yes,” the stranger hissed.

“Maybe a splint over the boot?”
Alban suggested.

The stranger took a long, shaky
breath. “No. I understand you’re trying to help, but no. Just get me to
wherever you’re taking me, and deal with it then.”

The Scathlan spoke with the weary
emptiness of total defeat.

Victory brought Alban no
satisfaction.

“Let’s try to get back before
full dark and that storm on the horizon hits,” Eamon said. “Getting him on a
horse is going to be a neat trick.”

The Scathlan shuddered, likely
thinking of the ordeal ahead. He wouldn’t be able to stay on a horse without
assistance, let alone guide one.

“I think you had better ride with
me on my horse.” Alban braced for an argument, but the stranger merely nodded.

Alban motioned for his squire to
lead his mount over.

“My sword,” the stranger
whispered.

“What?” Focused on the problem of
getting the Scathlan up onto the horse, the words caught him by surprise.

“My sword,” the Scathlan
repeated. “Please. It was my father’s.”

Alban followed the stranger’s
gaze to the sword that lay where it had fallen amongst the rocks.

“
Please,
” the Scathlan
begged.

Did he really think they would
refuse such a simple request? “Eamon, would you?”

#

Kieran watched the Leas with the
limp pick up his fallen sword and fasten it to the gray mare’s saddle. He would
rather have it back on his hip, but he could do without the extra weight. He
understood why the Leas wouldn’t want him to have a weapon to hand.

His ankle felt like it had been
caught in one of the mortals’ bear traps. Queasy and light-headed with pain, he
hoped he wouldn’t embarrass himself by fainting in front of the enemy.

He tried not to think about what
he would see when the boot came off.

Without Prince Alban’s help, he
would have died here tonight. Maybe he should prefer that to accepting aid from
the Leas. The choice had been taken from him; he shouldn’t feel so grateful for
that reality.

Mounting was both awkward and
excruciatingly painful. With the aid of Alban sitting behind the saddle and
Eamon on the ground, a stone outcrop, and a very patient horse, Kieran managed
to get into the saddle. He clutched at the pommel for balance, gasping in pain.

Alban wrapped one arm around him
from behind for support and held the reins in the other hand. “All right?”

“No,” Kieran answered honestly.
“But there’s no help for it.”

“We’ll get you taken care of, as
soon as we can.”

“Soon” felt like an eternity. The
motion of the horse’s walk bumped and jarred Kieran’s ankle. Any faster gait
would have been torture. The horse stumbled in the snow, and Kieran choked back
a scream.

“Sorry,” Alban said.

“Not your fault,” Kieran
admitted, albeit reluctantly.

But a bard should never be
churlish, and Alban had been gentler than he needed to be.

Alban did not repeat the
unnecessary apology but flinched every time Kieran gasped in pain.

The wind gusted harder still,
pushing him back like a giant, invisible hand. Snow pelted his face, cold, wet
blinding. Alban wrapped his cloak around both of them, giving what protection
he could. Kieran hoped the Leas’ horses knew their way home on instinct,
because there was no way elf nor horse could find their way by sight.

With a soft word, Alban sent his
squire ahead, leading Kieran’s long-suffering mare, to get to shelter more
quickly. He tried to send Eamon, as well, but the older Leas would not leave
his prince’s side.

Despite his cold and misery,
Kieran slipped in and out of consciousness. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed
when darkness and the hush of snow gave way to bright torches, voices, and
commotion.

“A Scathlan!” “It’s a Scathlan.”
“Was there an attack?”

Kieran blinked in the torchlight
and shrank back against the warmth that supported him. All around swarmed fair-haired
Leas elves, their faces strange in the flickering light and shadow.

“Not so close, if you please,”
Alban commanded the milling crowd. “He is a stranger and a guest, and he is
injured.”

“It has been a long time since we
have had a Scathlan guest.”

The crowd hushed and parted to
make way for the new speaker. The Leas was tall, with a regal bearing that
spoke of authority and the power that comes with age.

He did not sound pleased.

“He was lost and injured,
Father,” Alban said, and Kieran heard defensiveness in the tone. “What else
could I do?”

