Touch of Power

by Maria V. Snyder

  “Won’t he be mad?” From the way his men acted, he appeared to be someone you don’t want to be angry with you.

  “No,” Quain said. “There is always one of us on watch. When he wakes me to take my turn, he’ll just sleep in mine.”

  Loren hooked a thumb at the packs in the corner. “He can also use Belen’s.”

  The men all sobered at the name.

  “He’s the one who provided the distraction last night,” I said, guessing.

  “Yeah,” Flea said. His shoulders drooped and he hung his head so his hair covered his eyes. “He probably got lost or something.”

  “Belen doesn’t get lost,” Quain said. “He’s probably leading the town watchman on a merry chase.”

  “How long will we wait for him?” I asked Quain.

  “Not long.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’re more important than him. Hell, to Kerrick you’re more important than all of us, and the longer we stay here, the greater the danger.”

  As I lay on Kerrick’s bedroll, I breathed in his scent. That same mix of spring sunshine and living green. It felt as if the earth embraced me in her warmth. I cuddled deep into the blankets, letting the shock of being the last healer fade into an ache under my heart. And allowing all the questions I had for Kerrick and his men to be pushed aside for now.

  A shout woke me from a deep sleep. I felt safe, which was odd considering my circumstances. The fire had died to embers and the other bedrolls were empty. Alarmed, I jumped to my feet. Voices yelled and echoed from the only direction of escape. I was trapped.

  As the noise level increased, I backed away until I stood at the far wall. Something large and dark blocked the narrow entrance. If I could, I would have climbed the rough wall. My first impression was that an angry bear had returned to his cave and he wasn’t happy to find it occupied. The second and more accurate but no less terrifying was a giant man who looked like he could wrestle a bear one-handed and win.

  When he spotted me…not quite cowering against the far wall, he grinned.

  “There you are,” he said in a reasonable tone. He crossed the cavern in two strides and held out his hand. “Belen of Alga.” Kerrick and his men followed behind him. All sported smiles.

  As I shook Belen’s oversize paw, er, hand, I noted he was from Kerrick’s Realm. “Avry.”

  “Nice to meet you finally. Here.” He thrust my knapsack into my hands. “I hope this is yours. Otherwise, I went to a lot of trouble for nothing.”

  “You shouldn’t have risked going back for her pack,” Kerrick said.

  Belen frowned at him. “Nonsense. She needs her things.” He gestured. “Winter’s coming and she doesn’t even have a cloak. You probably didn’t even think to give her yours.”

  “I was a little busy saving her life.”

  Loren and Quain hid their amusement at Kerrick’s annoyed and slightly peevish tone.

  “Well, she’s going to need what little she has if we’re going to travel through the Nine Mountains before the first blizzard.”

  I clutched my pack to my chest. “The Nine Mountains? Why?” The plague had destroyed all form of organized government in the Fifteen Realms. It had taken a couple years before the survivors had grouped together to form the small clusters we had now. Law in Realms like Kazan and most others had ceased to be.

  Too busy dodging bounty hunters, I hadn’t paid attention to our current political situation, but even I’d heard that marauders had settled into the foothills of the Nine Mountains. Gangs who warred with one another and set their own rules to suit themselves. And if you managed to avoid them, the ufa packs would hunt you down.

  “Didn’t he tell you?” Belen jerked a thumb at Kerrick.

  “No time last night for idle chat,” Kerrick snapped. “Our sick friend is on the other side of the Nine Mountains.”

  It would take us more than two months to reach him. “How sick? He might not last.”

  “He’s been encased in a magical stasis.”

  Interesting. There weren’t that many magicians left. I wondered how long it took Kerrick to find one. “By a life magician?”

  “No. A death magician.”

  Even rarer. I considered. “How bad is your friend? If he’s on the edge of dying, I won’t be able to help him.”

  “He’s pretty healthy. Sepp was able to pause his life force just after he began the second stage.”

  The second stage? Dread wrapped around me. Had the plague returned? As far as I heard, there hadn’t been any more victims in two years. Then I remembered Kerrick had been searching for me at least that long.

  “He has the plague. Doesn’t he?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Belen said. “We know you can heal him. With the whole world dying, how could a hundred of you save six million of them? You couldn’t. The Healer’s Guild sent that missive so they could organize their healers, set up a response based on need, but that’s all in the past, Avry. It’s only one sick man.”

  “But—”

  Kerrick interrupted, “Belen, do you need to rest?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Gentlemen, prepare to go,” Kerrick said.

  His men scrambled to pack. I checked my knapsack. All my belongings remained inside. I removed my cloak, draping it around my shoulders.

  Should I tell them the real truth about the plague? They had saved me from the guillotine and I owed them my life. They seemed receptive to reason, unlike all the other survivors I’d encountered, who, at the mere mention of a healer, spat in the ground and refused to acknowledge the truth. I’d almost been caught a number of times defending healers so I’d stopped trying.

  However, Belen was right. I could heal their friend of the plague, but then I couldn’t heal myself.

  What they asked of me would be essentially trading one death—swift and certain—for another—slow, painful and just as certain.

