"Yes."
An ambush... magic, and poison—and an interminable ride on smooth-stepping Sky. Magic. There had been magic, and it hadn't been Farren's. Was Ronsin near, or was there more magic in this world than anyone seemed to realize? A sharp throb from Reandn's arm took away his trail of thought; he blinked, and realized he'd drifted away.
Rethia frowned. "It's not safe to have any more sweet syrup just yet," she said regretfully. She laid a hand on his arm above the wound for a few moments. "That's better," she said, even as he realized the pain had receded, at least enough so he could think past it again. Her careful hands moved to the bandage around his arm, unwrapping it. Reandn could have sworn he smelled garlic. They had put garlic on his arm?
"Still among the living?" Farren moved into the room to stand by the bedside looking down at Reandn, who didn't much like it, and then glancing over at Rethia. "We can relax, now, can't we?"
Rethia worked at the dressing, carefully lifting Reandn's arm as she unwrapped each pass around it. Farren had to clear his throat before she looked up. "Oh," she said. "Yes, I think so. It'll be a while before he feels well, though, so I hope...."
"Hope what?" Farren said, a trace of impatience in his voice.
"Hope? Oh," she said, and straightened her shoulders—looking, for the first time, like she'd been up all night. "He won't be traveling for quite a few days."
But Reandn had slowly been adding up the clues before him. She'd been up all night, no doubt caring for him. Farren's question, the kinetic memory of jerking an arrow out of his own arm, and Bergren, explaining the arrow poison to him. And most of all, filling his mind's eye, Adela, waiting for him. She had been waiting.
Reandn's good hand shot over to grab Rethia's wrist, all the strength of his weak body in those five fingers; she gave a quiet gasp of surprise. He tightened his grip in emphasis, and her great blue-brown eyes centered on his face, jolting him as he looked into them for the first time. His voice was a harsh whisper. "You kept me alive, didn't you? It was you."
Her eyes flicked away, up to Farren, and then to her imprisoned wrist. "Yes," she said, and her expression was reassuring. "But you'll be all—"
He shook her arm, silencing her. "You should have let it be."
She twisted away, and he couldn't sustain the strength to hold her. "I was right!" she cried, stumbling back from him. "You weren't trying."
She ran around the bed and past Farren, into whatever room lay behind him. Reandn closed his eyes and thought about Adela...waiting for him, expecting him.... It's all right, he told her silently. He still had to find Ronsin.
He just needed time to heal—and a chance to divest himself of Farren and grandson. He'd been wrong to think they could travel together. With or without magic, Farren was a liability—and Tanager was twice one.
A new voice startled him out of his thoughts; it was a woman's voice, full of scorn. "It's not our habit to just let it be." She waited for him to open his eyes, and then set a food-laden tray over his lap, standing back to regard him with her arms crossed.
He stared back, wondering who this woman was. Plumply full-bodied where Rethia was slender, dark instead of light, dressed in practical trousers and a short-sleeved tunic...she looked like her feet were firmly on the ground. Amazing, Reandn thought. He'd only been awake for a few minutes, yet he'd already managed to earn this woman's ire—even if he wasn't sure exactly why.
He shouldn't have worried. She didn't hesitate to tell him, her hazel eyes smoldering. "We'll help just about anyone, but we do have rules of courtesy. For one thing, if someone stays up all night to save your life, you don't complain about it. That girl worked hard for you."
He just looked at her, tired just from being in the same room with her energetic bearing.
"Hmmph," she said. "Eat that. Whether or not you want to." She circled around behind Farren, out of Reandn's narrow field of view; he thought she was probably still in the room somewhere.
After another moment's consideration—and a prompting pang from his stomach—Reandn eyed the tray. It sat on his stomach, and there was no way he could pull himself to a sitting position beneath it. To his surprise, Farren leaned over and lifted it for him until he pulled himself up. Then, awkward with his right hand, Reandn managed to spoon up most of the thin stew.
Farren didn't speak until the food was almost gone. Then he sat on the short padded stool beside the bed and said somberly, "We need to talk."
