Heroes at Risk

by Moore, Moira J.

  “I will be looking into this,” LaMonte threatened.

  “You do that.” In a much lower voice, too low to be heard by LaMonte, she added, “As long as you look into it somewhere else.”

  We listened to LaMonte retreat from the door and go down the stairs. I didn’t hear the outer door open and close, but that didn’t mean LaMonte hadn’t actually exited the building. I wouldn’t hear that door unless it was wrenched open and slammed shut.

  So there was no way to know, one way or the other.

  In time, the thud and clatter from the basement ceased, and we heard footsteps on the stairs again. There was a knock on the door. “It’s me,” said Taro.

  “Has that other person left?” Cree asked.

  “Chris? Aye.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “There’s no reason for him to hide from me,” Taro said impatiently. “Aren’t we running short on time?”

  Cree sighed with impatience, and she went to the sitting room to unlock the door. “Please assist Dunleavy down to the cellar.”

  “Need to get dressed,” I said.

  “No, you need to remain as you are.”

  Wonderful.

  Taro came into the room, strands of hair flying free of the tie at the base of his skull, sweat plastering his cream-colored shirt against his chest and back. I wished I had an artist’s skill, that I could make renderings of him in all his states of beauty. He would never want to look at them, or even know about them. I would just like them for myself. Maybe he would want to see them when he was much older, and beautiful in a different way.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Helping me down to the cellar meant carrying me down to the cellar, as my legs were useless. It was horribly embarrassing, though I couldn’t say why. Both Taro and Cree had seen me naked, and no one else was there. That there was a serious danger of being dropped only increased my discomfort. Taro had exercised a lot of stamina in destroying the table, and I wasn’t light.

  I knew where the cellar was. I’d been there once or twice. There was something about the cellar that made me uneasy. It was completely underground. The air smelled heavy and unpleasantly musty. And I never felt I could move about freely.

  Right then, lit only by a lantern set on the floor by the door, casting distorted shadows everywhere, the cellar looked unfamiliar and bizarre, the table gone and replaced by four piles of wood, one in each corner. Taro had dug a sort of trench around each pile in an attempt to prevent any spreading of fire once the piles were lit.

  It struck me just how incredibly bad an idea this was.

  “Lay her on the floor,” Cree said. “Head facing this way, feet facing there.”

  “Directly on the dirt?” Taro objected.

  “Now.”

  Wonderful. So I lay down on the floor, and despite the weird calm that had descended upon my mind, I had images of all the insects crawling in the dirt and possibly into exposed parts of my body.

  Cree lit each of the bundles of wood, having poured some kind of oil over them. The warmth was immediately apparent. From her bag she took a black-handled knife, which she dug into the dirt near my feet. Shuffling backward, she cut a wide circle around me, ending back at my feet. Small sticks—rods, I supposed—were thrust into the ground, one at my head, one at the tip of each hand and each foot. From a bottle she poured a clear liquid from one rod to the next, connecting them all. This line was then frosted with salt.

  “Take off your clothes, Shintaro,” Cree ordered. “And step inside the circle, but stay outside the salt line.” In a few moments, Taro was seated on the dirt beside me on my left.

  Cree took my left hand and sliced a small cut into the palm. She took Taro’s left hand and cut his palm, too. She took the bob from my right hand and put it in my left. She clasped my left hand and Taro’s left hand together. “Don’t let go until I give you leave.”

  Cree opened more bottles, and at various places within the circle poured out the contents. Sometimes the contents were a liquid, sometimes a powder. They were being poured to create patterns, but I couldn’t see the patterns against the dirt.

  A strange scent was developing in the air. It smelled like wet hay.

  Once Cree was finished dumping stuff on the floor, she stepped outside the circle, standing near my feet. She plunged the knife deep into the soil. Then from her bag she took out another knife, this one with a white handle. “It is time for me to begin. Once I begin, I can’t stop, or the fires will break loose and kill us all.”

  I was very displeased to be learning that death was a possibility this late in the proceedings.

