“Nothing,” breathed Jath. “You saw nothing. Come, help me. Time is dear.”
“I do not understand.”
“No, you do not,” Jath said, turning suddenly. “Help me and I will explain later.”
Less than a minute before, the whole camp had been startled by a series of wild screams from the lean-to where they’d kept the prisoner. One of the furs had bunched, pulled, then flew off the rope line that held it in place, and the prisoner had come scrambling out, naked, squinting into the sunlight. He was covered in fresh bleeding slashes, and blood ran into his eyes where the dark curling hair was ripped from his scalp. Something in his hand gleamed in the sunlight. Small, but sharp. A weapon. He stopped short and stared around him at the men and women who armed themselves, the horses who neighed warning to their masters, the man who had questioned him, the woman who had stabbed him, all with no sign of recognition, no sign of comprehension. Only unthinking frozen terror.
“Cwara!” called Nestor. He moved slowly toward the mage, trying not to frighten him any further. He spoke soothingly to the mage in Brymandyan, gesturing toward the man’s cuts. From his gentle tone, Chul gathered that Nestor was offering help. But the prisoner seemed not to hear him. He only stared at the old retainer as if trapped in a nightmare.
Behind him, Kerrick pushed angrily through the cloaks and furs, clutching at his leg, and stumbled weakly after him. “He stabbed me! Stop him!”
At the sound of Kerrick’s voice, the prisoner blinked away his paralysis as if fighting for some measure of clarity. He screamed again, babbling and hoarse, and ran, dodging between the knights, slashing clumsily at them to drive them back, looking up at the sun, around at the hills.
The Byrandian turned and hissed what must have been a threat and raised a hand in a warding gesture, circling around him, and a wall of white flame rose around him. The knights drew up short, trying to find a way through the wall of intense heat. But the mage was weakened, and already the wall was wavering, losing its power. The man was clearly in pain.
Damerian shouted as he ran toward the mage, sword drawn, “Stop him! Before he ports away!”
Shanth cursed at how slow he was to unbind his bow from his saddle. Finally, after what seemed hours, he turned, bringing the nocked arrow to bear on the prisoner.
In a desperate gamble, the mage turned, drew all of his power back to himself, letting the flame fall completely away, and directed an attack toward the most powerful of them, toward the one who had questioned him: Damerien. But whatever his attack would have been, it never fully took form.
Suddenly he had crumpled upon the ground, writhing and shrieking. Blood had bloomed from the stitched wound in his chest and from the cuts all over his body, and he’d kept screaming one word over and over: “Wyt’stra!” His skin had seemed to thin and dry over his frame, as if years passed for him in mere moments, or as if all the water was being sucked out of his flesh. With an act of will, he had raised his withering hand, but not in attack. The air had shimmered around him, like heat rising from a road, and then he was gone, ported away, still screaming, his voice fading on the wind of the landbridge.
“What happened to him, Jath?” Chul looked back at the place where the mage had vanished moments before, as if looking at it would somehow help him understand. Of course, it did not. The man was simply gone.
Jath followed Chul’s gaze. “He tried to hurt Damerien.”
Far ahead of the main body of riders, Chul and Gikka rode vanguard, scouting the road ahead as quickly as they could while riding at full gallop toward the Lacework. Before long, Gikka reported finding a way far to the south of the road to take them out of the direct path between their camp and the Lacework. Her reasoning, which the duke thought solid, was that at least until they reached the Lacework, the enemy would not be able to surround them, not right away. Once they approached the actual Lacework, though, they would be at risk again.
Nestor and Jath rode close beside the duke, while Renda and the sheriff rode ahead and behind with the knights, ready for an attack should one come.
Laniel rode at Kerrick’s side to mind him in case his wound was worse than it looked, but by now it was already merely seeping instead of running. He would dress it more properly when they stopped, but it seemed the knight would be able to fight, should the need arise.
