Bloodstone (36 page)

“What?”

“Find the old man!”

****

When Durren came to, he lay in a dark room. Gareth leaned over him and sponged his face. A bit of twilight seeped through chinks in the front wall, and he recognized the chamber he’d given Mirianna and the boy. “Stop.” His mouth was so dry the word came out as a rasp.

“You’re burning up, sir. I have to bring the fever down.”

“I’m...not...ill.” He pushed up onto his elbows. A haze of colored lights dipped and whirled before his eyes, making him fall back again.

“You need to drink something, sir. I don’t think you’ve had anything to drink or eat in two or three days, have you?”

The scolding tone in the boy’s voice made Durren want to laugh but even breathing hurt. “I had...porridge...with you.”

“Well, there you are. That was days ago. Here. Drink this broth.” With surprisingly strong hands, the boy lifted Durren’s head and managed to find his lips with the cup. Most of the liquid made it into his mouth, and he swallowed. When the cup was empty, Gareth made a satisfied sound.

“Who...put me in here?”

“Pumble’s very strong, sir. After Mirianna told him to stop kissing his charm and get on with it, he picked you right up. She wanted to come in here and help, but I told her she better not. After all, this is what you chose me for—to help you when no one else should.”

The boy had managed to remove Durren’s hood, unlace his tunic, open the cuffs and push up the sleeves. The cloth he’d stopped Gareth from swabbing over his face, sloshed now onto his bare chest. Durren flinched, but he did feel marginally cooler. “I’ll...drink some more.”

With a grunt of assent, Gareth spread the cloth and left it on Durren’s chest. In the dimness, he could just make out Gareth’s form as the boy poured and turned. “Here you are, sir.”

When he’d drunk a fourth cup, Durren made another attempt to rise onto his elbows. Gareth protested, and Durren’s head swam again, but he had to know—did his skin still glow?

Dear Koronolan, it did! But the quick glance before he fell back again told him two things. The glow had dimmed, but the brightest gleam came from his side, from the old wound that still throbbed with fire.

“I can’t wait any longer. I have to know what’s wrong.” Mirianna’s voice, breathy with fear, sounded from the other side of the door. “Durren? Can you hear me?”

“Don—don’t come in, love!”

“Cover him, Gareth,” said another woman’s voice. “We need to talk to him.”

He had not hallucinated his sister; Ayliss stood right outside that door, restored to her own form. He didn’t know whether to laugh, curse or cry. His eyes responded first, leaking from lids he’d clenched shut.

“They ought to wait till morning,” the boy grumbled. “You’re still too hot, but I guess if I soak your blanket, that should keep you cooler and covered.” After some sloshing sounds, Gareth spread the wet fabric over Durren’s upper body.

Durren sucked in a breath, but the cool shock revived him enough to open his eyes.

“I’m going to put a compress on your forehead,” the boy said as he wrung out another cloth. “You have to promise me you’ll keep it on or you’ll heat right up again under that hood.”

“There’s...an inner cloth. Just...cover me...with that.”

With some fumbling, Gareth managed to locate the cloth and position it. The muffling weave was open enough Durren could make out the boy bending and smoothing the blanket and hood drape, checking for any exposed flesh, but it stifled the fresher air, filling Durren’s nostrils with the sulfurous scent he’d lived with all too long. His stomach roiled at it. Dear Koronolan, he could hardly breathe!

“Loosen it...could you?”

Gareth plucked the fabric away from Durren’s nose and mouth. “That better?” He straightened. “I have to say, sir, I didn’t expect to wake up this morning to a lady who used to be a lion asking me to find her something to wear, but as this is the Wehrland, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“You’re...a good lad, Gareth.” He wanted to touch the boy’s arm to show his appreciation, but all Durren had strength for was speech, and he needed to conserve that. Ayliss had a lot to answer for.

The chamber door banged open, and Mirianna dropped to her knees at his side. “Durren!” She plunged her hand under the blanket before he could stop her, but she made no move to uncover him, only laced her fingers into his. “Thank goodness you’re cooler.” Her eyes glimmered in the light of a single candle flickering from the doorway. When she turned toward the boy opposite, a tear track sparkled on her cheek. “You’ve done wonders, Gareth. Thank you.”

“He needs more to drink,” Gareth grumbled.