  “Dunleavy, you must not move from within the circle of salt. Shintaro, you must not cross the salt line nor leave the circle. Dunleavy, this will hurt. A lot. Shintaro, you must keep her from moving over the salt line, but you can’t touch her with anything other than your left hand. Neither of you must try to get my attention. This is very important. I can’t lose my concentration.” She looked at me then. “Trust me, Dunleavy, as I am trusting you.”

  “Aye,” I said. Apparently, I had no choice.

  I was going to die. I wasn’t ready to die. There were things I hadn’t done. Gone to my parents’ home. I’d never been. Gone back to talk to Professor McAuley. And I’d really wanted to see how Aryne was going to turn out. I had no doubt she was terrorizing the Source Academy, and more power to her.

  Poor Taro. It wasn’t fair.

  Cree held the knife in both hands, at chest level, the tip of the blade pointed down. She looked ridiculous. What the hell was I doing?

  “I call on the power of the earth,” Cree intoned. “Source of all which heals. Source of the poison which defiles the blood of this subject. I call on you to draw this poison out, and take back that which should have never been drawn from you. Reclaim your essence.”

  The chants I’d read in the book had rhymed.

  “I give to you blood. Blood of the half, who is strong and clean. Blood of the caller, who is wise and clean.” She sliced her own right palm, then held her hand over the floor, palm facing down so the blood could drip from it. “Reclaim your essence.”

  Nothing happened, of course. Except the room was warming up and the smell of wet hay grew heavier, almost suffocating. Was this what her patients paid good money for?

  “Reclaim your essence.”

  It was going to be so embarrassing. When I died, and Taro died with me, Cree would clear out her props and leave. She wasn’t stupid enough to be found with a dead Pair and tools Runners would recognize as being connected to casting. And what would people think, what would my family think, of how we would be discovered? Naked in the cellar. And how people would talk, how the Stallion of the Triple S and his Shield had ended up. I hated the thought that I cared; it was stupid to worry about what people would think after I was dead. Still, what would my parents hear? What would my father think?

  “Reclaim your essence!”

  The circle flared into flame, low and blue, and Taro jerked in surprise. Damn it, the fire was spreading. How stupid were we, lighting fires in this small space? The temperature rose uncomfortably, while the scent of wet hay seemed to coat my nostrils and throat. It was foul.

  I felt that jittery sensation again, piercing through all my discomforts and the general assault on my senses. And I realized something. It wasn’t the ashes that gave me that feeling. It was the power of the spell itself. I could feel it when a spell was being used. My gods.

  “Reclaim your essence!”

  And the fire leapt closer, and this time the flames were dark green, tracing along the patterns on the floor.

  That was it. I wasn’t going to let myself be burned alive. But when I shifted to move, Taro’s grip on my hand became painfully tight. I looked up at him, and he was glaring down at me. I opened my mouth to tell him not to be ridiculous, and he squeezed my hand so hard I thought a bone was going to break.

  I was stunned. Despite appearances to the contrary, Taro was not a foolish p
erson. How could he think we were doing something sane?

  It was more likely that he thought there was nothing else we could do. And maybe he was right. I was hot and nauseous and so tired. No one else knew what the hell to do.

  I figured if Cree was still in the cellar, and she was, we couldn’t be in imminent danger of being fried.

  Maybe Ben was out looking for a real healer.

  “Reclaim your essence!”

  Pain flared through every vein I had, sharp and icy and splintering, so severe I couldn’t even scream. Gods.

  “Reclaim your essence!”

  I couldn’t move. I wanted to. I needed to try to curl away from the pain, which didn’t make sense, because the pain was everywhere. Except one spot that I couldn’t really define, a location that didn’t have the ice but instead some odd sucking sensation. It wasn’t pleasant, but in comparison to the rest of my body it was a haven of comfort. I wanted more of it. But I couldn’t move.

  “Reclaim your essence!”

  The shards of ice grew larger, tearing at my skin from the inside. For Zaire’s sake.

  “Reclaim your essence!”

  I must have screamed then. How could I not? But I couldn’t hear anything and I couldn’t feel anything other than the icy, shredding pain tearing through every part of me, slicing at the bottom of my feet, ripping jagged holes into my stomach and chest, sending jolts of ice through my limbs. My left hand was hot, burning hot, and the focus of the strange sucking sensation. Gods, gods, gods.