  I decided to wait and learn who their friend was. Perhaps he would be like Fawn, worth my life to save. Hard to imagine. Children deserved to be saved. They hadn’t lived, hadn’t made bad choices and hadn’t had time to harm others. That couldn’t be said of a grown man, but I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  Kerrick set a quick pace through the forest, heading north. Rays of the late-afternoon sun pierced the tree canopy, leaving pools of shadows on the ground. The crisp air smelled clean and fresh.

  We walked in a single line. I stayed behind Belen, and Flea trotted at my heels like an overeager puppy. No one said a word. Leaves crunched under my boots, drowning out the slight noise the others made. The men held their weapons ready as if expecting an ambush at any moment. Kerrick and Belen held swords, Loren kept an arrow notched in his bow, Quain palmed a nasty curved dagger and even Flea brandished a switchblade.

  Traveling through the Fifteen Realms was difficult, if not impossible, for small groups. When I moved to a new town, I’d try to hook up with a pilgrimage—a caravan of people searching for lost friends and relatives, collecting needed items from abandoned houses and burying any dead bodies left behind. Even well armed, a pilgrimage still kept to the major roads between Realms.

  So it wasn’t a surprise that in the middle of the forest, we encountered no one. No Death or Peace Lilys grew near our path, either. Odd that the gigantic flowers were nowhere to be seen. With the lack of manpower to cull them, they had spread like weeds everywhere, and had invaded farm fields, adding to the survivors’ struggle to feed ourselves.

  Unused to the pace, I tired after a few hours. We stopped a couple times to eat, but it was always in silence and didn’t last long. My legs ached and eventually all I could focus on was Belen’s broad back.

  The sun set and the moon rose. It had climbed to the top of the sky when I rea
ched my limit. Stumbling, I tripped over my own feet and sprawled among the colorful leaves.

  Before I could push up to my elbows, Belen scooped me into his arms. He carried me like a baby despite my protests, claiming I weighed nothing. Exhausted, I dozed in his arms.

  By dawn, I had reenergized. That was when I felt his injury. I squirmed from his arms and pulled his right sleeve up to his elbow.

  “It’s nothing,” he said, trying to pull the fabric down and cover the six-inch-long gash in his forearm before Kerrick and the others could see.

  I stopped him with a stern look, then traced the wound with a finger as magic stirred to life in my core. The cut was deep and dirty—borderline infected. Belen kept his face neutral, although I knew my rough examination had to hurt like crazy. Impressive.

  “Belen?” Kerrick asked.

  “It’s just a cut I got stirring up the town watch the other night. Nothing to worry about.”

  “It’s going to get infected if it’s not taken care of,” I said.

  “Can it wait until we find shelter?” Kerrick asked me.

  “I can heal him now. It doesn’t matter.”

  “That’s not what I asked you. Can it wait or not?”

  “How long?”

  “A few hours.”

  No sense arguing with him. “It can wait.”

  There was really no reason to wait. I wouldn’t let Belen carry me, but I rested my hand on the crook of his right arm. As we walked, I let the magic curl around his forearm, healing his wound as it transferred to me. The cut throbbed and stung as blood soaked my sleeve.

  By the time we arrived at another cave to rest for the afternoon, Belen’s injury had disappeared. Loren, Quain and Flea gathered around him, exclaiming over his smooth skin.

  “There’s not even a scar!” Flea hopped around despite having walked for the past twenty hours. I suspected this behavior was linked to his name.

  Kerrick, though, strode over to me and yanked my sleeve up, exposing the half-healed gash. I hissed as he jabbed it with a finger.

  “Why didn’t you listen to me?” he demanded.

  “There was no reason—”

  “You don’t make those decisions,” he said. A fire burned in his gaze. “I do.”

  “But—”

  He squeezed my arm. I yelped.

  “No arguments. You follow my orders. Understand?”

  Silence blanketed the cavern as everyone stared at us.

  “I understand.” And I did, but that didn’t mean I would obey him like one of his gentlemen.

  “Good.” He gazed at his men. “Standard watch schedule.”

  Once Kerrick left the cave, Flea bounded over to me. “Look at that! It’s the same size and shape as Belen’s was.”

  Interesting how the men were more relaxed when Kerrick wasn’t around.

  “How long until it heals?” Belen inspected the cut as if my arm would break at the slightest touch. Concern in his brown eyes.

  “About two days for it to fade into a pale scar.”

  Flea whooped and Quain looked impressed.

  “You didn’t need to heal me,” Belen said. “It was just a minor cut.”

  I pulled my arm from Belen. “And you didn’t need to risk capture by retrieving my knapsack. Consider it my way of saying thanks.”

  Loren met my gaze with an amused smile.

  “Better than juggling knives?” I asked him.

  “I’d have to see you juggle the knives first,” he said.

  “Gentlemen, your knives.” I held out my hands.

  After a brief hesitation, Loren, Quain and Flea all provided me with a leather-handled dagger. Perfect.

  “When Kerrick catches you, I’ll make sure to shed a few tears at your funerals,” Belen said. He shook his head as if distancing himself from the whole thing.

