Cordan and Mattie looked over the grizzly find with horror. Prince sprawled to one side in an unnatural, twisted and splayed position; it was obvious that he hadn’t been killed with magic. The front half of his body looked like he had crashed into something, and the marks around the body indicated that he had thrashed some before finally dying.
Though there was blood everywhere, the blood smearing his saddle concerned them the most. The blood on the saddle and that smeared over the rocks ten feet away, coupled with the amount of magic Sean had drawn through Mattie, could only mean one thing. Sean had fought Ludwyn here. With the amount of destruction in the area, it could be nothing else. The sight of Sean’s armor lying as if tossed away didn’t help allay their fears as to what they would find, provided they found anything at all.
There was no sign of Ludwyn, and right now, they didn’t care. Sean had been badly injured. The only good thing about all this was that, somehow he had managed to get away from this place. All they needed to do was figure out where he had gone. Since there had been no magic beacon since that pull of healing, a week ago now, they were confident that Ludwyn had not taken Sean. If Ludwyn had survived at all, he did not use magic to get away from here, and they didn’t believe he would have left any other way, not and take Sean with him.
The trail was comparatively easy to follow, though Cordan suspected it was intentional. He found things he felt he shouldn’t have; rocks had been rolled onto the trail from locations where they would have done little more than roll over if someone had chanced to walk that far from the path, and where he looked for crushed grass, broken twigs or scuffmarks, he found none.
As the trail became rockier and steeper, they left the horses behind with three men to watch over them, and forged ahead on foot. The sun was setting below the peaks when they found the cave where Sean slept, wrapped warmly in a heavy bear hide. The cold remains of a dry wood fire was in the middle of the cave floor, and a stone jug of water sat on a shelf of rock close by.
Fearing what they would find, Mattie knelt down beside Sean and touched his forehead. He looked pale, but he was warm and not fevered. He opened his eyes at her touch.
“Mattie,” he said, muzzily. “Has it been a day already?” Then he closed his eyes and went back to sleep, leaving them to puzzle over what he’d said.
Mattie sighed, and Jenny pulled her hands away from her mouth, though her eyes were still wide with fear.
Slowly Cordan looked around the roomy cave, taking in the collection of firewood and the few pieces of shaped stone. “This is more than anything he could have done,” he said, as he identified rolled furs on high ledges. “I doubt he’s moved the entire time he’s been here, and I’m thinking he’s been here ever since…whatever happened back there.”
Mattie nodded in agreement, but such detail didn’t concern her, much. She sent some of the men after more firewood and Cordan had them keep an eye out for anyone else. Larry discovered a tiny spring near the back of the cave. It was the visible portion of some underground river with a slow current.
Gently, so as not to disturb his sleep, Mattie started to roll the pelt away from Sean so she could see the extent of his injuries. If he hadn’t moved in a week, it couldn’t be good.
Bruises, now yellowing around the edges, began to show on his left shoulder, and as she rolled the pelt away from his side, just to peek, she found more all the way down to below his left knee. Appalled, she pushed the hide away and saw that he was very nearly one entire bruise; from his chest, encompassing his belly mostly, then extending down his left leg. She also found, scrawled across the left side of his belly, as if by a child’s hand, a wide crust of blood. The wound had healed, but the scab had yet to fall away.
Awakened by the draft, Sean started and tried to clutch for the pelt. “Mattie!” he said in indignation, but she didn’t hear.
With skilled hands, she rolled him on his side away from her. Suddenly she knew what had to have happened; all that was left was to find where all the blood on the rocks had come from. Despite the care she took, Sean cried out in pain as she rolled him over. Everyone in the cave looked to the sound and saw the ugly gashes on his back. One slashed across between his shoulder blades in a diagonal cut only a few inches long, and the other trailed from his right ribcage down through his left buttock, halfway to his left knee, nearly reaching his crotch at one point. This was where all the blood had come from; this was why he had needed to draw so much healing magic so desperately.
Ludwyn must have hurled something at Prince, who knows what Sean had done in return, but Prince had fallen or been knocked over backward, crushing Sean between his saddle and the jagged rocks. If he had been knocked out, he would have died within moments.
“Can I cover up now?” asked Sean indignantly, bringing her back to the moment. Mattie gently settled Sean back in his nest and covered him warmly again. “I’m all right, you know.”
She only nodded and tucked the warm pelt around him again, then she nearly fled to the mouth of the cave. Both Larry and Cordan followed her a little slower so as not to alarm any of the others. Sean was already drifting off to sleep again under Jenny’s fingers combing through his hair.
“He will be all right, won’t he?” asked Larry. He was quite shaken by what he had seen. He had never imagined anything so bad.
Mattie nodded. “He healed himself well enough, and other healing had been done since. He’ll be fine soon. It’s just that…” She heaved a hasty sigh and a tear made it past her control, quickly followed by others.
“What?” asked Cordan.
“His back was broken in two places. He should be dead. He should be a vegetable. Even with the magic… How could he do this?” Her voice was shaking audibly by the time she finished.
