Wizard of the Grove (26 page)

She sighed, signaled the barman to stay put—his skill with beer or brandy was undeniable, but the man was useless in an emergency—and made her way across to the door. Experience told her it would be faster to see for herself than to try to sort out over twenty voices. When she reached the stranger, she touched his shoulder with the toe of her shoe.

“Is he dead, Ivan?” she asked the server.

“No.” Pale brows drew down toward a snub nose. “But he's not good.”

Dorses shook her head and turned a withering gaze on her clientele. “And I suppose it occurred to none of you to get him over by the fire and out of those wet furs?”

As several of the more sober blushed and muttered excuses, she looked back to her server. “What are you trying to do?” she demanded as Ivan continued to tug on the stranger's arms.

“I can't get him to let go of his bundle,” he grunted, lower lip caught up between his teeth.

“Then let him be.” She scanned the faces present. “Nad?”

“He's in the pot.”

“Nay, I'm back.”

The man who pushed his way forward was of average height and anything but average width. His shoulders were so broad he seemed a foot or so shorter than he actually stood. Pleasant features were arranged about a mashed caricature of a nose in an expression of eager curiosity.

Dorses twitched Ivan out of Nad's way and said: “See what you can do.”

Nad flexed his massive shoulders, bent over the stranger, and taking each fur covered arm in a callused hand, lifted. A foot, then two, the stranger rose and although he maintained his grip the bundle's own weight pulled it free. Nad grunted in satisfaction, moved a bit to the left, and gently lowered the man back to the floor.

“Chaos,” breathed Ivan, his eyes widening. “That's a brindle pelt he was carryin'. Looks fresh killed, too.”

The stranger lay forgotten in a puddle of melting snow while they all examined what he'd been clutching so tightly. Dorses bent and stroked the long, brown and black fur.

“It's brindle all right,” she said, lifting a corner and looking beneath. Her tone remained unchanged as she added, “It's also a body.” After eight years of running this tavern, she'd pretty much lost her ability to be surprised by anything.

“My brother,” the stranger's voice was a reedy gasp. He rose shakily to one elbow and removed the half-frozen wool scarf from in front of his mouth. “Wounded in the mountains.” Beneath a drooping mustache his lips were pinched and white. “Needs . . .” Then he collapsed back to the floor.

“Help,” Dorses finished, her hand slipping beneath the fur and resting on the throat of the wounded man. His pulse barely shivered against her fingers. “Ivan, take care of . . .” Without a name, she waved a hand in the general direction of the stranger. “I want his brother here up on that table. Don't unwrap him, Nad!” she snapped as huge hands reached down and started to roll the brindle free. “Lift him as he is.”

“But Dorses!” Nad protested, scarred fingers sinking into the plush fur. “Just think on it! A week at my forge wouldn't bring in what this pelt will. You don't use brindle as a stretcher! You can't!” His tone was horrified.

“Why not? It's almost a shroud. Now move!”

With a miner on each side of the torso and another lifting the legs, the body and the pelt were hoisted onto a hastily cleared table. Nad bit back a cry as the preferred fur of kings settled gently on top of biscuit crumbs and spilled beer. At a curt nod from Dorses, he almost
reverently folded back the outer edge, and then the inner, pulling slowly but steadily for the pelt was frozen stiff and stuck to something beneath.

“Mother who made us all,” he breathed, and his hands dropped to his sides.

Even Dorses paled.

The stranger's brother looked about thirty and was a slightly built man, thin but muscular. A week's beard glinted gold in the lamplight, some shades darker than the wire-bound braids. His skin was pale and he had a delicate beauty seldom achieved by men; just barely saved from being effeminate by the stern line of his mouth, uncompromising even so close to death. Above the waist, his clothes bore russet brown stains. Below, they were shredded and the flesh beneath was no better. Not even the stiff and reddened strips of hide that bound them could disguise the extent of the injuries. Only by courtesy could these hunks of meat still be called legs.

The tavern fell silent. One of the men, up on a neighboring table for a better view, scrambled down off his perch and vomited into a bucket. Everyone ignored him, their eyes on the dead man. Oh, he still clung to life, although the Mother only knew how, but there wasn't a person watching who would grant him a place amongst the living.

