All of this sound and scent and sight slammed into me like an avalanche, and then I fell.
— 37 —
Unexpected Visitor
Contrary to everyone’s expectation—including mine—I did not die, nor was I allowed to drift in the sweet oblivion of unconsciousness. Duzayan and the chaos he’d loosed plagued my mind and the living tormented my body, hitting me, dragging me, and the gods alone knew what else.
“Crow, can you hear me?”
“Yes.” Someone—Tanris—had asked me the same question only a moment ago. Did he think the answer would be different now? Could he not just let me die in peace? I had not the strength to move, nor the energy to devise another desperate attack on the enemy.
“Crow?”
“What?” I ventured to lick my lips. My tongue did not belong to me and the flavor on my lips was strange, cool—if one can call that a flavor—and green like grass; not at all the taste of ash and sulphur and death I expected. Confusion burbled up in me.
“I think he’s waking up.”
The speaker was an idiot. To wake one would have to sleep, and as marvelous as that might be, it just wasn’t a practical thing to do in the middle of a battle with a crazy mage and creatures from another world. I just hadn’t opened my eyes yet. Dreaded to, for a fact, though it was ridiculous to hope keeping them closed would prevent further mayhem or damage to my person. I wanted only to enjoy the sweet respite of quiet for another moment or two.
Wait, quiet?
The small effort of bracing myself to move immediately brought to attention every agonizing ache in me. Someone groaned horribly and it made my throat hurt, which enlightened me to the fact that the awful noise had come from myself. I could not do this any more. I had nothing left to give. An attempt to roll over onto my side and curl into a ball of misery—and perhaps give in to the temptation to cry like a baby—was arrested by a weight on my feet and a hand on my shoulder.
“Easy. Easy, now… You were pretty badly hurt.”
Did I mention the idiocy of the speaker? Only Tanris had such a keen grasp of the obvious. Something wet and cold pressed against my face was the perfect solution for getting my eyes open and for sending me flying upward in a flurry of panic.
“Get it off! Get it off!” I shouted. I heard noises I couldn’t identify, but Tanris spoke clearly and concisely.
“Stop it, you fool.”
I stopped, firstly because he was holding me down and secondly because he looked absolutely frightful. He had a fantastic pair of cuts scribing his cheek and another slicing into his hairline, fierce bruises covering most of his face, a cut and swollen lip, and wildly bloodshot eyes.
“What happened to you?” I croaked, and he gave me one of his characteristic you’re-out-of-your-mind looks.
“He’s fine,” he said to someone, and I turned my head—slowly and with great effort—to see Girl standing some feet away with a damp cloth in her hand and a frightened look on her face.
“Girl, you don’t look so well.” She didn’t, though she looked considerably better than Tanris. In addition to the fear, she sported bloodshot eyes too, more than her usual pallor, and a wild expression. A startlingly black bruise marred one side of her face, and she wore one bandaged arm in a sling. “Are you all right?”
She gave me a curt nod, then hesitantly approached and perched on the edge of the bed to bathe my face. The sensation became much more pleasant now that I knew it was a damp cloth wielded by our very own Girl and not some disgusting thing licking me. It was very strange to find myself in a quiet, clean room—on a bed, no less—when the last thing I remembered was the flaming, clamorous ruins of Duzayan’s mansion and all of those odd creatures cavorting about. But here were Tanris and Girl, looking a little worse for the wear but clearly having survived the encounter, and I, although aching in every part, still lived and breathed. All of us—
Tanris arrested my sudden upward movement again with a hand on my chest, and it hurt! Great and glorious stars, it hurt! “Where is he?” I rasped. How frustrating to have him push me down so easily and hold me still!
“Dead.” Tanris’s horrible face somehow managed to produce a very convincing glum expression. “He’s dead, Crow.”
“What?” I whispered, staring in utter disbelief. It wasn’t true! Wouldn’t I know somehow? I had no doubt in my mind that Not-An-Egg had flapped awkwardly to my rescue; he had not been some bizarre hallucination. A curious dizziness threatened to overwhelm me. “No. No, that can’t be…”
“I very much doubt he’s going to recover. Beheaded people usually don’t, even wizards.”
