His companion, meanwhile, had made short work of the eager young soldier so entranced at the sight of mystic blood, and was now engaged in a furious duel with the two veteran fighters of the Lestra’s staff. Kelti took a step forward, certain he should go to his companions’ aid, far from certain where he could enter the battle. Blades were flying so swiftly, so mercilessly! One of the older men took a sword to the heart and dropped to the dirt with a choked cry. The other one loosed an oath and redoubled his attack, striking so hard and so often that Kelti was dazzled at the swordplay. But the stranger was simply too good. More thrusts and grunts and oaths, then a single fluid dart of silver, and the third soldier fell.
The swordsman pivoted quickly, taking in the scene with a single glance. He was burlier than his companion, maybe five or six years older, fair-haired, clean-shaven, and alight with righteousness. His gaze came to rest on Kelti—assessed him as being of no immediate threat—and then went on to take in the motionless mystic on the floor, the weeping woman in the corner, and the heated but inconclusive battle still under way between Cammon and Rostiff. He charged forward, bloody sword upraised, and entered the fray at Cammon’s side. Kelti held his breath, afraid to watch, afraid to hope for one outcome or another. Rostiff snarled out a string of taunts and curses, but the fair-haired swordsman did not answer. Cammon fell back as the other men wove their swords together in a complicated pattern of threat and rescue, keeping his own weapon ready but not as if he thought he’d need it.
Indeed, he did not. A rush—a clash—a great cry of anguish—and Rostiff crumpled to the ground on top of one of the other corpses.
Kelti could not move or speak. Four bodies on the floor. And the mystic still lives.
The ferocious young soldier spun around one more time, as if looking for new adversaries, but his companion shook his head. “That’s all of them,” Cammon said. “There aren’t any reserve soldiers on the road, either.”
The other man pointed the red tip of his sword in Kelti’s direction. “What about him? Will he be a problem?”
Cammon gave him one long, considering gaze, and Kelti found himself shivering, waiting for a terrible judgment. He had failed everyone tonight. Failed Rostiff, whom he should have been defending; failed the Pale Mother, whom he had sworn to serve; failed the Lestra, who had believed in him.
Failed this wretched mystic girl, who had not deserved such a dreadful fate at anybody’s hands.
“He’s harmless,” Cammon said.
His friend snorted. “Not wearing the Pale Mother’s colors, he’s not.”
A strange, flickering sort of smile came to Cammon’s face. He was still watching Kelti. “I don’t believe he understood until this night exactly what it meant to be a soldier in the service of the moon goddess. I don’t think he has the stomach for too many nights like this one.”
Another grunt from the swordsman, and he dropped to his knees next to the mystic on the floor. “What about the woman? Can you tell? Is she alive? Will she survive?”
Cammon knelt beside him. “She’s alive, but she—Justin, untie her hands. I can’t touch the moonstones.”
Kelti shivered again. A mystic, of course, this peculiar boy. Possibly the kind they referred to as a reader—the kind who could pick up the thoughts in a man’s head, tell what he was thinking, what he was feeling. How had these two happened upon this hut, in the back of an untraveled wood, in the middle of the night? What had led them in this direction at such a critical moment? Could this young man have felt the woman’s pain—even through its silence and over an appreciable distance? Was such a thing remotely possible?
If so, wasn’t the Lestra right to fear mystics and their friends?
Justin had snapped the slight chains with two quick twists of his hands. Cammon bent over the still form, touching his hand to the worst of the cuts, murmuring indistinguishable words in the woman’s ear. She must have closed her eyes sometime during the fight, and she did not open them now, but Kelti saw the regular movement of her chest. Still alive. Still breathing.
“Surprised she’s not dead,” Justin said. “Pretty bad wounds.”
“She’s a strong one,” Cammon replied. “And she’s— amazing. She has some kind of healing power that she can bring to bear even on herself.”
“The others can’t do that,” Justin said.
“I know.”
“So how quickly will she be well? Will she be able to sit up in a few minutes?”
“Not that fast.”
“Then how long? We can’t spare much time to care for her.”
A tentative unfolding from the corner, and then the weeping woman came to her feet. “I’ll watch her,” she said in a quavering voice.
“You!” Kelti burst out, taking a step forward. Everyone looked at him, but he was too agitated to subside. “You’re the one who betrayed her to the Lestra’s men!”
“I know, I know.” The woman sobbed. “I didn’t think— there was the money—I didn’t think they’d try to kill her! I thought they’d scare her—and make her tell them things they wanted to know—and let her go. I swear I did, I swear by the Pale Lady’s silver eye!”
