Where Light Meets Shadow

by Shawna Reppert

  “Guest? Prisoner, rather. At least speak the truth.”

  Alban’s tenuous hold on his temper started to slip. “Believe me or don’t, it makes no difference to me. But I can’t leave you here to die, and there is no other option. If there were a mortal village anywhere near, I’d be only too happy to dump you at the inn with enough coin to cover a bed and meals.”

  The wind gusted, blowing snow into his face. He shivered. Past time to end this conversation and return to the warmth of his father’s hall.

  Alban took a step toward the stranger, reaching out to help him to his feet.

  The stranger crawled backward, struggled to his knees, and awkwardly drew his sword.

  Alban stopped, more in astonishment than fear. The Scathlan had courage. Not much sense, but courage to spare.

  He shook his head. “What do you intend to do with that? You’re outnumbered and you’re injured.”

  “I will join my family in death before I allow myself to be captured.”

  The stranger’s sword hand shook—in cold, in fear, in weakness, or likely in some combination of all three. Still, the blade was sharp, and Alban wasn’t about to go against him bare-handed. He drew his own sword.

  Eamon grabbed his arm. “My prince, he may be armed, but he’s clearly not capable of defending himself.”

  Alban shook off the restraining hand. He planned to disarm, not to injure, but he wasn’t about to telegraph his intent.

  He took a centering breath. Eamon had taught him swordsmanship, but Alban had never before faced someone over sharpened steel who intended him real harm. Although the Scathlan didn’t look like he was in any shape to present much challenge, still there was risk.

  Also, he could injure the stranger further without meaning to. Despite his feelings toward Scathlan in general and the mouthy bard in particular, Alban really didn’t want to draw blood.

  The Scathlan stared at Alban’s sword with wide, frightened eyes.

  Alban made one last attempt. “Come, be reasonable. There’s no way you can win this. Put down your sword, I’ll put down mine, and we’ll all get out of the cold sooner.”

  The stranger uttered an obscenity that he had surely picked up from his time among mortals.

  “Now, then,” Alban said. “Is that any way to be, when we’re only trying to help—”

  On the last word, he slid his own blade inside the stranger’s and shoved it to the outside, up, and around, sending the stranger’s sword flying across the snow to clatter against exposed rock.

  Misdirection was a low trick, one that Alban’s cousin Sheary excelled at in practice duels. Alban was pleased to have carried it off so well.

  Alban held the tip of his sword against the stranger’s throat, giving him a chance to contemplate his own mortality. Then he lowered his blade and tried for a friendly smile.

  “I hope we have established that you are coming with us,” Alban said. “I would like to treat you as a guest. If I have to, I will bind you as a prisoner.”

  The stranger glared at him, lips drawn thin in rage and fear.

  “Will you let us help you?” Alban persisted.

  “I have no choice.”

  The stranger sounded bleak, as though they were taking him to an execution instead of to shelter. Did he really hate the Leas so much that he would rather die than accept their aid?

  He reached out a hand to help the stranger up. The Scathlan hesitated, then took it, and Alban tugged him to his feet. The stranger let out a strangled yelp. Alban startled and nearly let him fall, but the stranger grabbed onto him for support.

  Alban shifted to a more secure hold. “What—”

  “Hurts,” the stranger ground out between clenched teeth. “Ankle.” He gasped a bit, then caught his breath. “I barely felt it when I fell. It started to hurt pretty badly when I tried to get up on my own, and when you pulled me to my feet. . .”

  “How is it now?”

  “I’ll live. Not much choice, is there?”

  “Should we take a look now?” Alban addressed the question to the stranger, but he shot a look to Eamon, as well.

  “No,” the stranger gasped. “Please. You’d have to cut the boot off and, the way it feels, the boot may be the only thing holding the bones together.”

  “Are you sure?” Alban wanted to do something in the face of the stranger’s obvious pain.

  “Yes,” the stranger hissed.

  “Maybe a splint over the boot?” Alban suggested.