“People?” I stared. Who? What? “Not people, Egg!” I exclaimed, though the news of Duzayan’s permanent death was certainly welcome. “Where’s Egg?”
He just looked at me, a strange assortment of emotions muddling across his face. Girl tapped my cheek and pointed to the end of the bed, where I discovered the source of the weight on my feet. Thank the gods of dragons and good fortune and otherworldly creatures with bad aim! I had never felt so relieved in all of my life. Well, maybe two or three times, when the circumstances had been dire, but this was different. “Egg!”
Tanris winced. “Please tell me you’re going to give him a proper name. Fang? Claw? Flametooth? Egg is just humiliating.”
The little dragon lifted his head and creaked at me pitifully.
“Is he hurt? What happened to him? Come here,” I coaxed, but reaching for him sent a million shooting pains up my left hand and arm—an appendage so heavily swathed it might have belonged to a mummy. Fortunately, my horizontal position made fainting less obvious. I did not entirely lose consciousness, but I did alarm Girl and Tanris. The latter scolded me severely, but helped prop me up with some pillows, then moved Not-An-Egg up next to me. He, too, sported bandages. Poor baby. With my good hand I rubbed the dragon’s knobby little head while Girl carefully supported my injured arm on more pillows. It burned badly, but I was afraid to look at it, afraid to ask the extent of the damage, and so I tried to focus my attention on the dragon.
“He got torn up pretty badly by something with claws, and broke a bone in his wing,” Tanris offered, sitting down in a chair next to the bed. A pillow beside it and a blanket draped carelessly over the arm indicated recent, lengthy occupation. My chair, in my room, in my apartment! The realization and acceptance brought a dizzying wave of relief.
“Girl fixed him up as best she could,” Tanris went on. “I thought he was a goner, but you wouldn’t let us leave him behind.”
I did not remember that. “Of course not,” I said indignantly. Not-An-Egg looked up at me and heaved a little sigh. His emotions wove a more complicated tapestry than usual: adoration, worry, pain, exhaustion… He had been through a great deal, and him just a baby. “Brave little thing,” I murmured, scritching his chin.
“Girl and I are pretty much fine,” Tanris said drily. “In case you wondered.”
I looked from one to the other in no little confusion and they looked back reproachfully. “Of course you are.”
He snorted.
“You’re always fine, Tanris,” I pointed out.
Abruptly, he got to his feet and stalked out of the room.
“What?” I called out after him, but he did not answer. In a sulk Tanris was difficult to dissuade from his path. Currently, I had no dissuasive powers available. So, “What?” I asked Girl.
She pressed her lips together into a thin, tight line, marched around the bed, and slugged me in my good shoulder, which jarred me considerably and woke in me a fairly intimate knowledge of my other injuries.
“Ow! Hey! What was that for?”
She did not answer, of course, but stomped out after Tanris.
The Ancestors reminded me of their presence, darting about the room in a flurry, then becoming still again. I had the distinct impression that they, too, were displeased.
:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:
I slept a great deal in the nex
t few days, and spent most of my waking hours reading. Tanris was not the only one that could indulge in that sort of thing. Reading, however, could not fill all the time I spent convalescing. Whatever Duzayan had done to me had long-lasting effects that even the Priests of Ishram could not change, and evidently the magic of the Ancestors interfered in some way as well—an occasion that baffled the good brothers no little amount. I would have to recover in my own good time or not at all; a daunting prospect, particularly given the condition of my hand after ripping off the enchanted knife. It was strange, I suppose, but in spite of my career being so dependent upon two deft hands, I could not bring myself to look beneath the swath of bandages. Girl could tell me nothing, and Tanris would not. Neither would he tell where he went or how he spent his days. Conversation was minimal at best, and when I could not read any more, could not sleep any more, I thought. Copiously.
