Except that the greatest he knew regarded him tenderly, and gave a brave little shrug. “It doesn’t hurt. But what of this?” Her fingers took firm hold of his chin, turning it to see the full extent of the bloody gash that ran from above his ear to near his lips.
He’d almost forgotten. “I learned where dragons come from,” he quipped. “I’m fine, Dearest Heart. Scratches, that’s all.”
“Ancestors Witness. These are not ‘scratches!’”
Nothing would do after that but a thorough examination, which he might have enjoyed under other circumstances. Once she discovered the bites on his arms, Jenn pushed him to sit by the fountain and eased the pack from his shoulders before helping to remove his shirt.
What was left of his shirt, and that a bloody mess. “It looks worse than it is,” the truthseer insisted. “They were very small dragons.” He decided not to tell her of their fate.
“With sharp teeth.” Jenn bent to tear a clean strip from her dress, itself rent in a few places. One of those provided a distracting view of round soft flesh and, catching his look, she gave the bodice an irritated tug. “It can be mended. I hope.”
“We’ll look a pretty pair in Channen,” Bannan said lightly, but it was a problem. He’d one more shirt, but Jenn’s sack looked too small for a second dress. Not that fashions from Marrowdell would match the latest Naalish trends, but walking any city street in a torn garment would attract the wrong sort of attention.
Jenn dipped the strip in the water, though not without a shudder, and began cleaning his wounds, starting with one on his upper back he’d not noticed. “I’ve a shawl,” she mused. “What about your boots?”
He stuck a toe through a hole, then pulled off what were, in truth, more the memory of good boots than usable footwear, tossing them aside. “At least we’ve found our guides.”
The pair of kruar stood at a distance from Scourge, crests erect in continued alarm. Or respect. From what Bannan had seen of their kind, these were smaller than most, similar in size to Perrkin. There the resemblance to anything so safe as a horse ended.
Save for the saddles on their backs. Mistress Sand’s “guides” in truth though, from the looks on their long faces, they didn’t think much of that duty.
The truthseer couldn’t blame them. Scourge’s unhindered presence likely didn’t help. He wore naught by a harness of scars, given to him by his own kind when they’d ripped the armor from his body, the leader’s penance for having lost the war. That he’d survived that torture, to battle in another world and return, had only elevated Scourge among kruar.
Whose attention presently flitted between the old kruar and—more often now—him.
Oh, and didn’t he know why? His wounds were minor but many and, no doubt thanks to the dragonlings, continued to ooze red. “Can you stop the bleeding?” Bannan asked very quietly, even as nostrils flared to catch more scent and Scourge rumbled a warning deep in his chest.
Jenn’s eyes widened in understanding, then narrowed. “I can stop them.”
“While a comfort, Dearest Heart, believe me, them we need.”
~Worry not, truthseer, elder sister,~ the toad assured them pleasantly. ~All will be mended.~
“All?” Something stung Bannan in the back, then pulled. “Ouch!” He craned his head around to see, but Jenn was there first.
She smiled and settled back on the stone. “Hold still.”
Another sting. Another! “Hold still?”
A yling appeared too near his face, needles in its—her—hands. She patted his gashed cheek, then began to stitch.
Gentler stitches than Tir’s, if it came to it. Bannan held still as the creatures worked, quickly discovering that as each wound was sewn shut its pain vanished too. Could have used that skill after a patrol, when they sat to trade stitching favors.
On those who could be stitched.
Ancestors Doubtful and Dumbfounded, how many more escapes before the Verge claimed them?
And where was the dragon?
At first, watching the ylings sewing Bannan’s flesh back together had made Jenn queasy, though she’d seen Covie do the same for her father after an accident with his chisel. That wound had healed, leaving a long scar.
She felt better when she noticed where the ylings passed needle and thread, Bannan’s skin might have never been cut, save for the few smears of blood. The seamstresses worked with blinding speed, pausing only to pat him every so often.
Comfort, Jenn guessed. Though perhaps to be sure he stayed still.
