Morgawr

  The consequence of a risk. As simple as that. You took a risk, and the person you were closest to paid the price. He began to cry, all the pent-up frustration and guilt and sadness releasing at once. He couldn’t help himself. He didn’t want to break down in front of her—didn’t want her to see that—but it happened before he could find a way to stop it.

  She pulled him against her, enfolding him like an injured child. Her arms came about him and she rocked him gently, cooing soft words, stroking his back with her hand. The hard wooden rods of the splint on her left forearm were digging into his back.

  “Oh, Bek. It’s all right. You can cry with me. No one will see. Let me hold you until.” She pressed him into the softness of her body. “Poor Bek. So much responsibility all at once. So much hurt. It isn’t fair, is it?”

  He heard some of what she said, but comfort came not from the words themselves but from the sound of her voice and the feel of her arms wrapped about him. Everything released, and she was there to absorb it, to take it into herself and away from him.

  “Just hold on to me, Bek. Just let me take care of you. Everything will be all right.”

  She had said he owed it to her to share the losses she had suffered. Losses as great as his own. Furl Hawken. Her Rover companions. He was reminded of it suddenly and wanted to give back something of the comfort she was giving to him.

  He recovered his composure, and his arms went around her. “Rue, I’m sorry . . .”

  “No,” she said, putting her fingers over his mouth, stopping him from saying anything more. “I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want you to talk.”

  She replaced her fingers with her mouth and kissed him. She didn’t kiss him softly or gently, but with urgency and passion. He couldn’t mistake what was happening or what it meant, and he didn’t want to. It took him only a moment, and then he was returning her kiss. When he did, he forgot everything but the heat she aroused in him. Kissing her was wild and impossible. It made him worry that something was wrong, but he couldn’t decide what it was because everything felt right. She ran her hands all over him, pushing him up against the ship’s railing until he was pinned there, fastening her mouth on his with such hunger that he could scarcely breathe.

  When she broke away finally, he wasn’t sure who was the most surprised. From the look on her face she was, but he knew what he was feeling inside. They stared at each other in a kind of awed silence, and then she laughed—a low, sudden growl that brought such radiance to her face that he was surprised all over again.

  “That was unexpected,” she said.

  He couldn’t speak.

  “I want to do it some more. I want to do it a lot.”

  He grinned in spite of himself, in spite of everything. “Me, too.”

  “Soon, Bek.”

  “All right.”

  “I think I love you,” she said. She laughed again. “There, I said it. What do you think of that?”

  She reached out with her good arm and touched his lips with her fingers, then turned and walked away.

  When he went inside the ship to the Captain’s quarters to see about Quentin, he was still in shock from his encounter with Rue. Panax must have seen something in his face when Bek entered the room, because he immediately asked, “Are you all right?”

  Bek nodded. He was not all right, but he had no intention of talking about it just yet. It was too new to share, still so strange in his own mind that he needed time to get used to it. He needed time just to accept that it was true. Rue Meridian was in love with him. That’s what she had said. I think I love you. He tried the words out in his mind, and they sounded so ridiculous that he almost laughed aloud.

  On the other hand, the way she had kissed him was real enough, and he wasn’t going to forget how that felt anytime soon.

  Did he love her in turn? He hadn’t stopped to ask himself that. He hadn’t even considered it before now because the idea of her reciprocating had seemed impossible. It was enough that they were friends. But he did love her. He had always loved her in some sense, from the first moment he had seen her. Now, kissed and held and told of her feelings, he loved her so desperately he could hardly stand it.

  He forced himself to shift his thinking away from her.

  “How is he doing?” he asked, nodding toward Quentin.

  Panax shrugged. “The same. He just sleeps. I don’t like the way he looks, though.”

  Neither did Bek. Quentin’s skin was an unhealthy pasty color. His pulse was faint and his breathing labored and shallow. He was dying by inches, and there was nothing any of them could do about it but wait for the inevitable. Already emotionally overwrought, Bek found himself beginning to cry anew and he turned away self-consciously.

