by Tanya Huff
“But you,” she advanced on Raulin, “you, I can soothe.” She flipped open his coat and had the old bandages unwrapped before he had time for more than a single yelp. Clicking her tongue at the flaming red lines, she fished a flat metal container from a pocket, and spread the ointment it contained over the wounds. Even before she finished they looked less angry. She cocooned him in fresh linen, and pulled one of his spare shirts, warm and soft, over his head. Lifting the empty mugs from two sets of lax fingers, she pushed the brothers toward the shelter.
“The wizard will join you when she’s had something to eat,” she admonished as they hesitated. “Sleep.”
“Well, I’m not going to argue with her,” Raulin muttered, dropping to his knees and crawling inside.
Jago half turned, gave a small bow in the giant’s direction, and followed.
“Now,” she loomed over Crystal, “first we will remove this ugly piece of work.” Her large hands circled the cap and she added, “I’m sorry, child, but this may hurt.” Then she pulled.
Crystal’s back arched and she tried not to cry out as, with a crack that seemed to shatter her skull, the band broke. Panting, she collapsed back on the sleigh as the giant methodically snapped the polished amethyst into tiny pieces. “Please,” she said, when she thought she could control her voice, “I need food.”
“Yes, of course you do.” The giant placed a large biscuit in Crystal’s hand.
Crystal took a tentative bite, sighed, and crammed the rest into her mouth. When she finished swallowing, the giant handed her another.
“I haven’t had these since the centaurs,” she said through a mouthful of crumbs. The taste conjured up wild runs across the plains; the thunder of hooves pounding against the ground, the smells of centaur and upturned sod blending and becoming one, her hair blowing into a tangled cloud as she clung to a broad back and rode down the wind. She could feel strength seeping back. “I could never get enough of them.”
“I think you’ve had enough at present,” the giant chuckled. “Just one of those horse-cakes could keep your teachers fed for a whole day. They may, as the dwarves assert, be pompous and pedantic,” she said, sliding her arms under the wizard and carrying her over to the shelter, “but they can cook.”
Crystal yawned, suddenly more tired than she’d been since her battles with Kraydak. “Have you a name,” she asked.
“I have a number of names. Today, I am Balaniki Sokoji.”
“Sokoji,” Crystal repeated, crawling inside. “Pretty. I like it.” She snuggled down between the brothers and fell asleep with Raulin’s arms about her and Jago’s breath warm on the back of her neck.
* * *
“Good morning, Sokoji.”
“Good morning, Crystal. How do you feel?”
“I have less power back than I expected to,” she shrugged, “but I had more power to replace than I’m used to.” She stretched and smiled. “I guess I feel fine.”
“Good.” Sokoji bent over the fire and stirred the porridge that bubbled and steamed. “Come and eat and you’ll feel better still.”
Crystal, her feet healed during the night, glided forward an inch above the snow. She reached out, caught a plume of woodsmoke rising lazily on the still morning air and from it formed herself new boots.
“It would be more practical,” observed the giant, “to visit a cobbler.”
“It would,” Crystal agreed, accepting a huge portion of the oatmeal and nodding her thanks. “But by the time I realized that, there were no cobblers around.” As she ate, she told the giant everything; the first time she’d heard the voices in her head, the healing of Jago, her fight with Lord Death when Zarsheiy nearly broke free, the demon, agreeing to accompany the brothers to Aryalan’s tower, and the wer. She didn’t know why, exactly, but she felt Sokoji should know.
Sokoji sat immobile while Crystal spoke. Much of the story, she knew. The goddesses, however, she would have to think on. They were an aspect even the centaurs had not considered.
“Crystal?”
She turned to see Raulin crawling out of the shelter, his bandages brilliant white in the morning sun.
When he spotted her and saw that she was all right, his worried expression vanished. “I woke up and you weren’t there . . .” he said, spreading his hands. He reached back inside for more clothing, but Crystal stopped him before he could put it on.
“Wait.” she said, wrapping warmth about him. “I want to look at your chest.”
“It doesn’t even hurt anymore.” Raulin began, going to her side. He noticed the giant sitting motionless on the other side of the fire. “Is she okay?”
“She’s fine,” Crystal assured him, undoing the dressing. “Her name is Sokoji and she’s thinking. Lift your arms.”
He did. “She looks like she froze during the night.”
“The centaurs once took me to visit a giant. She sat like that the entire two days we stayed. Apparently she’d been thinking for almost six years.”
“What about?”
“No one knew.”
The eight parallel lines on Raulin’s chest no longer looked dangerous. Although the cuts themselves had not healed, the flesh around them appeared healthy and firm. Crystal set her fingertips just under the collarbone where they began and, humming softly, traced each line. The wounds glowed briefly green and vanished. Then her hands moved a little lower.
“Crystal! We’re not alone!”
“Prude.”
“Whoops! Excuse me if I’m interrupting.”
Raulin flushed deep red and pulled the heavy undershirt, still clutched in one fist, over his head.
Jago tossed him a shirt and sweater, grinning broadly. “I noticed you hadn’t got dressed this morning. Guess now I know why.”