 The elf Alban called father
sighed. “From what your squire told me, only what you did. I suppose we’ll have
to get him warm and see to his injury before we decide what to do with him.”

Kieran didn’t like the sound of
decide
what to do with him.

Alban leaned forward to speak low
into Kieran’s ear. “It will all work out.” He then addressed his father. “Will
you help me get him down?”

There was no way this wasn’t
going to hurt, no matter how careful the Leas were. And they were careful, but
still Kieran embarrassed himself with a stifled scream.

On his feet, he hung between
them, panting in pain. The world blurred at the edges. Fainting might be the
best option.

“There’s a room made ready for
him,” the Leas king said. “Next to yours. Since you brought him home, he will
be your responsibility.”

Alban laughed softly. “I remember
you saying the same thing about the stray puppy I brought home when I was a
child.”

Kieran bristled, but he was in no
position to retort. It was finally sinking in how precarious his position was.
A prisoner of the people who had killed his father, too injured to escape even
should he be left unguarded. And even if he could escape, what then? He had no
harp to earn his way in the world, no sword with which to defend himself, and
he was very, very far from home.

Kieran expected the king—Toryn,
he remembered from his lessons, Toryn the Oathbreaker—to call servants or
guards to take his unwanted burden, and braced himself for rough or indifferent
handling. But Toryn and Alban helped him into the mountain castle, through the
halls, and
up stairs
that seemed as long as the whole
of his journey.

The Leas, or elves of light, had
built up toward the sun and the stars a white castle on a white mountain. His
own people, the shadow-elves, sought security within the heart of mother earth
in the caverns beneath the black mountains they called home.

The room they had brought him to
was
twice as large as his old room back home. A fire already
blazed on the hearth, filling the room with lovely, blessed warmth. A large,
comfortable-looking bed beckoned, and he wanted no more than to heed its sweet
call, but he knew the worst of the night’s ordeal still lay before him.

They sat him in a straight-backed
chair by the fire. Alban took from him the cloak, sodden with snowmelt, and
hung it on a hook by the hearth. Shivering convulsively, Kieran wished he could
crawl closer to the fire, curl up on the hearth stones, and let the heat dry
his clothes and melt his frozen blood.

“We’ll get you into dry clothes
soon,” Alban said as if reading his mind, although he probably just sensed his
general state of wretchedness. “But it’s best if we see what needs to be done
for your leg first.”

The king handed Kieran a cup of
wine mulled with bitter herbs that clearly had not been added for their flavor.
Drawing back from the scent rising in the steam, Kieran looked at him, trying
to gauge his intent, to gauge the consequences should he refuse the drugged
wine.

“Oh, for mercy’s sake,” Alban
said. “If we wanted to kill you, we’ve no need to resort to poison. Father
could have slit your throat in the courtyard or cast you out to freeze to death
outside the gate.”

“The wine will not put you to
sleep,” the king said. “Though in a few moments, you might wish it had. It will
but blunt the edge of your pain. If the injury is as severe as my son fears it
might be, any dulling of the senses we can manage will be to your advantage.”

Kieran hesitated.
Leas elves
were not to be trusted.
On the other hand, as the prince had pointed out,
if they meant him harm, there was no need for subterfuge. He was utterly in
their power. And if they wanted to get secrets out of him, he had none that
would help them.

Drinking the wine down, Kieran
relished its warmth and tried to shut his mind to its bitterness.

The world started to blur around
the edges even before he finished the cup, and he felt the same pleasant
muzziness that came when an audience at an inn was generous and bought him far
too many mugs of dark brown ale. Pain slowly receded, and he closed his eyes.

A hand took the empty cup from
him, startling him. He had momentarily forgotten the Leas.

Toryn chuckled softly. “That’s
working fast enough. I take it you haven’t eaten in a while. We’ll have to get
some food into you soon.”

The Leas king sounded less
hostile, although maybe that was just the effect of the drug on Kieran’s
perceptions. Still, Kieran had his pride.

“The mortal innkeeper last night
was well satisfied with my music. I broke my fast with his servants this
morning, and he even sent me away with bread and cheese for my noon meal.”

