Shadows Return (50 page)

“Alec said you’d come.”

“Alec?”

“Oh Illior, he’s alive, too!” Thero pressed two fingers gently to Alec’s throat, then unslung his water skin and wet Alec’s parched lips as Micum did the same for Seregil. “But how? I saw his ghost!”

Seregil swallowed a few drops from the water skin, then raised one finger slightly, pointing to the child. “He did it. Sebrahn.” His eyelids closed again, but he was still breathing. And smiling.

Micum glanced up at the child again. It still looked like a girl to him, with all that hair. His eyes were closed and he hadn’t moved, but Micum could see the long tracks of dried tears on the boy’s pale dusty cheeks. Micum reached out to see if he was breathing, but Thero grabbed his hand. “Don’t! That’s no child. Can’t you see?”

“See what?”

The child opened his eyes and Micum saw that they were the color of steel. “What is it?”

“I don’t know.” Thero was squinting now, as if the child was giving off a bright light that Micum couldn’t see. “It has human form, but there’s something else showing just around the edges-And magic! It’s like a storm in him, but muted.”

Sebrahn, as it was called, whimpered and crawled slowly past Thero to stroke Alec’s hair. The wizard scuttled back away from it, wide-eyed.

Micum didn’t doubt Thero was seeing something he wasn’t, but his heart went out to the child-like thing all the same. That was, until it lifted Alec’s left hand to his mouth and licked weakly at the dry blood there.

“Bilairy’s Balls!”

“It’s all right,” Seregil rasped as his eyes fluttered open again. “He’s starving. Eats…”

“Blood,” Thero finished for him, looking appalled.

“Alec’s. Just a little,” Seregil whispered as his eyes slid shut again and his voice failed.

“Please, help him. Saved us. Save him…”

“You can’t be serious,” gasped Thero.

“You heard him,” Micum said. “He’s in no shape to explain.” He took out his knife and pulled Alec’s hand from Sebrahn’s grip. The child was surprisingly strong, but gave up with another pitiful little whimper when Micum gently insisted.

“Look at that.” Micum showed the wizard the tips of Alec’s fingers, all stippled with small scabs. “I guess that’s how they do it.” He nicked the least damaged finger and Sebrahn lunged forward, grabbing Alec’s hand and sucking frantically on Alec’s finger.

Micum watched in mixed wonder and revulsion. “I don’t suppose you could get word to Magyana to send us one of those translocations of hers? I don’t know what Seregil meant when he said this little mite saved them, but it can’t be much help to them anymore. We have to get them somewhere safe, and quickly.”

“Translocations don’t work that way, and even if they did, the shock of the magic would surely kill Seregil, weak as he is, and probably Alec, as well.”

Micum looked around, trying to ignore the loud sucking noises. “There’s no shelter in sight.

We’ll have to make do with the tarp for tonight. Can you do more of that healing on them?”

“I can, but I don’t know how much good it will do. They need a drysian.”

“Do what you can. And give them more water. The child, too.”

Micum left him to it and led the packhorses away from the carnage. Not far on he found a dry gully deep enough to hide the horses. He used the tarp they’d brought to make a small lean-to, spread the bedrolls, and rode back for the others.

He found Thero still bent over their friends. The strange child hadn’t moved.

Thero had their dirty coats open and was inspecting their chests. “Look here!” he exclaimed, pointing to what was obviously a freshly healed arrow wound on Alec’s chest. “Seregil claimed this happened yesterday.”

“But that would have gone right through his heart, and a lung, too.”

“I know. Seregil has a similar scar here under his shoulder, and one that went into the large artery in his thigh.”

“We call that a ‘man killer.’ How in Bilairy’s name did they survive, half-starved as they are, much less heal?”

“Seregil kept insisting that this-creature did it, though I can’t get enough sense out of him to know how, and it seems to be mute.”

“Never mind. All that matters is getting them to shelter.”