  I tested the weight of each knife. My older brother, Criss, had taught me how to juggle. First with scarves, then balls, and then wooden sticks before he’d let me throw anything sharp. A pang of sadness touched my chest as I juggled the daggers. The firelight reflected off the silver blades as they twirled in the air. Flea enjoyed the show, laughing and begging to be taught when I finished.

  “Not bad,” Loren said. “But most anyone can learn how to juggle. No one else can heal.”

  Later that night we settled next to the fire. The men moved about in an easy routine, hardly speaking as they cooked the rabbits Loren had shot with his bow.

  “Have you been doing this every night for two years?” I asked them.

  Loren and Quain exchanged a glance with Belen.

  “Not quite,” Belen said. “Kerrick and I started searching for a healer right after the magician encased our friend. Six months in, we encountered those two monkeys in Tobory.” He jabbed a thick finger at Loren and Quain. “Getting the snot beat out of them.” Belen chuckled. It was a deep rumbling sound.

  Quain jumped to their defense. “We were outnumbered!”

  “Didn’t stop you from rushing that whor—” Belen shot me a look. “That brothel.”

  “It’s not a brothel when the girls are forced to be there,” Loren said with a quiet intensity.

  Another reminder of our world gone mad. Not all survivors desired a return to normal. Some took full advantage of the depleted security and turned small towns into their own playgrounds.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “We lent a hand,” Belen said. “Helped clean out that nest of nasties, got the town back on track and picked up those two for our trouble.”

  “We’re returning the favor,” Loren said.

  “Uh-huh.” Belen stretched out on his blankets, sighed and was soon snoring.

  Considering how long he’d been awake, it was amazing he’d lasted that long.

  My bedroll was close to Flea’s. He had been practicing the first step in learning how to juggle, tossing a stone from one hand to another. Flea mastered the motion of throwing the rock up to his eye level and letting it drop down to his other hand, making a path through the air like an inverted V while keeping both hands near his waist. I showed him the next step. Same motion, but using two rocks—trickier.

  After a few tries, he started to get it. “That’s it, Flea. When the first stone is at the tip of the V, you throw the second.” I made encouraging noises.

  He worked a while longer, then flopped back onto his blankets. “It’s too hard.”

  Flea reminded me of my younger sister, Noelle. She would give up right away if a task proved too difficult. I wondered if she had gotten the plague and died just as quick.

  No one who contracted the disease survived. Except those very first people the healers cured before they in turn died. Back when we hadn’t known it would become a plague. There had been enough sanity for the Healer’s Guild to send out notice to their members not to heal anyone who had those symptoms. Not even if there were a couple healers to share energy. It had been a logical decision. There were more sicknesses than healers. And it made sense to heal the ones we could. But that notice had been what condemned us all to death. Or rather, the wording of that missive. It hadn’t clearly stated that a healer would die if he helped a plague victim. It had said, “Success was unlikely at this time.”

  I suppressed those dark thoughts, concentrating instead on the positive. Being with these men had renewed my interest in life. They’d been traveling throughout the Fifteen Realms, perhaps they’d heard of my family. Except Loren and Quain had also fallen asleep. Only Flea stared morosely at the cave’s ceiling.

  “Don’t fret,” I said. “With more practice, you’ll be juggling in no time.”

  He groaned. “That’s what those guys say all the time. Practice, practice, practice. It’s
boring!”

  I hid my smile. “You’re right.”

  He sat up. “I am?”

  “It’s very boring. Unfortunately, it’s necessary.”

  Groaning, he plopped back onto his pillow. He waved a listless hand. “You can stop the lecture. I’ve got four fathers. I don’t need a mother.”

  I gasped in mock horror. “You’re right. I’m sounding like my mother! I promise never to do it again.”

  “Really?” Flea squinted at me.

  “No. Sorry. An overdeveloped nurturing instinct comes with being a healer.”

  He shrugged. “Oh, well. I guess everyone has their faults.”

  “True.”

  He pushed up to an elbow and looked at me for a moment. “Do you like being a healer? That cut you took from Belen had to hurt.”

  “It does, but for less time than it would have hurt him.” Plus there was the satisfaction of helping another.

  Flea huffed. “I don’t think Belen feels pain. I kicked him hard in the shins one time and he didn’t even blink.”

  “Why did you kick him?”

  “He wouldn’t let me go.” Flea’s eyelids drooped and he yawned.

  I sensed a longer story, but I stifled my curiosity. Instead, I gently pushed him down and pulled the blanket up to his chin.

  Flea gave me a sleepy half smile and said, “Belen won’t let you go, either.”

  It was an odd statement and he noticed my concern.

  “Not like that… Once you heal Prince Ryne, you won’t want to go.”

  I jerked wide awake. “Prince Ryne of Ivdel Realm? He’s your friend? The one who’s sick?”

  “Yeah, he—”

  “Flea, go to sleep,” Kerrick said from behind me.

  Flea grimaced an oops and turned onto his side.

  Oops was putting it mildly. I gathered my belongings.

  “What are you doing?” Kerrick asked. His voice low and deadly.

  “Leaving.”

  “No.”

  “I’m not asking. I’m going.” I rolled up my thin mat and stuffed it into my knapsack.