by Jocelyn Fox
“What Guard would let his Lady Bearer embark on a dangerous journey without a good plain blade?” he replied.
I slid the scabbard onto my sword-belt and buckled it about my waist. The sword laid against my left hip at precisely the right spot, not too long that it got tangled in my legs and not too short that it knocked my knees. “Thank you,” I said earnestly. “I’ll bring it back to you, when I return to Darkhill.”
Half a smile touched Emery’s mouth. “I’ll hold you to your word, Lady Bearer.”
“Stop that nonsense.” I smiled back at him and shook my head.
“You should learn to stop blushing when you are called by your proper title,” he said, gray eyes glimmering in amusement.
I shrugged. “I can’t really help it.”
“But you must. You must have a face for the world to see, and a face that is your true self. Don’t let the world have your true face, Tess. It won’t go well for you, I don’t think.”
“I’ll keep it in mind.” I straightened my shirt beneath the new weight of Emery’s sword. “Thank you again.”
“Be careful, Tess,” he said quietly, giving me a slight nod as I turned to go. I nodded back and walked over to Vell.
“So?” I asked, folding my legs beneath me and sliding Emery’s sword to the side as I sat down next to her. “What’s the verdict?”
Vell ran her fingers through Beryk’s sable fur. “Nothing save bruises that a good night’s rest will remedy.” Beryk gazed at me with tranquil golden eyes.
“And what about you?”
“I’ve had my nose broken before,” she replied unconcernedly. “It’s a clean break and it’s not crooked, so it’s nothing to fuss over.”
I grimaced. “Does it hurt?”
“A little.” She shrugged. “’Twill pass. Like most things.” Raising her eyes from Beryk, she looked at me calmly. “Sorry for getting upset. It wasn’t your fault.” She took a breath. “It—unsettled—Beryk and I, that thing. That syivhalla.”
“Syivhalla?” I repeated.
Vell waved a hand. “Evil spirit.” Then she caught my chin in her hand and tilted my face to the light. I began to draw back in surprise. She tightened her grip. “Hold still. Let me see these stitches.” She leaned closer, and I could smell the pine and snow of the North. “It’s almost healed,” she murmured in fascination. “Seems as though the legends are true, then.”
“What legends?” I asked, rubbing my chin as she let me go.
“Old legends that I heard when I was young, and forgot, mostly, until now. Until I retrieved a half-drowned mortal from under the river-tree.” Her golden eyes flashed teasingly.
“It was raining,” I said in half-hearted defense. My cheek itched, and my hands twitched of their own accord before I placed them firmly in my lap. “Can you take the stitches out soon, then?”
“Right now, if you like,” Vell replied, springing to her feet with uncanny grace. I clambered to my feet and followed her to the table by the fire. She rummaged through Eamon’s supplies and found a sharp, slim little dagger whose blade was barely thicker than a needle. “Sit down, then. It’ll only take a minute.”
I sat down in the chair. Beryk settled himself by my side, sitting with his tail wrapped neatly about his paws. His tongue lolled out over his white teeth in pleasure as I twined my fingers through his ruff.
“Close your eyes. I can’t have you all nervous, not with the blade this close to your eye.”
“I’m not—nervous,” I protested as I closed my eyes, but I jumped a little at the first tug of a stitch being cut by the delicate blade. Vell made a tsk-ing noise in the back of her throat, Beryk adding his wolfish admonishment as well. “Fine,” I grumbled.
“And stop talking. When you move your lips, your cheek moves too.”
I would have rolled my eyes had they been open, but as it was I stayed carefully still, shadows playing on my closed eyes as Vell leaned over me. My skin stung as she cut each stitch and pulled the threads from the wound; but it was also a strangely satisfying feeling, like scratching an itch I hadn’t been able to reach for a long time.
“This would have taken even a Sidhe a few days to heal,” Vell murmured as she tugged another thread from my skin. “And all the stories say that mortals are supposed to be much slower than Sidhe to heal.” I heard the grin in her voice as she amended, “Well, I know you’re not an ordinary mortal, but still, this is impressive. There, finished.”