Handling the wounded men as carefully as they could manage, they slung them each over a saddle. They had some trouble with Sebrahn when they went to move Alec. The child clung to him and hissed at Micum when he tried to pull him away. In the end, Thero had to hold him back until Micum could get Alec on the horse, then lift the struggling, spitting child up onto the horse behind him. Once there, still gripping the battered cup in one hand, he clutched the back of Alec’s coat with the other.

“It’s all right, little one,” Micum soothed, patting the child’s skinny leg. “You stay with him and we’ll be safe soon.”

“I’m telling you, that’s no child,” Thero warned.

“You heard what Seregil said. That’s enough for me.”

They led the horses toward the camp Micum had set up, going slowly so as not to jostle their friends too much. Even so, halfway there the child began to whimper and squirm. Then Seregil began to moan and struggle weakly.

Micum pressed a hand firmly between his shoulders. “We’re almost there. Just a little further.”

Seregil’s face was turned away, but Micum heard him gasp out, “So-undignified!”

“He’s bleeding again!” Thero pointed out. “It’s his leg.”

Looking back, Micum saw bright red splashes in the dust. He halted the horse and walked around to the other side. Seregil’s left thigh was soaked. Feeling carefully, he found the wound, then took off his belt and tightened it above the wound. “We’d better hurry.”

“Yes. Alec is bleeding a little from the mouth.”

The child grew more and more frantic as they went on, until Micum finally had to pull him off and carry him. He weighed almost nothing, but struggled all the way, reaching out for Alec and crying out softly.

At the tent, he scrabbled about underfoot until Micum and Thero had the wounded men settled on the bedrolls they’d brought. Seregil was unconscious, and Alec was in agony, coughing up bloody foam.

Micum put the child aside as gently as he could, but he persisted, tugging Micum’s water skin from his shoulder. Squatting between Seregil and Alec, he filled his dented cup, then held out one little hand.

“What is he doing?” wondered Micum.

“Cut his finger,” Alec wheezed. “Now!”

Despite his doubts, Micum did as he asked. As he and Thero watched, the child held his cut finger over the cup and something far too pale to be blood dripped into the water. There was a faint flash of light, and then a beautiful, dark blue flower appeared. Sebrahn scooped it out and put it on Seregil’s wound. It melted from sight, leaving a pleasant scent behind.

Micum reached down and felt the wound. “It’s closed up again.”

The child made another flower and placed it on Alec’s chest wound. Alec was still coughing blood, but he managed to get his breath long enough to gasp out, “That’s how-Flowers-heal.”

They watched in awe as Sebrahn repeated the procedure several times and laid more flowers across Alec’s chest and Seregil’s leg.

After a moment Seregil came around. “’lec!”

Micum clasped his hand. “It’s all right. He’s right here beside you. You’re both safe.”

Alec took Seregil’s other hand. “Told you. They found us.”

Micum carefully undressed both of them and checked for more wounds. The one on the inside of Seregil’s thigh was closed, but the skin there looked fragile and thin. The arrow wounds on Alec’s chest and throat had healed more completely, but the breath still rattled a little in his throat and bloody foam seeped from the corner of his mouth.

Micum covered them both warmly and drew Thero outside.

“What do you think?”

The wizard shook his head slowly, looking a bit dazed. “I don’t know what to think. I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“But the child did heal them. He saved their lives.”

“Yes.” Yet Thero looked less than pleased. “I suppose we’ll have to stay here until they’re stronger.”

“And pray no one else comes looking for them.”

“I can hide us. I’ll obscure this whole gully if need be.”

“We should send word to Magyana and Korathan.”

“I did, while you were away setting this up. She advised me not to contact the prince yet. She thinks it would be dangerous to bring that-” He pointed into the lean-to, where Sebrahn was still crouched over the sleeping men, cup clasped in his pale little hands. “To bring him to Skala until we know more about what it is. And most especially not to the Orлska House. Every wizard in the place would feel it, as soon as it got anywhere near them, and word of it would soon reach Phoria.”