Duzayan, intentionally or not, had influenced my life tremendously. Because of him, everything changed completely and, I imagined, forever. The Ancestors kept a distance, but I knew they had not left me and never would. I was theirs and they were mine, and although I had come to understand that connection through dreams and through our strange interactions, it was a difficult thing to fully accept, particularly now that I’d returned to Marketh and hovered on the edge of my old life. I was eager—no anxious—to return to the way things had been, but the more I came to understand, the more I realized that would never happen. I could resume my career, hopefully, but I was different now in ways that might mean little to anyone else, but meant much to me.
Through those initial days of healing and musing, Girl patiently tended to my needs, and to Not-An-Egg’s, and dealt with the cleaning and shopping and cooking. Who would suspect a deadly marksman beneath her quiet, docile façade? She had lost everything, and while she could have—should have—stayed with the good people of Uzuun, she had chosen instead to cast her lot with us. More and more I wondered why. It is true that my countenance is good to look upon and my manner more than a little charming. It is true, too, that while Tanris is not at all charming or good looking, he is steady and honest and noble. But we are both nearly old enough to be her father. Well… Tanris is easily old enough. If she did not already know how to read and write, a fact she had never disclosed in our months of traveling together, I would have to teach her. Perhaps she would become less of a mystery, though I had little doubt that she, being a woman, would continue to remain mysterious as only women can.
I also had a visitor to break the monotony. On that particular morning, I was reclining on the couch in the parlor, enjoying a breeze idling through the open windows and lazily contemplating the philosophies set forth in my latest literary study when there came a knock at the door. Girl appeared to answer the summons and I soon heard the door open and a quiet request voiced by a female. She spoke my name, and there the civilities ended.
The soft entreaty gave way to a shriek and thumping, and the next thing I knew a fight erupted in the entry. Curiosity prompted me to investigate, and I put some effort into levering myself up off the couch, wishing Tanris hadn’t gone out.
“Don’t you dare! You have no right! Let me in, you—”
The description applied to Girl was neither polite nor accurate, but it was handily brought to an end by some generous thumping. When I arrived on the scene, a distance of only about fifteen or twenty feet, I found Girl on the floor straddling our guest, whose disheveled gown amply revealed a fine set of legs. A fierce scar marked one ankle. She’d lost one slipper and stood—or it might be more accurate to say she laid—in danger of losing the battle in its opening moments.
“Tarsha.” Casually, I propped a shoulder against the wall and folded my arms across my chest, protecting the injured one and adopting an air of lackadaisical interest. “I don’t recall sending you an invitation. What are you doing here?”
“Get her off me!”
She struggled, but Girl had the situation well in hand in spite of her injury, and I couldn’t help but admire her fortitude. And Tarsha’s humiliation. She had not escaped the conflict at Duzayan’s ruined house unscathed. In addition to the damage done to her leg, she had some nasty scars across one cheek. Between them, they spelled the end of her career as a dancer.
“Crow!”
“If you promise to behave yourself nicely—and keep your hands, feet, teeth and any other weapons to yourself, I’ll ask her to let you up.”
Tarsha hissed her frustration, then rolled her eyes. “As if I would assault you.”
I snorted. “No, I suppose it’s more your style to set me up so you can watch someone else assault me.” I made a motion with my head to Girl. “Let her go, but why don’t you get your crossbow?”
Girl peered at me inscrutably, then got to her feet and disappeared down the hall.
“That is completely unnecessary,” Tarsha protested. Yanking her clothing straight, she got to her feet.
“So is your presence here.”
Her chin lifted. She was such a proud thing, which I’d always found attractive. That, and the fact that she was utterly beautiful and graceful beyond measure. None of her attributes, however, compensated for the way she’d deceived me and broken my heart.
“I came to thank you,” she sniffed.
“For what?” Such an easy thing to act the part of ignorance.
“For saving my life,” she murmured, dropping her scornful, indignant attitude and folding her hands across her middle demurely.