“You don’t know anything, you little . . .” Raulin stopped in mid diatribe, his eyes widening. “Your hand!”
Both Jago’s hands were whole.
“That’s two I owe you,” he said softly to Crystal, his eyes bright with emotion. “Thank you.”
I have less power, than I expected to. And she had no memory of healing Jago. As it healed her when she needed it, whether she directed it or not, her power had also healed him, using the life-bond between them.
“Come and eat,” she said, suddenly unsure of what this closeness would demand of her. “Power alone can only do so much.”
As the brothers ate under Sokoji’s unwinking stare—Jago having been reassured as Raulin had been—Crystal spotted movement in the trees and went thankfully to meet it.
Raulin rose in protest but Jago dragged him back, mouthing the words “Lord Death.” He’d sensed Crystal’s discomfort, knew it had something to do with him and Raulin, and wished, not for the first time, that Lord Death had a more corporeal form. As much as he had grown to love the wizard, Jago suspected that her kind could never be happy with mere mortals.
* * *
They stood silently for a moment, Crystal gazing down at the branch in her hands and stroking the needles, and Lord Death staring off at nothing, then they both began to speak at once.
“Please, go ahead.”
She hesitated but realized he would not speak until she did. “I missed you,” she said at last. “What kept you away?”
“Would you have me sit at night and keep company with them?” Even to his own ears, he sounded bitter.
“Why not? You’ve sat with me in mortal company before.”
But I meant more to you than the company then, he thought to himself. Ironic, isn’t it, that someday those two will die and be mine and you I can never have. All he said aloud was, “No.”
“Have I upset you somehow, I . . .”
Her distress at his refusal showed in both face and voice and while he cursed himself for hurting her, he also marveled that he could. “Two mortals, a giant, and a wizard make a crowded campsite.” That
to lighten the no. And then he took a chance. “But if you want me, step away from the fire and call.”
“And you’ll come?”
“If you call me,” he reiterated, meeting her eyes, wondering why he put himself in such a position, “I will always come.” What if she never called? What if she did?
Crystal heard a deeper meaning beneath his words and knew she could probably force it out. But did she want to? Was it something that could survive being dragged out and totally revealed between them?
Not yet, murmured a voice.
Idiot, snapped another.
“You must do something about the wer,” said Lord Death, not totally unaware of the turmoil he’d caused and pulling away from it for his own sake.
“What?” The sudden change of subject caught Crystal off balance.
“You cannot leave them as they are when you can heal them.”
“The changes?”
“Yes. You can right a very great wrong.” Young women and infants, faces feral and in great pain, flickered across his features.
She shook her head, hiding behind a curtain of silver hair until he wore his own face again.
“I am Death, Crystal, and often I seem cruel, but these have been robbed of even a chance at life. I am not as cruel as that. Too many come to me too young.”
She thought of the power it would take to heal so many, how her shields would weaken. She thought of the goddesses breaking free. She opened her mouth to say she couldn’t, looked at Lord Death and knew he expected her to say she would. Although he had seen the excesses of the ancient wizards, he had never, she realized suddenly, expected her to follow their path. Free my people were among the first words he’d ever said to her. She would not have Heal the wer be the last.
“I will heal them,” she said and felt that his smile of approval well rewarded her for the risk.
* * *
When Crystal returned to the campsite, Raulin and Jago sat nervously watching the giant who, as far as Crystal could see, hadn’t moved.
“I have to speak to the wer,” she said.
“Are you crazy?” asked Raulin, standing and striding over to her. He took hold of both her shoulders and gave her a little shake. “You barely escaped from them with your life. Go near them and they’ll zap you with that rod again.”
“They won’t dare, not while Sokoji is with us.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed, Sokoji is not with us.”
“I am only thinking, mortal, I am not dead.”
Crystal suppressed a smile as Raulin paled. She gently patted his cheek and whispered. “Don’t worry, they’re used to it.” Sliding out from under his hands, she crossed the camp until she stood at the giant’s knee. “I need to speak with the pack. Will you come with me?”
Sokoji nodded. “I will.”
Crystal raised her voice slightly, turning her head so she faced the trees beyond the giant. “Then I will speak with the pack, the entire pack, when the sun has moved a handspan in the sky. They will speak with me because they remember what I did for Beth. The Elder will see that we both, the pack and I, are no threat to each other.”
A shadow separated itself from the shadows of the forest and moved off toward the mountain.
“I knew it,” Raulin muttered, still a little rattled by the giant’s sudden return to awareness. “I knew we were being watched.”
One handspan of the sun later, Crystal stepped out of the trees and faced the wer, the giant on her right and the brothers on her left.
“You can’t leave us behind, Crystal,” Jago had said quietly. And he was correct. She couldn’t.
The wolves had grouped in the center of the slope, the cats in their regular flanking position to each side. Of the sixty-two wer assembled, all but two walked on four legs. A young woman stood at the back of the pack, warmly dressed in leather and fur, holding a squirming bundle in her arms. It had to be Beth. A great black wolf wove about her legs, every now and then whining and sticking his nose in the bundle.
“You will not, of course, be using that,” Sokoji called out.