I opened my eyes and touched my cheek lightly with two fingers. The tips of my fingers came away smeared with the faintest trace of blood, but the bone-deep cut across my cheek had healed to a tender, smooth scar, with a pattern of tiny pricks on either side from the stitches. “Thanks,” I said.
Vell shrugged with one shoulder. “It’s nothing. Any backwoods bumbling idiot can take out stitches.” Her teeth glimmered as she grinned. “It’s putting them in, piecing a person together again, that takes the skill.”
“And you did a fine job of it,” I replied, running my fingers over the smooth scar again, remembering the taste of fear in the back of my throat as I climbed down the tree in the forest, running for my life from the cadengriff; and the sudden flare of pain, then frightening numbness, as a shard of wood laid open my cheek to the bone. I straightened my shoulders and shook free of the memory.
“Have you ever heard of cleansing a wound by fire and sigil?” I asked Vell.
She looked up from cleaning the slender blade. “I haven’t ever seen it done, but I’ve heard it’s a powerful rite.”
“Is it…painful?”
“I’ve heard tell of some who have died from it,” she replied.
Before I could think, before I had time to question myself, I threw back my chair and was halfway to the door of the healing room, my long strides purposeful.
“They’re doing it?” I heard Vell ask from behind me.
“The Vaelanbrigh,” I answered tightly.
Vell caught up to me, her soft boots silent on the floor. “He’s strong,” she said quietly, matching my pace as we passed through the outer room, past the long still body covered in a blanket. Ramel no longer stood guard over it; instead a Sidhe whose name I did not know stood by the corpse, blade drawn.
“He was wounded in the battle,” I said, “and then he brought me back from the gray cliffs. That must have taken some strength.”
Vell stopped suddenly. I turned to look at her. We stood by the door of the barracks.
“Do you understand what the gray cliffs mean?” she asked me quietly, golden eyes searching my face.
I raised my chin slightly. “I was dying.”
Her golden eyes sharpened. “No. You died. There’s a difference.”
“Just because someone stops breathing, and their heart stops…that doesn’t mean they’re dead,” I told her. “Technically, yes…but in my world, you can bring someone back from that, sometimes.”
“You were in the grip of a powerful poison. There was no coming back from that, not without more powerful help.”
I thought of the sapphire blaze of Finnead’s eyes, burning through the gray mists. “He came for me, by the cliffs.”
Vell folded her arms and looked into the distance. “We thought we had lost both of you. He stopped breathing, when he went after you. And you…there was frost on your face, on your arms.” She glanced at me. “He brought you back, and he came back with you. We thought it had to have been one or the other, him or you. We knew he would send you back.” Her mouth twisted slightly.
“How…how long was I…gone?” I asked softly.
“The better part of an hour, maybe more.” Vell shrugged, her beautiful fierce face carefully smooth.
I scrubbed my face with one palm. “It felt like minutes to me.” I held my hand in front of my face and flexed the fingers, remembering the dreamy feel of my own flesh in that gray-shrouded world.
“Let’s speak no more of it,” the Northerner said sternly. “What’s passed is over and done.” She glanc
ed at the long still form of Allene’s body under the sheet. “All we can do is move forward.”
“All we can do is move forward,” I repeated softly in agreement, following her out into the golden afternoon light.
Chapter 7
A small group of men stood near the great spreading oak tree that lifted its branches to the sky by the side of the barracks. Finnead stood a distance apart from the group. I recognized Ramel and Eamon immediately, Ramel by the glint of copper in his hair and Eamon by the healing-satchel slung across his shoulder, and the lacquered wooden box held carefully in his hands. One of the other Sidhe turned to look at us as we approached.
“Donovan!” I called out with a grin. He strode over, an answering smile on his lips, his vibrantly green eyes flashing like emeralds in the sun. He clasped my forearm, the greeting of one warrior to another. I grinned up at him, and then he winked at me and drew me into a brotherly hug. “It’s good to see you,” I told him honestly. The small group of friends that I’d made at Court had been scattered throughout the camp since the battle. I hadn’t seen Donovan since I’d arrived at the camp, rain-drenched and weary, led by Vell and Beryk.