  “Reclaim your essence!”

  The words pierced my ears and struck my brain. And then I felt nothing, a sublime relief.

  When I opened my eyes, the fires within the circle were all gone, though the scent of wet hay lingered. It was dark and smokey and I felt filthy.

  Taro was shouting. “There’s blood all over her!”

  Was there? It took far too much effort to move either head or limb to look.

  “The poison is bleeding out of her.” Cree was chillingly calm.

  “Or maybe she’s bleeding to death!”

  “Keep your hold on her hand. She is taking blood from you.”

  There was something wrong with mixing blood from different people. I knew that. I just couldn’t remember what the danger was, or what it meant.

  “Don’t touch anything,” Cree said. “Don’t move from your positions. This isn’t finished yet.” She went to each corner of the cellar, dousing the flames with a handful of powder. I didn’t understand how that worked, a dash of powder putting out fire.

  “Thank you,” Cree said, and I knew she wasn’t talking to either of us.

  The salt she had lined around me she dug up with one of the rods she had sunk into the ground. She mixed it up in the soil, then poured more salt over it. “Thank you.”

  She plucked up the remaining rods, and when she had the last one in her hands, she said again, “Thank you.”

  “For what?” Taro asked her.

  She didn’t answer. From her bag she took out shorter, slimmer rods and she stuck them into the dirt in roughly the same locations as the first set. She lit them, and though none of them held a flame, they immediately began to smoke, thin white lines curving up from the tips. The smoke smelled nice, clean and refreshing, a little like mint.

  All this smoke. I wondered if any of the food in the cellar was still fit for eating.

  Cree knelt beside Taro, her hands clasped on her knees, her head bowed.

  “Can’t I—”

  Cree shushed Taro sharply. He shut up.

  So we just waited, in silence. I didn’t know for what. I wished I could sleep. I was too tired to sleep. And too filthy.

  And then, in time, she reached out and separated my hand from Taro’s. The fact that both of our hands were smeared with unexpected amounts of blood should have probably been alarming to me, but I was beyond strong emotions. Cree plucked out the bob and placed it in a handkerchief, which she tied around Taro’s neck.

  Another bottle appeared from her bag, and in this was a liquid, clear and just a little thicker than water. This Cree slowly poured over me, over my forehead, temple to temple, hairline to eyebrows, and then my face, throat, torso and limbs, all very thorough, with the same intimacy she’d shown during my earlier examination.

  That should have bothered me more than it did. I just didn’t care. I was just happy the pain was gone, and the nausea.

  “Thank you,” Cree said once she’d finished with my feet. She untied the handkerchief from Taro’s neck and tied it around my own. It was awkward, because I couldn’t shift my head to help her.

  Once the new rods had burned down to small stubs, she removed them from the dirt and threw them into her bag. Then she put her hands flat on the dirt, bowing until her forehead touched the floor. “Thank you,” she said, and the difference in her tone told me this whole thing was over.

  So. That was casting. It was real.

  I would panic about that later. When I wasn’t so exhausted.

  “You can get dressed, Shintaro,” she said, rising to her feet and shaking dirt from her robe.

  Taro tried to stand, only to flop over on the floor.

  “Don’t worry. It’s natural to be weak. Dunleavy has taken a great deal from you.”

  “How am I going to get her back upstairs?”

  I laughed. For some reason that question struck me as hilarious.

  “I will assist you.”

  And, oh, wasn’t that an exercise in graceless danger? Carrying me was beyond Taro at that point, which meant he and Cree sort of dragged me up the stairs between them, each with one of my arms around their shoulders. There were several moments when someone nearly lost their balance. It was hysterical.

  And of course, I was still naked. Later I would be pathetically relieved that there was no one else there to see me.

  Cree directed us to Taro’s suite rather than my own, though I balked at being laid on his clean sheets. “Filthy,” I mumbled as they sat me down on the side of the bed, and I let myself fall back. I didn’t think I could sit up unassisted if I tried.

  “Yes, and you’ll remain filthy until I come back to see you tomorrow. Neither of you will wash anything, not even your hands or face.”

