Touched By Magic (The King's Wolf Saga)

by Doranna Durgin

  Sky sighed, a content sound, as Reandn brushed the sweat-stiff hairs of his back. "Enjoy it while my arm lasts," Reandn told him, stopping to flex his arm.

  "Reandn?"

  Rethia. He was surprised she wasn't asleep somewhere; she'd looked drawn and pale this morning, and plenty tired. When she drew close enough to escape the silhouette effect of the bright entrance, he could see she looked no better than before; even her thick, bright hair was out of sorts, her bangs mussed and long strands of hair, escaped from her braid, framed her face.

  "I thought I might find you here," she said.

  "You look like you should be in bed." He gave her a wary look. Given his penchant for saying just the wrong thing, he might just drive her out to the meadow again.

  Or maybe she'd drive him somewhere, instead.

  "Probably I should," she admitted. Her striking blue and brown eyes were red-rimmed, and her slightly long nose had a moist look to it, as if she'd been crying just recently. Well, then, she was already upset. He shook his head; he'd probably done that, too.

  "How'd you come to be with Faline this morning?" he asked, bending to brush Sky's belly and giving the horse a warning tap on the rump when one hind leg lifted, thinking about protest.

  Her gaze wandered away, slightly unfocused; for a moment he didn't think she was going to answer, and he wondered why she'd been looking for him in the first place. But after a moment, she said, "I was in the meadow and I thought I heard you on the road, so I went, and there they were. It must have been her I felt. She's a lot like you."

  Reandn tried to unravel the meaning behind this and gave up. Half the things she said didn't make sense to anyone but her anyway.

  Then she looked at him again, and the perpetual vagueness in her expression was gone, replaced by a surprisingly sharp gaze. "I want to talk to you—about the meadow, and about what you asked if I was magic."

  "I'm sorry I said it," he told her. "I didn't do it to upset you...I was drugged, and I wasn't thinking very clearly."

  "That's exactly why I know it was the truth. Or at least, the truth as you saw it." She gave him a wry little smile. "Though I get the impression you tell the truth as you see it any time you open your mouth."

  He stopped, resting the brush on Sky's rump to stare at her, trying to decipher the intent behind that one. He was beginning to realize there was more to this woman than he'd yet seen.

  Sky shifted, pushing his arm into a painful angle. He removed it with a grimace and, as absently as ever, Rethia reached out and took his hand. She was at it again; the faint whisper in his ears quickly faded, but he'd have recognized it anywhere.

  His pain, of course, had receded. He caught her eyes, kept her in close with his gaze. "That's why I said you were magic."

  Her odd brown-ringed blue eyes held a steady gaze with his own. "I think you may be right." The tip of her pale braid had fallen over her shoulder and she fingered the bluntly cut end. "I never paid any attention before...it's just the way things are. But you made me think." She gave him a sly glance. "And you didn't suppose I did a lot of that, did you? Thinking."

  Reandn left the brush sitting on Sky's rump and leaned back against the stall. Sky made a lazy snort and resumed picking at his hay, apparently convinced the grooming was over. "You think your own thoughts, Rethia. I just don't suppose they're much like anybody else's."

  She smiled. "Perhaps they're not. But it never occurred to me to wonder why, and now I am. I even think I know."

  He gave her a wary look. Rethia didn't notice it. "When I was a little girl, I went missing for a day. They found me that night in my meadow. Father was upset, of course."

  "No more than Kacey, I'm sure," Reandn said dryly.

  But Rethia was caught up in a world of memory, and didn't even seem to hear. "I told him I'd fallen asleep. All these years I thought I was telling the truth, but when you said...when you called me magic, when you ran from the meadow...." She hesitated. "Have you ever seen a unicorn?"

  He shook his head. "They died with the magic."

  "I have," she said firmly. "A whole herd. They're beautiful, not what you'd think. They're wild, and dangerous. "

  Reandn pushed his fingers through his hair. "Rethia," he said, "You're not old enough to have seen a whole herd. There just weren't that many left. I don't think I'd been born, then."

