Spirit Mage

by Esther Mitchell

  "Father," the plea left her in a hoarse whisper, and her vision blurred.

  A part of me is with you always, my daughter. Now live. Love. Heal him. He is your destiny.

  Those words gave her confidence as none ever had, and for the first time, she actually believed she really could heal Nacaris' wounds. Oh, he may never regain enough use of his sword arm to wield a sword with the same skill as before, but she could heal the actual wounds. She was so tied up in her fear and uncertainty about how to face him she forgot all she learned in the cycles since she discovered the secrets of Raiador. Once properly cleaned, a shallow wound could be immediately healed using minimal energy. Deep wounds, such as Nacaris', must first be cleaned and stitched, but once they were, the healing was no more difficult.

  Telyn flexed her fingers wearily. Did she have enough energy left? Grimly, she decided she must. She may not yet know her own limits, but neither Ashes nor Sala would ever push her to do something dangerous to her welfare.

  Telyn re-entered the Tikesha with a resolute, purposeful stride, her former weariness replaced by newfound energy. The young monk, Nevorai, saw her first. A hesitant smile touched his lips before he elbowed the man who sat lost in thought beside him. Paduari jerked back to attention, and his eyes widened as his gaze settled on her face.

  "We've got a lot of work to do." She crossed the space toward Nacaris. "In order to get rid of Reaphia, we all need to be free of distractions, and committed to this course. That means," she continued as she reached into her herb pouch and pulled out a small bag of iacora root, then reached for the water bag, "we need to get our patient up and mobile again."

  "Telyn..." Paduari started up, one hand stretched toward her.

  "No," she stopped him firmly. "Don't argue with me. I know what I'm doing. This is best for ... Marakai."

  "Why don't you let Marakai judge for himself?"

  The sound of his voice startled Telyn, yanking her gaze his way to find his attention focused clearly on her, and his mouth curved into a wry smile.

  "You're awake! But how..." Telyn whirled on Paduari. "Why didn't you tell me?"

  Nacaris chuckled. "You didn't give him much of a chance."

  "He woke up right after you left, Telyn." Paduari shrugged apologetically as he rose to his feet. "I thought you needed some time to relax and gather your thoughts, so I gave him your ash mixture..."

  "Which was thoroughly disgusting, by the way." The wry, teasing humor in Nacaris' voice wrenched Telyn's heart. But at least this was more familiar territory, for her.

  "It served its purpose, didn't it?" She shot back, her voice tinged with both ire and amusement, as Paduari walked away. Then, realizing what she said, Telyn stopped, her gaze fixed numbly on Nacaris. She couldn't believe she was bantering with a wounded man who should be dead twice over. In stunned, uncomfortable silence, she watched his smile fade, and wary resignation fill his grey-green eyes. The courage it took for him to face her so openly wasn't lost on Telyn. There was a great man in his broken shell, and she was more honored to know him in this moment than ever before. She wanted to tell him she never forgot how to love him, but fear was her failing, not his -- it held her mute as the words pressed against her tongue.

  "It did indeed," he conceded in a soft voice. Desire tripped along Telyn's overwrought nerves until she wanted nothing more than to find sanctuary in his arms. "I hear tell from a very reliable source you saved my life. Again," he praised her, and the reminder brought tears to her eyes. She blinked them away as he reached his good hand to grasp hers. "Balnyt, I'm... I'm sorry."

  There was no need to ask what for. Neither of them was likely to forget Falraec anytime soon. Telyn managed a shaky smile, but had to draw several deep breaths against the impulse to run from this conversation, and these old ghosts. "You did what you had to do. The past is done. Now, though, I'd like to finish what I started, and get you on your way. Paduari and I have unfinished business, and I very much doubt you'll wish to linger here while we're gone."

  Nacaris winced visibly, and she knew the coolness in her voice, not his wounds, caused his pained look. "Telyn..."

  "I don't want to talk about it, Nacaris, or Marakai, or whoever in Raktou's nine gates you really are." She forced her tone brisk but upbeat as she pulled her hand from his grasp and enquired, "How are you feeling?"

