Wizard of the Grove

by Tanya Huff

  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.

  “Well, if you’re well enough,” Dorses spoke over her thought, “there’s one man I wish you’d see. That Raulin’s been driving me crazy trying to get into your room.”

  “Raulin? The brother?” She wondered what he wanted. Over the last twelve years she’d learned they always wanted something. “I guess I’d better see him.”

  “Good, I’ll tell him . . .” Dorses paused in the doorway, nodded once, and added, “. . . Crystal.” Then she was gone.

  A long time, the wizard thought sadly, since someone said my name in friendship. Except, she added upon reflection, for Lord Death.

  It was too soon for the food to do any good, even in a wizard’s system, but Crystal imagined that she could feel her power grow. It frightened her being helpless; there were too many who would love to make a wizard pay for a wizard’s crimes. She studied the ceiling and reached out just a little.

  The logs were pine. The branch now growing into the room at her urging, fully needled, and tipped with a pair of pinecones, proved it.

  “More power back than I thought,” Crystal muttered. She’d only intended a light touch. “This could be embarrassing to explain.”

  Out in the hall she heard Dorses trying to make an impression on someone who didn’t appear to be listening.

  “. . . and you will not stay long. She’ll be here for a few days, you’ll likely see her again before you leave.”

  “I only want to thank her. That’s all.”

  Crystal wasn’t sure, but she thought she recognized the voice, although when she’d heard it last, it had quavered with pain and exhaustion. Raulin. He spoke in a kind of lazy drawl she found pleasing. The voice of a man who smiles a lot she decided; smiles and means every one.

  “Lady?”

  Rested and fed, Raulin was much more attractive than he’d been that night in the tavern. It wasn’t so much the features—the nose a bit large, the gray eyes a bit deep, the brows a bit too definite, the mustache more than a bit . . . Crystal paused, uncertain of how to describe the mustache but it was more than a bit, that was for sure—but rather how he wore them: with laugh lines, and a twinkle, and a willingness to be delighted by life.

  “Lady?” he repeated and stepped into the room. “Mind if I come in?”

  “You’re in,” she pointed out.

  He smiled. “And you don’t seem to mind.”

  No, she didn’t. She returned the smile and said, “You wanted to see me?”

  “I’ve been trying for the last two days,” he admitted. “In fact,” his smile grew broader, “Dorses would say I’ve been very trying.”

  Crystal gave a gurgle of laughter, the sort of uncomplicated response she thought o
nly her younger brother could evoke. “I really doubt Dorses would,” she told him.

  “Maybe not.” He reached the edge of the bed and dropped to his knees. His face grew serious and his eyes stared fearlessly into hers. “You saved my brother’s life,” he said. “I can never thank you for that, there aren’t the words, but I wish you could know how I feel.”

  Maybe later she would warn him about the dangers of looking into a wizard’s eyes.

  An emerald spark appeared and Crystal took the gift Raulin so innocently offered, moving across their gaze into his heart. It held little darkness, she found, and much light. At the center of the light was Jago. The younger brother, much loved and protected. The companion, the right arm, the other half. A man to guard his back, a friend to guard his dreams. Could he lose this much of his life and still have a life remaining?

  Crystal didn’t know she was crying until a gentle finger wiped away a tear.

  “Lady?”

  She caught his reaching hand and held it for a moment. “I do know how you feel,” she said, so softly he had to lean forward to catch the words. “And I am well thanked for your brother’s life.”

  To her astonishment, he brought the hand that held his to his lips and kissed its back, his mustache drawing fine lines of sensation across the skin.

  “Lady,” he told her, allowing her to reclaim her arm, “I will continue thanking you all the days I live.” His smile returned. “And never has gratitude been expressed so willingly.”

  Was he flirting with her? Crystal tilted her head and gazed at the man in puzzlement.

  “And if my thanks could be expressed in some more tangible way . . .”

  She recognized that tone. He was flirting with her.

  “You have only to command me, Lady. I long to fulfill your every wish.” The florid words were accompanied by a mighty flourish of an imaginary hat.

  “Uh, no wishes at the moment.”

  “Well, then . . .” He stood and dusted off his knees. “I’d best get back to Jago.” The smile became a grin. “He’s not as pretty, but I don’t want him to spill soup in the bed. We can’t afford a second one.” He bowed, winked—she was quite sure he winked—and left.