  "Listen to me," she said, with a hint of impatience. "After you said what you did, I went to my meadow. I thought of the things I've done, the way I can ease your arm and the way Kacey gives me all the sickest children to care for, and how they get well when she seems to think they shouldn't, and how you're allergic to me—though I stopped most of that." She gave him an earnest look—far too earnest, as far as he was concerned.

  He shook his head, alarm rising. "I don't want to hear this."

  "I never tried to remember that day before—but last night I found the unicorns waiting in my head. That day they came to my meadow and they talked to me—they changed me—and then they went away. And after that, the last of the magic was gone." She shook her head. "I've known it all along, without knowing. They were the keepers, you see. They were the magic."

  "Whatever you say." I don't want to hear this.

  Because he knew where she was going with it. He knew why she'd come to him.

  "Don't treat me like a child," she told him, her words carrying an edge unlike anything he'd heard from her before. "They were the magic, and they left. But..." she frowned, trying to frame the words. "They didn't go away without leaving a key."

  "You," Reandn said. "Or you want to think so."

  Her gaze filled with unexpected pain, and she tipped her head to hide her eyes behind the impenetrable fringe of her bangs. Her voice went thick, choking with that grief. "You can't even guess what it was like. You can't. The things they said to me, felt at me... There was a brown unicorn, with the longest mane...he could have killed me so easily. Instead he got inside my head, and then hid from me in there. All this time I didn't know, and now—now I can't stop remembering!" She turned from him, covering her face with her hands—struggling hard to keep from crying.

  "Rethia..." Reandn said, and reached out a hesitant hand. He almost withdrew again, not ready to offer that kind of contact to any woman, but Adela's command came as clearly as if she'd been there. Comfort her, said her voice in his head, so his hand fell gently on her arm and gave it a little squeeze.

  She didn't look at him, but she lifted her head slightly. "I know how to get rid of it," she whispered. "But I need your help. You can tell if the magic's getting stronger—you can feel it. If I'm a key, then I want to be a key. I want to ask them back."

  I didn't want to hear this. Reandn let his hand fall slowly back to his leg. "If you're right, then you'll bring back magic as well."

  She looked at him, her eyes full of premature gratitude. Their bright-dark strangeness caught him as always, punctuating the intensity of her words. "Yes. Help me bring back the magic."

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  Chapter 19

  Reandn stood by the well in the front of Teayo's house and poured another bucket of cold water over his head, raising goosebumps on his chest and arms as he washed away the day's sweat-glued dust. He dropped the bucket back into the well and let its own weight pull it down, listening to the slow creak of the rope.

  Dusk had given way to darkness, hiding him from any casual glance. That suited Reandn fine. Stiff, more tired than he liked from the day's activity, and still touched by enraged astonishment by Rethia's request, he wished the cold water could wash away his thoughts as well as his sweat.

  The bucket hit water and slowly settled; Reandn forced his sore arm to work, bringing it upward again. There was no more time to pamper it, not with Rethia determined to bring her own magic into the world. Ronsin had to be dead before she had the chance to accomplish her goal.

  Reandn set the bucket on the thick stone edge of the well. With or without Ronsin, the restoration of magic appalled him as much as ever
—but Rethia didn't think about the danger. She thought about healing people and getting unicorns out of her head—and never about the kind of wizard who would kill children for power.

  With luck, she'd simply fail in her quest—but if she was right, and she was some sort of key, she was more likely to succeed than not.

  Which left only one way to truly stop her, and the fact that the possibility had even run through his head was more than he could deal with. He dunked his head in the bucket, scrubbing his hands across his face and hair.

  Someone's there, coming up behind—

  Reandn flung his head back, spraying water. He reached for his knife, squinting against the water that still dripped in his eyes—but even water-blurred eyes could make out the light of the mirrored candle lantern moving toward him; it paused several yards away, its flickering light gleaming along the knife's blade and sparking off the droplets on his lashes. He couldn't tell who stood behind it, but lowered the knife anyway. Someone from the house, of course.