  His brows drew together, and she knew she was only delaying the inevitable. Call her a coward, but she would be plenty happy to continue the delay indefinitely.

  Nacaris searched her face for a moment and, apparently not finding whatever he was looking for, sighed. "I'll live. And you're not getting rid of me that easily, balnyt. I may not be able to wield a sword like this, but then, I don't see any swords laying about, either. Paduari's filled me in on most of what you lot plan to do, though I'm sure he doesn't know even half of what you've got in mind, and his tactical knowledge is hazy," the friendly, amused look Nacaris cast at Paduari's way softened the bite of his words. "If you're going to get close enough to do any good, you need a distraction. I can talk a pretty bluff hand when I need to, and I'm an unexpected enough enemy, she'll want me out of the way before I can do anything to alter her plans. And, if things go sour, I'm not the sort that'll ever be missed. Logically, I'm the perfect bait."

  Telyn opened her mouth to protest, but the determination in his eyes stopped her. Grudgingly, she conceded he was right about one thing -- he was the logical choice. Reaphia couldn't gauge him, and would therefore be anxious to get rid of him as swiftly as possible. He may not be capable of wielding a blade with any real skill in his current state, but Reaphia didn’t know that, and she certainly wouldn't know whether he was capable of anything more threatening to her, like Majik.

  Still, being the logical choice didn't make Nacaris the right choice.

  "You'd be missed." She couldn't meet his eyes as those words slipped through her lips. She was too afraid he'd see everything behind them -- everything she felt for him.

  "By who?" His words were as soft as hers, but held the hard edge of challenge. "I'm dead to almost everyone who's ever known me"

  Telyn bit back the first words that sprang to her lips, both unable to face so stark a truth and unsure how he'd respond if she did. She chose a safer course, instead.

  "By Paduari," she told him pointedly. "He's your friend. He risked a lot to rescue you."

  Nacaris' lips twitched in a sad, knowing smile, telling her he knew she was running away. Demn him, he read her so well. When he spoke, Nacaris' voice was a low murmur. "Paduari's changed. I saw it when I first came back. But even that change was nothing compared to the changes he's undergone lately. He's found an inner balance I almost envy. But he's not the Paduari I knew anymore. He feels remorse for something I can't get him to talk about, and it's held him here all these Summers. He's not meant to be here. He never was. He's got journeys he still needs to make in this life. As for me, I'm a liability to Paduari as long as I'm injured like this. He's my friend now, but how long would it take for us to become enemies?"

  Telyn swallowed hard, forcing herself to say the words, though she was acutely aware they would reveal how much she already mourned him, once. "I would miss you."

  Surprise flashed across Nacaris' face, before his good hand reached to touch her face lightly. "Would you?"

  She nodded mutely, unwilling to answer the questions burning in his eyes. She still wasn't much good at this emotional stuff.

  "Telyn," Nacaris drew her attention with his quiet entreaty. "There's something I want to tell you -- something I've never told anyone before. Even Paduari doesn't know. He blames himself for my being sent away when we were children only barely older than Corand, but the truth is, I wanted to go. Paduari and I always talked about the lands beyond the Eleshau. But, unlike him, I was never content to just talk about them. I hungered to see them with my own eyes."

  "I don't understand. What--"

  He reached up, stroked callused fingers over her cheek and settled them over her lips in a
silencing gesture. "I'm getting to that."

  The sting of his rebuke was softened by the tenderness of his smile. But it was the sadness pushing away the light in his eyes which forced a shaft of almost-physical pain through Telyn's heart.

  He clasped her hand lightly, his thumb gently stroking its back as he murmured, "You remember what I told you about my aunt and uncle?"

  She nodded mutely. He hadn't said much, but she understood it was far from a love match, and theirs was an unpleasant home for a young boy to exist in.

  "I've tried very hard to forget that evil place, balnyt. But it came back to haunt me after we separated at Falraec."

  After she escaped, and he supposedly died, she corrected silently, but let him continue unchallenged.

  "My aunt may have been my mother's sister, but they shared little enough in common for me to question their relation over and over in my head. My mother was -- and still is, according to Paduari -- a woman of gentle breeding and soft-spoken dignity. She likely would have forgiven me my disgrace, had I asked.