“Not an oath that will get you very far in this company,” Justin said dryly.
The woman was back on the floor, kneeling beside the others. “Please let me help her,” she begged. “Please—I have to atone—I have to—”
Justin looked at his friend. “Well? Can she be trusted?”
Cammon didn’t lift his gaze from the hurt woman’s form. “She’s sincere at the moment,” he said. “But I don’t know how long the conversion will last.”
Justin sighed. “Then we stay awhile.”
“Possibly no more than a day,” Cammon said. “It’s miraculous, the way the power is moving through her body. Healing her.”
“Who is she? Do you know? What’s her magic?”
Cammon shook his head. “I don’t have any idea. I’ve never seen anything quite like this. I’d have to ask her. I wish I knew her name.”
The other woman looked up eagerly, as if glad to have something of use to offer. “It’s Lara,” she said.
“And what do you know about her?” Cammon asked.
She shook her head. “Not very much. She helped one of my neighbors with his vegetable garden this summer. Made plants grow like you’ve never seen before. Big and delicious. Other folk, they were amazed, but I was afraid. I knew she had to be a mystic.”
Cammon looked at her, his boyish face severe. “And when had she ever hurt you or anyone you loved, that you had to turn her over to the Lestra’s men?”
“She’s a mystic,” the woman repeated, starting to cry. “Everybody’s afraid of them. They’re evil.”
“I’ve met a damn sight more mystics than I ever thought to, or wanted to, and I haven’t yet come across one of them that particularly struck me as evil,” Justin growled. “Not the way these men are, hunting down and killing people who never offered them any pain or trouble. If you want to start looking for people loosing harm into the world, look to the Daughters of the Pale Mother and the soldiers who fight for them.”
The woman was still crying. “What am I going to do now?” She wept. “Dead men in my house and an injured woman on my floor—and him! Him!” She was pointing straight at Kelti, and her voice had risen to a hysterical pitch. “He’ll go back to the convent to tell the Lestra what I did, and next she’ll send her soldiers after me!”
Now the mystic and his friend, reminded of Kelti’s presence, were staring in his direction. “Yes, just what do we do about him?” Justin demanded in a menacing voice. “Let him go running back to the convent to describe this night’s activities? I’m not opposed to having the Lestra discover that four of her men were killed as they were off on her witch hunts—let her know that she can’t send her men rampaging through the countryside at will! But I am not so eager to have her learn that I am in the vicinity. Which he will certainly tell her if we let him go.”
Kelti fe
ll to his knees, his hands raised in an attitude of supplication. Now they were all on the hard dirt floor—the dead men, the hurt mystic, the weeping woman, the avengers, and Kelti. “Please don’t kill me,” he begged. “I will do whatever you say. Please let me live.”
“You don’t deserve to live,” Justin said in a stern voice. “Look at what you and your fellows were about tonight! Torturing a helpless woman—almost murdering her! What made you think you could do such things? Why would you want to?”
“The goddess—” Kelti stammered, meaning to tell him the whole philosophy, but the words stuck in his throat. The goddess abhors mystics. The goddess demands of her faithful followers that they eradicate magic from the land. It had seemed to make so much sense back at the convent.
It had seemed so brutally senseless tonight.
Justin leaned toward him over Lara’s body, his face fierce. “Any goddess who demands wicked behavior is wicked herself,” he said flatly. “Why would you choose to serve a deity like that?”
From Cammon, a choking sound. Disbelieving, Kelti saw that the younger man was trying to hold back a laugh. “Oh, and from you. A lecture about the gods from you. No one will believe the story when I tell it.”
Justin settled back on his heels, a suggestion of a grin on his face. “Then don’t tell it.”
“Ah,” Cammon said, “I think she’s reviving.” He leaned down and spoke deliberately at Lara’s ear. “Can you hear me? What can I do to make you more comfortable?”
Lara opened her green-brown eyes and looked up at him. No surprise she didn’t answer; she had not said a word all night, no matter what Rostiff did to her. But she must have communicated something to Cammon, for he nodded and looked over at the others. “She needs time. A day, two at most, and she will be able to travel on her own.”
“So we can leave her? With this one?” Justin made a sweep of his hand to indicate the traitor woman, and disgust colored his voice. “Will she be safe?”
Cammon shook his head. “I’m not convinced.”
“I’ll care for her,” Kelti said.
Everyone in the room was surprised to hear him say the words, Kelti included. The others stared at him, even Lara watching him with her dull eyes. “I will,” he repeated.
