Heir to the Shadows

by Anne Bishop

Page 69

 

  "By then the Jhinka were all around us. A lot of the women who tried to reach the building didn't make it, or were badly wounded by the time I pulled them through the shield. Gran . . . Gran was almost within reach when one ' of the Jhinka swooped down and. . . . He laughed. He looked at me and he laughed while he killed her. "

  Lucivar refilled the cup and put a warming spell on the pots while Mari groped in her apron pocket for a handkerchief.

  She sipped the herbal tea, saying nothing for a minute. "Khevin couldn't keep fighting and hold the shield, too. Even I could see that. He had a-arrows in his legs. He couldn't move very fast. They caught him before he could go through the shield and did that to him. Then Lord Randahl and the others came and started fighting.

  "Two of the Warlords were shielding the wounded, leading them here, while the other two kept killing and killing.

  "Khevin's shield started to fail. I was afraid the Warlords I would put up another one that I couldn't get through, and Khevin would be left outside. As I reached out and grabbed

  him, a Jhinka saw me and slashed my arm. I pulled Khevin through just before the Warlords slipped inside and put up another shield. "

  Mari sipped her tea. "Lord Adler started swearing because they couldn't break through the witch storm around the village to send a message to Agio. But Lord Randahl just kept looking at Khevin.

  "Then he and Lord Adler picked Khevin up 1-like he was finally worth something. They took the mattress and sheets from the caretaker's bed and did what they could to make him comfortable. " Mari stared at the cup, tears running down her face. "That's it. "

  Lucivar took the empty cup, wanting to offer her some comfort but not sure if she could accept it from a Warlord Prince. Maybe from someone like Aaron, who was the same age, but from him?

  "Mari?"

  Relief washed through him when Jaenelle walked into the kitchen.

  "Let's see your arm," Jaenelle said, gently loosening the bandage and ignoring Mari's stammered pleas to take care of Khevin. "First your arm. I need you whole so you can help me with the others. We're going to need some mild— ah, you've already prepared some. "

  While Jaenelle healed the deep knife wound that had opened Mari's arm from elbow to wrist, Lucivar ladled out cups of the healing teas and put a warming spell on each cup. After a bit of cupboard hunting, he found two large metal serving trays. Full, they'd be too heavy for Mari— especially since Jaenelle had just warned her that the kind of fast healing she was going to have to do wasn't going to hold up under strain—but the young Warlords out there could do the heavy hauling and lifting now that he was maintaining the shield.

  Jaenelle solved the problem by putting a float spell on both trays so that they hovered waist high. Mari didn't need to lift, just steer.

  With Lucivar and Mari guiding the trays, the three of them went to the large room. Jaenelle ignored the clamor that began as soon as the villagers saw her and went to the ' shadowed wall where Khevin lay.

  Mari hesitated, biting her lip, obviously torn between her desire to go to her lover and her duties as assistant Healer. ; Lucivar gave her shoulder a quick, encouraging squeeze j before he joined Jaenelle. He didn't know what help he j could give her, but he'd do whatever he could.

  As Jaenelle started to lift the sheet, Khevin's eyes opened. With effort, he grabbed her hand.

  She stared at the young man, her eyes blank. It was as if she had gone so deep within herself that the windows of ! the soul could no longer reveal the person who lived within

  "Do you fear me?" she asked in a midnight whisper.

  "No, Lady. " Khevin licked his dry lips. "But it's a War- j lord's privilege to protect his people. Take care of them first. "

  Lucivar tried to reach her with a psychic thread, but Jaenelle had shut him out. Please, Cat. Let him have his pride.

  She reached under the sheet. Khevin moaned a wordless protest.

  "I'll do as you ask because you asked," she said, "but I'm going to tie in some of the threads from the healing j web I've builtnow so that you'll stay with me. " She smoothed the sheet and rested one long-nailed finger at the base of his throat. "And I warn you, Khevin, you had better stay with me. "

  Khevin smiled at her and closed his eyes.

  Cupping her elbow, Lucivar led Jaenelle into the hallway. "Since they won't be needed for the shield, I'll send the younger Warlords in to help with the fetching and carrying. "

  "Adler, yes. Not the other two. "

  The ice in her voice chilled him. He'd never heard any Queen condemn a man so thoroughly.

  "Very well," he said respectfully. "I can—"

  "Keep this place safe, Yaslana. "

  He felt the quiver, swiftly leashed, and locked his emotions up tight. Hell's fire, even if the drugs were out of her system enough for her to do the healings, her emotions weren't stable. And she knew it.