  "Touchy," Kacey said.

  Kacey. He returned the knife to its sheath. "I can't wait to get back to a place where people know better than to do that," he grunted, turning his attention back to the bucket and the small sliver of soap borrowed from the house.

  "You might want to get used to it." Kacey came forward to set the lantern on the well. "From what your friend said today, you won't be very welcome at your keep if you go ahead with this...plan of yours."

  "If you came out here to make that plain to me, you're wasting your time. I heard her and I understood her." He lathered his face and reached for his razor, but not before flicking the lantern shutter closed. Light leaked out around the seams of the shiny tin, no longer enough to disrupt his night vision.

  "Actually, I thought you might like some light, but I see I was mistaken." She made as if to pick up the lantern, but hesitated. "No, that's not entirely true," she added with reluctance, then deliberately changed the subject again. "If you shave in the dark, you won't see what you've missed."

  "I don't have a mirror. Light seems a little pointless." Reandn set the blade against his face.

  "If you let me crack the lantern open a little, I'll do that for you."

  He lowered the straight blade to look at the dark form of her, skeptical; the thought of acerbic Kacey with a sharp blade at his throat made him feel a little too vulnerable.

  "Cut yourself, then," Kacey said, and her voice sounded more stung than acerbic, now. She reached for the lantern.

  "No," Reandn said, setting the razor on the well. "It's just..." Adela. How she'd loved to shave his face; how she'd loved to turn it into play.

  But Kacey, he realized, probably shaved many of the men in the clinic, and trimmed her father's beard as well. And Kacey, he also realized, this time with a little start, was also giving him a peace offering.

  He held out the razor.

  She put her back to the waist high well wall and hopped up to sit on it, then leaned over to unshutter the lantern before she took the razor. "This would be much easier if you were sitting down inside," she said. "Hold still."

  "I came out here so I wouldn't be inside," he reminded her, holding still indeed as the sharp blade came in contact with his face.

  "I know you did," she said. "And I came out to tell you I'm sorry."

  "You're sorry? For what?" He drew back to look at her.

  "I said hold still!" She planted her hand firmly on the top of his head. "You're not making this easy. Any of it. Because of what your friend said today, that's what. Because of what's happened to you. And...mostly because of what Rethia asked of you today."

  Quietly, he said, "None of it's your fault."

  "I can be sorry it's happening, can't I?" The annoyance on her face did not extend to her steady hand. Scrape, scrape, and wipe against her skirt.

  Hot and cold Kacey, one moment mixing teas for him, the next aiming a scathing look in his direction. That she'd come out here to be with him was as significant as anything she'd done before. And, as usual, equally puzzling. No matter what she scolded or how she comforted, he had the feeling he'd never seen her true self. "Yes," he said, when no longer concerned for his upper lip. " Thank you."

  Silence from her, as she concentrated on her task. Voices from the house drifted down to them; Tanager's, in a complaint that broke from low to high and then stopped in the embarrassment of it. Teayo, some typically hearty response. They had, he thought, no real inkling of what this day had wrought.

  More footsteps behind him, and although Kacey's gaze flicked out and then back to her task with no alarm, he couldn't help but stiffen.

  "Oh, stop," she said, impatience coloring her words. "Do you Wolves really have to be like that?"

  "It's Farren." The old man's voice was quiet, understanding.

  Reandn scowled, taking the chance as Kacey looked down to wipe off the razor. "If you're all going to come out here, maybe I should go back up to the house."

  "I wouldn't. Tanager still hasn't accepted that he won't be going into the city, at least not at first."

  "And you?"

  "Another day or so," Farren said quietly. In the pause that followed, Kacey guided Reandn's head to the side and tipped it back to carefully shave around the fresh scar there. A few last strokes of dark stubble gone, and Reandn was free to turn to Farren. The old wizard's beard gleamed in the lantern light, and his face still glistened with ointment. "What now, Wolf First? Will you wait for me, so we can look into this matter together?"

