He landed awkwardly and felt a moment’s blinding pain as the edge of his wing bent backward. A small cry tore from his throat and he hopped for a few paces just to distract himself from the raw sensation. Beside him, Kirra made a flawless landing. The others were instantly on their knees in the grass in a rough circle around them.
“Is that them? Are you sure?” Ellynor asked fearfully, and Justin was so glad to hear her voice that he hopped around another few paces just to get a good look at her. She was disheveled but whole; her face was tight with worry. I’m fine, he wanted to say, but all he could produce was a hoarse croak.
“It’s them,” Cammon said with utter certainty.
“Why are they still birds? Why hasn’t she changed them back?”
“I’m guessing she’s almost at the limits of her strength,” Senneth said quietly. “You have no idea how much energy it takes for her to change a person into something else. And she’s done how many transformations in a few short hours? She might not recover for a couple of days.”
“So—they’ll be like this for another day?” Ellynor cried.
“Better a live hawk than a dead Rider,” Tayse said.
“So do we stay here tonight or move on?” Senneth asked. “Depending on how spectacular this rescue was, someone might come looking for Ellynor in a matter of hours. We’re awfully close to the convent.”
“They need sleep,” Cammon said.
“We can carry them,” Senneth replied.
Tayse glanced up at the sky, gauging the time. “If we can, I’d like to get to someplace that approximates safety,” he said. “A town with an inn, if such a thing can be found. It sounds like these two will need to recover, and I’d like that to be inside shelter, if possible.”
“Then let’s go,” Senneth said. She reached out carefully and gathered up Kirra’s small, trembling form. “I’ll carry this one. Ellynor, I assume—”
“Yes,” said Ellynor, her soft hands already under Justin’s body. He gave a little cry of pain, and she looked more closely. “I think he snapped his wing,” she said. “Does that mean his arm will be broken when he—when he’s human again?”
“Probably,” Senneth said. “Unless you can fix it.”
Ellynor ran one finger delicately down the overlapping feathers. “I’ve never tried to heal a bird before.”
“Then wait till morning. When Kirra changes him back, you can heal him then. Or she can.”
“I’ll do it now,” Ellynor whispered.
“Hurry then,” Tayse said. “We don’t want soldiers to catch us on the road.”
Her hand moved a second time, even more slowly, down the long sweep of his wing. Justin felt the feathered quills straighten and reknit; he felt the pain simply ease away. He bobbed his head up and down and cawed out what thanks he could manage, but he was tired—so tired.
Ellynor scooped him up and cradled him against her throat. “Let’s get going,” she said in a choked voice.
Justin felt her swing into the saddle, heard Tayse issue orders and Cammon ask a question, but he couldn’t sort out the words. Ellynor bunched up the front of her robes to make a nest for him in her lap, and she kept one hand on his back as the horses went into motion. He could not keep his eyes open any longer; he slept away the rest of the journey.
CHAPTER 40
JUSTIN woke suddenly and completely, lying absolutely motionless as he tried to ascertain where he was.
What he was.
Up to a point, he vividly remembered the events of the night before. The fire, the rescue, the flight to safety. Ellynor’s hands cupped around his small, feathered body, the sounds and sensations of travel. After that, nothing. He had fallen asleep while they were still on the road. He had no idea when they had arrived wherever they were now or what shape he had been in when they stopped for the night.
Keeping his eyes closed, still feigning sleep in case he had somehow fallen back into enemy hands, he cautiously stretched his extremities. Those were fingers, those were toes. There was a definite and familiar weight to his body. He was human, he was male. His skin was overlaid with cotton and his bones were relatively comfortable. He must be lying on his side between the sheets of a bed, his head resting comfortably on a pillow.
His right arm ached as if it had been recently broken, but there were no ropes on his wrists or ankles. Still among friends.
He opened his eyes and stared straight at Ellynor, whose head rested on the same pillow just a few inches from his. She was awake, and her expression was hopeful. When she saw him conscious, her whole face was transformed with delight.
“Justin!” she squealed, and threw her arms around him.
He was alert enough to participate enthusiastically in the kiss, rolling her over so her back was against the bed and he was practically on top of her. Then he was slammed with protests from half the bones in his body, while at the same time catching a whiff of his own odor—sweat and smoke and some indefinable animal scent—and he groaned and let her go.
“I’m too foul to be kissing anyone,” he said, sitting up and stretching his arms high over his head and wincing at every bruise and ache. He hadn’t felt this bad since his first weeks training to be a Rider, when every day was a punishment.
