Garth looked back at Ravenna, and took a quick breath of concern. Her eyes, back to their natural grey for the moment, were ringed with exhaustion, and her mouth was thin and pinched. “Ravenna!”
“I will be well, Garth Baxtor,” she said quietly. “I can rest while you heal Maximilian, and the return will not be half the effort the journey here was.”
Garth doubted her too-easy reassurance very much, but he did not say anything. After a moment longer he dropped his eyes to the prince.
Maximilian was staring at him, his blue eyes heavy with pain. “Help me, Garth,” he whispered. “Free this damned Manteceros that troubles me so sorely.”
Garth winced at the agony in Maximilian’s voice, remembering Cavor’s ravaged face and eyes. Joseph had taken him to one side before Ravenna had spirited them here, and whispered to him hasty instructions. None of them had reassured Garth very much. He had never caused an incision into anyone’s flesh before—and creating the wound instead of healing it was anathema to Garth’s training.
But it had to be done.
Garth took a deep breath and lifted the bag of instruments his father had given him. “Ravenna,” he said quietly, his eyes not leaving Maximilian’s face, “take his hands. Hold him tight.”
She nodded, and lifted Maximilian’s hands into her own.
The prince’s torso was already bare, and Garth folded back the sheet so that he would have easy access to his arm. Trembling slightly, he ran his hands over the thick scar that rippled over most of Maximilian’s upper right arm, trying to feel the outline of the Manteceros beneath it. He probed with the entire strength of his Touch, but, unlike the first time he had Touched the man beneath the Veins, it was useless. All he could feel was the hot angry ridged tissue beneath his fingers. The mark was buried deep, very deep.
“Maximilian,” he said very softly. “The scar tissue must be cut away. It will hurt.” He hesitated. “I am sorry.”
Maximilian, his face even paler than normal, if that were possible, nodded curtly, then turned his face away, burying it in the comforting folds of Ravenna’s gown as she sat beside him.
Garth clenched his hands momentarily to stop their trembling—how was he going to be able to get through this!—then took gauze and a flask from the bag beside him, liberally wiping disinfectant over the scar. He took a deep breath, focusing both mind and Touch as tightly as he could, then reached into the bag and withdrew a shiny scalpel.
It glinted wickedly, even in this misty light.
His jaw tight with strain, Garth touched the blade to the lower portion of the scar tissue.
The door had just slammed behind Egalion and his two soldiers, the limp form of Jack dragged between them, when lightning agony knifed into Cavor’s arm.
Unable even to scream, his eyes and mouth open round in shock and horror, Cavor slipped from the chair to the floor and thrashed about, clutching his arm, his low, agonised moans inaudible to the guards outside the room.
At the first touch of the blade, Maximilian arched his body in shock and screamed.
Ravenna cried with him, her eyes wide with horror, and Garth, appalled by the prince’s reaction, dropped the scalpel from his hand.
It fell with an apologetic splash into the water that flowed gently about his feet.
Trembling almost uncontrollably now, Garth reached down, mentally cursing himself. The metal would be contaminated by whatever medium it had fallen into, and he would have to wipe it clean again. Gods but he wished this were over and done with.
Gods, but he wished his father were here to do this instead of him.
His hand groped about at his feet, searching blindly through the water—surely it was only a finger’s width deep? But however much his fingers scrabbled about, they found nothing. Garth met Ravenna’s eyes above the now silent prince. “What are you going to do?” she asked, and Garth wondered if her calm expression hid accusation.
He groped about a moment longer, his heart sinking icy cold within his breast, then he sat up. “I don’t know,” he whispered. “I have no other knife.”
To his surprise, Ravenna relaxed. “Believe,” she said. “Believe in yourself, and trust in the man who lies between us. Believe.”
“Believe?” Garth whispered, appalled.