  "Aunt Risela, on the other hand, was a bitter, boorish shrew of a woman, and she made her distaste for everyone in her household -- and especially being saddled with me -- known plainly within the building's walls. She used sharp words and hurled kitchen implements as her weapons, and screamed or raged at anything and anyone who crossed her."

  "Small wonder it was such a battlefield," Telyn muttered, trying to recall if she ever heard Gwneth so much as raise her voice. She couldn't think of a single instance, which wasn't surprising. If there was one thing Telyn had decided early in life she never wanted to see again, it was the faint light of hurt disapproval in her mother's eyes.

  "My uncle was no meek man, either," Nacaris continued, clearly unaware of Telyn's moment of reflection. "Part Dwarf on his mother's side, he carried all their disagreeable tendencies, and very little of their patience. He was a foul-tempered, sharp-tongued little man, and he matched my aunt scream for scream."

  Telyn winced at the picture his words painted, then frowned. "I still don't understand why you're telling me this. What does it have to do with who would miss you, or with us?"

  His smile was back, his eyes full of gentle tenderness as he reached to stroke her cheek lightly with the back of his hand. "Because it has everything to do with you, and why I go where you do, no matter my injury, or the danger we face."

  A confused, impatient sound bubbled up from deep inside her, and Nacaris chuckled before continuing, "Once, just before my twelfth birthday, I made the mistake of talking back to my aunt when she questioned where I'd been. She beat me to a raw pulp with the hearth broom. I was lucky to survive."

  Telyn gasped, horror flying through her. How could anyone harm a child in such a way? Her mother never so much as raised a hand to her in all her life, and she could not imagine misusing a child with such violence. This puzzle piece of Nacaris did, however, answer the questions she once harbored about his protective attitude toward Corand. At the time she'd been half-afraid she'd discover Corand was truly Nacaris' son. Now, she understood the truth -- he saw himself in the orphaned heir to the Borderland throne.

  "My uncle at least had the sense to realize a dead relative -- particularly a child left in their keeping -- was sure to raise questions," Nacaris was saying, apparently oblivious to her dismay as he stared into a past she was certain a lesser man would have collapsed under. "He hauled me off to a Dwarven Healer in the Eleshau and had me set to rights again. But I was so injured I truly believe I died during that first night. I felt the darkness close in around me, and then there was nothing except emptiness -- a great void -- and a voice calling me back, promising me I could be someone, I was meant to be someone. When I woke, I knew something had changed. It was as if the void, the emptiness, was inside me. It kept me restless, wandering. I had no idea how to fill it, or make it go away. Not until the day you arrived in Dariadus' camp. That day, a light went on in my soul, and I knew my destiny was wherever you were. Telyn, you are my home."

  Telyn's mind spun as she tried to absorb what he told her. She wasn't sure of much, but she knew his declaration complicated things. She still had to get to Reaphia -- she and the Vedic had a showdown far too long in coming. That much hadn't changed. But to know Kishfa's touch might truly bind her and Nacaris together freed her from the last of her doubts about herself. Kishfa, it seemed, had not forsaken her, after all. His words cleared her fears, and assured her she would always be safe in loving Nacaris. As the thought settled, so did the knowledge she might just as easily lose Nacaris forever if she let him go through with the foolishly noble sacrifice he intended. Oblivious to the presence of Paduari and Nevorai nearby, she leaned to kiss Nacaris.

  She'd meant it only to be a brief touch of her lips to his, but the familiar feel, the sizzle of heat she'd craved ever since Falraec, spurred her to another taste, and she was lost.

  She barely registered the pressure of Nacaris' good hand as he buried his fingers in her hair and urged her closer. She went willingly, and the hunger in his kiss -- as if this kiss alone could save him -- heated her blood to boiling. She didn't think to deny him when he sought entrance to her mouth. Instead, she welcomed the onslaught, and the fire kindling low in her belly promising an eruption of desire unlike anything she'd experienced since the last time she was in his arms.

  Silently, she acknowledged this was the first time since that awful day at Falraec she truly felt alive, and she clung desperately to the feeling, and the man who was its genesis.

