Mystic Warrior

by Patricia Rice

  Lissandra knew she didn’t qualify either. An Oracle needed the wisdom and strength to calm a volcano, return their tropical weather patterns, and heal whatever was wrong with their crops. She came into her own only when she could lay her hands on people and feel the blood move beneath their skin, feel their pain and surround it with her energy. Healing was her true gift. Then, she felt useful.

  Yet Aelynn had other Healers. They needed leaders, and by birth she should be one. By birth, Murdoch should not. The blue glow of the spirit flame contradicted everything she knew about how things should work.

  After covering the cooking pot and banking the fire, she donned her sandals rather than wear the painful heeled shoes. She didn’t dare revert to her simple tunics, but last night she’d cleaned her French gown, taken up the hem, and reduced the width of the skirt so she did not need billows of petticoats to hold it off the ground. She’d used some of the excess material to create inserts at the bodice waist so she did not need the restrictive corset, and covered the neckline with lace scraps from her petticoat to hide her unfettered breasts so she could be comfortable in this world.

  If Murdoch would not stay with her, she must go after him. As irritating as it was to be ignored, she saw no other means of understanding what the gods intended.

  He’d left the horse and cart, but now that she was rested, she didn’t need an animal any more than he did. They would require transportation to reach the coast, but otherwise, she was accustomed to walking miles of Aelynn’s roads each day, Healing the sick and delivering babies. Although, admittedly, she usually walked at a speed much greater than Other Worlders. Sensing that no one was about, she set off quickly, and slowed down as she approached the village.

  Lowering her shield slightly, she sensed Murdoch in the fields beyond the village. She glanced warily at the tavern, but it was closed and dark at this hour of the morning.

  The roof of the priest’s humble cottage had been replaced overnight. Père Antoine stood outside, gazing upward in awe. Lissandra knew very little of roof construction, but the rough-hewn timbers looked more solid to her than the thatch she saw elsewhere.

  “Good morning, Père Antoine,” she said courteously, refraining from asking all the questions that were on the tip of her tongue. She was too new to this world to understand its customs, or how the people built their houses. She hoped that what Murdoch had done—for no one else could have repaired the roof so quickly—was satisfactory.

  “It would take five men weeks to build that,” the priest murmured in an amazed tone. “There is never enough time or materials. I had despaired of ever having a roof again.” His voice broke with emotion.

  She pretended to understand. “It is how we do things at home. Is it not done right?”

  He finally looked from his roof to her. “The former thatch was so old, it leaked in a fine mist. A roof like this . . .” He looked as if he would cry. “It will last for decades. It will hold tile if we can buy it. He has reinforced the inside so we can add another floor for a loft.”

  She nodded as if that were to be expected, and handed him a bag made from a scrap of her petticoat. She’d filled it with an herbal remedy that she thought might be useful to these people. “I would thank you for being so kind to my husband while he was recovering.”

  She had decided last night not to let Murdoch’s perversity stand in the way of her duty. Let him pretend to be a simpleminded laborer. She would stay and haunt him until she could convince him to come home. She would have to learn how to live here—although it did seem a trifle awkward having to hide their unusual skills.

  “Mix a pinch of these herbs with a cup of water, and drink it down to ease the aches of a hard day’s work. My husband swears by it,” she said crisply, not asking for gratitude but expecting to be obeyed.

  The priest looked at her gift as if it contained the Holy Grail. “If this is what keeps him going, we should be able to restore half the town on our own.”

  “It takes practice,” she warned. “He is driven by near madness, so do not try to keep up with him.”

  “I will help him, whatever it takes,” the priest said fervently. “His traveling companions said he was skilled with swords as well, but weapons are dangerous in these times.”

  Ah, finally, some glimpse into what had happened here. “He seldom lets his weapons out of his sight,” she said carefully. “I am surprised that he does not wear them.”

  “He gave them to me in atonement for what he calls his sins. They are well hidden,” Père Antoine assured her. “Far better that he apply his energies to constructive work, especially if his mind is injured.”

  The priest had hidden Murdoch’s sword, and Murdoch had let him? Wasn’t it Euripides who first said, “Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad”? Surely the ancients did not mean that literally! Had they brought her here to kill a madman? Or . . . to Heal him? “And his traveling companions?” she asked, hiding her uneasiness.

  “Once they ascertained his injuries were not fatal, they went on without him. It wasn’t safe here for them.” He tilted his head meaningfully toward the tavern where the soldiers stayed.

  Lissandra would have liked to know more, but the priest did not seem inclined toward explanation, and she was anxious to see what Murdoch was up to today.

  “I give you good day, Father.” She hurried off, leaving the priest to his roof gazing. It did not take much to make an Other Worlder happy, it seemed.

  Following her Finding instinct, Lissandra wandered down a back lane until she reached a field sprouting new green wheat. She frowned and calculated how long it took for wheat seed to germinate. Recovery from the fire seemed extraordinarily quick, unless the wheat here was different from what they used at home.