Crystal followed her gaze and saw the amethyst rod between the forepaws of a wolf she thought she recognized as Eli.
“We will not use it if we are not attacked,” Beth replied, settling the baby more securely in her arms, “but we must be able to defend ourselves, Elder.”
Sokoji looked unconvinced. “I would prefer it with one less likely to use it.”
Beth shrugged. “Eli is hunt-leader.”
“It doesn’t matter, Sokoji.” Although she spoke to the giant, Crystal’s voice carried up the mountain. “I’ll give him no reason to think his people under attack.”
“And if he uses it anyway, I’ll rip his tail out and strangle him with it,” Raulin muttered, not at all comfortable standing so exposed before the wer.
Crystal ignored him and continued. “I have only one thing to say. If you wish it, I will remove from the women the flaw of the ancient wizards and heal them all as I healed Beth, a gift they will pass on to their daughters.”
The silence on the mountain was so complete the sun could almost be heard moving across the sky. For different reasons, Raulin and Jago were as shocked as the wer. Only Sokoji seemed unaffected.
Then one of the cats changed and a tawny-haired woman with eyes as green as Crystal’s asked suspiciously, “Why only the women, wizard?”
“That is my flaw. I am sorry, but I have nothing in me to touch the men.”
“No!” An old man crouched on the mountainside. “Each generation we grow more stable, some of the younger ones are able to walk with mortals and keep them unaware of what they are. We don’t take anything from wizards!”
“Some? Two! Two! only!”
“Each generation we grow fewer!”
Bodies shifted out of wolf and cat all over the pack, ignoring the cold in the need for a voice.
“What good is it, if she cannot change the men?”
“It’s women who die!” screamed a girl, barely in her teens. The male wolf beside her bared his teeth and growled. She slipped into wolfshape, rolled on her back and exposed her throat, but before he could close his teeth on the soft fur Jason threw himself between them and cuffed the male away.
“She’s right,” Jason snarled, taking on his manshape but looking no less furious, “it is the women who die. This is their choice. Not ours.”
“But what of us,” whined the male, shifting only long enough to form the words and not rising off his belly.
“It is too soon to tell, but I think,” Jason looked back at Beth and his features softened as he met her smile, “when the women have control, it will help us remain calm.”
“And what do you want for this great gift, wizard?” Eli stood, the rod dangling from his fingers.
Crystal’s face hardened.
“I want you to ask me. Come to the camp when you’ve reached a decision.”
Then she turned on her heel and headed back into the trees.
The brothers held their peace until they reached the camp but only just.
“Crystal, you are out of your mind! They almost killed you and you want to help them?” Raulin stomped about, one hand twisting at his mustache, the other waving in the air. “Put yourself at risk for them?”
“They are women and children, Raulin.” She explained about the random changes and what that meant to childbirth. Her shoulders squared. “I can’t allow such suffering to continue when I could banish it.”
“And if the goddesses break free while your power is elsewhere?” Jago asked quietly.
“Sholah, I know, is with me in this.”
We cannot leave them as they are, agreed the goddess, although only Crystal could hear her.
“And the rest’ll shatter you into nothing!” added Raulin, still driven to stomp around the c
learing by the force of his emotions.
“I’ll take that chance.”
“No.” Lord Death’s quiet tone carried a finality just bordering on the melodramatic.
“Listen, Crystal,” Raulin began. Sokoji laid a massive hand on his shoulder.
“Gently, mortal, let the Mother’s son have his say. He seems to agree with you.”
“What? Is he here?” Raulin glared up at the giant. “And you can see him too? Oh, great.” He threw himself down on the sleigh beside his brother. “Well, maybe he can talk her out of sacrificing herself.”
“Maybe he can,” Jago murmured, watching Crystal, watching Lord Death.
“I didn’t realize what I asked of you,” Lord Death told her, his eyes locked on her face.
“I’m ashamed you had to ask.” Crystal flushed. “For all my talk, I am more like the ancient wizards than I suspected.”
“You needn’t do this to prove yourself to me.”
She smiled. “I’m not. I’m proving myself to me.”
He nodded slowly and she saw he understood. Something blazed for a moment in his eyes, something that caused her heart to pound and then both it and Lord Death were gone.
Raulin got to his feet and Jago, knowing his brother was neither as brash nor as insensitive as he pretended, wondered what he would say, even having heard only Crystal’s side of that conversation.
But, concern the single emotion in his voice, Raulin only said, “Can’t it wait? Just until you get the goddesses under control?”
“And if I never do? Should I let more innocents die because I’m afraid to take a risk?” She cupped her hands, letting them fill with sunlight, then wove a garland out of glowing golden strands. With a disdainful toss of her head, she let it dissolve. “Do I spend the rest of my life using only enough power to do pretty tricks? I am the only one who can help them. They need me.”
“We need you, Crystal.”
“No,” she corrected gently, “you want me and as wondrous as that is, it isn’t the same thing. If I turn my back on the wer, I am no better than the wizards who created them, denying the responsibility of my power.”
He lifted her hand to his lips. “Then I will stand with you and do what I can to help.”