For an answer, she pushed herself to her knees, wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her mouth to his. “I was so afraid you wouldn’t live long enough to ever be able to kiss me again,” she whispered. “Tell me what happened.”
He kissed her cheek and dragged himself out of bed. They must be in an inn of some kind. The room was small and sparsely furnished, but there was a pitcher and basin over in one corner. Justin gulped down half of the water and used the rest to wash his face and upper body. He was stalling for time; he didn’t want to tell her how close he’d come to dying.
“First tell me what happened last night,” he said through the thin towel that he was using to dry his face. “Last thing I remember is flying down to a camp on the side of the road and Tayse saying we had to move on. How’d we get here— wherever here is—and when did I become human again? Did the magic just wear off?”
Ellynor was watching him with wise eyes. She knew he was trying to distract her. “Kirra stumbled in during the middle of the night and changed you back. Then she left and I think she went to sleep again. I haven’t seen her this morning.”
“Where are we?”
“I don’t know. Some small town on the road to the Lireth Mountains.”
He laid aside the towel and came to sit beside her on the bed, his bare feet on the floor. His pants were torn and ripped, and the shirt, which he’d left balled up by the basin, was a dead loss. He hoped someone had brought the rest of his clothes along, or he’d be riding half-naked for the rest of this journey. “Are you all right?” he asked gently. “Did they do anything to harm you before we arrived?”
She shook her head. “No. Well, except for what you saw. But what happened? It seemed to take so long before you returned with Kirra.”
Before he could answer, the door opened and Cammon stuck his head in. Over his shoulder he called, “I told you he was awake,” and then entered without an invitation. He was smiling broadly. His hair and clothes were almost as disheveled as Justin’s, and he didn’t have the same excuses. “You look terrible,” he offered.
“About the way I feel,” Justin admitted.
The others filed in one by one—Tayse and Senneth both appearing rested and capable, Kirra still in a nightdress and yawning hugely, Donnal in human form.
“Hey!” Justin greeted this last arrival. “I thought you’d gone on to Ghosenhall.”
“I called him back,” Cammon said. “I thought Kirra might need him.”
Kirra flung herself on the foot of the bed and curled up there. Donnal settled on the floor beside her. “And I do,” she said drowsily.
“So the king still doesn’t know what’s keeping you so long on the road?” Justin asked.
Donnal smiled and shook his head
. Senneth groaned and leaned against the wall beside Tayse. “No,” she said. “I’m convinced he thinks I’ve deserted. It might be easier if I did. I’ll come with you across the Lireth Mountains and then stay there. Maybe Ammet will take me in for another year.”
“So tell us what happened,” Tayse said. “Kirra hasn’t been coherent enough to recite the tale.”
Justin glanced around the room first, feeling a tightness in his chest. There it was again, that lancing light, that strange cord of power that bound the six of them. He always felt stronger when they were all together, his mind clearer, his senses sharper, as if what one of them saw or felt registered in his own sight, his own body. Ellynor sat somewhat apart, disconnected, not bound by the same mystical chain, yet exerting an equal and irresistible pull on his senses. He reached out and took her hand and felt the live spark that seemed to cross from his fingers to hers. She flung her head up and shivered a little, then squeezed his hand between hers. Justin didn’t know what that flare of power signified, if it was only a manifestation of his own connection to her or if it represented her binding into the group, but he did not care. Either way, she was linked somehow to him. He tightened his grip.
“I suppose Ellynor told you that they had confined her to a small room,” he said. “Bringing in groups of novices all day to look on the face of a mystic and grow faint with fear. Kirra thought it unlikely that she could get Ellynor out the gates before some new group came in, and she didn’t want the room to be empty. So she left me behind, shaped like Ellynor.”
“I really meant to get back sooner than I did,” Kirra said, speaking through another yawn. “I didn’t realize how close it was to nightfall.”
“A little while after she left Ellynor with us and went back to get you, Cammon just sort of froze in place,” Senneth said. “We knew something was wrong.”
“Guards came right at sunset to take me down to the bonfire,” Justin said, glancing at Ellynor to see how she was taking this. Not very well. Her dark blue eyes were huge and luminous with fear. “I tried to make a break for freedom, figuring I’d rather die in a fight, but there were too many of them and I had no weapons.” He shrugged. “So they tied me to the stake and lit the fire.”
Ellynor made a strangled noise and buried her face against his bare shoulder. He patted her hair with his free hand.