Justin studied him with elaborate skepticism. “So that you can then return to the Lumanen Convent and tell your mistress where she can find a mystic in greatly weakened condition?”
Kelti shook his head. “I won’t ever return to the Lumanen Convent. I’m done with that way of life.”
Justin still sneered, but Cammon shook his head. “He means it,” the mystic said. “He can be trusted.”
Kelti waited for Justin’s ridicule or disbelief, but apparently this rather fearsome swordsman was willing to believe whatever the slim young mystic said. “Then we’re done here?” he said. “We can be on our way?”
“Well,” said Cammon, “I think we first ought to take the bodies out.”
A snort from Justin. “Woman who betrays someone to the Lestra’s men deserves to have corpses rotting in her house.”
“But the mystic who will be recovering here does not,” Cammon said gently.
Justin nodded and came easily to his feet. “Then let’s get started digging.”
“I want to stay with her a little while longer,” Cammon said.
Justin turned his bright gaze on Kelti. His eyes were light brown and full of a restless intelligence. “Then I guess you’ll have to help me,” he said, an edge of malicious laughter in his voice.
Kelti stood rather unsteadily. “I—I will,” he said. He turned to the woman who was now nominally their hostess. “Is there a shovel anywhere?”
Sniveling, she rose and led them out the front door. The night air felt cool and velvety against Kelti’s skin, for all that it was still the tail end of summer and the day had been over-warm. But the air in the hut had turned rank with sweat and terror and blood. Any fresh breeze would have been a relief after that.
They collected the woman’s tools—a dull shovel with a splintered handle and a couple of rusty hand trowels—and picked their spot. “I’ll just go in and put on a kettle,” the woman said in a hopeful voice.
“You just go and do that,” Justin said indifferently. He had already begun to dig.
Kelti was not surprised to see that Justin attacked this task with the same energy and intensity he had brought to the swordfight. He seemed like the sort of man who did nothing by half measures. Quickly enough, they fell into a sort of rhythm, as Justin shoveled out big scoops of dirt and Kelti darted in after him to clear away loose clumps. He only faltered once, when he allowed himself to realize what he was actually doing. Digging a grave for four companions.
Never had he expected his day to end like this.
“How long have you been with the Lestra’s men?” Justin asked after a period of silence. His voice sounded normal, not even winded. Kelti thought the muscles under his dark clothes must be extraordinary.
“About four months,” Kelti said, trying to keep his own voice level, unalarmed.
“This your first trip out hunting mystics?”
“Yes. I didn’t know—I—” He couldn’t figure out how to explain himself. Maybe there was no explanation. He just stopped talking.
“Harder than you think it’s going to be to take someone’s life,” Justin said. “Even when you think he deserves it.”
“You did it,” Kelti said in a low tone. “Killed Rostiff and the others.”
Justin grunted, more a conversational element than a response to the effort of digging, Kelti thought. “Easier to do when someone’s trying to kill you.”
“How did you get to be so good?” Kelti burst out. “No one’s ever been able to take Rostiff! He wins every contest! And you kil—you killed him after you’d already taken down three others.”
Justin paused a moment and peered at him in the dark. “It’s my life,” he said quietly. “Combat. It’s what I’m built to do. I only know three or four men who are better than I am. And I’ve beaten even them a time or two.”
“No one’s that good,” Kelti whispered. “Unless you—are you a mystic, too? A warrior mystic?”
Now Justin’s grunt sounded more like a laugh. He returned to the digging. “No. Though if I was going to ask for magic, that’s what I’d ask for. A cool head and a strong sword arm. The ability to fight anyone and win.”
“Seems like you’ve already got that,” Kelti muttered.
Justin laughed outright. “So what do you do next?” he asked. “Once this mystic—Lara?—once she’s well enough to travel and you move on. If you’re not going back to the convent—”
“I’m not,” Kelti said quickly.
“Can you go back home? Or will you be shamed to have deserted the Lestra?”
Kelti thought a moment. He was the seventh of eight children, most of them boys, living in a house too small for half that number. He had been so pleased to find a place for himself at the convent, where even the crowded barracks seemed roomy, where everyone welcomed him because every new convert to the Lestra’s cause was another sword arm trained to serve the Silver Lady. He could not return to Lumanen, but there was no place for him in his father’s house.
“I won’t go home,” he said at last. “I’ll find someplace—I don’t know. Work somewhere.”
“You any good with a sword? You didn’t fight tonight, so I couldn’t judge.”
“Not really,” Kelti admitted. “I’m getting better though. Was, anyway.”