“I hate to shatter your romantic illusion, but saving your life never even occurred to me.” I watched her eyes widen and her lovely mouth form an “oh” of surprise. I then went on before she could ask the question they moved to shape. “Duzayan used your blood to power his spell for the Gate. You bled enough for him to open it, and if you’d died, I doubt it would have been so easy to close.” Not that it was easy at all, but why should I share that with her?
Her face paled, and she looked away. Uncomfortable silence that grew between us, and I did nothing to relieve it. I could not begin to imagine what was going through her devious little mind, but she did not keep me in suspense for very long.
“I’m—I’m sorry, Crow,” she murmured at last, remarkably subdued. “I treated you very poorly. I thought—I didn’t know that you—” Head bent, she rubbed her fingers and fretted. “There is really nothing I can say that won’t sound like an excuse. I’d like to make up for what I did to you.” She gave me a tentatively hopeful look. Very appealing.
I was not swayed. Curious, yes, but not so much as to inquire about her thoughts on the matter. “You can’t,” I said bluntly, without a single trace of sympathy. “You completely destroyed something irreplaceable, Tarsha. What I really want is for you to go away. Far away. It shouldn’t be very difficult for you to forget all about me; it’s not like you actually cared to begin with.”
Tears sprang to her lovely dark eyes and she took a step forward, reaching out as though to put a hand on my arm.
“Don’t. If you touch me, you’ll get a crossbow bolt through your back.”
Startled, she looked over her shoulder where Girl stood with the loaded and cocked weapon held steadily in her hands and a grim, uncompromising look on her face. Too easily, I discerned the pain it cost her. The sacrifice touched me unexpectedly.
“Crow…” Tarsha whispered in patent disbelief.
“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out,” I said, nodding at it pointedly.
The pooling tears spilled over her cheeks. “Crow, please—”
Her persistence irritated me. Deliberately, I moved my head from side to side, stretching and crackling the joints. All this laying about had made me stiff. “Don’t you have a husband to attend to?”
Taking her cue at last, Tarsha pressed one hand to her luscious mouth and fled.
Thank the god of fortuitous deliverances. I heaved a sigh of relief and straightened, turning to Girl. “What do you say to a nice cup of tea out in the sun?”
<
br /> — 38 —
Who Would Have Thought?
It was after a long afternoon of sitting on the balcony drinking in the gentle warmth of the spring sun that I realized what I had done. Pain and exhaustion must share the blame for my dull wits, for my callousness. As a student of humans and all their vagaries, I should have known better. I wondered if my lack, my blindness, might have had anything to do with the relationship Tanris and I had previously shared. More food for thought was the fact that he had not, you might have noted, turned me in for the bounty he could no doubt have used, and it would have been easy to collect, given my state of poor health. I couldn’t run down the hall, never mind scampering up to the rooftops and across the city.
Tanris didn’t return to the apartment until after the evening meal, and while Girl cleaned up, Not-An-Egg and I had retired to the balcony. The dragon curled up on my lap and watched the sun setting with me, creaking softly. As I enjoyed the beauty of the view, it occurred to me that I had not thought of selling the apartment even once in the time since Duzayan’s demise. The door to the parlor stood open, and I had no difficulty hearing the apartment’s front door open and close, though Tanris himself moved lightly enough that his footsteps could often go undetected.
“Tanris.” I glanced over my shoulder to watch for him. He appeared reluctantly in the doorway a few minutes later. “Come sit with me.”
Surprise pricked him, but he took a seat in the other chair without a word.
“You’re mad at me.”
“Aye,” he grunted, lacing his fingers across his belly, posture stiff.
“Because of Aehana? I’m awfully sorry, I—”
“No.” His jaw knotted. “You did it again, Crow. You knew bloody well I wanted to be there to destroy Duzayan, and you took him on by yourself.”
Little fingers of wind ruffled my hair but did not touch Tanris. “I had to, he’d already started the spell. I knew you’d be there as soon as you could. I was counting on it.”
As the Crow Flies: An Epic Fantasy Adventure Page 47