To do her part, she gathered up the remains of his bloody shirt, thinking to bury them. Ylings swooped down to take the mess from her hands, then flew high into the plumes and disappeared.
Well. That solved a problem. “Thank you,” Jenn said, trying not to notice how the kruars’ noses, including Scourge’s, lifted to follow the blood scent.
“Your turn to hold still.” Bannan smiled and dropped his gaze to her bodice.
That again? Jenn looked down to find two ylings hard at work. Their needles flickered like darts of light and their hair, this close, sparkled from tip to base. In hardly more time than she’d have taken to thread a needle, they were done and flew away.
There was no seam. The fabric, like Bannan’s skin, appeared never to have been torn. “I thought Frann had tidy stitching,” she commented, adding the ’Dear and Departed to herself.
Bannan flexed his arm. “I’ve no complaints. How do we thank them?”
Jenn dipped a finger in the fountain, bringing it to her lips as she would at home, and considered the matter. “Little cousin?”
The house toad sat against the fountain, its skin matched in hue to the stone. ~Yes, elder sister?~
“The ylings. Could you thank them for us?”
The toad blinked slowly. ~I could, if you ask it, elder sister, but they would not understand your gratitude. I fear they might take it as insult.~
“I heard that,” Bannan said, reminding her of that helpful difference within the Verge. He went to run his fingers through his hair, then stopped with a wry grin. “Is there anything we could do for them?”
The toad crouched, as if wary of their response. ~Kill the Lost One.~
The eyes, that meant. Certainly it had been her dragon’s intention. Jenn looked worriedly at Bannan. “Shouldn’t Wisp be back by now?”
The truthseer shook his head. “There’s no telling the sort of chase that thing could lead him on. He won’t give up.”
No, she thought, he wouldn’t. For all his posturing, her dragon cared deeply about the small denizens of Marrowdell; the more, perhaps, because he hadn’t always. The Lost One would regret making Wisp his enemy.
The metal around her arm felt suddenly heavier. Jenn laid it on her thigh. “The eyes—he said he wanted to be my friend,” she said bitterly. “I shouldn’t have listened.”
“Did you see him? More than those cursed eyes.”
Something in Bannan’s voice had Jenn searching his face. “Have you?”
“We’d an encounter,” he admitted, his tone grim. “Only the voice.”
That horrible voice. “I saw nothing more.” But she had, hadn’t she? In the snow. In Marrowdell. Jenn stood and went to her sack, digging out the bundle of socks. She brought it back with her, facing man and toad. “Whoever he is, whatever, doesn’t belong in the Verge.” Cautious of its sharpness, she pulled the shard from its hiding place. The black was gone.
That didn’t make it safe. She stared at her own reflection. “He’s been watching Marrowdell. That’s where he’s from, isn’t he? From—from our world.”
Bannan crossed his arms over his chest, eyes hooded. Considering what to say, she wondered abruptly.
Or what to leave out.
“Tell me all of it,” Jenn insisted. “Everything you know. The Lost One has trapped and killed efflet in Marrowdell. T
hey feared I’d be next. I almost was, Bannan.”
A muscle clenched along his jaw. “He’s killed ylings as well.” The truthseer regarded her soberly. “I’ve been told the Lost One is—was—a man named Crumlin Tralee. The toads remember him. I’ve heard of him. Crumlin arrived in Marrowdell with the first settlers.” He paused as though to give her time to absorb this, but Jenn nodded, certain there was more and worse. “Crumlin was no farmer,” Bannan continued, his voice harsh. “Whatever lies he told the others, he came for the Verge and magic. He found a way to cross, long ago.” A wave at the meadow. “And been here, it seems, ever since.”
A man? She’d seen nothing man-like in the snow sculpture; Crumlin’s eyes were stranger still. His voice, though?
Jenn shivered, putting the shard down on the stone. Like the fountain, it reflected only the Verge’s sky, presently crimson with a set of floating mountains shaped like pie wedges. “Crumlin’s gone now,” she said, to reassure all of her protectors.
And herself.
Bannan came to her, put his hands on her shoulders. “We’ll wait for the dragon. He’ll tell us.”