“You’re saying we should keep this from the queen?”

“She’s no friend to wizards, or to magic. I don’t know what she’d do with this thing. However, I’m more concerned with what it might do. You saw those men back there. All dead, and not a mark on them. Can you imagine if this creature felt threatened in the heart of the city? No, we can’t risk it. Magyana will meet us in Gedre. The khirnari has offered us temporary sanctuary if Seregil can give his word that it poses no danger.”

Micum shook his head. “We both saw how this little fellow can heal. He saved their lives again right in front of us. But how could it kill all those men? It couldn’t protect itself!”

“Do you have a better explanation?”

“I haven’t looked yet, have I?” He went to his horse and struggled up into the saddle. “Keep a sharp eye out, and send me one of those little lights if you see anyone coming. I won’t be long.”

Micum’s idea of not being gone long was different than Thero’s. He was about to send a sighting out for him when Micum rode back into camp, looking grim.

“What did you find?” Thero asked, helping him down from the horse.

Micum sat on a large stone and stared down at his hands; they were smeared with dark blood.

“There are thirty-one men lying dead back there, and all but three don’t have a scratch on them, except that they’d bled from their eyes and ears.”

“And the other three?”

“One decapitated. One stabbed through the heart. The third one gutted and hacked to pieces.”

“In that vision with Alec, I saw Seregil running at the riders with a sword. I was sure I was seeing his death.”

“It should have been. But I’d say he managed to kill those three. They were close together, and the gutted one was dressed like a noble. Seregil must have cut the other two down to get to him.

But the others? Seregil didn’t do that, and neither did Alec.”

“Then you agree that whatever this thing is it’s dangerous.”

“But it didn’t hurt us, not even when we pulled it away from Alec,” Micum pointed out.

They both turned and looked into the shelter, where the strange pale creature was curled up between the two men now, its silvery hair spread across both their chests.

Micum sighed and shook his head. “What have you two gotten yourselves into this time?”

At Bay  

T
HERO SAT WITH the two wounded men that night, while Micum kept watch at the head of the gully. He’d cast a sheltering spell on the little tent to keep the wind and cold out. The heat of their bodies made it comfortable inside, and Thero was dozing when Alec started awake.

Looking around in alarm, he found Seregil first and reached across Sebrahn to stroke his talimenios’s sleeping face.

“He’s healing,” Thero assured him quietly.

Alec stared up at him. “I thought it was a dream, seeing you on that ship.”

“No dream. You came to me and I saw you. It was you who guided us here.” A sudden tightness in his throat made the wizard pause a moment. “I thought you were dead, Alec. I thought I was seeing your ghost. What happened?”

“Yhakobin came after us with the slave takers. There were archers. They were aiming at Seregil.” He broke off, and Thero saw his hand tighten around Seregil’s. “Are you sure he’s all right?”

“Yes. This odd little friend of yours is quite the healer.”

“The flowers. I was hit, and when I came around, he was putting them on Seregil.”

“He must have done quite a bit of that before we reached you, and he’s done it a few more times since.”

Alec let out a long, wheezing sigh of relief that turned into a ragged cough. “I really thought we were for the Gate this time,” he whispered when he got his breath back. “Where are we?”

“Still in Plenimar, not far from where you and Seregil were-attacked. Can you tell me any more about how you ended up in Plenimar in the first place?”

“Ambushed by slavers on the road-somewhere.” Alec closed his eyes.

“We tracked you that far. And then they took you to Riga and sold you, right?”

“To an alchemist. Yhakobin.” His eyes stayed shut, but his breathing grew shallow and quick as more memories came to him. “Gave Seregil-to Ilar. I didn’t know-didn’t know who Ilar was-Thought he was friend-”

“Stop, Alec. Get your breath!” Thero urged, pressing a hand to Alec’s brow with a small spell to calm him, then to his chest to heal what he could. When Alec’s breathing grew easier, he asked, “Who is Ilar?”