Donovan held me at arms’ length and inspected me. “’Tis well to see you too, and not looking too much the worse for wear. Bren would have my skin if I let the only mortal she’s ever met run into too much trouble.”
“Too much trouble? Never,” I said dryly, eliciting a chuckle from him.
Then he sobered as he looked over my shoulder at Vell. “And how are you, lady?”
“First of all, I’m not a lady,” Vell said, a hint of a growl in her voice. She paced forward, her lithe body moving with the supple grace of the wolf keeping pace beside her. Then she raised her chin slightly, golden eyes considering Donovan. “But thank you for asking. We are fine.” She twined her fingers in Beryk’s gleaming black fur.
“Tess,” said Ramel, “this is not going to be pleasant.”
I gestured back to the barracks. “That wasn’t very pleasant, either.” I caught the gaze of my sword-teacher, my one-time childhood friend, the Sidhe who perhaps understood me best of all in this world that was not my own, but to which I was now bound by blood and fire and ancient iron. “I can’t shy away from pain, or blood.” I held his gaze, hoping he would understand. “I’m going to see much more of it, and I have to be able to stand it when I do.”
Ramel nodded imperceptibly. “I understand, Tess, but this might be different.” He looked over to where Finnead stood apart from the group, still wearing his blood-stained shirt, shredded at the shoulder where the creature had caught him in her claws.
I clenched my jaw and forced myself to meet Ramel’s eyes again. “No matter what my personal feelings, I have to do my duty. I need to learn as much as I can before we set out for the Seelie Court. What if another creature attacks us on the road? I need to know how to cure a Dark wound, just the same as I need to know how to set a broken bone or stitch someone back together.” My voice was calm, unwavering, sensible. I felt a small twinge of pride at its steadiness, because my mind was anything but calm when I looked over at Finnead.
“Tess has a point,” Vell said in her logical way, stepping up to stand close behind my shoulder. Beryk pushed his nose between us and squeezed the rest of his body through until he was wedged between our legs. He panted happily, tongue lolling. I wanted to give Vell a look of gratitude but instead I rubbed Beryk’s soft ears. He gave an appreciative, wolfish sigh.
“Stand outside the circle, and make sure you keep a rein on the Sword’s power,” Ramel cautioned. “I don’t know what would happen if the two mixed.”
I nodded and felt my eyes go unfocused for a moment as I drew the Caedbranr’s power into myself, caging it with my ribs, with my skin and the delicate pulsing threads of my veins. It knew what I asked and dampened the rest of its aura, the little I could not draw into myself. We were becoming very good at sensing one another, the Sword and I; and aside from the fact that it had given me emerald-green war-markings from my right fingertips to my right shoulder, it seemed to accept my authority. I still knew, though, that it would stand me in good stead to remain polite, asking rather than ordering unless in dire circumstance.
“You’re getting very good at that,” Ramel commented.
“You can feel a difference?”
“Yes.”
“What does it feel like when I don’t have it completely dampened?” I asked in curiosity.
“It feels like the air before a storm around you,” Ramel said thoughtfully. “A feeling of heaviness, something that could lash out like lightning.”
“Interesting,” I said quietly.
Ramel showed us where to stand. There was a circle drawn in the earth around the oak tree, the line smooth and unwavering. We stood on the edge, Beryk still wedged happily between Vell and I, both of us twining our fingers in his black fur. Vell glanced at me once, her gaze unreadable; and then we watched as Donovan unfolded a square of black cloth, placing it on the grass. Eamon knelt and gently placed the lacquered box on the cloth, opening it reverently. While he unbound the blood-blessed blade, Donovan and Ramel walked over to Finnead. Ramel helped him ease his shirt over his head. Finnead stood bare-chested before the ancient oak, the still-healing wound to his side pink against the gleaming paleness of his skin. As he handed his tattered shirt to Donovan, he glimpsed us standing at the edge of the circle. We were close enough that I saw his blue eyes darken. Ramel leaned close to him and said something in a low voice in his ear. An inscrutable expression passed fleetingly across the Vaelanbrigh’s face, and then he nodded slightly.
