Set in Stone (53 page)

Every step tore at his heart. They were leaving his father behind.

When they reached the kitchen, Lady Isobel shrieked anew, "You filthy Linn demon! Not again."

Connor turned until he could see her out of the corner of his eye and shrugged. The movement of his head sent boiling sheets of fire spewing across the kitchen, instantly re-igniting the already blackened walls.

Connor tried not to feel so satisfied with such a fitting revenge, but couldn't quite manage it. If Lady Isobel hadn't been such a vicious, thieving petty woman, he never would have been on that barge.

He never would have been captured.

Never would have met Verena. Never would have saved Shona.

His village would not have been invaded. Probably.

As conflicting thoughts warred in his brain, he let Rory guide him toward the final door. Outside and in the wide open space, Connor could see a little better. The group broke into a run, with his fifty foot tongue of fire leading the way.

At the top of the switchback road, Connor caught sight of Loch Sholto, the flooded quarry situated close by, right at the very edge of the cliff. He shrugged off Rory's hands and dove headlong into it.

The shocking cold of the loch embraced him. He savored it, but the flames didn't stop. They only set the water boiling around him. A little water finally slipped into his mouth and loosened the marble wafer's hold against his skin. Risking the burning of his lips, he spat the wafer out.

Still burning, it fell into the deep blackness of the loch. Connor hung there in the water for a moment, exhausted, letting the water fill his mouth and ease the pain. He watched the marble sink further and further along the outer wall of the loch, until it glimmered hundreds of feet below.

For a second, it illuminated something dark that clung to the outer wall of the loch, and then it hit the bottom and winked out.

Bruce helped Connor climb onto the bank. Far below, the manor house burned. Even farther, Carbrey's army was retreating, while on the plateau a group of soldiers had broken off from the main force and approached the road leading up to their position.

Rory clapped Connor on the shoulder, "You are full of surprises, lad. Come on, we'd best get out of here."

Tomas slung the still-unconscious Shona over one shoulder, and the group moved to follow Rory toward the trail into the mountains.

As Connor moved to the front of the party, he met Moira's gaze. She regarded him with fear and awe, and looked away after only a second. Barely a trace of their old friendship remained in her eyes.

She knew he was Cursed, and nothing could ever be the same.

Chapter 59

"Looks like the fighting is over for now," Hamish said as he entered the healer's kitchen. "The Grandurians have been driven out."

Jean breathed a sigh of relief, and Neasa banged a fist onto the tabletop. "Tallan take those warmongers for wrecking our town before leaving."

"How is it out there?" Jean asked.

Hamish rubbed dirty hands across his grime-coated face. The whites of his eyes stood out against the dirt and lines of exhaustion. "Not good. They're still digging soldiers and people from the rubble. A lot of them are injured pretty bad." He spoke fast, his words spilling over each other, his eyes wild. "We can't salvage anything from the granary."

Jean noted the signs of growing hysteria and moved to his side. She took his face in her hands and forced him to look at her. "It'll be all right. We'll get through this."

He relaxed under her touch. "The army Healers aren't keeping up."

"Jean can go."

An exhausted but determined Mhairi stood in the doorway. "We've stabilized everyone here. Go with Hamish and see if you can help."

Hamish scooped up Jean's healer bag while she tied on a fresh apron and checked the many pouches of supplies in her various pockets.

Mhairi hugged her, "I'm proud of you, girl."

"I'm just trying to do what you taught me."

"No, dear, you've exceeded your training. Be safe out there. Have Hamish help. Off with you, now."

Jean followed Hamish into the rubble-filled streets, and the sight made her gasp. She'd been too busy to venture outside since the battle, and stared with horror. The Healer house remained untouched, but most of the houses on Cliff Street either bore marks of fire, or leaned on unsteady foundations, suffering heavy damage.

Mud and rubble clogged the streets as they made their way toward the square, passable only by scampering along planks laid across the roads in meandering paths. Gray haze hung heavy in the air, tasting of ash and smelling of wet cinders. Breathing proved difficult, and she covered her nose with one sleeve.

As bad as Cliff Street looked, Market Street was far worse. The fighting must have concentrated there, because no building stood unscathed. Many of the shops and warehouses lay in ruin, some still smoldering.

In the square, mud and debris had been pushed back to make space for the wounded. Neasa's shop was reduced to little more than a pile of rubble, and most of the other buildings surrounding the square had fared little better.

Dead bodies were stacked near Neasa's shattered bakery, while row after row of injured lay across the square. Three Healers, dressed in brown, were working on the most severe cases. Jean's eyes scanned the long rows, and the calm, calculating part of her mind catalogued the injuries and began sorting them by severity.

After taking a steadying breath to center her mind and lock away the horror that threatened to overwhelm her, Jean moved across the square to where injured men moaned on cots or jackets or bare ground while waiting to be treated.

One soldier, who stood nearby as a sentry, motioned Jean and Hamish away, but Jean said, "I am a local healer. I came to help."

He frowned, "Not much you can do here, lass. Better to stay inside."

"We'll see about that." Jean dropped to her knees beside the nearest injured soldier, who held a blood-soaked bandage over his shoulder. She gently peeled it back and bit her lip at the sight of the torn flesh.

The sentry took a threatening step forward, "I told you to move off, lass."