  Reandn's first impulse was to argue. He squelched it, nodded his thanks to Kacey, and took back his folded razor. Then, with unfeigned reluctance, he said, "You might find him without causing as much stir." Although with Faline's patrol in Solace, Reandn was no longer without cover for his stalk. "But if you want to learn anything from him, you'll have to do it quickly—before I kill him."

  Farren didn't hesitate. "I've a few more days to work with you on that one," he said. "Maybe by then your Faline will be closing in on him."

  The worst possibility of all, if Reandn wasn't there to watch her back. Faline didn't believe in the magic, nor in Ronsin's strength. If she went to investigate, she'd be unprepared, and unprotected. She'd be dead, and Ronsin would be gone again. He combed his fingers through his hair, let the wet length of it fall below the nape of his neck. "Maybe she will."

  Farren regarded him with a long and searching gaze—and when he turned away, he seemed convinced, satisfied that Reandn would travel with him into the city, although the words had never been said. Hoping, perhaps, that what they'd been through together had created enough regard that Reandn would wait.

  Rethia wanted him to stay and help her find magic. Farren wanted him to provide access to Ronsin, to help him find magic. And all while Reandn had the best reasons in the world for shutting the magic away forever. Sorry, Farren.

  Kacey watched silently as Farren's retreated, until his silhouette in the doorway announced his arrival back at the house. Reandn let his mind go quiet, absorbing the earthiness that came with a heavy dew, the silence of all but the random liquid trill of the persistent night birds. For an instant he could even pretend he was home, enjoying a quiet moment alone at the beginning of a night patrol. A night of working with the men and women who respected him, and believed in him, and then in the morning, Adela's scent in his bed.

  Kacey took a deep breath and the illusion shattered. He turned to her—almost turned on her—nearly overcome with the loss of it all.

  "You left your gear on the cot when you got your razor out," she said, and her voice sounded odd, like there was a small hurt thing hiding in her throat. "There's a patch there. I was wondering if you'd like me to sew it back on your vest."

  She knows.

  She knew he had no intention of waiting for Farren. She knew he'd accepted that he might die. And her words hadn't meant what they'd said at all. They'd meant I wish you wouldn't go and I'm worried about you and worst of all, I wasn't shaving a patient. I was shaving
a man. Hot and cold Kacey, trying to run from the mistake of caring for him with the cold, and trying to make up for it with the warmth.

  Reandn felt his chest go tight, his voice grow distant. "Thank you," he said. "But if you leave the needle and thread, I'll do it myself."

  She sat there a moment, clearly understanding the rejection. Then she hopped off the well wall and picked up the lantern. "Just don't break the needle," she said, her voice not quite up to the perspicacity the words demanded. "Good ones are hard to find, you know."

  Reandn watched her go, thinking of her steady, sturdy fingers against his face, and wondered, quite suddenly, whether it was the last shave he'd have. To stop Ronsin, to be with Adela again—it was worth trading whatever he might have left waiting for him in life. It was.

  But he stayed out in the cooling darkness until all the lights in the house had been doused, wondering if betraying Farren and Rethia, who true to themselves only when they had their magic, would be as hard to live with as the pain that choked him now.

  ~~~~~

  Come morning, Kacey found her needle and thread on her workbench, set neatly to the side where she'd be sure to see it. Nothing of Reandn's remained—not the saddlebags under the bed, the densely woven shirt he'd often slung over the iron headboard, not even a wrinkle in the bed sheets. There was no sign he'd ever been here, except for the small knot in her stomach.

  Thank goodness she still had another patient. "Eat slowly, child," she told Braden, who gulped his breakfast. He paid her no attention and she added sharply, "Slower, or I'll take it away and feed you like a baby."

  More canny than alarmed, he instantly slowed his pace. It gave him enough time between bites to say, "I'm going home today. When's mam gonna be here?"