“Believe,” she said gently, and leaned across Maximilian to kiss Garth gently on the cheek. “I believe in you, and Maximilian believes in you, and above all you must believe in your Touch. It is far deeper and far more powerful in you than in any before you. Joseph does not understand that yet, and neither do you. Believe in yourself, Garth. Trust in your ability. In you and in this place the Touch can be used in ways unimaginable.”
Garth stared at her, mesmerised by the touch of her lips and by the words she spoke. Believe.
“Believe,” he whispered and, his hands still trembling slightly, he Touched Maximilian’s arm just above the elbow.
His Touch was warm and dry, yet felt like the distant reverberations of a swarm of bees. Maximilian shuddered, trusting, and fought to relax under Garth’s hands.
“Believe,” Maximilian whispered. “Believe.”
Garth’s Touch felt strange, unsettling, but it did not hurt. Maximilian relaxed further, and Ravenna stroked the backs of his hands with her thumbs and crooned wordlessly to him.
Garth was now concentrating so hard he was hardly aware of the man beneath his hands or of the young woman across from him. The Pavilion faded into insignificance, and all Garth could feel was a throbbing that thrilled through his veins from the very centre of his being towards his palms and fingertips—which burned as though they had been engulfed in cold yet painless fire.
“Believe,” he whispered again. “Trust,” and gave himself completely to the Touch.
Cavor moaned one more time, then realised the pain had gone. He rolled over, his fine clothes dusted with the dirt of Furst’s floor, and stared uncomprehendingly at the floorboards as they stretched away towards the far wall. A feeling of warmth and comfort such as he had never felt before was spreading upwards from his right elbow.
Garth massaged Maximilian’s flesh between his fingers and thumbs, rolling it to and fro, probing deep and surely. Slowly his fingers moved up Maximilian’s arm towards the first ridge of scar tissue. His lips moved, although he made no sound.
Maximilian had relaxed completely, and Ravenna had let go of one of his hands and was now smoothing the hair back from his forehead. His head had lolled back on the pillow; his eyes now closed, a small smile lit his face, mirroring Ravenna’s own expression as she watched Garth work his miracle.
Garth’s fingers and thumbs had now reached the scar tissue, and he frowned. It was irritating, irritating beyond measure! Angry with the impure flesh beneath his Touch, he muttered and shifted slightly on the bed, changing his grip on Maximilian’s arm.
He dug his thumbs under the lower edge of the mass of scar tissue and slowly…achingly slowly…rolled and lifted it from the Prince’s arm as a dirty carpet is rolled away from a smooth floor.
Ravenna’s hand stilled on Maximilian’s forehead, and her lips parted slightly in wonder.
Unaware of anything but the need to roll the offending tissue away completely, Garth continued to work his fingers further and further up Maximilian’s arm, submerging himself completely in the Touch, letting its power sweep through him and, through him, into Maximilian.
As the scar tissue buckled and rolled away it exposed white skin almost crystalline in its purity. Not a mark marred its surface.
Ravenna frowned slightly.
But Garth continued to work. Now almost half of the scar had been rolled back, and it bunched and roiled above Garth’s fingers. Maximilian had relaxed so completely he seemed deeply asleep.
A few minutes longer and the scar was almost completely removed—yet still the skin beneath it remained white and pure. Ravenna opened her mouth to speak, thought better of it as she glanced at Garth’s face, and closed her lips slowly.
�
�Ah!” Garth grunted, and with an abrupt twist of his hand tore the loose scar tissue away from Maximilian’s arm completely. With a look of utter distaste, he flung it as far as he could from them.
There was a distant splash, and Maximilian’s eyes sprang open. They widened impossibly, and neither Ravenna nor Garth could read the expression in them nor understand what he saw in the mist surrounding him.
“Watch out!” he screamed, and twisted his head and shoulders away as if avoiding something charging out of the mists.
Too shocked even to scream, Cavor rolled violently across the floor until he rested against a wall, certain he was about to be trampled.
There was a thunder of beating feet, and Ravenna and Garth winced and hunched low, not sure what to avoid or even what direction the danger came from.