  Panax rose and came over to him. He put one rough hand on Bek’s shoulder and gently squeezed. “First Truls Rohk and now the Highlander. This hasn’t been easy,” he said.

  “No.”

  His hand dropped away, and he walked over to where Grianne knelt on a pallet in the corner, eyes open as she stared straight ahead. The Dwarf shook his head in puzzlement. “What do you suppose she’s thinking?”

  Bek wiped away the last of his tears. “Nothing we want to know about, I’d guess.”

  “Probably not. What a mess. This whole journey, from start to finish. A mess.” He didn’t seem to know where else to go with his thoughts, so he went silent for a moment. “I wish I’d never come. I wouldn’t have, if I’d known what it was going to be like.”

  “I don’t suppose any of us would.” Bek walked over to his sister and knelt in front of her. He touched her cheek with his fingers as he always did to let her know he was there. “Can you hear me, Grianne?” he asked softly.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing here anymore,” Panax continued. “I don’t know that there’s a reason for any of us being here. We haven’t done anything but get ourselves killed and injured. Even the Druid. I didn’t think anything would ever happen to him. But then I didn’t think anything could happen to Truls, either. Now they’re both gone.” He shook his head.

  “When I get home,” Bek said, still looking at Grianne’s pale, empty face, “I’ll stay there. I won’t leave again. Not like this.”

  He thought again about Rue Meridian. What would happen to her when they got back in the Four Lands? She was a Rover, born to the Rover life, a traveler and an adventurer. She was nothing like him. She wouldn’t want to come back to the Highlands and stay home for the rest of her life. She wouldn’t want anything to do with him then.

  “I’ve been thinking about home,” Panax said quietly. He knelt down beside Bek, his bearded face troubled. “I never cared all that much for my own. Depo Bent was just the village where I ended up. I have no family, just a few friends, none of them close. I’ve traveled all my life, but I don’t know if there’s anything left in the Four Lands that I want to see. Without Truls and Walker to keep me busy, I don’t know that there’s anything back there for me.” He paused. “I think maybe I’ll stay here.”

  Bek looked at him. “Stay here in Parkasia?”

  The Dwarf shrugged. “I like the Rindge. They’re a good people and they’re not so different from me. Their language is similar to mine. I kind of like this country, too, except for things like the Graak and Antrax. But the rest of it looks interesting. I want to explore it. There’s a lot of it none of us have seen, all of the interior beyond the mountains, where Obat and his people are going.”

  “You would be trapped here, if you changed your mind. You wouldn’t have a way to get back.” Bek tried the words out on the Dwarf, then grimaced at the way they sounded.

  Panax chuckled softly. “I don’t see it that way, Bek. When you make a choice, you accept the consequences going in. Like coming on this journey. Only maybe this time things will turn out a little better for me. I’m not that young. I don’t have all that much life left in me. I don’t think I would mind finishing it out in Parkasia, rather than in the Four Lands.”

  How differ
ent the Dwarf was from himself, Bek thought in astonishment. Not to want to go home again, but to stay in a strange land on the chance that it might prove interesting. He couldn’t do that. But he understood the Dwarf’s reasoning. If you had spent most of your life as an explorer and a guide, living outside cities and towns, living on your own, staying here wouldn’t seem so strange. How much different were the mountains of the Aleuthra Ark, after all, from those of the Wolfsktaag?

  “Do you think you can manage without me?” Panax asked, his face strangely serious.

  Bek knew what Panax wanted to hear. “I think you’d just get in the way,” he answered. “Anyway, I think you’ve earned the right to do what you want. If you want to stay, you should.”

  They were nothing without their freedom, nothing without their right to choose. They had given themselves to a common cause in coming with Walker in search of the Old World books of magic, but that was finished. What they needed to do now was to help each other find a way home again, whether home was to be found in the Four Lands or elsewhere.