  "Cat . . . "

  "I'll hold. You don't have to watch your back because of that. "

  He grinned. "Actually, it's when you're hissing and spitting that you're the most useful when it comes to guarding my back. "

  Her sapphire eyes warmed a little. "I'll remind you of that. "

  Lucivar headed for the outside door. He'd have to keep an eye on her to make sure she drank some water and had a bite to eat every couple of hours. He'd slip a word to Mari. It was always easier to get Jaenelle to eat if someone else was eating, too.

  As he turned back, he felt the impact of bodies against the shield and heard the warning shouts from the Warlords outside.

  He'd talk to Mari later. The Jhinka had returned.

  9 / Kaeleer

  Lucivar leaned against the covered well and gratefully took the mug of coffee Randahl handed to him. It tasted rough and muddy. He didn't care. At that moment, he would have drunk piss as long as it was hot.

  The Jhinka had attacked throughout the night—sometimes small parties striking the shield and then fleeing, sometimes a couple hundred battering at the shield while he sliced them apart. There had been no sleep, no rest. Just the steadily increasing fatigue and physical drain of channeling the power stored in the Jewels as well as the steady drain of that power—a more rapid drain than he had anticipated. Randahl and the other Warlords had exhausted their reserves by the time he and Jaenelle had arrived yesterday, so he was now their only protection and most of their fighting ability.

  Because the shield hadn't extended more than a couple of inches below the ground, he'd discovered, almost too late, that the Jhinka had been using the piles of bodies for cover while they dug under the shield. So now the shield went down five feet before turning inward and running underground until it reached the building's foundation.

  While they were fighting the Jhinka who'd gotten under the south side of the shield, Lucivar had responded to instinct and raced to the north side of the building, reaching j the corner just as one of the Jhinka ran toward the well, j The earthenware jar the Jhinka carried had contained ' enough concentrated poison to destroy their only water | supply. So the well now had a separate shield around it.

  As soon as the attack on the well had been thwarted and f the shield extended, the witch storm had re-formed over j the building. No longer spread out to cover the whole village and hide the destruction, it had become a tight mass of tangled psychic threads, an invisible cloud full of psychic lightning that sizzled every time it brushed the shield.

  The extra shielding and the constant reinforcement against another's Craft were doing what the Jhinka alone couldn't do—draining him to the breaking point. It would r take another day. Maybe two. After that, weak spots would appear in the shield—spots the witch storm could penetrate to entangle already exhausted minds, spots the Jhinka could ' break through to attack already exhausted bodies.

  He'd briefly toyed with the idea of insisting that Jaenelle return to the Keep for help. He'd dismissed the idea just as quickly. Until th
e healings were done, nothing and no j one would convince her to leave. If he admitted the shield ' might fail, more than likely she would throw a Black shield around the building, straining a body already overtaxed by the large healing web she'd created to strengthen all the wounded until she could get to them. Totally focused on the healing, she wouldn't give a second thought to driving her body beyond its limits. And he already knew what she would say if he argued with her about the damage she was doing to herself: everything has a price.

  So he'd held his tongue and his temper, determined to hold out until someone from Agio or the Keep came looking for them. Now, in the chill, early dawn, he couldn't find enough energy to produce any body heat, so he wrapped his cold hands around the warm mug.

  Randahl sipped his coffee in silence, his back turned toward the village. He was a fair-skinned Rihlander with faded blue eyes and thinning, cinnamon hair. His body had a middle-years thickness but the muscles were still solid, and he had more stamina than the three younger Warlords put together.

  "The women who can are helping out in the kitchen," Randahl said after a few minutes. "They were pleased to get the venison and other supplies you brought with you. They're using most of the meat to make broth for the seriously wounded, but they said they'd make a stew with the rest. You should have seen the sour looks they gave Mari when she insisted that we get the first bowls. Hell's fire, they even whined about giving us this sludge to drink, and me standing right there. " He shook his head in disgust. "Damn landens. It's gotten to the point where the little ones run, screaming, whenever we walk into a village. They go around making signs against evil behind our backs, but they squeal loud enough when they need help. "

  Lucivar sipped his quickly cooling coffee. "If you feel that way about landens, why did you come to help when the Jhinka attacked?"

  "Not forthem. To protect the land. Won't have that Jhinka filth in Ebon Rih. We came to protect the land— and to get those two out. " Randahl's shoulders sagged. "Hell's fire, Yaslana. Who would have thought the boy could build a shield like that?"