The prisoner had ported away just as they’d feared he might in spite of their precautions and in spite of the horrific injuries he’d suffered. Damerien had told the others that he thought it unlikely the mage would survive long once he reached the other mages, but he would not take the chance. It was possible that he was not as badly injured as he looked or that they might have a proficient surgeon on hand to save him, which meant that he might survive and that once he was debriefed, he would be leading at least some of the army back to destroy them.
Minutes, hours, days. They could not be sure how much time they had, but they would use it to get as far away from where he’d left them as they could. Even an insignificant portion of the enemy forces would be deadly if they ported into the knights’ camp unexpectedly.
What Damerien did not tell them was that if the mage did not survive to lead them back, it was very likely the body of mages would mass at the Lacework to intercept them, since it was the only way across. If that happened…well, if that happened, he supposed they would all do whatever they must or whatever they could, even he.
But an hour passed and then another, with no sign of any mages even scouting. At length, they let the horses slow their pace and began considering where to put camp. A few hours ride from the Lacework, Gikka had found them a clearing north of the road to make camp for the night. It was on higher ground, not as level as they might have liked, but not directly visible from the main roadway. A good watch set through the night, and they would be fine.
“I took an unacceptable risk today,” breathed the duke, warming his hands in the small fire they’d built in a carved out hollow in a dead reef.
“Yes,” Renda said simply. “You did. You should never have been alone with the prisoner, Your Grace.”
“My Grace, is it?” he sighed, then allowed himself a bit of a chuckle at his own expense. “How is it with you and your father, that whenever you say, ‘Your Grace,’ I feel as if I’ve just been called a whoreson graetna whelp?”
She looked up at him. He was once again his hale self, the thick burnished gold of his curls around his shoulders, a proper beard on his chin and the spark back in his dark gold eyes. She peered at him in the firelight and tried to see her heroic Uncle Brada in this man barely older than herself, but she could not, not even in the way people used to say they could see Lord Daerwin in Roquandor. She certainly saw no trace of her Grandpapa in him. Yet she knew he was Trocu and Brada and Vilmar and all the dukes going back to Arjan, the first Damerien prince. But then, this was a very different man from the bloated dying creature she’d seen at Castle Damerien only half a season past, too. She was grateful to the gods, to B’radik, even to Damerien’s strange nature, she supposed, for his renewed vigor, but she was still angry with him for putting himself at risk. If he had been at risk. She supposed he had, considering how Nestor and the others had fretted over him. She wondered if she would ever understand. His ability to live seemingly forever by becoming his own son generation after generation and why he had this power…these things were all mysteries to her. But more mysterious still was how he could live lifetime after lifetime, engage in war after tedious war, and never lose his will. Yet after only one war, she had seen no point in continuing? Was that the secret? Endless war? She looked up to see him studying her.
“My Lord and cousin, there is no such stuff in my thoughts,” she said almost convincingly. “My bond to you…”
He nodded impatiently. “I’ve no doubt of your loyalty, Renda. Blood runs true.”
“Aye,” she replied, “but today, you put yourself at risk for something Gikka could probably have done better––”
He laughed
, and she stopped short. “You truly believe it is my own safety that concerns me here. Do you know me so little then, after all these years?”
She lifted her head. “I know Damerien,” she said carefully. “But this recklessness is not what I came to expect!” She lowered her voice. “Is this foolhardiness something you have put on to mark yourself as young?”
Damerien looked around them. “You do not understand. The risk I took was far greater than you can possibly imagine. You know more of me than anyone save your father, it’s true, but even you do not understand fully.”
What he said was true, of course. She knew only what her father had told her, bits and pieces, dribs and drabs, and she’d been encouraged strongly over the years not to ask questions.
“I have trusted your father and yourself, and even your boon companion, Gikka, with more knowledge of me than any generation before. Of necessity, mark you, or I should not have done. The prophecy…” he sighed. “I took the risk that this mage would recognize who and what I was by speaking to him myself, in the hopes that I could learn what no one else could. Oh, yes, Gikka could have gotten him to answer any question, had she known what to ask. But she did not. As it happened, I got nothing from him at all. And then, of course, he escaped. That mistake could have brought down such violence and destruction upon us…”
“It did not,” she soothed, mildly amused at finding herself on what had been his side of the argument. She touched his arm gently. “At least not yet. So be of good cheer. We yet have time to prepare.”