~We cannot.~ A new voice, like Scourge’s but somehow thinner. Younger, Jenn guessed, though every bit as full of itself. ~The dimming comes. We must away now.~
~Or what? The dark is when we hunt!~ Scourge lifted a foot and set it down. The ground beneath Jenn’s feet trembled, and the new kruar tossed their heads, eyes wide. ~Obey your riders.~ Though his crest had been cut away, leaving a stubble along the rise of his neck like broken knives, when he curved his massive neck, there was no mistaking who was larger—and more dangerous. ~Do you know my name?~
And that was either invitation or threat.
~We know.~ Despite their mass and armor, they appeared to move on tiptoe, ready to bolt. Once close enough to Scourge, they stretched out their necks, nostrils flared. Their crests chattered like restless swords. ~We know, Lord General. You are Scourge, the Malevolent.~
~While you are nameless!~ Scourge swung his head, smacking one in the shoulder. That kruar swung around to snap, teeth scoring red along tough hide, while the other pranced at a distance, snarling.
Faced with such ferocious display, Jenn wasn’t sure if they should intervene or hide behind the fountain. To her surprise, Bannan chuckled. “We’re in a hurry, Idiot Beast. She’ll have to wait.”
Scourge gave him such a look Jenn blushed.
Amused agreement. ~He’s right. Mate later.~
“Wisp!”
Bannan ran with Jenn to where the dragon heaved himself up through the ground.
Despite the amused tone to his voice, Wisp was hurt and badly. One wing hung crooked and useless. A leg had been opened to the bone, skin flapping loose. There were what could only be burns along his jaws, though from what Bannan knew of dragons, they couldn’t burn.
Unless— “You caught him.”
Had the look in those eyes been meant for him, Bannan would have run for his life. ~Not yet. The coward fled rather than fight, covering his trail with what would have killed anything else.~
Scourge having arrived.
Not only the kruar. The air suddenly filled with dragons, full-sized and of every color, wheeling around them in a vast angry flock. Their wingbeats drove hot, dry air into Bannan and Jenn’s faces.
Kruar roared a challenge! More than one. Dragons answered. They were, Bannan decided numbly, at the center of what could well be a resumption of the great beings’ war. Or at least a bloody skirmish, for old times’ sake.
But neither kruar nor dragon were the most powerful here. Jenn Nalynn became turn-born, her inner glow burnishing scales and hide. “Enough,” she said quietly, and raised her hand.
The meadow became deathly still, then the dragons scattered, tail and wingtips the last to disappear. The kruar bent their heads, but didn’t bolt, though the young ones trembled.
Wisp’s lower jaw sank in one of his laughs. ~Dearest Heart.~
He claimed her and Bannan was happy to let him, quite sure the dragon was on their side.
“You’re hurt,” Jenn cried, flesh again and worried.
~This?~ The dragon flexed his broken limb. ~I will heal. And hunt again.~
Scourge growled approval.
Given how he’d seen the dragon heal before, it was no idle boast. Reassured, Bannan caught Jenn’s wrist and lifted it so Wisp could see the band, careful to support the metal’s weight. “You bit through the chain. Can you remove the rest?”
“Please, Wisp?” with the faintest tremor in her voice.
He could hate Crumlin more, the truthseer discovered.
~Be turn-born again, Dearest Heart,~ Wisp said. ~Come close.~
Jenn did as he bade her, becoming glass and pearl. Her inner light faded alarmingly where the band wrapped her arm. Trustingly, she held her arm near the dragon’s jaws. Wisp took hold, finger-length fangs ticking against the metal like daggers of bone.
The dragonlings’ sharp little teeth had sliced his flesh with no effort. This? A bad idea. A terrible one! The truthseer started forward. He was panicking and knew it, but those jaws around her slender arm were a nightmare.
But the jaws didn’t close and crush. Instead fire boiled within the dragon’s open mouth, writhing and white-hot.
Bannan shielded his eyes. “Jenn!”
“I don’t feel it,” she said quickly. “Clever Wisp.”
