“I think I'd be pretty upset about setting that shoulder without warning,” Mordon said. And he was smiling.
“You can't apologize while you're poking fun at me. That's not an apology at all. And that hurt, a lot.”
“Was it a little uncomfortable?” Mordon asked, still smiling.
“A little uncomfortable?” I clenched my fist—then marveled that I was doing it with my right hand, the arm I'd been babying ever since I'd hurt it. I sniffed. “I'm still pissed off.”
“That works for me. Tear off some of that spider silk. I need to wrap up your shoulder so it doesn't come out again. Your sling wasn't near enough.” He thought about it. “You might have had it in place and it slipped back out while you were moving or sleeping.”
I didn't move to approach him. He curled his finger. “Come here, take your top off. Everyone else back to the fire.”
My cheeks burned. I grasped my throbbing shoulder even tighter. “No way.”
“Fera, now isn't the time to fight, and you don't want conflict.”
“Really? If you know me so well, what is it I want? Huh?”
We were being gawked at, and a couple of the battalion looked ready to spring on me if I made a move in the wrong direction. Mordon smiled, he gave me that smile, the one he kept for when we were in private and intoxicated on something other than wine.
“You want what I want, and you're upset that I pushed you away. Now come here so I can fix your shoulder and make you feel better.”
“not, that hurt, and you aren't going to start telling me what to do, especially not after thinking about killing me.”
“Does it feel better now?”
My nostrils flared at the way he hadn't paid attention to everything else I'd said. But there was no stalking away. The little group of people obeyed him, no questions asked, and they hadn't gone back to the fire yet because they were going to enforce Mordon's will even against me.
I stood my ground and asked peevishly, “Does what feel better?”
“Your shoulder.”
“Yes. But that's not the point.”
“But it is mine.” He grew serious. “Are you going to come here or am I going to have to get you?”
“Don't you dare lay a finger on me.”
He stepped forward. I took a half-step back, falling into a defensive stance. He lunged. I blocked his grapple, but he trapped my good hand and I didn't want to kick him, so he soon had me restrained with a painfully tweaked wrist, pressed flush against his chest. I took a breath to call him a name, knowing I'd feel bad about it later, and he kissed my parted lips.
I stiffened, not at all pleased about any of this, but he put a hand on the back of my head and held me right where I was. I muffled a foul word on his lips, he chuckled, and I did my best to glare. Beneath the urge to shove him away there was a part of me that liked this way he was handling this fight, the way he was physically handling me. A part of me that recognized he was bigger and stronger and frankly a better fighter than I was. A part of me liked the added zing of the twisted wrist, and I was ashamed of that, just like I was ashamed that he knew what I did want, and that I wanted it. There was a part of me that loved that even when I was trying, I couldn't scare him off, that he'd call my bluff. And there was a whole lot of me which realized my objections were my parent's influence, not my own. And that made me madder than anything Mordon had ever done. I kissed him back, to let him know with my teeth and tongue what I was feeling.
When I was my chest was heaving and his breaths came short and ragged, he pulled his lips off mine. Then his grip switched angles and he held me in a different restraint. The others had returned to the fire, as Mordon had instructed. It spared me a little embarrassment.
“Sit down.” He added pressure to my arm to let me know he was serious. So I sat, knowing to expect him to to tell me to take my top off again so he could bind my shoulder up right. We'd been through this before, I recalled, and not that long ago.
I rolled my eyes and eased the dress off my shoulders as soon as he let go of my hand. To my surprise he took off his tunic, leaving him only in trousers. His undertunic was already at half-length even before he decided to tear into it. The other half bound shallow gashes across his abdomen. I took my eyes away, guilt-ridden, then forced myself to look at the injuries.
“Not going to fight with me again?” he asked as he sat down so close our knees touched.
“No,” I said, finding my fingernails fascinating, thoroughly ashamed of my behavior.
“Too bad.”
His tone sounded light, teasing. He had a smile as he straightened the tunic strip in his hands. At my bewildered expression, he said, “Well, I thought that was fun. Didn't you? Not even a little?”
I didn't know what to say, so I just held out my arms so he could reach around my chest. While he was making careful work of tucking the first end beneath the wrap, I sorted out how I did feel. Had it been disrespectful of him to demand that I let my shoulder be treated? Was he not abiding by my wishes? Had I felt afraid? No, maybe or maybe not, and no again. Then I thought about his question while he positioned my shoulder and gave it a tug which made me gasp, both with pain and relief. He was all seriousness now, no flirting, nothing to make me feel like a female in his power. I smiled.
“Maybe,” I said, “it was just a bit fun to get you so riled up.”
Mordon paused. “Really?”
“Maybe I even enjoyed it,” I said and nipped the lobe of his ear. He exhaled, a relaxed smile touching his eyes. When he brought the wrap across my chest next, his fingertips skimmed over my hard nipples. Dizzy all at once, I whispered, “and maybe I'd like more of that,” and I kissed him.