  Wandering farther into the field, she found Murdoch plowing the furrows with a primitive farm implement that he pushed with both hands. Today, he wore a pair of crudely made sandals. As before, his chest was bare, and his impressive shoulders strained at the plow. Only, this time, she saw him in full sunlight without a thick layer of soot. She gasped at the many scars marring his once-smooth skin. Ian had mentioned wounding him when he was here, but how many injuries could one body take? The healing scab of a wicked graze still tarnished one broad shoulder.

  Murdoch turned as if he’d heard her thoughts, and bestowed a black gaze on her. “I told you, I have work to do. If you keep interfering, it will take longer.”

  The furrows he’d just plowed had no green seedlings, but they appeared moist, as if he’d planted the seed and watered it as he worked. A hint of steam or mist rose from the furrows, and she crouched down to feel heat rising from the fertile soil. She watched and thought she saw green pushing through the dirt in a recently plowed row farther down the field. She’d never actually seen plants grow. “What are you doing?” she asked in fascination.

  “Planting.” He returned to pushing the blade into the ground. A sack tied to his waist dropped a thin line of seed as he walked.

  “You’re not an Agrarian,” she called after him. “How did you learn to do this?”

  He didn’t reply. Frustrated, she wanted to beat her fists upon his back until she had answers, but even if she hit him with all her strength, Murdoch had the power to fling her away as if she were no more than an irritating insect.

  All right, if he insisted on repairing the village before he would listen to reason, then she must help speed his efforts. What could she do? She knew how to plant herbs but had few Agrarian gifts as spectacular as Murdoch’s for tending them. She had no knowledge of construction. She enjoyed working with fine fabric, and could sew and mend, but that required materials she didn’t possess. She could predict the future, but telling people their future was usually more depressing than useful. Her gifts were exceedingly impractical in this world.

  Which made her feel more inadequate than ever.

  Sensing a muffled cry and the mental anguish of pain from some creature nearby, she glared at Murdoch’s naked ba
ck, hoped she scorched a hole in it, then deliberately worked her way across the field toward the forest and whoever had been injured. She could still Heal.

  Murdoch knew the instant Lis turned away. Since her action immediately followed a cry of pain, it didn’t take much logic to know where she was going. The damned woman simply didn’t understand that this wasn’t safe, peaceful Aelynn, and there were monsters everywhere.

  He threw down his plow, found the homespun shirt he’d tossed onto a branch, and jerked it over his head. The fire had destroyed the fine clothing he’d once carried with him. He’d been reduced to the crude hand-me-downs the villagers provided, and he tried to take care of them.

  He stalked after Lis, cursing under his breath. Until her arrival, he’d been coping. He’d even convinced himself to quit pretending he could ever change the world. He’d hoped if he could make himself useful, he might be welcome here long enough to make a difference. Fixing one small village, repairing some of his mistake, was all he’d asked.

  And then Lissandra had arrived, shattering his illusion.

  He stifled his inappropriate temper and caught up with her where he’d expected she’d go—the encampment of local men who were hiding from conscription. He knew they watched him from the shadows during the day, then came out and hoed the fields at night after he had gone, aiding him as best they could when the committee wasn’t looking. Torn between wanting to lower his mental shields in order to know who was around him, and fearing the barrage of grief and anger that would assault him when he did, Murdoch had refrained from getting too close. Lissandra, of course, waded right into the emotional tempest.

  “The wound requires stitching. If you’ll hold this pad tight over it, I’ll fetch my bag.” Crouching beside a young lad with a bandage wrapped around his hand, Lissandra straightened, observed Murdoch’s arrival, and, ignoring him, strode off toward the village.

  He stepped in front of her. “If you go parading back and forth from a supposedly empty forest, carrying a medicine bag, and anyone sees you, they will be suspicious. The committee doesn’t know these men are here.”

  “Shall I turn invisible?” she inquired with the cool demeanor she’d apparently chosen to keep him in line.“The wound needs tending or it will become gangrenous.”

  Murdoch glanced over her shoulder at the small band of men. “Take the lad to the woodcutter’s cottage,” he ordered them. “My wife and I will meet you there.”

  He grabbed Lis’s arm and hauled her out of the forest, toward the field where he’d been working. “You are wasting your efforts,” he muttered for her ears alone. “There is an entire world of people who need Healing and only one of you. You may as well try to eradicate the world population of flies by swatting them one at a time.”

  She applied her not-inconsiderable strength into digging in her heels and yanking her arm from his grasp. She nearly toppled when he released her. Murdoch refrained from catching her when she stumbled. The more he ached to hold her in his arms, the more he knew he must let her go, for her own good.

  She righted herself and, hands on hips, glared at him. “You should know about Healing—your back is covered by scars! Are they wounds that do not Heal?”

  He hadn’t wanted her to see his scars, not the physical or the emotional ones. That she had seen them humiliated him even more. “I still have some ability to Heal,” he growled at her. “One does not go to war without injury.”

  “You would have served this world better as a Healer than as a mercenary.”

  He crossed his arms and regarded her with the same arrogance she employed. “I made an honest living.”

  “Killing?” she retorted, not acknowledging his loftiness. “I have spent these last years attempting to understand how you could have done what you did to my father.”