  The stranger took a long, shaky breath. “No. I understand you’re trying to help, but no. Just get me to wherever you’re taking me, and deal with it then.”

  The Scathlan spoke with the weary emptiness of total defeat.

  Victory brought Alban no satisfaction.

  “Let’s try to get back before full dark and that storm on the horizon hits,” Eamon said. “Getting him on a horse is going to be a neat trick.”

  The Scathlan shuddered, likely thinking of the ordeal ahead. He wouldn’t be able to stay on a horse without assistance, let alone guide one.

  “I think you had better ride with me on my horse.” Alban braced for an argument, but the stranger merely nodded.

  Alban motioned for his squire to lead his mount over.

  “My sword,” the stranger whispered.

  “What?” Focused on the problem of getting the Scathlan up onto the horse, the words caught him by surprise.

  “My sword,” the Scathlan repeated. “Please. It was my father’s.”

  Alban followed the stranger’s gaze to the sword that lay where it had fallen amongst the rocks.

  “Please,” the Scathlan begged.

  Did he really think they would refuse such a simple request? “Eamon, would you?”

  #

  Kieran watched the Leas with the limp pick up his fallen sword and fasten it to the gray mare’s saddle. He would rather have it back on his hip, but he could do without the extra weight. He understood why the Leas wouldn’t want him to have a weapon to hand.

  His ankle felt like it had been caught in one of the mortals’ bear traps. Queasy and light-headed with pain, he hoped he wouldn’t embarrass himself by fainting in front of the enemy.

  He tried not to think about what he would see when the boot came off.

  Without Prince Alban’s help, he would have died here tonight. Maybe he should prefer that to accepting aid from the Leas. The choice had been taken from him; he shouldn’t feel so grateful for that reality.

  Mounting was both awkward and excruciatingly painful. With the aid of Alban sitting behind the saddle and Eamon on the ground, a stone outcrop, and a very patient horse, Kieran managed to get into the saddle. He clutched at the pommel for balance, gasping in pain.

  Alban wrapped one arm around him from behind for support and held the reins in the other hand. “All right?”

  “No,” Kieran answered honestly. “But there’s no help for it.”

  “We’ll get you taken care of, as soon as we can.”

  “Soon” felt like an eternity. The motion of the horse’s walk bumped and jarred Kieran’s ankle. Any faster gait would have been torture. The horse stumbled in the snow, and Kieran choked back a scream.

  “Sorry,” Alban said.

  “Not your fault,” Kieran admitted, albeit reluctantly.

  But a bard should never be churlish, and Alban had been gentler than he needed to be.

  Alban did not repeat the unnecessary apology but flinched every time Kieran gasped in pain.

  The wind gusted harder still, pushing him back like a giant, invisible hand. Snow pelted his face, cold, wet blinding. Alban wrapped his cloak around both of them, giving what protection he could. Kieran hoped the Leas’ horses knew their way home on instinct, because there was no way elf nor horse could find their way by sight.

  With a soft word, Alban sent his squire ahead, leading Kieran’s long-suffering mare, to get to shelter more quickly. He tried to send Eamon, as well, but the older Leas would not leave his prin
ce’s side.

  Despite his cold and misery, Kieran slipped in and out of consciousness. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed when darkness and the hush of snow gave way to bright torches, voices, and commotion.

  “A Scathlan!” “It’s a Scathlan.” “Was there an attack?”

  Kieran blinked in the torchlight and shrank back against the warmth that supported him. All around swarmed fair-haired Leas elves, their faces strange in the flickering light and shadow.

  “Not so close, if you please,” Alban commanded the milling crowd. “He is a stranger and a guest, and he is injured.”

  “It has been a long time since we have had a Scathlan guest.”

  The crowd hushed and parted to make way for the new speaker. The Leas was tall, with a regal bearing that spoke of authority and the power that comes with age.

  He did not sound pleased.

  Two

  “He was lost and injured, Father,” Alban said, and Kieran heard defensiveness in the tone. “What else could I do?”