Amara brought the makeshift torch closer so she and Laniel could both look more closely at the wound in Kerrick’s thigh.
The Bilkarian prodded carefully at the skin and watched blood swell and break free of the cut.
“A cut of a hand’s length, still seeping a fair bit of blood this many an hour later,” Amara observed. “To the good, the cut goes but a little into the meat. No damage to muscle. Were it the least bit shallower I should have expected it to seal by now.”
The priest nodded, pleased that her assessment matched his own. “The least bit deeper, and we might be sending his bones into the sea. As it is, would you stitch it or leave it heal on its own?”
“Stitch it?” Kerrick looked between them and laughed. “You mean like a tear in a shirt?”
But neither answered him. Amara shook her head. “No.”
“Truly,” Laniel said in surprise. “At the abbey we would not hesitate to stitch a wound like this.”
“Ah,” she smiled, “but in the abbey, you have cleanliness and quiet. In battle, we have noise, chaos, grime, and almost always, other wounds as need tending. Stitches are a luxury unless the blood pulses or the bone shows.”
Laniel’s brow rose. He had not considered beyond the recovery of the patient. Yes, it made sense to him that treatment would need to be a balance of risks, and that the risks here would be different. “Such a very different way of thinking. I have much to learn.”
She shrugged. “The basis of treatment is the same. The difference is simply in what is possible and what is not, what is safe and what is not. Those we can save and those we cannot.” She prodded dispassionately at Kerrick’s leg. “True, stitches would seal this sooner and reduce the scarring, but I would not risk infection from a field suture for so small a gain. In this case, perhaps a bit of clean silk to help it bind, no more.”
Laniel nodded. “You should have been a Bilkarian, madam. You have given me challenge today, and for this, I thank you.” He smiled. “I can offer more than just a bit of clean silk.”
The Bilkarian applied one of his salves to a tiny strip of Bremondine silk and explained its healing properties and derivation. Amara told him she had not seen it before, and she eagerly drank up the knowledge. It felt so good to have a student to teach again. But as he had already learned, she was as much a teacher to him as he was to her. Since he’d left the abbey, he’d felt unnecessary except when he was sharing what he knew.
He lay the tiny strip of silk into the wound and watched the blood begin to bind to it, clotting and weaving a healing lattice inside the cut. Since he had watched Daerwin’s wound burn away the silk at the abbey, he was always relieved to see it work properly.
“You should get a nice boasting scar out of it, my Lord, and a few days’ annoyance from the pain, but nothing more,” he told Lord Kerrick. “Just keep it clean and wrapped.”
But the knight shook his head. “No boasting for me, not over this. A prisoner slipped out on my watch and tried to attack the duke, no less.” He scowled, staring darkly at the burning branch Amara held. “Imagine if he had succeeded… ”
“Indeed,” Amara murmured, and Laniel thought he heard a slight tinge of disapproval in her tone.
“He failed.” The priest wiped away the excess salve. “You were wounded trying to stop him, and the duke has expressed his gratitude for your efforts.”
“Yes,” he allowed, “which is the only reason I do not hang my head in absolute shame. I have to wonder why he chose to attack the duke that way. He had nowhere to go”
Amara watched Laniel wind the bandage around Kerrick’s leg. “Most likely he recognized that the duke was in command, or perhaps because he recognized his face as the one who had questioned him,” she shrugged. “But perhaps not. His Grace has the look of command about him. I doubt anyone could miss that he is noble.”
“Certainly no one would believe the duke was responsible for the prisoner’s wounds,” Kerrick continued, “least of all the prisoner himself.”
“No,” Laniel answered, looking up at him in surprise. He might have expected Kerrick to say anything but that. “Not a soul of this camp would believe it or even speculate to that end.”