“And we are well past the dinner
hour. Your body is too concerned with cold and pain to let you know your
hunger. Tell me about your injury.”

The king’s voice was soft and
gentle. A healer’s voice. Yes, the old ballads from before the war talked about
how all Leas kings could heal. Kieran always assumed the requirement to be
purely ceremonial, if not outright bardic hyperbole. Looks like he was about to
find out. He could not reject the king’s ministrations and insist on a real
healer.

Odd that a people who valued
healing so much that they required it of their king could let that same king
start a bloody war that killed so many.

“My son said you went over your
mare’s head when she stumbled?” Toryn prompted patiently.

The sudden vertigo of falling,
the sickening crunch of the harp beneath him. “Yes. I think I wrenched my ankle
coming out of the stirrup. Maybe. It all happened so fast. I didn’t realize I
was hurt until I tried to get up and run.”

Did that make as little sense as
he thought? The drug was making him loose-tongued and vague. He’d be worried if
he had anything to hide.

“I’m not surprised, between the
cold and the shock,” Toryn said. “What were you thinking, trying to run? Surely
you knew by that point that there was no other shelter nearby. You can’t have
expected to survive a night on the mountain in the snow?”

“Something would have turned up.
Something always does.”

Given his current vulnerability,
Kieran wasn’t going to say that he’d rather have died on the mountain than be
sheltered with the Leas.

Toryn sighed. “Has anyone ever
told you that you are a reckless fool?”

He sounded so much like Brona
that Kieran smiled despite himself. “Frequently. And usually with cause.”

“Can you move the ankle at all?
Try carefully.”

Kieran took a breath, flexed the
joint a fraction, and choked back a whimper.

“Enough,” Toryn said quickly. “We
don’t want to make it any worse. We’re going to have to cut off the boot.”

Brona had given him the boots, a
gift the day he’d finished his apprenticeship. Too extravagant and too personal
a gift from the queen’s daughter to an orphan boy barely a bard, but he
couldn’t hurt her feelings by refusing them.

He wasn’t quite so much a fool
not to see that the Leas king was right. “Yes. All right. Do it.”

“I’m sorry,” Toryn said. “They’re
fine boots.”

And they were, custom-made to fit
him and hand-stitched with a stylized harp, the symbol of his vocation.

Alban came and crouched before
him to steady his leg while the king sliced at the leather. In the firelight,
Alban’s coloring looked less eerie, recalling instead the old ballads from long
before the war that called the Leas “golden.”

Every tug at the boot, every pull
of the knife through the leather, sent fresh agony screaming up his leg. Yet,
much as he wanted to hate the Leas, he had to admit that Toryn Oathbreaker
worked as gently as he could. Alban flinched at Kieran’s every choked cry. How
could these be Leas, who mercilessly slaughtered their distant Scathlan cousins
on the battlefield?

At last the boot and the sock
beneath it came free. Kieran dared one quick look at the ankle beneath, and
then looked away. Mercifully, the skin wasn’t broken; from the level of pain,
Kieran had been imagining blood pooled in the boot. But the swollen limb had
twisted in an unnatural shape that told him the bones were not just broken but
displaced.

The sourness of bile burned in
the back of his throat. If it healed like that, he’d never walk again. A
crippled bard who could not travel in search of new songs became an extra
burden to all around him. No comely bar maids would sneak into the cripple’s
bed at night, no handsome grooms would invite him to tumble in the hay.

“Will you allow me to set the
bones?” Toryn asked.

Kieran swallowed. He’d broken an
arm as a boy, falling out of a tree he’d been explicitly told not to climb. The
setting of the bone hurt far worse than the breaking. And that had been a
relatively simple break. This would be painful beyond all imagining. To let a
healer he knew and trusted set the bone would be hard enough. But to put
himself in the hands of Toryn Oathbreaker, whose very name he loathed. . .

“I have no choice, do I?”

“Not if you ever want to walk
again without crutches,” Toryn said grimly.