I wondered if Finnead ever felt fear. I wondered if he had been at all afraid, journeying into the gray mists to bring me back. An intense yearning to ask him that question burned through me, but I clenched my jaw and forced myself to stand straight and tall and unmoving at the edge of the circle.
The afternoon light slanted golden over the green grass. Lacy shadows and chains of sun-dapple flowed across Ramel and Donovan as they took up positions on either side of Finnead. The sunlight played in Finnead’s raven-dark hair, coaxing out the shades of deep purple and blue and green that had so mesmerized me on our first meeting.
Eamon took the dagger, murmuring in the Sidhe tongue as he cut a piece of bark from the oak tree’s trunk. The tree shone starkly white as he pulled the bark away, echoing the whiteness of Finnead’s bare skin. Eamon dipped his fingers into the gleaming sap of the oak and walked over to Donovan and Ramel, marking their foreheads with the lifeblood of the tree. He marked himself on his head and his palms, but did not mark Finnead. I felt a strange prickle of power, power not my own, as Eamon took a flat silver dish and placed the bark upon it, still murmuring in the mellifluous words of the ancient Sidhe language. He placed a sprig of a bright green herb on the bark, and then a strange blood-red flower. Then there was a spiky-leafed purple plant, and finally a beautiful white flower. The stem of the white flower had wickedly long thorns.
Eamon struck flint against the beautiful silver blade. I winced, but the blade was unscathed as a spark fell down like a tear onto the bark and the flowers. A small flame flickered on the bark of the oak. The beautiful white flower began to char, its pristine petals curling into ash at the edges. But the blood-red flower seemed to feed on the flame, its color growing deeper and more vibrant, red as mortal blood.
The silver dish must have been hot, but Eamon placed the silver blade over the flames and lifted the dish in his hands, the dagger balanced precisely, bathed in fire up to its hilt. He took three long steps and stopped before Finnead. The smoke from the small fire was pungent, even at our distance. When I inhaled its first curling tendrils, a wave of dizziness came over me. The sap-markings, I thought disjointedly, must protect Donovan and Ramel and Eamon.
“Blood-flower and maiden’s-skin, purple moonbane and green knightsfoil,” Vell murmured beside me. I swayed at the smoke, and Beryk pressed against my knee, suddenly large enough to support me with li
ttle trouble. I smiled dizzily down at him.
Eamon was indeed unaffected by the smoke, the sap on his forehead gleaming. He held the silver dish close to Finnead, so that the gray-blue smoke rising over the heating dagger washed over the Vaelanbrigh. At first I thought that the Knight was unaffected as well, and a swell of hope rose in my chest—perhaps this would not be so terrible a rite after all. Then he swayed slightly, pale skin gleaming like moonlight through the smoke. The smoke wreathed his face and twined around his neck and pressed against his shoulder, where I could see the one vivid wound by his collarbone.
The smoke pressed thickly around Finnead’s face. I saw Donovan and Ramel’s grim expressions as they watched, protected by the lifeblood of the oak. Eamon held the silver dish steadily, but his eyes betrayed his worry.
“It’s smothering him,” I whispered, still light-headed from my one draught of the blue smoke.
“He cannot fall,” Vell said quietly. “The cleansing will not work if he falls. He has to prove himself worthy of the blood of the Queen.” Her voice twisted in soft sarcasm at her last words.
“He’s a Named Knight,” I said, hearing the tinge of bitterness in my own voice. “Hasn’t he already proven himself worthy, if she’s chosen him?”
“I cannot speak for them,” Vell replied, her voice flat.
The flames flickered on the silver dish, seeming to dance suspended on the blade of the silver dagger. The smoke was a living thing. I saw Finnead’s head start to fall forward as he took a staggering step. I felt my own knees trembling as I watched. He half-turned, but Eamon kept the smoke before his face. The four claw marks on his shoulder burned a dangerous red against his flesh.
“How long must he stand on his own?” I asked, not caring that my voice was hoarse or that my fingers buried in Beryk’s fur were white-knuckled.
“Until the fire goes out,” Vell replied quietly.
A cold stone settled into the pit of my stomach as I realized that the smoldering fire on the silver dish, though small, could very well burn for hours.
“And then?” I whispered.