Iron began to melt and drip, sliding over silver scales to drop to the ground with a sizzle and spit. Before they could cool, the house toad pounced, snapping each up with its tongue and what seemed boundless delight.
Ancestors only knew what it would make of them. Bannan refused to guess.
~There.~
Flesh once more, Jenn straightened, holding out her arm. “Bannan, look!”
He did more, running paired thumbs gently over her skin, turning her arm over to check the other side. Was it paler, where the band had been, as if she’d worn it for years? With a hand that wanted to shake, the truthseer rubbed his eyes and looked again.
“Bannan?”
Jenn’s arm was fine, exactly as it had been. “Perfect,” he affirmed. “How does it feel?”
“Normal. Is something wrong?” She came close, looking into his eyes.
“Other than our good dragon here looking like battle dregs?” he said, to distract her. The dimming—the Verge’s night—was coming. He hoped so.
It was that, or his beyond weary eyes were losing the struggle to make sense of what he saw.
One of the kruar shifted its feet. ~Turn-born.~ Oh, the new-found respect in that voice. ~If we are to cross into Channen when we should, we must away.~
To Channen. The words were a weight he felt in his heart. What was he thinking, to risk Jenn there? They could turn back, now. Be home in whatever passed for hours here.
Face Semyn and Werfol.
“I’d best find a shirt,” Bannan announced, doing his best to sound lively and ready for more adventure.
Hearts of his Ancestors, he’d be Beholden for less.
He’d rubbed his eyes, again. As before, Jenn pretended not to notice. Bannan’s gift let him stay here, but not for long or forever, that was plain.
Unlike Crumlin.
She made herself use the name in her thoughts, for it was a truer name than “lost.” She most sincerely hoped he was “one.” Her dragon lay hurt—and how many others had Crumlin harmed? For what?
For what she touched, in the Verge. For what she was. Crumlin was a great fool, to think magic was something you took in your hand and used. As well put time in your hand or guilt or courage.
Or kindness. “Bannan?” Jenn pointed to the cluster of ylings. They held a shirt, his shirt, whole and clean, between them, somehow flying in a straight line despite their burden.
The truthseer grinned.
Dressed once more, they refilled their flasks, then turned to Wisp. ~Go,~ he ordered, almost peevishly. Perhaps, Jenn thought, the healing magic of a dragon prickled as it worked. She could, to her relief, see him heal. Bones shifted under his scaled skin and the deep wound on his leg had begun to knit.
It was not a process to rush. Jenn crouched in front of him, seeing herself in his wild beautiful eyes. “I’d not stop you hunting Crumlin,” she said gently. “I don’t want him to harm anyone else. But please, while I’m away and can’t, dear Wisp, take care of Marrowdell.”
Steam rose from his nostrils and claws dug into the ground. She waited, trusting her dragon, and sure enough, after that mute protest, he bowed his deadly head as might a man. ~I will.~
Jenn smiled from the bottom of her heart. “We’ll be home as soon as we can.”
~Listen to the little cousin, Dearest Heart,~ Wisp advised. ~They have their wisdom. If they don’t always employ it.~ That to the toad, presently half-inside Bannan’s backpack.
Then it was time to gather up her sack and say good-bye to Scourge, but he’d left at some point when she’d been distracted by dragon. “The idiot beast’s for Marrowdell too,” Bannan told her, guessing why she was looking around. “He’s bent and determined Werfol learn to ride.”
Oh dear. She was reassured by the twinkle in Bannan’s eye. They’d worked something out, he and the kruar, and she wouldn’t worry.
Their steeds stood waiting. Their guides. They’d not had the best of introductions; she should remedy that.
Jenn took Bannan’s hand and drew him to stand with her before the pair of kruar. Whose eyes rolled and lips curled, but who stood waiting nonetheless. “My name is Jenn Nalynn. Thank you for your help,” she told them.
Bannan, more familiar with the creatures, bowed deeply. As he rose, he said, “I am Scourge’s rider,” in a no-nonsense tone. “We’ve gone into battle times without count. I trust you will attempt to honor him.” Spoken as if he had grave doubts.
A Play of Shadow Page 40