  Refusing to let her force a fight, Murdoch turned and stalked through the field, avoiding the new seedlings.

  She followed on his heels. “We have nothing in our texts about aberrations like yours.”

  Murdoch snorted. Aberrations! Accidentally killing a beloved leader and setting a village on fire were aberrations.

  “I need you to talk to me!”

  He could practically feel her breathing down his back. He was glad he’d remembered his shirt so he did not remind her again of whatever had set off this charming chat.

  “I’ve studied other kinds of mental abnormalities,” she continued, despite his silence, “and observed the phenomenon among some of our people. Did you know your father was an Agrarian with Navigation abilities? That’s an aberration.”

  “He should have stayed an Agrarian. Then he wouldn’t have fallen overboard and drowned before I was born.” He caught her elbow and dragged her to the road.

  “But, see, that’s what I mean.” She shook him off again, matching his increasing pace. “Agrarians aren’t meant for life on the sea. He got seasick and fell overboard. But he could Navigate! He shouldn’t have been able to.”

  “No more than I should be able to do what I do.” Murdoch dismissed her absurdity with a gesture. “I’m not an Olympus. Only your family should be able to See. The gods laugh at us.”

  “No, we laugh at the gods,” she argued. “We ignore what we don’t understand. Your gifts are too great to be dismissed, but there may be others like your father, people who are expected to continue as their families have for centuries but who could be so much more!”

  “Who could be dead like my father,” he said indifferently. “None of this matters to me. My place is here, and I’m trying to make the best of it. Your place is on Aelynn. You need to go home and do what you can there.”

  “I can do nothing!” She threw up her fists in a gesture of despair and frustration that he had never seen in the ice queen before—then she proceeded to walk away from him.

  She could do nothing? An all-powerful Olympus could do nothing? Murdoch frowned and caught up with her. “You can do everything your mother could do. Quit feeling sorry for yourself, grow up, and go home.”

  She spun on her heel so fast, her palm cracked against his jaw before he could halt her. Murdoch staggered more from surprise than pain. He rubbed his face with his fingers to take away the sting and shook his head. “What the hell was that for?”

  “Because I can’t blow up rocks or set fires to express how I feel,” she said with the stone-cold voice of her mother. “Because violence seems to be the only way to hold your attention.”

  Lis stalked off, practically racing into the village. He caught the back of her bodice and tugged her to a halt so they could proceed at a normal pace, without attracting unnecessary notice. His action pulled her gown tight against her unbound breasts, and cursing, he hastily released her. Lissandra had definitely grown up—and filled out—in the years he’d been gone. His lust for her escalated so swiftly, it drained his head and made him dizzy.

  The damned woman made him dizzy just by existing.

  “You make no sense,” he complained. “Blowing up rocks serves no purpose.”

  “Isn’t that what you do when you lose your temper? Blow up things? Set them on fire? That must be extremely gratifying, far more so than arguing with a senseless donkey who kicks and brays and resists doing as it’s told.”

  “You no longer have any right to tell me what to do,” he pointed out, logically enough. “I was banished from Aelynn, and thus am free from your authority. And that’s making you crazy, isn’t it?”

  As they reached the far side of the village, she picked up her speed again. “You were never under my authority. No one is. Yet an entire island needs me to bring home an Oracle to save them from destruction. You see my problem?”

  “Your problem is that you think what I do actually matters, and it doesn’t. I can’t go home. Besides, it wouldn’t solve anything. It won’t bring your father back.”

  They were nearing the cottage. The young man and his friends would arrive soon. This painful argument wasn’t going anywhere. Murdoch increased his pace.

&
nbsp; Lis didn’t. “Ian says if you find the Chalice of Plenty, you can do anything you like,” she called after him with a decided tone of resentment.

  He’d tried that. Even the chalice had hidden from him. If that didn’t prove the gods had forsaken him, he didn’t know what did.

  Seven

  Even Healing in this world was a painful chore. Clenching her teeth against the sensation of the boy’s knifing pain, fighting the waves of anguish emanating from his friends, Lissandra rubbed an unguent over her patient’s wound. Leaning his broad shoulders against the doorframe, Murdoch crossed his arms and watched the proceedings like a jealous lover. Not that he gave off jealousy so much as impatience and frustration. If that much leaked past his mental shields, she was glad she could not feel the full fireworks going off inside him.

  “The wound needs time to mend,” she reminded the youth while his companions hovered anxiously. With the bandage applied and her work done, she mentally shut out the farmers, as well as Murdoch, and sighed with relief at the return of serenity. “Keep the wound covered. Don’t get the bandages wet. If you see the flesh turn red around the wound, come to me at once.”

  “Yes, madame,” the boy replied, bowing his head gratefully. “I thank you. I will chop some wood for you when my hand is better.”

  She hoped she wouldn’t be here long enough to need any more wood than the pile Murdoch had already built, but she nodded at the boy. “I would appreciate that, thank you.” She looked at the two men who had brought him here. “You cannot hide forever. You know that, don’t you?”

  Thin and careworn, their faces revealed no expression. “We can do more by hiding than by going to war,” one replied. “Our families need us more than the army does.”