  The elf Alban called father sighed. “From what your squire told me, only what you did. I suppose we’ll have to get him warm and see to his injury before we decide what to do with him.”

  Kieran didn’t like the sound of decide what to do with him.

  Alban leaned forward to speak low into Kieran’s ear. “It will all work out.” He then addressed his father. “Will you help me get him down?”

  There was no way this wasn’t going to hurt, no matter how careful the Leas were. And they were careful, but still Kieran embarrassed himself with a stifled scream.

  On his feet, he hung between them, panting in pain. The world blurred at the edges. Fainting might be the best option.

  “There’s a room made ready for him,” the Leas king said. “Next to yours. Since you brought him home, he will be your responsibility.”

  Alban laughed softly. “I remember you saying the same thing about the stray puppy I brought home when I was a child.”

  Kieran bristled, but he was in no position to retort. It was finally sinking in how precarious his position was. A prisoner of the people who had killed his father, too injured to escape even should he be left unguarded. And even if he could escape, what then? He had no harp to earn his way in the world, no sword with which to defend himself, and he was very, very far from home.

  Kieran expected the king—Toryn, he remembered from his lessons, Toryn the Oathbreaker—to call servants or guards to take his unwanted burden, and braced himself for rough or indifferent handling. But Toryn and Alban helped him into the mountain castle, through the halls, and up stairs that seemed as long as the whole of his journey.

  The Leas, or elves of light, had built up toward the sun and the stars a white castle on a white mountain. His own people, the shadow-elves, sought security within the heart of mother earth in the caverns beneath the black mountains they called home.

  The room they had brought him to was twice as large as his old room back home. A fire already blazed on the hearth, filling the room with lovely, blessed warmth. A large, comfortable-looking bed beckoned, and he wanted no more than to heed its sweet call, but he knew the worst of the night’s ordeal still lay before him.

  They sat him in a straight-backed chair by the fire. Alban took from him the cloak, sodden with snowmelt, and hung it on a hook by the hearth. Shivering convulsively, Kieran wished he could crawl closer to the fire, curl up on the hearth stones, and let the heat dry his clothes and melt his frozen blood.

  “We’ll get you into dry clothes soon,” Alban said as if reading his mind, although he probably just sensed his general state of wretchedness. “But it’s best if we see what needs to be done for your leg first.”

  The king handed Kieran a cup of wine mulled with bitter herbs that clearly had not been added for their flavor. Drawing back from the scent rising in the steam, Kieran looked at him, trying to gauge his intent, to gauge the consequences should he refuse the drugged wine.

  “Oh, for mercy’s sake,” Alban said. “If we wanted to kill you, we’ve no need to resort to poison. Father could have slit your throat in the courtyard or cast you out to freeze to death outside the gate.”

  “The wine will not put you to sleep,” the king said. “Though in a few moments, you might wish it had. It will but blunt the edge of your pain. If the injury is as severe as my son fears it might be, any dulling of the senses we can manage will be to your advantage.”

  Kieran hesitated. Leas elves were not to be trusted. On the other hand, as the prince had pointed out, if they meant him harm, there was no need for subterfuge. He was utterly in their power. And if they wanted to get secrets out of him, he had none that would help them.

  Drinking the wine down, Kieran relished its warmth and tried to shut his mind to its bitterness.

  The world started to blur around the edges even before he finished the cup, and he felt the same pleasant muzziness that came when an audience at an inn was generous and bought him far too many mugs of dark brown ale. Pain slowly receded, and he closed his eyes.

  A hand took the empty cup from him, startling him. He had momentarily forgotten the Leas.

  Toryn chuckled softly. “That’s working fast enough. I take it you haven’t eaten in a while. We’ll have to get some food into you soon.”

  The Leas king sounded less hostile, although maybe that was just the effect of the drug on Kieran’s perceptions. Still, Kieran had his pride.