***
The sun wasn't even up yet when I heard a sound I hadn't heard before, something that made me confused at first. It took me a minute to place, but when I opened up my eyes, I saw Mordon in the early morning light, sitting by the camp fire made of dried bits of the ruins, singing.
It was a folksy tune, low and like a monk's chant, and there was no doubt in my mind that he was happy. I laid still, pretending to be asleep, wanting to hear more. It seemed that in that instant, his soul emerged from the twirls of the smoke and knotted with mine, stripping the breath from my lungs and leaving in its place a peace and sense of fullness that I hadn't ever felt before.
I loved him. More than I'd ever loved him before, more than I'd ever thought possible. It was a selfless love, a love encompassed fully of him and who he was. What or who I was didn't matter, what I thought didn't count. For once in my life, I realized wholly how selfish I had been. I realized what it meant to want to serve another, what it meant to be willing to obey. I'd always had a snide sort of obedience, a way where I was achieving my own means. But in that instant, I knew that if he told me to go jump off a cliff, I'd do it because I trusted and believed in him. If he told me he needed something, I'd give it to him, not because I was afraid of what he'd do if I didn't, not because I felt I needed to, not because I thought it was in my best interest or that I'd get something in return. Because I had no doubts of his intentions. Because I had nothing to fear from him. Because if he said he needed something, he needed it. And I wanted to fill his needs and desires. I wanted to overfill them.
I'd never felt like that before.
And I didn't know why I felt it now. I just knew it was true. Not that it would be easy. Not that at times I wouldn't slip and doubt him.
Now I knew that I needed to give him the breathing space he wanted. Stop pressuring him for my wants. Start showing him the support and encouragement he thrived on. He'd been doing a lot of that for me, and I couldn't think of a time I'd been very reciprocal.
“Morning, Love,” I said, and sat alongside him. He put his arm behind my back and kissed my neck.
“Morning, you,” he said. “I haven't started any brew yet.”
“No matter.”
“Bit early for you to be up.”
“Your singing woke me. You've a bea
utiful voice.”
“You like it?”
“I like it. And that you've got reason to be so happy.”
His arm tensed about me and his voice became gruff. “Am I happy?”
“I hope so,” I said. “With me, anyway. I'm sorry I was such a grouch yesterday.”
“I think it turned out to mutual satisfaction.”
I bumped him. “Just a little.”
Mordon appraised me from head to hip. “You're into rough play.”
“Guess so.”
There was no denying that he was pleased, though he did try not to look it. “Well, then,” he said. “If it's ever too rough, tap out or say banana.”
“Banana?”
“Banana.”
I laughed. “How can I take it seriously?”
“You're not meant to.”
“You're totally giving me a safe word?”
“Unless you can think of an alternative?”
Now that it was in my head, it was the only thing I could think of. “Here I was being all sappy and romantic, and you're practically ignoring my heartfelt apologies.”
Mordon's deep chuckle gave me goosebumps deep under my skin and stirred something else to life.
“I'm sorry I frightened you. I had a duty I thought I was ignoring for my own desires. But I'm not sorry for doing this,” he said and caressed my hurt shoulder.
“I'm not sorry for that, either,” I said. “Or rather, I'm not angry with you for it. For any of it. I wish I could take back what I'd said.”
“Not that I didn't deserve some of it.”
“No,” I said, thinking. “You didn't deserve it.”
I studied him by the first rays of the light cresting over the bare ridge of the mountains, hazy and defined with the smoke outside the fey circle. “I love you. No, don't say it. Listen to me. I didn't know what it meant, what it meant, before now. What it means to be in something deeper, something older, than just being in love. To feel fealty and faith. Unreservedly. To know that it's just the beginning. That I don't have to constantly fall back on my own plans, my own initiatives, my own resources. That I can really and truly trust you. Does that make sense? I feel like I'm talking circles and babbling nonsense.”
When I looked at him, his lips were twitching between a smile and a frown and his eyes were wet. I thought I might have upset him, but he kissed my temple and put my forehead to his, and we didn't say a word to one another as we watched the sun rise through a dusky red sky.
***
We let the others sleep as long as we could before waking them. That we were in the path of the wildfire was obvious the longer we were in it, and already we could feel the temperature rising even as the sun darkened and became an orange glow through the black rolls of smoke.
I was the first one who noticed the wildlife gathering at the edge of the lake. Anything which could fly flew out to the ruins and roosted there, as far away from us as they could at first, then closer and closer as places were filled, taking whatever spaces were still available. Eventually, a hawk landed within the fey circle and gripped ahold of a man's leg, not caring when he jumped and thought the better of yelling. There was a moment when the bird thought of departing, but it seemed to know, seemed to understand, that the thin film of a spell was keeping the air clean. And other birds soon enough followed.