"I have the feeling this is the beginning of a conversation we've already ended," Reandn said shortly. As if he was supposed to trust the man just because he hadn't used magic at the ambush.
Apparently so, for Farren gave his head one short shake. "Things are different now. You've seen I have no magic to use, while I've seen someone else does. I also watched you identify it before even I could feel it. I need to understand what's happening if I'm going to help stop it."
"I didn't ask for your help."
"That's very gracious, to the man who saved your life." The woman's sardonic voice had lost none of its bite. Reandn looked past Farren and found the worktable beyond him; behind that he found the yet unnamed face that went with the voice. It was an oval face, plain aside from expressive hazel eyes, and it reflected none of the plumpness of the body below. Brown hair hung in soft curls and just brushed her shoulders, swinging with the motion as she worked with mortar and pestle.
"If I'd been on my own, I wouldn't have been caught unaware, or on foot," Reandn told her, his voice just as sharp as hers. She stopped her work long enough to raise eyebrows of doubt.
"Reandn," Farren interposed, "if you and Kacey get started at each other you'll wear out before I get a chance to hear what I need to know. Please. How do you know about the magic?"
Reandn let the spoon rest in the shallow bowl in his lap. Did it really matter if the man knew how he could tell, once he already knew Reandn wasn't to be fooled over magic? He said simply, "I can feel it. Can't you?"
Farren closed his eyes in relief at such sudden cooperation. Behind him, Kacey wrapped her crushed herbs in a loosely woven cloth and dipped it into a steaming mug. Then she leaned on her elbows to watch.
"How do you feel it?" Farren asked. "What made you so certain I'd used magic on you after your... arrival in Maurant?"
How did he feel it? It disrupted his entire being, nothing less. Reandn remembered faltering the spot in the woods where the Resiore boy's trail disappeared; he thought of crashing to the floor in front of Saxe in the ready room. He remembered the fear when magic disabled him before Ronsin...destroyed Adela.
And then he swallowed hard to open his throat and said, as casually as he could, "Mostly in my ears. Or maybe it's in my head." A hundred echoing bees flying around inside his mind. "It's a rush of noise. I don't know why I can hear it and others can't. And if it wasn't magic I heard in your house, what was it?"
"I'm not sure," Farren admitted. "Unprepared translocation is a terrible shock to the body as well as the mind. It was necessary for Lina to dose you—so I've no idea what you thought you might have heard."
"Did hear," Reandn growled.
"Dosed him?" Kacey said, bobbing her seeping herbs up and down in a thoughtful gesture. "What medicines, Farren?"
Farren shrugged, twisting on the stool to address her. "I'm not sure. Pain medicines, something to keep him sedated until his body got a chance to sort things out. Nothing an ordinary household would have any trouble obtaining."
"Probably something like this," she said, lifting the herbs from the mug before she brought it around the table for Reandn. "Here," she ordered. "Drink it all. And if your ears ring, don't go tossing us around the room again—it's just the herbs. That's probably all it was at your house, Farren, especially if she was brewing it thick." She looked down at Reandn, who'd made no attempt to pick up the mug, and gestured impatiently. "It's only something to take the edge off that arm. Now that you've driven Rethia away, you'll be feeling it more."
That made little sense to
him, not that she seemed to expect it would, or to care that it didn't. Although, he realized, it was already true enough.
He'd have preferred it to make sense, and he'd have preferred that this woman didn't seem so prepared to pick a fight with him. Kacey stared down at him, a scowl growing in her eyebrows and spreading to the face below. "Drink it."
With a glance at Farren—whose amusement he didn't appreciate—Reandn took a first, bitter sip and made a face. But he drank the rest of the tea without further fuss. It was worth it to escape the glare, regardless of its effect on his arm.
Farren gave him the moments afterward to close his eyes, hoping the herbs would take effect. Kacey returned to remove the tray, and pulled another stool out to sit by his arm, stingingly aromatic poultice and bandages in hand.
"It is garlic," Reandn said without thinking, looking at her. He thought he saw a hint of a smile.