  “You can’t be serious.” Taro’s lip curled in disgust.

  “Lie down.” She left the room without waiting to see if she was obeyed.

  Taro shifted me so I was properly stretched out on the bed. “How do you feel?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Think any of what she did down there did any good?”

  “Don’t know.”

  And I didn’t want to think about it. At least, not yet. The very idea of casting spells, that something so powerful and limitless existed for anyone who could read a book, was appalling. People were too stupid to be trusted with that sort of thing. People were too avaricious. And too vengeful. The possibilities were terrifying, and I was too tired to be terrified. I would be terrified later.

  Taro sat on the other side of the bed. He was shaking, and his eyes seemed a little unfocused. “You all right?” I asked.

  “Don’t know,” he answered with the tiniest smile.

  In time, Cree came back into the room, carrying a tray with a jug and two mugs. “This is water,” she explained, filling the mugs. “This is all you are to consume between now and my return. Neither of you will be able to tolerate anything else in your stomach, and vomiting when you’re this drained can be dangerous.” She gave Taro one mug and put a strong arm under my shoulders to lift me up and have me drink the water, whether I wanted it or not.

  “You both need to sleep,” said Cree. “Shintaro, I want you to lock the door behind me. I’ll be leaving a note for your colleagues, instructing them not to disturb you. Should you somehow end up speaking with any of them before I return, you are to tell them I took you downstairs to sweat the illness out. No mention of casting to anyone. Understood?”

  She gave each of us a hard look, and I was sure
it would have been most effective had I not been so desperate for sleep.

  “Sure,” I muttered.

  “Of course,” said Taro.

  She nodded and moved away from the bed, and I had no idea whether Taro followed her to lock the door, because I fell asleep.

  I woke to pounding on the door, my heart leaping into triple time, because pounding on the door was never a good thing. I heard Taro swearing, and there was movement, and then I heard him shout out an inquiry, but I didn’t hear an answer.

  It turned out to be Cree. “What’s wrong?” I asked, feeling confused and dizzy.

  She was clean again, her hair tightly coiled at the back, her dress of simple clean lines and a delicate fabric unsuited to any kind of labor. She looked completely respectable. No one would think she’d been chanting in the basement with multicolored fire dancing around her.

  “Nothing,” she said. “I told you I would be back.”

  It was morning already? I rubbed at my eyes, which felt gritty. So did my fingers, and I looked at my hand, which, to my surprise, was streaked with some kind of orange reddish substance. And suddenly I felt just disgusting.

  Cree put me through another examination, involving more little strips, and at the end of it declared all the niyacin had been cleared from my system.

  And, really, I couldn’t believe it. It was all so unlikely, to be so throughly sick so quickly, and to be cured so quickly.

  Though I said nothing, Cree seemed to know what I was thinking. “How is your stomach?”

  I’d been trying not to think about it. Now that I did, it cramped painfully. “Empty.”

  “You’re hungry.”

  “That adjective seems somehow inadequate.”

  “Shintaro, how does she feel?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Is she fevered or clammy?”

  He put a hand to my forehead, my cheek, and then my throat. “No. She feels good. Normal.”

  “And her eyes?”

  “They’ve lost their glaze.”

  My eyes were glazed? “But I’m so tired,” I complained. “Of course you are.” You idiot. “You were poisoned, or as good as, and you lost a lot of blood last night. You won’t be back to full health for weeks. But you will be back to full health. Provided you don’t do anything stupid.” She looked at Taro, who was leaning against the wall looking awful, the disarray of his hair crazed as opposed to sexy, his white shirt and black trousers wrinkled and encrusted with various stains. His face, pale with wrinkles about the eyes, had dabs of the same orange red that was streaked all over my hands and arms. “She needs lots of broth, and tea with high amounts of sugar and cream. No coffee, nothing with alcohol. Tomorrow, add fruit and greens, fresh. Nothing dried. The next day, you can add cheese and small amounts of meat. Don’t touch that bread. I want you to bring it to me. If there’s as much niyacin in it as I suspect, it isn’t safe for anyone, whether they’re sensitive to the powder or not.”