  In the end, it was Nacaris who drew away first, with a reluctant sigh. The smile he offered her was both tender and wary. "So, are we agreed? I'll play bait."

  She didn't want to discuss this. What she wanted to do was argue with him, convince him it was a fool's errand. Only problem was, they both knew it was the only course open to them. Finally, with a resigned frown, she nodded. "I don't like it, but you're right."

  He brushed her cheek with his fingers. "Don't worry about me. Just do what needs doing. Now, fix me up, and let's get moving."

  She smiled at the familiar impatience in those words. Lifting away the poultice on his leg, she was pleased to see her handiwork held perfectly. Holding her hand above the wound, she closed her eyes and focused on the sewn flesh, seeing it in her mind's eye, slowly altering it within her mind, melding and mending with touches of heat until it was little more than a white pucker of skin and a thin line of crusted blood. Opening her eyes, she studied her work, and smiled. Even the sinew she had used to stitch the wound had burned away, and she knew the slight redness was from the heat of the healing. It would soon fade, as well.

  "You're much better at that than you were when we last parted," Nacaris acknowledged, moving his leg a little.

  Telyn averted her gaze. She didn't want to talk about the heartache that sent her running for the very same mountain and Majik she had once so vehemently fled. "I can't fix your arm as easily. I can't tell you how much use you'll get back."

  He gave a one-shouldered shrug. "I know. I resigned myself during the wagon ride from the Eleshau to the monastery with the likelihood of losing the arm altogether. I don't even know how I hung onto life at all, but I was convinced my fighting days were over."

  Telyn studied him gravely as she moved to kneel beside his shoulder. "It may not be as dire as that, you know. There's just no telling, this soon."

  He quirked her another resigned look. "I'd be a fool to think it will ever be the same again. In this case, I think it's much more practical to prepare myself for the worst. I've identified myself by my skill with a blade since I was a boy. To continue to believe that possible would be pure folly. Besides, in truth, I won't miss it much." He shrugged again, an odd, jerking one-shouldered movement. "You know as well as I that war is a wearying existence. Even before Falraec, I'd begun to question whether it was what I really wanted from life."

  Telyn glanced away, swallowing hard at this new chasm between them. No matter if he claimed her to be his destiny, t
here was a world of differences between them they might never resolve.

  She was born to be the ultimate warrior. Would Kishfa truly permit her to love a man who sought to abandon the battlefield? Could there be any hope of a future when he actively denied her life's purpose?

  "That's why you left, isn't it? Didn't you even care what your choice would do to Corand?" Her voice lowered to a harsh whisper. "Or to me?"

  "Telyn." He grasped her hand, forcing her to meet his gaze with the pressure of his grip. "Of course I cared. But I knew the Regent would see to Corand's training to be King more properly than I ever could. And I didn't have much of a choice, at the time. I really was half-dead when the Rahians dumped me in the Eleshau. It was only by the will of the gods the same Dwarven Healer who rescued me as a boy happened to be nearby that day. He carted me back to his home and treated my wounds. When I mentioned returning to the Borderlands, he refused to let me go."

  Confusion pricked her. "Why would he do that?"

  "He said my destiny would follow me here, I needed to return to Lurudan to set right many wrongs within my own life. I had to promise that was what I'd do. It was the only way he'd let me leave. I would never abandon you by choice, Telyn, and had I not been certain we would meet again, even my oath to the old Healer would not have kept me from returning for you." He raised her captive hand to his lips. "You will always be my destiny."

  She had no idea how to respond. Swallowing hard, she pulled her hand free and concentrated on healing his shoulder wound. Using Majik to heal such a grievous injury was far from simple, but she refused to give up, even when the pain it caused threatened to turn her inside out. She gritted her teeth and pushed through the agony, determined to see him as healed as she possibly could.

  Finally, when the once-gaping wound was little more than a bright pink scar, she sat back, dizzy with exhaustion. At the worried frown on Nacaris' face, she forced a small smile to her lips. "You're as healed as I can make you. Now, we're running out of time, so I suggest we get on our way."