There was a moment when everyone woke up and stirred and stared at the invading animals. That we heard the snapping roar of a fire coming down the mountainside, and heard the cries of animals caught up within it. Trees, old and dead and yet to be taken for lumber, lit aflame first. Then the younger trees, the strong ones, trees which boomed like a gunshot as the sap and moisture within steamed and exploded them apart.
“What do we do?” Mordon asked, softly so no one else could hear.
One by one the trees succumbed under the flames and the smoke grew and the temperature rose. The animals splashed into the water and their pleas were cut silent. Behind them the forest disappeared into a raging inferno of hellfire and destruction. None of them looked back. Each was lost in its own world, trying to escape the heat, the flames, the smoke which clogged their lungs. Predator or prey, it didn't matter in the face of an even greater monster, a thing which killed indiscriminately, a thing which would alter the landscape forever. Escape on the other end of Lake Alarum was impossible. The fire had spread there, too. Within minutes they were as far as they could go, a few trying to paddle the water before returning to their shelf, exhausted, and just as doomed to die as those who had fallen behind on the slopes of the mountainside.
“We expand the circle as far as we can,” I said at last. “If we tap into the residual magic the same way as the caravan had before us, we should be able to circumference the lake and wait the fire out.”
If I'd expected to explain myself, I was disappointed. Mordon nodded, ordering the feys into wakefulness. The spell soon occurred.
All around us as I led the construction of a massive fey circle, the rain started. Lightning struck ground, missing the lake, lighting up trees and sending ashes down on the landscape. Hot embers sifted through the air. They steamed when they hit the circle.
When I felt our spell-casters connect with the residual magic of Alarum, I saw something large looming through the suffocating dark of bilious smoke clouds. It seemed I was the only one who could see it, and I didn't need to point it out to someone else.
It was a great dark dragon, rising out of the flames, its body casting a shadow through the orange light of the fire, then it rose into the sky, arching overhead. It cried out and flames billowed from its mouth, unseen and unnoticed by anyone else. It was then I understood.
All of this, all the forest fire and the husks and walking animations, it had all been targeted against me. But it was the residents who were paying. It was the wild deer who lapped at the lake water, mingling with the domestic cattle of the feys. It was the coyotes and wolves and foxes who cowered in the shallows, hot and singed. It was the things of the sky, battered and burned and too weary to press on. Against the threat of the fire, their petty squabbles meant nothing. They were too tired, too frightened, to mark a territory. All they knew was that amidst the death and destruction, they had found a pocket of protection.
I bolted to the edge of the walkway, prior exhaustion from spell-casting gone, staring out at the fey circle in comprehension.
“What is it?” Mordon asked.
“This is a price,” I said. “This is the price the Unwritten has asked for. I don't know what has given in exchange, but I know how to scrub it clean and start afresh.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
No one was very thrilled with my proposed plan, which I'd expected of Leazar and Mordon, but not from all of them. We were eating elk meat, specifically the hind leg of a calf which had succumbed to burns or smoke inhalation prior to reaching the lake. Simbalene ate little of it, chewing instead on watercress and some sort of moss she swore would boost her strength.
The fire had moved on, leaving nothing but ashes behind. Well, ashes and rocks. There were a whole lot more rocks and boulders on the mountain than I had imagined. It would take a lot to get regrowth started.
“It will work,” I said, “there's no need to jump to the worst possibility.”
“We're not jumping to the worst possibility. That one is the spell collapses, we all die, and we sterilize the soil for miles around. That's the worst possibility,” Leazar said. “That the leader of the chant will keel over dead is a probability, not a possibility.”
“But if we set up the counter ward in the same place as the Unwritten, reach into the same energy source, and kick the original spell-casters out by taking their place, it will all be stable and sound and you'll have the Wildwoods back. Maybe not exactly as it used to be, but it'll still be there.”
“I know the theory, but in order to do that, someone will have to listen in to the original incantation, step into it, and basically yell over them until the resonance is broken and th
e new chant takes root. The original spell won't look too kindly upon an intrusion like that, and it will do everything it can to destroy the interloper. No one here is trained to do that, much less ever done it.”
We were gathered around the camp fire, ironically huddled up near it for warmth. With the passing of the major wildfire there came a bitter chill which left a frost in its wake indistinguishable from the white tinges of scorched earth. Lyall had told me that the rest of the battalion sheltered in the heart of the village, where they had made a control-burn to deflect the intensity of the fire. He was the only one who could still navigate the portals of the Wildwoods, but even so he now said that he'd given up on the mode of transportation. The problem, he said, the real problem, was that the Infection hadn't stopped at the edge of the Wildwoods. It was leeching into the rest of the landscape. Which had progressed to my proposal which was now being examined.
Swift Magic (The Swift Codex Book 2) Page 27