"Among other things," she said. "Probably not necessary anymore, but it's good to draw the snake venom out."
"You and your reaction to magic...it sounds like allergies," Farren said, scraping fingers down his beard in thought. "It's been so long...I should have realized."
"Allergies?" Kacey repeated, saving Reandn the trouble. "What—?"
"Allergies weren't all that common even when magic was strong—but every once in a while, someone would crop up with it. The very sensitive usually died before anyone recognized what was happening—after all, the reaction is mostly internal, and not as easy to recognize as a rash or runny eyes. But when a sensitive child was recognized in time, they were cherished and protected." He looked at Reandn, a smile playing about his eyes. "If you'd been born into magic, Reandn, you would have spent your life among the Highborn, serving as a detector for people who were neither talented nor sensitive to magic, and who had no other way to know if malignant magic was in use."
Reandn blinked at him, but spoke more to himself than the wizard. "That's what it was," he murmured, thinking of all the times his body had tried to tell him about Ronsin. "All that noise in my head—"
"That's what Rethia said," Kacey offered suddenly, obviously voicing her thought before she had time to order the words. "About the noise, I mean. When you started in on us."
Reandn raised a brow. "When I did what?"
"That's right," Farren said, but it was to Kacey he spoke. "He reacted much that way at home, once, as well. Does it bother you that much, Reandn? Or is it what you saw that magic do?"
Reandn's gaze snapped to the wizard, his heart struggling between anger and anguish; his rough voice filled the room without rising in volume. "You ask too many questions, wizard."
Farren held his ground, his own eyes cool, his face unreadable. "And I don't get enough answers," he said, and let a moment of quiet fill the space between them. "Haven't you figured it out yet, Reandn? I'm on your side. But I can't continue to blunder along. I've got to put a stop to this."
Reandn pulled away from Kacey as she finished her work, twisting to face the wizard, his voice hard. "I'm a Wolf, Farren. Letting you travel with me was a mistake. From here I go on my own." Ow, dammit. But not today. Not for a few days. His arm throbbed under the taut new bandages; he closed his eyes against it. Not today. But soon.
"Be still," Kacey said quietly, matter-of-factly. "Try to relax. The tea will help in just a moment—and you've still got venom in your system. Don't push it." As if she could read his mind. Rethia certainly seemed to be able. "And you, Farren. I think you'd better try another time."
"That's all right," Farren said, scraping the stool back, his voice rising as he stood. "It looks like I have that time to work with."
His footsteps took him out of the room. Kacey's stood, then hesitated. Her hand fell down on his good shoulder with a more comforting touch than he would have expected, given her antagonism. "The worst of it's over," she said. "It'll get better soon."
He hoped so. For as soon as he was able, he was shaking himself free of Farren to go after his prey.
~~~~~~
He was with her, the bright-eyed, dark-haired woman who fit so well against him; she warmed him, body and soul. Her fingers traced his spine, her breath was hot against his neck, and she laughed with delight at the goose bumps she caused. He threw his leg over her thighs and tangled his fingers in her hair, kissing her. Starting with her mouth, moving to the sensitive skin of her neck, his free hand caressing her bare shoulder, her breast, the gentle swell of her lower belly. They spoke their own language, now, of quick breathing and throaty noises. Skin on skin as she rolled on top of him, settling down on him with a mutual gasp of pleasure—
Gone! She was gone, and cold grey deafening magic surrounded him instead, mocking him, tearing at him. Panting, he fought to regain his love, to help her, refusing to believe she was truly gone. He couldn't think, couldn't breathe, couldn't move—
Suddenly the eyes meeting his were startling blue and brown, and the hair that fell to tickle his face was thick and pale. With a great gasp, Reandn flung aside the visions. His hands closed around her upper arms, fingers digging into soft flesh. He clung to the sight of candlelight flickering off her brow and cheek, dimly illuminating the lines of her shoulder and the bed beside him.
"You're awake now," she said.
"Am I?" he demanded in a gasp. Her hands rested on his shoulders and he felt a tingle there; it spread to his ears in the too-familiar feel of magic. "Am I?"