“Jago?” Pulling free of Ivan's help and leaving the young man holding his sodden furs, the stranger fell onto the bench by the table and took his brother's face in cracked and bleeding hands. His hair was nearer brown than blond and pulled back into a greasy tail. Although pain and exhaustion made it difficult to tell for certain, he appeared five to seven years older than the wounded man. “Jago?”

“Give me your knife,” Dorses said quietly to Nad. “Those bindings have to come off.”

“Those bindings are all that's holdin' the flesh on his bones,” observed a woman in the crowd.

“Aye,” Nad agreed from his vantage point. “You'll have a right mess if you cut him free. And the whole lot's froze so you'll have ta pry the bindings up and likely take a bit of leg with it. Wouldn't be surprised if what's left is frostbit, too.” He handed Dorses his knife and added,
“'Course, far as he's concerned it won't make much difference either way.”

“While he lives, we do what we can.” And her tone left no room for argument.

The knife was sharp but the bindings were tight, wet, and becoming slimy as they thawed. Only the shallow and infrequent rise and fall of his chest said Jago still breathed. Although her eyes never left the delicate maneuvering of the blade, Dorses checked between each repositioning of the point; just in case. She'd fight to save the living, but she'd not waste her time on one already gone to Lord Death.

“Are you a healer?” The stranger looked up from his brother's face, his eyes and the circles beneath them nearly the same shade of purplish gray. His accent gave the words an almost musical inflection but did nothing to hide the desperation.

“No.” Dorses' mouth pressed into a thin white line and the tendons of her neck bulged as she forced the knife through the hide.

“We've no healer here,” Nad explained, putting one foot up on the bench and leaning a forearm on his thigh. “And few anywhere in Halda. When the Wizard's Horde went through twelve year ago, they were all killed, from apprentice ta master. When the wizard fell, and the horde with him, there was no one left ta teach the youngsters until Ardhan sent aid. E'en then there was so much healin' needed doin' they'd no time ta teach at first. Dorses was joined ta a healer though and he . . .”

“He couldn't have done anything here.” As the flesh beneath the bindings began to warm, her nose told her what she'd find. She had hoped it was the untanned brindle hide she smelled, and in part it was, but with even a small fraction of leg exposed the putrid stench rising from the black bits of flesh could only mean gangrene. The one question remaining was how the man still lived with legs clawed to shreds and rotting off his body.

“Have you a name?” She asked the stranger.

The stranger nodded. “Raulin. This,” he added, “is my brother Jago. We were traveling north across the mountains when we were
attacked by the brindle. Jago screamed and screamed, but I got my dagger in its eye . . .”

“In its eye?” More than one eye in the tavern measured the length of the pelt. A full grown brindle stood more than seven feet high at the shoulder and its eyes were two feet higher than that. Of course, if it was feeding . . .

“I climbed on its back,” Raulin continued, as jaws dropped throughout his audience, “and put my dagger into its eye. It's a long dagger. It died. Jago stopped screaming.” Tears dripped from his face onto his brother's. “Five days ago. Maybe four. He hasn't screamed since. I did what I could. I promised to get him to a healer.” He began to struggle to his feet. “You said no healers. We have to go on.”

Dorses' hand on his shoulder pushed him back down and a steady pressure kept him there. She was stronger than she looked.

“You're in no condition to go anywhere,” she said, her voice as gentle as anyone had ever heard it. “And your brother is well on his way to Lord Death.”

In the quiet corner, as far removed from the drama near the door as was possible while still remaining in the room, Crystal raised her head and met Lord Death's eyes. He nodded.

“He's mine, or yours,” he said.

She peered through the nearly solid wall of wool and leather covered backs and then at the Mother's one true son. Already his hair was beginning to lighten and a faint line of beard coarsened his jaw as the features of the young man on the table moved onto Death. She couldn't save every handsome young man destined to die. But she could save this one.

She made up her mind.

“He's mine.”

The scrape of her chair, moving away from the table as she stood, sounded unnaturally loud. A miner turned, nudged his neighbor, and in seconds the crowd had spun on its collective heel to look at Crystal.

There was no longer any point in avoiding attention.

She threw back her hood and let the cloak slip from her shoulders.
Hair, the silver-white of moonlight, flowed almost to her waist and danced languidly about in the still air as though glad to be free. She stood taller than the tallest man in the room. As she stepped forward, her eyes began to glow; green as strong summer sunlight through leaves. There could be no mistaking who she was.