The next instant Maximilian cried again, tore his left hand from Ravenna’s clasp, and gripped his right biceps tight. His body rolled and twisted on the bed.
“Garth!” Ravenna cried, her hands to her face. “Look!”
Following the direction of her eyes, Garth looked at Maximilian’s hand where it gripped his biceps. He gripped so hard that his fingers dug into his pale flesh, but as Garth looked there was a flash of blue light from between the prince’s fingers. Maximilian convulsed, crying out yet again, and then he slowly relaxed, a look of wonder on his face.
His hand dropped slowly away from his arm.
Simultaneously, Garth and Ravenna took great breaths. Emblazoned across Maximilian’s right biceps in all its thick-legged, stiff-maned glory was the blue outline of the Manteceros.
Maximilian twisted his head and stared at the mark, then slowly shifted his eyes to Garth. “I remember,” he whispered. “I remember it all.”
Cavor heaved in great breaths, coughing as floor dust lined his lungs, then slowly, wonderingly, pushed himself to his feet. He stood a moment, his chest heaving, then he tore his jacket and then his shirt from his torso, twisting his head and arm to see.
His arm was completely healed. The mark of the Manteceros blazed forth clear and blue from skin rosy with health.
The pain that had plagued him for years had completely gone.
Gone.
Slowly his breathing calmed, and Cavor raised his eyes, staring sightlessly into the depths of the room. Intuitively he understood what this meant. If his mark had healed, then it meant Maximilian’s mark had been freed from beneath its scar tissue.
And if that had happened…
If that had happened then Maximilian was free to make his claim. And there was only one place he could do that.
“The forest,” he whispered. “He’s in the forest.”
Maximilian sat silently before the fire, a bowl of soup in his hands, lifting the spoon to his mouth in slow, thoughtful movements. He had said almost nothing since Ravenna had returned them to the rock hut, and now stared into the flames, coming to terms with the flood of his memories in his own way.
He wore only breeches and boots, and the firelight flickered over his pale, naked torso. Every so often the eyes of the watchers would sweep over the proud blue mark on his arm, then they would sweep back to the prince’s face.
As his sickness had sloughed away from him and his memories had surged in to fill the vacuum, Maximilian had automatically assumed the demeanour and bearing of a prince. His shoulders, hunched and unsure ever since he’d been freed from the Veins (and for how many years before that?) were now straight and strong. His movements, although slow, were measured and deliberate.
His face, uncertain and haunted before, still had traces of pain lacing his eyes (and would probably all the rest of his life, thought Vorstus), but was now grave and calm, even curiously peaceful for the memories that must be coursing through him.
But then, Joseph remembered, even as a young boy he’d learned to keep his innermost feelings well to himself.
Joseph’s own eyes swam with tears. The man before him was the boy he remembered grown into his true heritage. Who could doubt that he was a prince true-blooded and bred?
The soup finished, Maximilian put the bowl down on the hearth and turned to face the three men and the young marsh woman. “Will you listen if I talk?” he asked, and they nodded.
Maximilian shifted about on his stool a little, making himself comfortable. “The hound, Boroleas, that I’d been given for my fourteenth birthday,” he began, his eyes distant, “was a false gift.” His eyes shifted to the window, as if the path that had led him to his fate still stretched within sight. “He’d been trained to answer a whistle, and on the day appointed followed the whistle to lead me deep into the forest and into a glade peopled with traitors. They had planned well, and probably for over a year to have trained Boroleas for the purpose.”
His mouth quirked, and he looked down at his hands. “And they knew me. Knew that I would not be able to resist the thrill of cornering the hart by myself.” Pain flickered briefly across his face. “There were, oh, perhaps twenty or twenty-five of them in that glade. Faceless, featureless, and voiceless but for two.”
“Did you recognise their voices?” Vorstus asked softly.
Maximilian looked up, surprised but not angered by the interruption. “No. The leader had an unusual brogue, probably from one of the eastern kingdoms.” He winced in memory. “He was roughly spoken, and harsh of spirit.”