The candle and its bearer moved into Durren’s line of sight. Ayliss laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder, and the look she gave him was full of tenderness. “We won’t keep him long.” When the boy made a move to rise, she held him in place. “You need to hear this too, Gareth. You’re as much a part of it as we are.”

“What about Pumble?” the boy said.

“Our portly friend needs to watch over Mirianna’s father.” With a graceful adjustment of her cloak, Ayliss placed the candle next to the wash basin and settled herself on the bench beside the boy. Gareth leaned into her, and she draped a slender arm around his shoulders.

They made a pretty picture, and she looked not a bit altered from when Durren had last seen her despite the years and the spell blast, but he’d long since passed the relief stage. “What... consequences?” he demanded through his teeth.

“Patient as ever, I see.”

“Fourteen years, Ayliss...”

Her brows dipped into a V. “Try counting that in lion years.”

There you go, thinking about no one but yourself again,
said the Voice in his head.

Be still! It’s time she explained herself.
“Where were you...all that time?”

“Watching. And waiting.” With the back of her hand, she flipped her hair over her shoulder.

The gesture, so truly Ayliss, made Durren’s throat swell. Dear Koronolan, she was his flesh and blood, and despite everything, he loved her. “What for?”

“Her, for one. I had to wait for your dream woman.”

Mirianna flushed, her already high color deepening. “I can accept that you’re Durren’s sister and you’ve been trapped in a lion’s form just as he’s been trapped in the Shadow Man’s form all these years.” She paused, rolled her eyes skyward and blew out a breath. “Two weeks ago I wouldn’t have believed any of this, and here I am talking as if I know something of magic.”

“You do,” Ayliss said. “Or you wouldn’t be here.”

Mirianna quirked an eyebrow. “It’s the dream, that’s all that’s magic about me. Anyway, how do you know about the dream? And how did you speak to me from your lion form? Can you read minds?”

Good questions.
Durren squeezed her hand to tell her, and she cast him a brief smile before refocusing on Ayliss.

His sister sat up straighter and carefully rearranged the drape of her cloak over her legs. “I know about the dream because I put it there.” When they gaped at her, she said, “Not the particulars. I didn’t know precisely who your ‘dream woman’ would be, Durren, or when she would come, but you needed to recognize each other, so I gave you both the dream. It was all I had time for after you burst into Drakkonwehr and fell for Syryk’s illusions.”

“Wait—” Mirianna put up her free hand. “You knew I was coming—even back then?”

Ayliss tilted her head. “More or less.”

“No. Not more or less.” Mirianna’s eyes narrowed and Durren recognized the fierce expression that had jolted him only days ago. “I want to know—just
what
are you? A…mage?”

He read in his sister’s eyes the same struggle for patience he’d undergone days earlier and squeezed Mirianna’s fingers.
Keep pressing, love. Make her tell us.

Ayliss smoothed the fabric over her knees. “All of us have power. Even your portly friend outside. We’re born with it. Some of us have more gifts than others. And some of us are better at using the powers we have. I happen to be rather good at reading Shadow Speech and unlocking ancient mysteries, both of which told me a woman—who turned out to be you—was coming.”

Mirianna’s hand lowered to her lap. She chewed her lower lip. “So…you’re not a mage?”

“If a mage is someone who has knowledge and power, then, yes, I suppose I could be called a mage.” She gently brushed hair from Gareth’s face. “But I would much rather be known as a Drakkonwehr because everything I am and do comes from that lineage.”

“You…betrayed us!” Durren spat out.

“
You
weren’t supposed to be there for the Chant!” Her eyes flashed green fire. “Contrary to what you seem to think, I was trying to protect you by keeping you out of Drakkonwehr. I knew Syryk would try to kill you if you came, and what I meant to do required all my concentration, but somehow you managed to get inside the chamber anyway. When he went for you, I intended to stop his spell, to shield you, but then you broke his crystal in the middle of the Chant and”—she shrugged one shoulder—“well, the spell energy rearranged everything. I tried to cast both of us out of the chamber, to safety, but I must have taken some of Syryk’s curse because I came to in the body of a lion, and I couldn’t change back. You had disappeared. Syryk had vanished. The fortress was a smoking ruin.”

“And…Errek?” He hadn’t wanted to know, but the words were out before he could stop them.

Ayliss contemplated the hand she’d turned palm up in her lap. When she raised her eyes, they were dark and full. “That was no illusion, Durren. But you knew that anyway.”