“Strange thing was, once I was tied up, one of the guards slipped me a knife,” he continued. “Whispered that I should stab myself before I burned to death. I was ready to do just that when Kirra arrived. Turned me into a bird, and we flew away.”
Ellynor lifted her head, astonishment replacing horror. “One of the guards gave you a knife?” she repeated. “Why?”
He shook his head. “No idea. He was young, a little shorter than me, dark-haired. Looked like he might be noble, or bastard nobility. I think he might have been the same fellow I saw the last time I was at the convent. Late that night, after I said good-bye to you.”
Her face showed even more surprise. “Daken,” she said. “But—how strange. I thought—that night, when he came down the path, I was afraid he would see you. I was afraid he reported you to the guards. I thought—Justin, I’m fairly sure he’s the one who betrayed you, who sent the soldiers after you the next day. Why would he then decide to save you?”
“Well, he didn’t know it was Justin,” Cammon pointed out. “He thought it was you.”
“Was he in love with you?” Justin asked outright, because he wanted to know. “He looked pretty upset at the thought that you were going to die.”
She shook her head. “He was in love with Astira.” She paused, thinking that over. “And Astira was grateful that I didn’t tell the Lestra she had been meeting Daken in secret. Maybe she’s the one who told him to give you the knife, thinking you were me. Maybe that was her way of thanking me.”
Justin grunted. “Better way to thank you would have been to try to help you escape.”
“I’m sure she thought that would be impossible,” Ellynor said quietly.
Tayse spoke up. “So. How visible do you think your transformation was? Did Coralinda Gisseltess and all her novices watch you change into a hawk, or were you obscured by flame? Do they know you didn’t die?”
“Don’t know what they saw, but I’d bet they realized there was no body,” Justin said with a grin. “So unless they think mystics burn to ash and leave nothing behind, they’ve probably guessed that Ellynor didn’t die in the fire.”
“Which means they might come looking for her.”
Kirra stirred and sat up. “Or it means they’re even more afraid of magic than they were before,” she said wearily. “Everything we do just makes them decide we’re more dangerous than they thought.”
Tayse gave her a faint smile. “Well, you are.”
“But they might not be in close pursuit,” Senneth said. “Still, I don’t know that we should be lingering here much longer than we have to. This country is mostly given over to followers of the Pale Mother, and mystics are far from welcome. And we’re an odd group by any measure. We arrive last night as a party of four, and this morning there are seven of us, though no friends have joined us in the night. I can see where such inexplicable multiplication might make an innkeeper and his friends uneasy.”
“This is how it always happens with us when we travel,” Justin murmured to Ellynor. “We ride peacefully into town, looking for a place to spend the night, and by the time we leave, everyone wants to kill us.”
“Kirra and I can slip out the door in some other forms,” Donnal offered. “And join you later, looking like ourselves.”
“I can’t,” Kirra said through another yawn. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to shift shapes again.”
Donnal was grinning. “All right. I’ll leave three times as a bird, and come back three times as a human. You, myself, and Justin.”
Kirra looked interested. “Now, that might work.”
“Or we all pack up and exit this morning, not worrying too much about what our hosts think,” Tayse said. “Are you two strong enough to travel?”
“I’m well enough to sit a horse,” Justin said. “Still not up to full strength, though. Wouldn’t want to encounter more than a couple enemies at a time.”
“I’m tired, but I can ride,” Kirra said.
Tayse looked at Cammon with his eyebrows lifted. Cammon shrugged. “They’re both lying,” he said.
Tayse nodded. “All right. Then we stay a day.” He glanced at Senneth and Ellynor. “Those who have restorative powers might use them to hurry along the recovery of our friends.”
“Oh, yes. Of course,” Ellynor said so earnestly that Kirra laughed.
“What a ragtag group we are,” Kirra said. “The lot of us so bruised and broken that the healers have to cure the healers who were curing them a few days ago!”
“It’s strange, though, isn’t it?” Cammon said thoughtfully. “How many mystics are healers? You three all have such different powers, and yet all of you can lay your hands on someone and save him. And there was that woman Justin rescued on the way to Neft—Lara. She recovered so quickly I have to think she’s got that kind of power, too. So many kinds of mystics, so many of them healers. Why would that be?”
“Don’t forget that Senneth and I, at least, can kill someone as easily as we can succor him,” Kirra answered somewhat grimly.
Senneth was shaking her head. “The gods love life,” she said quietly. “That’s why they put the power in us to begin with. And that’s what we’re supposed to use the power for. Making people whole.”