  “Why don’t you get some sleep,” he said to the Dwarf. “I’ll sit with Quentin now. I want to, really. I need to be with him.”

  Panax rose and put his hand on Bek’s shoulder a second time, an act that was meant to convey both his support and his gratitude. Then he walked through the shadows and from the room. Bek stared after him a moment, wondering how Panax would find his new life, if it would bring him the peace and contentment that the old apparently had not. He wondered what it would feel like to be so disassociated from everyone and everything that the thought of leaving it all behind wasn’t disturbing. He couldn’t know that, and in truth he hoped he would never find out.

  He turned back to Quentin, looking at him as he lay white-faced and dying. Shades, shades, he felt so helpless. He took a deep, steadying breath and exhaled slowly. He couldn’t stand this anymore. He couldn’t stand watching him slip away. He had to do something, even if it was the wrong thing, so that he could know that at least he had tried. All of the usual possibilities for healing were out of the question. He had to try something else.

  He remembered from the stories of the Druids that the wishsong had the ability to heal. It hadn’t been used that way often because it required great skill. He didn’t have that skill or the experience that might lend it to him, but he couldn’t worry about that here. Brin Ohmsford had used the magic once upon a time to heal Rone Leah. If an Ohmsford had used the magic to save the life of a Leah once, there was no reason an Ohmsford couldn’t do so again.

  It was a risky undertaking. Foolish, maybe. But Quentin was not going to live if something wasn’t done to help him, and there wasn’t anything else left to try.

  Bek walked over to the bed and sat next to his cousin. He watched him for a moment, then took his hand in his own and held it. He wished he had something more to work with than experimentation. He wished he had directions of some kind, a place to begin, an idea of how the magic worked, anything. But there was nothing of the sort at hand, and no help for it.

  “I’ll do my best, Quentin,” he said softly. “I’ll do everything I can. Please come back to me.”

  Then he called up the magic in a slow unfurling of words and music and began to sing.

  Twenty-four

  Because he had never done this before and had no real idea of how to do it now, Bek Ohmsford did not rush himself. He proceeded carefully, taking one small step at a time, watching Quentin closely to make certain that the magic of the wishsong was not having an adverse affect. He called up the magic in a slow humming that rose in his chest where it warmed and throbbed softly. He kept hold of Quentin’s hands, wanting to maintain physical contact in order to give himself a chance to further judge if things were going as intended.

  When the level of magic was sufficient, he sent a small probe into Quentin’s ravaged body to measure the damage. Red shards of pain ricocheted back through him, and he withdrew the probe quickly. Fair enough. Investigating a damaged body without adequate self-protection was not a good idea. Shielding himself, he tried again and ran into a wall of resistance. Still humming, he tried coming in through Quentin’s mind, taking a reading on what his cousin was thinking. He ran into another blank wall. Quentin’s mind seemed to have shut down, or at least it was not giving off anything Bek could decipher.

  For a moment, he was stumped. Both attempts at getting to where he could do some good had failed, and he wasn’t sure what he should try next. What he wanted to do was to get close enough to one specific injury to see what the magic could do to heal it. But if he couldn’t break down the barriers that Quentin had thrown up to protect himself, he wasn’t going to be able to do anything.

  He tried a more general approach then, a wrapping of Quentin in the magic’s veil, a covering over of his mind and body both. It had the desired effect; Quentin immediately calmed and his breathing became steadier and smoother. Bek worked his way over his cousin’s still form in search of entry, thinking that as his body relaxed, Quentin might lower his protective barriers. Slowly, slowly he touched and stroked with the magic, his singing smoothing away wrinkles of pain and discomfort, working toward the deeper, more serious injuries.

  It didn’t work. He could not get past the surface of Quentin’s body, even when he brushed up against the open wounds beneath the bandages, which should have offered him easy access.