The ancient wizards had been bred of gods and mortal women and they'd ruled the earth for millennia until their arrogance destroyed them. All but one. All but Kraydak. And in less than a thousand years on his own, Kraydak had engendered as much carnage as all of the others had accomplished together over five times as long.

But from Ardhan came a prophecy, that from Ardhan would come Kraydak's Doom.

Crystal. A weapon forged by the goddesses in a mortal womb, shaped by the strength of the Eldest.

Crystal. The last wizard. Only seventeen when she'd faced Kraydak and defeated him. Only seventeen when she'd saved the world. Twelve years later, she looked barely older.

The crowd parted, moved by surprise and other emotions, less well defined, with a guttural, multitoned murmur. Her gaze shifting neither left nor right—the tavern might have been empty from the way she moved—she approached the table, a song of power building in the back of her throat. It wasn't a sound yet, but the hair on every neck in the room stood up. She looked down at the wounded man and then at his brother.

For the first time in five days, Raulin's eyes held hope.

“Save him,” he said.

She nodded, laid long pale fingers on the torn and rotting legs, and sang.

T
he soft crackle and hiss of flame, the pervasive scent of smoke mixed with wool and wood, the warm weight of blankets shielding her body against the chill that touched her uncovered face, the musty taste of time's passage in her mouth . . . Crystal opened her eyes.

Above her, parallel lines of logs, bark still clinging, slanted down to the right. She turned her head and followed their length until they ended in a wall, also of rough log, and liberally chinked with mud and moss. Barely below the eaves, two small windows made of glass so thick it appeared green let in weak and watery winter sunlight. She shifted and heard the rustle of straw as the mattress moved below her.

Inside. And in bed. What else?

Rolling her head back to the left, she saw another wall, with a door, and close beside the bed a small table that held a half-burned candle, a heavy ceramic pitcher and a matching mug. Her nose wrinkled. There was water in the pitcher.

Moving carefully, for muscles shrieked protest at the gentlest activity, Crystal managed to free an arm from the constricting bedclothes. She reached out, a long pale finger touched the edge of the jug, and she paused.

As much as she needed to drink—and her mouth felt as though a family of mice had moved in for the winter—she knew the water, or more specifically the swallowing and the weight in her stomach, would only intensify the craving for food she could feel beginning. Until she
could satisfy
that
she'd best not make it any worse. Whoever put her here—in this bed, in this room—would soon return, for the fire sounded as if it had almost burned down.

She let her hand fall and concentrated instead on remembering what had happened. There'd been a man. No, two men. And a healing. Frowning in disgust over her lack of recall, she grabbed at the memory and yanked it forward. Jago. She'd healed Jago's legs. Or more accurately, rebuilt them, and then rebuilt Jago. She remembered his life-force fluttering beneath her power like a wounded bird trying to beat its way free. But she'd held and healed it, pouring her own life-force into it until it could manage alone. The last thing she remembered was hitting the floor, the fall closely followed by a confused babble of voices. She grimaced. No, two confused babbles of voices; one of them reverberating inside her head.

“So. You're awake.” Dorses said, and paused in the room's doorway to study the wizard.

Long silver hair spilled across the pillow, not moving now but not exactly lifeless either. Green eyes were partially hooded by pale lids, and the one hand that lay outside the covers seemed almost translucent. It was easy to believe that this ethereal beauty was a child of the Mother's Eldest, less easy to believe that she held the power of life and death in those ivory hands.

“Please . . .” Crystal's voice had an unused rasp. “Please, I need food.”

Dorses watched for an instant longer, keeping her expression carefully neutral. Did feeding this wizard indicate approval beyond what she had already? And if it did, did it matter? No, she realized, it did not. A moral judgment had been made when she'd had the helpless woman carried upstairs. That would have been the time to deny her, not now. She twisted her head and called over her shoulder, “Ivan, fill a tray and bring it up.”

The half-lidded eyes opened a bit wider and a definite twinkle sparkled in the emerald depths. “Rather a lot of food.”

“Ivan!” The yell was a practiced, long-distance command. “Fill the large tray.”

Crystal's lips flickered into a smile, but the expression took too much effort to maintain. She sighed and tried to move the taste of mold out of her mouth.

“Can you use a drink?” Dorses assumed nothing, but the wizard certainly looked like she
needed
a drink. Hardly surprising, all things considered.