He did. He’d known as soon as the knife left his hand. But the acknowledgment intensified the shame, the guilt, the sorrow. If only his heart would stop beating so he could lay down the pain and simply die.

He must have clenched Mirianna’s hand, for he became aware of the gentle stroke of her thumb across his knuckles. There was such tenderness in her look the iron band around his heart loosened a little and he breathed again.

“Who’s—?” said Gareth, but Ayliss touched her finger to his lips, and the boy leaned into her shoulder once more.

“When I finally found you again, months later,” she continued, “you’d become this Shadow being and I couldn’t reach you. Not until something changed. I could feel it coming, but I couldn’t reach into your mind until that day the Krad attacked you at the stream. And you,” she said to Mirianna, “you had to enter the Wehrland.”

“That was—that was two weeks ago,” Durren said, recalling the matter at hand. “What happened…last night?”

With a cat-like smile, Ayliss glanced at Mirianna, who blushed bright red but met her gaze. “Apparently, with the spell energy unraveling, a great many things,” Ayliss said, “most of which were exactly as I’d hoped when I used the piece of crystal Gareth found down by the pool to return to my own form.”

“You…made us—I mean—we were enchanted…” Mirianna trailed off, looking aghast.

“Hardly.” Ayliss smiled and patted her hand. “You simply did what your hearts had already chosen to do. No spell can change true hearts.”

‘True hearts and no fear, against a mage’s power, hold dear.’
The words from Owender echoed in Durren’s mind.

Ayliss looked directly at him, meeting his eyes through the weave of his face covering, and he knew she’d heard his thoughts. “All I ever asked of you was to trust me, Durren, to let me help you, but you wouldn’t hear of it.”

“You were jealous…”

“For a time. Who wouldn’t be? Especially since you kept flaunting it.” She looked at Mirianna and explained, “The Sword of Drakkonwehr, which Durren has and which has always been intended for him. It’s his destiny, and I’ve never disputed that.”

Durren sucked in air, struggling for speech.

Ayliss’s gaze drilled into the hood, finding his eyes as easily as if there were no barrier. “Yes, I know I needled you about it. I’m the elder child,” she told Mirianna, “and the Sword always passed to the firstborn—”

“Son!” Durren rasped.

“The firstborn, which just so happened to be sons until my birth.” She looked down her nose at him, so much the thirteen-year-old of his memories again his eyes welled. “Despite what you may have thought, I’ve always known my destiny lay in the scrolls. No one seemed to realize their significance. Grandfather may have read some of them—once—but I don’t think Father ever did more than poke around.”

“Like me.”

“Yes, like you. The dust was that thick. Anyway, I started reading, realized they were in a jumble, and spent weeks putting them in order.”

“Dragon Chant...you weren’t supposed to—”

“Find it? Yes, I was. You had the Sword, Durren. I had the Chant. That’s why there were two of us, and why I was the firstborn, not you. I was meant to find that Chant.”

“Not to—to give it away!”

“All I’ve ever asked of you, Durren, was to trust me, just once, and to let me help you.”

“Giving Syryk the Chant was…helping me?”

“If you’d read the scrolls, you wouldn’t be asking that now.”

“Syryk?” Mirianna said. “Is that—?”

“The mage,” Ayliss said. “He came to me because he’d been chasing the Chant. Some of his ancestors were Black Mages, and he’d found bits and pieces of their scrolls, enough to know that what he wanted had to be buried in that dustbin deep in Drakkonwehr.”

“Syryk is evil—”

“Syryk is selfish. He wants to control the Dragon for his own purposes. Don’t you think I know that?”

“Why…did you help him?”

“Because he had something I needed, a power source. Crystal columns concentrate great spell energy in the hands of the user, but they’re very rare, and rarer still are those who know how to work them.”

She paused, looked off in the distance and seemed to compose herself. When her focus returned, the emerald eyes gleamed like twin beams, as if some power shone through them. “There’s more to being the Dragon
keeper
than you think, Durren. More to it than everyone since Koronolan knew about how to
keep
the Dragon. There’s been an unbroken line of sons who needed to know only the Sword, because all they had to do was make sure the Dragon stayed entombed, so that’s all they read about, all they spoke about. But the Dragon wasn’t meant to be entombed forever.