  He was so frustrated that he broke off his attempts completely. Sitting silently, motionlessly beside Quentin, he continued to hold his cousin’s hand, not willing to break that contact, as well. He tried to think of what else he could do. Something about the way in which he was approaching the problem was throwing up barriers. He knew he could force his way into Quentin’s body, could break down the protective walls that barred his way. But he thought, as well, that the consequence of such a harsh intrusion might be fatal to a system already close to collapse. What was needed was tact and care, a gentle offering to heal that would be embraced and not resisted.

  What would it take to make that happen?

  He tried again, this time returning to what was familiar to him about the magic. He sang to Quentin as he had sung to Grianne—of their lives together as boys, of the Highlands of Leah, of family and friends, and of adventures shared. He sang stories to his cousin, thinking to use them as a means of lessening resistance to his ministrations. Now and then, he would attempt a foray into his cousin’s body and mind, taking a story in a direction that might lend itself to a welcoming, the two of them friends still and always.

  Nothing.

  He changed the nature of his song to one of revelation and warning. This is the situation, Quentin, he sang. You are very sick and in need of healing. But you are fighting me. I need you to help me instead. I need you to open to me and let me use the wishsong to mend you. Please, Quentin, listen to me. Listen.

  If his cousin heard, he didn’t do anything to indicate it and did nothing to give Bek any further access. He simply lay on his bed beneath a light covering and fought to stay alive on his own terms. He remained unconscious and unresponsive and, like Grianne, locked away where Bek could not reach him.

  Bek kept at it. He fought to use the magic for the better part of the next hour, maintaining contact through the touching of their hands while trying to heal with his song. He came at the problem from every direction he could imagine, even when he suspected that what he was trying was futile. He attacked with such determination that he completely lost track of everything but what he was doing.

  All to no avail.

  Finally, exhausted and frustrated, he gave up. He rocked back, put his face in his hands, and began to sob. All this crying felt foolish and weak, but he was so weary from his efforts that it was an impulsive, unavoidable response. It happened in spite of his efforts to stop it, boiling over in a rush that left him convulsed and shaking. He had failed. There was nothing left for him to try, nowhere else for him to go.

  “Poor little baby boy,” a voice soothed in his ear
, and slender arms came around his neck and pulled him close.

  At first he thought it was Rue Meridian, come down to the cabin when he wasn’t looking. But he realized almost before he had completed the thought that it wasn’t her voice. Gray robes fell across his face as he twisted his head for a quick look.

  It was Grianne.

  He was so shocked that for a moment he just sat there and let her hold him. “Little boy, little boy, don’t be sad.” She was speaking not in her adult voice, but with the voice of a child. “It’s all right, baby Bek. Your big sister is here. I won’t leave you again, I promise. I won’t go away again. I’m so sorry, so sorry.”

  Her hands stroked his face, gentle and soothing. She kissed his forehead as she cooed to him, touching him as if he were a baby.

  He glanced up again, looking into her eyes. She was looking back at him, seeing him for the first time since he had found her in Castledown. Gone were the vacant stare and the empty expression. She had come back from wherever she had been hiding. She was awake.

  “Grianne!” he gasped in relief.

  “No, no, baby, don’t cry,” she replied at once, touching his lips with her fingers. “There, there, your Grianne can make it all better. Tell me what’s wrong, little one.”

  Bek caught his breath. She was seeing him, but not as he really was, only as she remembered him.

  Her gaze shifted suddenly. “Oh, what’s this? Is your puppy sick, Bek? Did he eat something bad? Did he hurt himself? Poor little puppy.”

  She was looking right at Quentin. Bek was so taken aback by this that he just stared at her. He vaguely remembered a puppy from when he was very little, a black mixed breed that trotted around the house and slept in the sun. He remembered nothing else about it, not even its name.

  “No wonder you’re crying.” She smoothed Bek’s hair back gently. “Your puppy is sick, and you can’t make him better. It’s all right, Bek. Grianne can help. We’ll use my special medicine to take away the pain.”