“That’s just biology, isn’t it?” said Larry. “Isn’t that how the magic works? If you understand how to do something, you can do it with magic, can’t you?”
Both Mattie and Cordan looked at him with stunned expressions. “His back was broken; healing the bones isn’t good enough,” said Mattie.
“I know that,” said Larry. “But if you understand how nerves work, you can fix them, can’t you?”
“What are ‘nerves’?” asked Cordan, and Mattie’s expression said that she was wondering the same thing.
“Well, uh,” started Larry, trying to remember some of his biology lessons. Sean had been much better than he had been. “Nerves are what lets you feel; they’re what lets your brain tell your foot to move. It’s uh… I can’t explain it.” He retreated into the cave to escape more questions he couldn’t answer.
Time Returns
Early on the morning of the third day, Sean’s restlessness started digging at him again. Using magic, he clothed himself in a silk shirt and a pair of linen pants, black by chance. Limping heavily, he made his way to the cave entrance and was dismayed to see a layer of frost on the stones around him. The cave faced southwest, so the sun wouldn’t hit this spot until early afternoon.
Sean looked out over the tiny valley laid out in front of him. Though it was lush, it wouldn’t even begin to hold his encampment, and his herd of horses would have now-frozen grass cropped to nothing in a day, but the morning sun would touch down there in about an hour. Suddenly, he longed to feel the sun on his shoulders. Even though his bruises were rapidly fading, he was stiff and achy and he wanted nothing more than to just move. He knew he wouldn’t last long, but he could think of no better way to loosen up the kinks and knots that made his every movement painful.
The path that left the cave led off to the right and followed a narrow ledge along the face of the cliff. Even the most inexperienced rock climber could have climbed directly up to the cave from the valley without using their hands much, and the vertical distance from the valley floor to the cave mouth was only about four stories worth of distance, but Sean was in no condition to do any such thing, up or down.
Leaving his friends sleeping around the coals of the fi
re, he turned to hobble down the trail that followed the side of the cliff. Whether carved by Mother Nature or the hand of some long-ago Yeti the end result was uneven steps, few of which were completely level, and none of which were the same depth as the one next to it, and the whole thing was worn by the weather, or from generations of use.
Less than halfway down, he was leaning heavily on the cliff wall and digging a fist into his left hip. Scarcely able to put any weight on his left leg, he was determined to make it to the bottom. If he couldn’t make it back up, they could move camp down to him or carry him back. Then again, only his body hurt; maybe he’d just take them all back to his main encampment. He chuckled to himself. I could have just teleported myself down to that valley. I’m such an idiot, but I’ve started this trek; I’ll finish it. Stubbornness does not run in my family, it resides entirely within me, along with a generous amount of idiocy.
As he hobbled slowly down the steps, Sean allowed himself to worry about his men. Nineteen kids – mages all, but still kids, seven new-made knights – men scarcely redeemed, and sixteen officers who were probably worried sick about their families, the thought made him cringe. He must seem little better than his uncle. And then there were his original troops, less than a hundred men who followed him for no clear reason other than his name. Though these troops had some experience or at least training, this hodge-podge mix he had now had seen no action that might meld them into anything like a unit. I wonder what kind of trouble they will get themselves into without me, or Cordan, or even Larry to watch over them. He pictured something along the line of Home Alone going on; thankfully Macaulay Culkin wasn’t there to give them any ideas.
Finally, at the bottom of the uneven stairs, he sat down. It didn’t help the ache in his hip that was sending spears of pain up his back and down his leg, but at least he could catch his breath.
He toyed with the idea of calling his aunt for help with the ache, but he doubted she could do much more than had already been done. Mattie was a very good healer, even if her magic wasn’t very strong. Hélène had been able to ease the ache out of his arm, but he wasn’t willing to get involved with her again. If she knew he was this badly injured, she would find a way to get here, and being a priestess of the White House of Healing, she’d have little trouble finding the necessary help.
With careful attention to where he put his feet – if he stumbled, he knew he didn’t have the mobility to stay on his feet – he wended his way to the center of the clearing and its patch of warm sunlight. He was thankful when he finally reached his destination. Walking across mostly level ground was infinitely easier than walking down those stone steps, but even so, he had just walked farther than he had walked at all since getting to his feet for the first time only yesterday.
Standing there, he tried to push the pain away and concentrate on his simplest forms. Even though he only stood there, even though he was only doing the forms in his head, every move he imagined hurt. He grit his teeth and started anyway, after all, that was why he had endured the trip.
He brought his sword belt to his hand and buckled it on, then took it off again because it rested on bruises that already ached. He planted his swords in the ground several feet apart and moved ten paces away, then tossed his belt aside. The set was supposed to be the moves of a fight that would lead him to arming himself at a point about halfway through. He planned to lengthen it, thereby working in the acquisition of the second sword. Lengthening the set wasn’t too popular, but stubbornness…
He closed his eyes and began. The first steps were agony, but he turned the pain into wounds taken in his imagined battle, which they were in a way, just not this battle. He had to reach his swords. He had to rescue Armelle. She was over there and men were trying to hustle her away, but she was accounting for herself too; she had her knife out and more than a little blood colored the blade already.