“Will Ivan be long?”

“No.”

“Then I would love a drink.”

The intense longing in Crystal's voice made Dorses thirsty as well. She moved to the bed licking her lips, filled the mug, and held it to the wizard's mouth.

The water had sat in the pitcher for some hours and was beginning to go stale and flat, but it couldn't have tasted better to Crystal had it just been drawn fresh from a mountain spring. She drained the mug and with the strength it gave her pulled herself shakily up to recline against the headboard of the bed. The fire, she could now see, burned in a small black stove, squatting against the opposite wall.

“If I may . . .” Dorses offered. Slipping an arm between back and headboard—and the wizard was not as light, as she looked—she rearranged both wizard and pillows in a more comfortable position.

“Thank you.”

“More water?”

“Please.”

Using both hands, Crystal managed to hold the mug and drink. She tried to ignore the spasms of hunger, concentrating instead on the very real pleasure in her mouth and throat. When the cup was empty again, she carefully put it on the table, and turned to the innkeeper.

“How long?” she asked.

As she'd already asked about the food, Dorses assumed the wizard wanted to know how long since the healing. “Two and a half days.” She moved to tend the fire, going over all she wanted to know, ordering the questions, wondering how best to begin. When a wizard, the last of all the wizards, collapses in your common room, a number of
questions need answering. She opened the stove's door and began to rebuild the fire. Two and a half days ago she'd seen a dead man come back to life, blackened and rotting legs made whole and pink, but the why of
that
was wizard's work and no business of hers. “Why,” she finally asked without turning, “did you fall?”

For the shelter and the food, Crystal felt the innkeeper was entitled to an answer. Her fists clenched against the hunger, she tried to explain. “He was too close to Death. Healing the legs wasn't enough. I had to give some of my life to keep him alive.” She forced the fingers of her right hand to relax so she could indicate the room with a wave. “Why did you . . .” Why did you have me carried upstairs? Why did you see that I was comfortable and protected? Why did you shield me from those who would take advantage of my helplessness? And there would be those, there always were. All that conveyed in only three words.

Closing the stove door, wiping the wood dust from her hands, Dorses considered the question. This was not the first time she'd been asked it in the last two and a half days. Perhaps it was time she found an answer. After a moment, she stood and met the wizard's eyes. The motion of her hand was a reflection of Crystal's. “You gave some of your life to keep him alive,” she said.

There were more questions in the silence but Ivan, arriving with the laden tray, pushed them into another time.

“I brought some of everything that was ready,” he panted, maneuvering his bulky load through the door with the ease of long practice, “'cause you never said what you wanted on . . .” He stopped as he felt Crystal's eyes on him and all the color drained from his face.
It's one thing to know you serve a wizard; it's another thing entirely when that wizard sits up in bed and stares at you.
He took a step backward and his mouth worked soundlessly.

“Put it by the bed,” Dorses ordered sharply, afraid he was going to turn and run.

Ivan's gaze snapped to Dorses, and finding nothing there, at least, he didn't understand, he moved tentatively forward and eased the tray down on the small table.

No longer able to control herself, Crystal grabbed for the steaming bowl of soup.

Moving backward much faster than he'd advanced, Ivan retreated out of arm's reach, then paused to watch. His pale face grew paler as the hot soup disappeared, but he stood his ground, fascinated.

“Ivan!”

He jumped. He'd forgotten that Dorses still stood by the stove. “Yes, Dorses?”

“Haven't you anything to do?”

“Uh, aye.”

She waited, arms folded across her chest.

“Uh . . . right I'll get ta it now.” After a last astounded look at Crystal, who had finished the soup and was reaching for the tray, he ran from the room.

“Your apprentice?” Crystal asked as she broke open a fresh biscuit and spread it thickly with butter.

“Aye.” Dorses hooked the room's one chair out of the corner with a toe and sat. “He's a good worker when he remembers there's work to be done.” A nod at the tray. “Enough?”

Besides the soup and biscuits, the tray held a meat pie, a bowl of rabbit stew thick with potatoes and carrots, a small baked squash, and two apple tarts.

“It should be, thank you.”

Dorses peered a little nearsightedly at the woman on the bed. “I'm curious; did you know this would happen? The collapse? The hunger?”