“Please,” Alban said. “Let us do
this. Neither of us intended the evening to go as it did. I would not wish that
you take permanent harm from it.”

Too late for that. His father’s
harp was broken. But he’d think about that tomorrow.

“Do it, then.”

The Leas king laid a hand on his
leg above the injury. “I will be as quick as I can. Any pain I cause is
unintentional and unavoidable.”

Kieran closed his eyes and saw
his father as his four-year-old self had seen him before the healers had
noticed him and chased him out. Ribs smashed, tunic soaked in red, flesh
showing raw like fresh-butchered meat.
Did you not intend that, either?

Alban stood, stepped behind his
chair, and placed his hands on Kieran’s shoulders. Kieran felt a soothing,
calming peace settle over him. Healing magic, lost to the Scathlan as long ago
as the Leas had lost bardic magic. He’d thought its continuance among the Leas
had only been a rumor. Healing magic, the touch of this enemy’s soul to his
own. He struggled against the hands.

“Please,” Alban said, voice
pained.

Alban was young, a few years
younger than Kieran. Possibly he had not seen enough suffering to be as inured
to it as those who had slaughtered his father had been. Kieran wanted to hold
onto his old, comfortable hatred. But the respite offered by healing magic was
too seductive.

He closed his eyes again and
dropped his head back, accepting the flow of warmth and light as pure as
sunshine. The pain came, sudden, swift, terrible, and yet somehow very far
away.

“The worst of it is over,” Toryn
said. “Now I will splint—Alban, are you well?”

Kieran twisted to look over his
shoulder, cursing as the movement reminded him how intimately every part of his
body was connected to his broken ankle. Alban had stepped away to lean against
the wall beside him, eyes closed, exhaustion lining his face and making him
look much older than he was.

Kieran had heard that the magic
could be costly, as costly as the deepest bardic trance. Tired and no doubt
hungry from the night’s misadventures, Alban would already be without strength
to spare. Why, then, had he bothered? Kieran would have survived the bone
setting without it.

“I’m
fine
, Father,” Alban
answered.

Kieran hid a smile at the tone.
Still a trace of the petulant adolescent Alban had been a few years ago. Kieran
had used that tone often enough himself with old Cyrna.

“Perhaps you should go rest. I
can handle the Scathlan myself.”

“I said I was fine,” Alban answered.
“Besides, I always take responsibility for my strays.”

Kieran wondered what they would
do if he growled and showed teeth.

“All right, then,” his father
said. “But remember, a wise healer knows his limits. If you make a mistake out
of exhaustion, it may be your patient who suffers.”

With Alban assisting, Toryn
splinted and wrapped his ankle. After they set the ankle, Kieran thought he
could handle anything, but his endurance had been worn thin and he wanted to
whine and cry like a child. He managed with just a few sharp gasps and one
whimper.

“You’re doing well, very well,”
Toryn encouraged. “Now we just have to get you out of those wet clothes and
into something warm and dry, get you fed, and then you can rest.”

They had to slice apart his
breeches to get them off over the splint. He managed the shirt himself, though
his hands fumbled at the lacings and he floundered pulling it over his head.
The Leas were kind enough not to laugh.

Alban gave him a thick, soft
nightshirt, and Kieran pulled it on gratefully. The comfort in contrast to the
recent cold damp made him sleepy. He covered a yawn.

“Come on, let’s get you into bed
so we can prop up that leg,” Alban said. “If you sit against the headboard, you
can eat before you sleep. Lean on my shoulder. Tomorrow you can start learning
to walk on crutches.”

Tomorrow would be time enough.
He’d have a long while to practice, after all. Were it not for Toryn
Oathbreaker, he’d be on crutches forever. Though if it had not been for Toryn’s
son and the other Leas, Alban would never have broken his ankle in the first
place.

Instead, he and his mare would
have frozen to death on the lonely mountainside.

Too much to think about when he
was hurt and tired and hungry.

A maidservant came then, bringing
a covered tray from which came the warm, savory scents of roasted meat and
fresh bread. She set the tray down on the nightstand and curtseyed to her king
and prince. Kieran smiled at her, but she narrowed her eyes in response.