“No, of course not, and for that, I am relieved.” Kerrick cocked his head. “But I am surprised at your confidence that no one would doubt. For myself, I’ve not heard a word against him, but…”
Gikka chuckled softly from the darkness where she sat on a boulder not far away scratching at it with the long nails on her little fingers. “His Grace’d not have gone in with the prisoner to muck about with blades and such. If that were his plan, he’d have set me on him. He did not, and the knights know he did not. Is why not one of this camp even touches such a thought as lays blame on Damerien.” She looked up at them, letting them see her eyeshine in the weak light of the makeshift torch. “The prisoner was untouched as the duke left him, as sure as the sun rises and sets.”
“Indeed!” The viscount smiled and shook his head in amazement. “The loyalty among the knights for Lord Trocu is profound indeed.”
Through the corner of his eye, Laniel watched Amara’s expression darken.
“Of course it is,” she growled, “and that loyalty was well earned of us. We follow because through the war, his father had our trust and that of our Lord Sheriff, well earned by their deeds. When Brada Damerien died, that loyalty fell to the present duke.”
“Much like your own loyalty to him, Lord Windale,” murmured the priest.
“Oh, without question. I followed Brada in the wars, too, as I follow Trocu now. But then, my loyalty was not tested today. I saw the prisoner when Damerien left him, and I saw how he attained his wounds with my own eyes, right before he attacked me. I certainly have no reason to question, but I could see how one might.” He gestured toward the cut on his leg. “I am frankly embarrassed that a wounded mage, of all things, managed to surprise me that way.” He rubbed his temples. “Even now, it’s left me feeling a bit lightheaded and strange.”
Amara glared at him, the fine lines of her face oddly lit by the tiny fire on the branch she held. “Strange indeed, Lord Windale. I pray you mind your words. Your tongue is loosened as with drink, and the thoughtless whims on your lips press my patience. If you’ll excuse me.” She handed Laniel the brand, bowed rather curtly to Kerrick, and walked away.
Laniel cleared his throat in the awkward silence that followed and resumed his examination. “So small a wound can still give a
shock to the body, but it should have passed by now.” The priest looked into Kerrick’s eyes, alternately shading them and exposing them to the flickering light. He marked the beads of sweat on the young man’s temples, the damp stringiness of his chestnut hair. “Did you faint outright, perhaps hit your head?” He looked down at where the wound was already binding itself closed. “I should have looked into the wound more closely.”
“No need.” Kerrick huffed and looked away impatiently. “Knights of Brannagh do not faint at the sight of a drop or two of blood, priest. As I said, I feel a bit lightheaded, no more but so.” He tugged at the cut fabric of his breeches, and Laniel gave him the needle and suture thread he’d readied to stitch the cut closed if needed. “The little bastard was stronger than I expected. Imagine if he’d had a real knife instead of that bit of glass!” He shook his head as he began stitching the cloth together.
“Glass…” Laniel looked back at the knight’s wound thoughtfully.
“Aye,” said the knight, waving toward Laniel’s pouch. “Same as he used to cut himself. No doubt it was a piece of one of your medicine vials. Sure that’s the only glass I’ve seen since we left Pyran.”
A medicine vial. Of course.
“If that is the case,” replied Laniel, “the mystery of the lightheadedness is solved. The only vials I opened near him contained a sedative, and so, with his having cut you, the sedative in the vial no doubt entered your wound when he cut you with the glass. You’re lucky to be standing, considering that the drug is meant to be inhaled amid large quantities of air and not put straight into the blood.” That solved the mystery of Kerrick’s lightheadedness, but it brought to light several more. He felt in his pouch. “I still know not how he might have acquired it.”
“You may have left one behind, or perhaps he thieved it from you.”
Laniel shook his head. “Impossible. He was quite sedated––” Though he had not been sedated when he came running from the lean-to. How had he recovered so quickly?
Guardian Last (Lords of Syon Saga Book 2) Page 26