Pain stabbed at his leg, and he stepped to the side with a turn that favored the leg and blocked another attack that brought him a step closer to his goal. He needed to arm himself. Thorns started to vine up his leg to guard his wounds, but they did not tangle his steps. The thorns that protruded from his knuckles caused his opponents to draw back fractionally quicker and half a step farther.
Another stab of pain in his side caused him to step aside again with another turn that brought thorns close to a face, then there was a broken wrist and a free sword. Armelle spun and cut again, still steps away, still in danger. The look she gave him over her shoulder said that she was waiting for him; she would be there when he got there.
With the comforting weight of a sword in his hand, he was able to cut a much wider swath of destruction and the thorns grew longer and did some reaching of their own. Another stab of pain in his hip brought another sliding turn, then there was a severed hand and another sword was caught up.
Armelle was only steps away now; a rose bloomed fat and red over his heart, then she was within his swings and she turned to wrap her arms around him while he drove the last of their attackers away with a spell that felt earthy and rich, not unlike an avalanche made of light.
Unwilling to open his eyes and break the spell, he just stood there and relished in her warm arms being around him. The tiny lump in her middle was a treasure held reverently between them. “I love you,” he whispered into her golden hair.
A soft giggle told him he had managed to share a good deal of this with her, if not all of it, and she took control of the link. There were more soft giggles as she pulled at laces and buckles present only in their imagination. There were shrieks of laughter as she dodged a splash of cold water. More giggles from somewhere deep under warm covers. It all filled him near to bursting with longing and happiness.
She reached up and pulled him down within reach, and gave him a long kiss. “Take care of yourself out there in the cold, cruel world.” The more-than-a-dream faded, leaving him swaying in its wake.
He took a long, deep breath, allowing the move to straighten his back and square his shoulders, then he turned to make the long trek back up to the cave. He let his breath out with a long sigh, creating a cloud of steam that fogged his sight, but he still saw Jenny standing at the mouth of the cave with her hands balled up under her chin. He brought his belt to his hand and sheathed his swords, then decided not to take the long way up to the cave. He wasn’t an idiot all the time.
Jenny gasped when he appeared beside her. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to you doing that,” she said, but she gave him a hug anyway. “Where did you find that?” She brushed the petals of the rose that was still attached to his shirt, all that remained of the vines that had covered one leg and twined down to his hands offering their thorns for his use.
He lifted the flower from his shirt. “It’s part of the magic, I guess. At one point, I was using rosebush thorns as a weapon.” They had been more like spikes, but she didn’t need to know that. He smelled the flower, then gave it to Jenny. “I like roses. I think I’ll try to get some to grow around the palace.”
Jenny buried her nose in the soft petals. “If you can get them to grow on your shirt, you shouldn’t have any problem getting them to grow at the palace.” She looked up at Sean’s somber face. “What’s the matter?”
Sean looked over to where Mattie and Cordan were discussing something on the other side of the fire, and to where Larry was going through his saddlebags. “You don’t understand what it’s like. I’m only just beginning to understand myself.” He took a breath and plunged ahead. “Armelle and I were married by the Dance; by magic more binding than any ritual we know back home. Being away from her…is hard. Putting myself in danger, and I must, there are things that need doing that only I can do, but that also puts her in danger.” He took another deep breath. “Letting her go like that, knowing that she’s so far away…it hurts.” He pushed past her with his jaw set and limped over to the fire. “Cordan, we leave in the morning.”
Cordan nodded, looking at Sean a little longer than necessary, then
he gave Mattie a look that asked her to make sure he was ready to travel.
Sean eased himself down on a stone shelf so he could lean back against the cool rock wall.
Mattie handed him some coarse slices of cheese and a small dish of boiled meat. “Eat up, then go lay down. I’ll rub some more of those kinks out of your muscles. It’s a long walk down to the horses.”
“I can take us there the easy way,” said Sean, as he tossed the first piece of hot meat in his mouth.
“You could, but that would only be putting off the inevitable. You still have some healing to do, and walking will help.”
Sean popped another piece of meat in his mouth and smiled. “Thanks Mattie,” he said.
“Thanks? For what?” she asked.
“For being you,” he said, and finished his breakfast. Her fingers quickly lulled him into a nap that carried him well into the afternoon.
As he drifted off, there was a familiar touch behind his ears. “You are the ‘one’, little brother,” said Oak-Root, and he felt Mountain-Wave agree.
Healing
The trip down to the horses was grueling for Sean, though it was infinitely better than his trip down to the little clearing had been. When they reached the place where Cordan had left the horses, they found them gone. Since their pace was slow, they sent a man ahead to scout for possible trouble while they rested.
The messenger returned with news that the men had merely retreated to the battle site because there was grass and water for the horses nearby.
The sun had dipped below the trees by the time they reached level ground, but Sean wouldn’t let them stop until they had made it all the way to the camp. Suspended between two men who happened to be tall enough to be of real help, Sean was nearly carried into camp.
The Making of a Mage King: White Star Page 22