"Yes, of course. You're at Teayo's now, remember? You've just had a bad dream."
"Are you magic?" Sweat dripped down the side of his face; he gripped her with his eyes as much as his hands.
When she laughed, it was light, and held nothing more sinister than amusement. It made the candlelight seem brighter, and Reandn blinked, relaxing his hold. The magic still sang through his blood, but all at once he realized there was no malice in it.
"You are," he said, and she laughed again, shaking her head.
"Only if there is magic in caring, Reandn." She used a damp cloth to wipe away his sweat, and he submitted to it like a child with a dirty face. "Feel a little better now?"
He looked around the room, illuminated only by the stubby candle on the worktable, and saw that the woven cover on the bed next to him was rumpled only at the head of the bed—as though someone had been curled up, sitting, watching. "Why?"
It should have made no sense to her. But she sobered and said quietly, "Because it's what I do."
"I'm sorry about what I said this morning," Reandn said. "I didn't mean to hurt your feelings."
Her eyes flashed up from the cloth in her quietly folded hands. "You didn't."
Slowly, he relaxed from the grip of his visions. "You were upset."
"Yes..." she said, looking away again. She took his hand in both of hers in an absent, familiar gesture he couldn't bring himself to deny, although he didn't welcome it. "I...just can't understand...I mean, the wind, and the way it sounds in the trees, or the way the air smells after rain, and the clean rustle of hay in the stalls—you want to run from all that. "
His first reaction was to laugh. She sounded like the few Ardrite priests who bothered to invade the barracks. But he stopped himself, for he saw she was sincere. More carefully, he said, "It's not quite that way...I'm not running from anything." Am I? "It's just there's something else I miss more."
"I see," she said, and absently—although he was beginning to suspect she always knew just what she was about. She worked his injured arm, just enough to flex at the torn tissue without pulling it, and eliciting none of the creaks left over from what Farren called translocation. "And what makes you think she would want you to give up all the things of this world now, when you will be with her in the end regardless?"
He stiffened in surprise, in the automatic stirrings of anger. But astonishment won out and, as she released his arm, he asked roughly, "How do you know so much?"
Her shrug diffused the mystery. "Farren's been guessing about you since you popped up in Maurant. Kacey said when you c
ame in, you... reacted to the poison, thought you saw someone else. I've seen loss before. You carry it with you like a shroud."
He gathered it about him now, a thing of familiarity in this strange Southern place with its magic and the creature of precise and quiet beauty that sat on the edge of his bed. It shadowed his eyes, set his jaw. She drew back from him, and despite her unchanged position she might as well have been sitting across the room.
"You know her best," Rethia said. "Is giving up what you have here and now what she would ask of you? Or is it patience she wants?"
He swallowed hard and looked away, staring into the darkness. A muscle along his jaw clenched, faded, and trembled into shape again.
Rethia moved over to the other bed, tucking her knees up under her chin and smoothing her skirts into decency. After a moment she leaned back against the headboard—and shortly after that, to all appearances, was asleep.
Reandn stared into the darkness for a long time.
~~~~~
Satisfaction filled Kacey at the sight of Rethia asleep in the sickroom; it meant she was perfectly secure in her patient's well-being. Reandn slept as heavily, his breathing deep and regular, his color good, his face relaxed. Even the scabby swath along his jaw looked better today. She squelched the urge to touch that face; it didn't need her attention.
Soon he would wake, and he'd be in need of more bitter tea. Once the poison left his system, the arm would he'll quickly.
The sound of a yawn took her eyes away from Reandn. Rethia sat, stretching, rubbing her eyes in a child-like gesture.
"Good morning," Kacey said.
Rethia closed her eyes and took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of the morning. "Yes," she said, and smiled, looking at Kacey. "He'll be all right now."
"Looks that way," Kacey agreed. "I hope he was civil to you this time."
"He never meant to be rude." Rethia left the bed, pausing for a quick glance at her patient. "He's hurting so much inside, I don't think he knows when some of it leaks out to other people."
Touched By Magic (The King's Wolf Saga) Page 19