“A mercenary,” Ravenna said in a flat, angry voice. “Hired for the occasion.”
Maximilian stared at her for a moment. “Likely, lovely lady. Likely.”
“And the other voice?” Vorstus asked.
“Belonged to a man named Furst,” Maximilian said. “They…they had a fire going behind one of the trees—stoked by Furst. They dragged me there…and while the irons heated to their satisfaction—”
“You do not have to go on with this, Maximilian,” Joseph said, concerned for the naked pain he could see in the prince’s eyes.
“I must, Joseph,” the prince replied. “I must.” He took a deep breath. “While the irons heated to their satisfaction, as they laughed and passed about a jug of wine, the leader told me that I was a changeling.” He breathed deep again, but more raggedly this time. “He laughed, and said that my mother had birthed a stillborn son so small and featureless he looked like a skinned lizard. In desperation, she caused her maid to search Ruen for a new-born boy of blue-eyed parents, tall and dark.”
Maximilian stopped for a moment, and when he continued his voice was flat and featureless. “I was the son of a blacksmith, he told me, and my rightful future lay shackled to an anvil, not a throne. I believed him.”
“Why?” Garth asked. Compassion radiated out from his eyes and voice.
“Why?” Maximilian shook his head slightly. “I can’t explain it fully. I was scared…terrified. Perhaps I thought that if I believed it they might let me go. It was all such a nightmare…if they’d told me I was a toad dressed in a princeling’s clothes I think I would have believed them utterly. And then, lost in the darkness, I continued to believe them.”
“Do you believe them now?” Vorstus asked, his face expressionless in the firelight.
Maximilian met his eyes steadily. “No, Vorstus. Now I choose not to believe them. When Garth healed my arm Ravenna told us both to believe. To believe. When the mark was restored, so was my belief.” His voice deepened with inner strength. “Vorstus, I know who I am…and I am no changeling.”
Vorstus inclined his head, pleased. Relieved.
Maximilian dropped his eyes and passed a hand briefly over his face. “When…when the irons were hot enough, they decided they’d taunted me sufficiently.” His hand crept to his arm, his fingers running softly, absently, over the mark of the Manteceros. “Then…then the nightmare truly began.”
There was silence between them for a very long time. Eventually Ravenna stood up and poured each of them a glass of wine, pausing briefly by Maximilian as she handed him his, laying a gentle hand on his shoulder. He smiled at her, and pressed her hand gratefull
y.
As she sat back down, Maximilian continued. “I remember little of the next week or so. The burn festered—the flesh above the elbow puckered and wept evil fluids. The pain…” his voice drifted off, then he roused himself. “Eventually my tormentors laughed and drank some more, then threw me in a great iron cage on wheels and fixed my ankles to its floor.”
Garth shuddered, remembering the loathsome transport carts he’d seen on the road between Ruen and Myrna.
“From there all became blackness. Blackness and pain for an eternity, until,” he lifted his eyes and flashed his extraordinary smile at Garth, “came the light of your presence and your words, Garth. ‘What are you doing here, Maximilian?’ you asked. ‘You belong beyond the hanging wall.’”
“And so you do,” Garth said emphatically.
Maximilian grinned at his tone. “And so I do,” he said.
Then the light died from his eyes. “Joseph. Memories have flooded back, memories from before my incarceration in the Veins. My time there seems only a hellish blur. How long…look at me. I am a man grown, yet I know that when I was thrown into the darkness I was but a beardless youth. And you, Joseph. You look almost as old as I remember your father. Joseph?” Maximilian’s voice almost broke, although his face remained stoic. “How long was I down there?”
Joseph rose from his seat and squatted by Maximilian’s side. “You were gone seventeen years, Maximilian. Seventeen years.”
Maximilian stared at Joseph uncomprehendingly, then his face cracked. “Seventeen years? I have lost seventeen years?”
Beyond the Hanging Wall Page 21