“The hunger, yes. The energy I use has to be replaced.” Crystal flushed. “But the other, I'd forgotten. It's been a long time since I've healed someone so close to Death. I forgot what it would cost to bring him back.” She paused and licked a bit of gravy from her lip. Suddenly it occurred to her that Lord Death had suggested the healing. Somehow, she doubted he'd forgotten and she wondered why he'd put her in such a position. “By the time I remembered,” she continued, resolving to question the Mother's son when next he appeared, “it was too late to stop.”

“Could you?”

“Have stopped? Yes.”

“Why didn't you when you realized that this,” Dorses waved a hand at the bed, “would come of it?”

Finished with the stew, Crystal started on the meat pie while she searched for a way to make her position clear. “Once I'd started, it wouldn't have been right to stop. I'd made him my responsibility by beginning and I couldn't just let him die. Giving him the life-force he needed, even knowing it would leave me helpless while it kept him alive, seemed the lesser of two evils.” She sighed, blowing pastry crumbs over the bed. “Although I'd have rather not had to do it.”

“Ah.” Dorses thought about that for a moment. This was the first wizard she'd ever heard of who considered the
lesser
of two evils. For that matter, she could think of very few people who would save a stranger at their own expense. “And what would you have done,” she asked at last, “had you just been hungry?”

The wizard grinned. “I'd have staggered outside to the nearest grove and become a tree until spring when the body of the Mother would feed me.”

“If you weren't chopped up for firewood,” Dorses reminded her dryly. “Winters are long here.”

Crystal acknowledged the truth of that with a smile. What a way for a wizard to die. She licked bits of squash from her fingers. “When I fell, what happened?”

Dorses shrugged thin shoulders. “Nothing much. No one wanted to touch you, which wasn't surprising considering who and what you are. So, after we got our other invalids up into bedrooms, I had Nad carry you up here before liquor overcame common sense.”

“Nad wasn't afraid to touch me.”

“Nad does what I ask.”

Crystal had a pretty good idea that most of the village did what this strong-minded woman asked. “Thank you.”

“You're welcome.” She spread her hands. “Now what?”

Crystal flushed again and put down the second tart. “I can pay you for all of this.”

Dorses cut at the air with a dismissive gesture. “It isn't a problem. There could be blizzards every night and the place'd still be packed. You're good for business. You could eat that way for another five or six days and still not eat up all the profits you've made me in the last two nights. What I meant was, now you're here, do you plan to stay?”

Crystal thought about the aimless wandering she'd been doing lately, about the fear that greeted her wherever she went save home and the mindless adoration that greeted her there. So far, there'd been none of that here. She had spoken more to Dorses than she had to anyone outside her immediate family in years. Except, of course, Lord Death. It felt good.

“If you don't mind,” she decided suddenly, “I'd like to stay for a bit.”

“Mind? Weren't you listening? You're good for business.” The innkeeper rose, glad to have it settled, and pleased the wizard was staying; not solely for the increase in custom. “Ivan!” she called down the stairs. “Come up for the tray.”

He must've been waiting at the bottom of the stairs for the summons, he reached the room so quickly.

“Chaos,” he breathed, spotting the empty dishes. He lifted the tray gingerly, it had been used by a wizard, after all. “I only ever saw Nad eat that much before.” It was this, not the miraculous healing, that marked her as truly powerful in his mind. Food, he understood. He tried a tentative smile. To his shock and joy it was returned.

“Thank you, Ivan.” Her voice was a summer breeze.

“You're welcome, L-Lady,” Ivan stammered and floated from the room, so totally oblivious to his surroundings Dorses had to move out of his way.

Puzzled by the young man's behavior, Dorses glanced questioningly toward the woman on the bed and suddenly saw what Ivan had; a soft, exotic beauty with a hint of need and a promise of passion. A beauty more a matter of expression than eyes or lips or cheek. She pursed her own lips in admiration; this was a power
she
understood.

“At least he no longer fears me,” Crystal explained softly, letting
the expression fall, becoming no less beautiful but certainly less accessible.

“If you think Ivan in love will be easier to manage,” the other woman said dryly, “I wish you joy of him. Do you thus lay the fear in all men?”

“No.” Her laugh was a little embarrassed. “Two years older or two years younger and that wouldn't have worked.” She remembered other men who'd howled curses at her, or pleas, or just howled. Ivan's uncomplicated sweetness was like a balm across the memories.