  “The mortal innkeeper last night was well satisfied with my music. I broke my fast with his servants this morning, and he even sent me away with bread and cheese for my noon meal.”

  “And we are well past the dinner hour. Your body is too concerned with cold and pain to let you know your hunger. Tell me about your injury.”

  The king’s voice was soft and gentle. A healer’s voice. Yes, the old ballads from before the war talked about how all Leas kings could heal. Kieran always assumed the requirement to be purely ceremonial, if not outright bardic hyperbole. Looks like he was about to find out. He could not reject the king’s ministrations and insist on a real healer.

  Odd that a people who valued healing so much that they required it of their king could let that same king start a bloody war that killed so many.

  “My son said you went over your mare’s head when she stumbled?” Toryn prompted patiently.

  The sudden vertigo of falling, the sickening crunch of the harp beneath him. “Yes. I think I wrenched my ankle coming out of the stirrup. Maybe. It all happened so fast. I didn’t realize I was hurt until I tried to get up and run.”

  Did that make as little sense as he thought? The drug was making him loose-tongued and vague. He’d be worried if he had anything to hide.

  “I’m not surprised, between the cold and the shock,” Toryn said. “What were you thinking, trying to run? Surely you knew by that point that there was no other shelter nearby. You can’t have expected to survive a night on the mountain in the snow?”

  “Something would have turned up. Something always does.”

  Given his current vulnerability, Kieran wasn’t going to say that he’d rather have died on the mountain than be sheltered with the Leas.

  Toryn sighed. “Has anyone ever told you that you are a reckless fool?”

  He sounded so much like Brona that Kieran smiled despite himself. “Frequently. And usually with cause.”

  “Can you move the ankle at all? Try carefully.”

  Kieran took a breath, flexed the joint a fraction, and choked back a whimper.

  “Enough,” Toryn said quickly. “We don’t want to make it any worse. We’re going to have to cut off the boot.”

  Brona had given him the boots, a gift the day he’d finished his apprenticeship. Too extravagant and too personal a gift from the queen’s daughter to an orphan boy barely a bard, but he couldn’t hurt her feelings by refusing them.

  He wasn’t quite so much a fool not to see that the Leas king was right. “Yes. All right. Do it.”

  �
��I’m sorry,” Toryn said. “They’re fine boots.”

  And they were, custom-made to fit him and hand-stitched with a stylized harp, the symbol of his vocation.

  Alban came and crouched before him to steady his leg while the king sliced at the leather. In the firelight, Alban’s coloring looked less eerie, recalling instead the old ballads from long before the war that called the Leas “golden.”

  Every tug at the boot, every pull of the knife through the leather, sent fresh agony screaming up his leg. Yet, much as he wanted to hate the Leas, he had to admit that Toryn Oathbreaker worked as gently as he could. Alban flinched at Kieran’s every choked cry. How could these be Leas, who mercilessly slaughtered their distant Scathlan cousins on the battlefield?

  At last the boot and the sock beneath it came free. Kieran dared one quick look at the ankle beneath, and then looked away. Mercifully, the skin wasn’t broken; from the level of pain, Kieran had been imagining blood pooled in the boot. But the swollen limb had twisted in an unnatural shape that told him the bones were not just broken but displaced.

  The sourness of bile burned in the back of his throat. If it healed like that, he’d never walk again. A crippled bard who could not travel in search of new songs became an extra burden to all around him. No comely bar maids would sneak into the cripple’s bed at night, no handsome grooms would invite him to tumble in the hay.

  “Will you allow me to set the bones?” Toryn asked.

  Kieran swallowed. He’d broken an arm as a boy, falling out of a tree he’d been explicitly told not to climb. The setting of the bone hurt far worse than the breaking. And that had been a relatively simple break. This would be painful beyond all imagining. To let a healer he knew and trusted set the bone would be hard enough. But to put himself in the hands of Toryn Oathbreaker, whose very name he loathed. . .

  “I have no choice, do I?”

  “Not if you ever want to walk again without crutches,” Toryn said grimly.