"Hamish, see if you can find some clean water."

He rushed off, and she spared a glance at the irritated sentry. "If you have nothing better to do, find me some clean bandages."

Then she set to work.

The next half hour passed in a blur as Jean stitched wounds, set broken bones, and worked to alleviate some of the overwhelming anguish. She refused to acknowledge the suffering and focused only on diagnosis and treatment, moving with practiced efficiency.

Cries of alarm drew her attention from her current patient, a local girl with a badly broken jaw. Thick, white mist billowed into the square from the eastern edge of town. It was clearly not natural, as its leading edge was too defined, too thick, and it rolled forward with implacable purpose.

More Petralists.

Soldiers reached for weapons, and villagers shrank back with cries of fear. Jean hushed the frightened girl lying before her. There was nothing else she could do but wait and see what devilry the fog carried with it.

In seconds, it rolled over her, consuming the square and obscuring all in billowing white. Jean could not help but hold her breath, her body tense against some kind of assault.

Instead, the mist pulsed against her exposed skin like hundreds of tiny, soft brushes that scrubbed way the filth and grime and clinging reek.

Voices called out in fear all around her, but Jean tipped her face up and threw her arms wide, exulting in the wonder of the moment. After so much destruction, she welcomed this tiny mercy. The mist smelled like new-washed clothing and the air on a crisp winter day, and for a second the horrors of battle faded away.

The mist rolled on through town, leaving the square sparkling in its wake. Rubble still lay piled everywhere, but blackened timbers now glistened with a thin sheen of dew. Many of the soldiers and injured looked after the mist with fear and made signs of warding against the Tallan, but Jean breathed deep the air scrubbed clean of ash and smoke.

Hamish entered the square, and Jean moved to join him watching the mist roll toward the wall gate. He grinned, "That tasted just like soapstone."

"It felt wonderful," she agreed. "What do you think it means?"

Before Hamish could answer, a sharp cry of alarm drew their attention to the eastern length of Market Street. At the far end, a solitary figure strode through the gate, straight toward a group of half a dozen soldiers, who drew weapons and charged.

Hamish sucked in a sharp breath. "Kilian!"

Jean stared closer at the man who Connor had called a Water Moccasin. His hair was dark and he wore loose-fitting trousers and tunic over his lanky frame. A sword and long dagger swung at his side, and fingers of water that glistened like quicksilver flowed along the granite streets in front of him.

He looked angry.

Even from a distance, Jean trembled at the sight of him. He approached the onrushing soldiers with an implacable stride, and she wanted to scream at them to run away. Couldn't they see they didn't stand a chance against him? She didn't know what a Water Moccasin was, but something about the man Kilian filled her with dread.

He looked like an approaching storm.

The soldiers closed on Kilian, and their war cries rang through Alasdair.

Instead of drawing his sword, Kilian made a shooing gesture. The fingers of water slipping along the ground at his feet surged up like living serpents and struck faster than Jean could follow.

Soldiers cried out in alarm, and one of them cut wildly at the striking ropes of water, but to no avail. The liquid tendrils wrapped the soldiers in glistening bonds, lifted them high, and tossed them tumbling down Market Street back to the square.

Jean winced at the sight, but could not help but catalogue the host of broken bones, contusions, and concussions. None of those soldiers would be fit for duty for a long time.

Without slowing, Kilian advanced down Market Street as more soldiers massed in the square. Jean could not believe they meant to face him after what happened to their comrades.

Hamish caught her arm and dragged her to the side. "Best get out of the way. I saw him fighting Captain Aonghus, but I don't think the slingers will get lucky again."

She followed his gaze to a group of slingers concealed among the ranks of soldiers.

A wild shout turned her back to the western side of town. A fiery blur raced up the devastated Market Street, moving faster than a galloping horse. By the time she realized the onrushing apparition was a man, wreathed in flames, laughing wildly, he was already shooting into the square.

As soldiers dove out of the way to let the super-fast, burning man through, Hamish cried, "That's Aonghus!"

Jean spun to follow Aonghus, who left streamers of fire in his wake, as he closed on Kilian.

"Boil in your own cauldron, devil!" Aonghus bellowed, and vomited an enormous gout of flame that blasted forward to fully engulf Kilian.

For three heartbeats, the crimson fires roared around Kilian, obscuring him from view. Aonghus skidded to a halt in the center of the street, burning hands thrown wide, laughing like a madman. Jean felt queasy, and feared what they would see when the fires subsided, but could not look away.

Then with the sound of a crashing wave, the thick column of flames winked out of existence.

Kilian stood unharmed in the street, his eyes blazing with living fire, while flames trickled out his grinning mouth.

Stunned silence fell across the town, and Aonghus' shocked whisper echoed all the way back to the square.

"Impossible."

Kilian said, "You have no idea."

Then he brought his hands together with the sound of a thunderclap. A wave of water rose to engulf Aonghus, whose fire hissed like a hundred angry snakes before the waters snuffed them out.

The wave knocked Aonghus off his feet before coalescing into a roiling sphere that rolled back toward the square, scattering soldiers again. Jean caught sight of a laughing Aonghus tumbling wildly inside the sphere before it bore him out the far side of the square, down Market Street, and out the wall gate. She doubted it would stop before crashing into the wick.