She shrugged, “You spent most of yesterday trying to turn your stomach inside out. He didn’t think you were in a mood for conversation then.”
“Point taken.”
She disappeared and my large friend poked his head in the door. “Still alive?” he asked with a half-smile.
“Barely, but thanks to your mother I mostly wish I had died,” I responded. “Any news?” It had been three days since Lady Thornbear had begun liberally dosing me with alcohol, so I was understandably nervous about what might have occurred in the meantime.
Dorian grew somber, “Only seven of the Knights of Stone survived: me, Cyhan, Harold, Thomas, William, Egan, and Edward,” he said bluntly.
“We lost so many?”
“Most of the servants, townsfolk, and soldiers survived, except those who didn’t get transported in time. We lost over fifty guardsmen and twenty of the townsfolk, including nine children. Most of those casualties occurred in the town, though a few were hiding in the castle before they were discovered by the god-ridden berserkers of Doron’s,” he said, elaborating.
“Any changes among the Knights that survived?” I asked, knowing that they must have drawn greatly upon their bond during the fighting.
“No, thankfully, since I doubt you are up to releasing anyone at this point.”
I stared at Dorian’s face, wondering if I had imagined the granite teeth in his mouth a few days ago. He had clearly begun transforming, and while that was to be expected of someone who used a lot of the earth’s power, what wasn’t expected was for him to spontaneously revert to his normal state. I couldn’t even decide whether to ask him directly about it. “Did your mother ever talk to you?” I asked, changing the subject.
Dorian frowned, “No, why?”
For a moment I considered keeping her confidence by misdirecting his question, but for once I was too tired for subtlety. Instead I gave him the most direct answer I could, “You need to ask her that yourself.”
He stood, as if ready to do so right then and there, “Perhaps I will then.”
“Before you do that, I need some advice,” I interjected.
“On what?”
“What do I do now?” I asked.
Dorian looked at me as if I had grown a second head. “You should know the answer to that as well as anyone. We rebuild and we go on. George has already begun moving people back to Washbrook, and we will soon begin repairing the damage to the keep itself. Other than the loss of life, we suffered fairly minor damage to the town and outer walls.”
“Not that,” I said, waving my hands. “About the gods… I think I’ve convinced Doron and perhaps even Millicenth to give us a wide berth, but I’m worried about Mal’goroth. He’s become too powerful, even the shining gods fear him now. Worse, he’s here, in our world, but I have no idea where, or what he might be up to.”
“I told you before; I’ll deal with the shiggreth and the foes that can be fought by mortal men… I leave the deities and such in your hands. You and Marcus were always better at strategizing when it came to politics or matters of the gods,” he replied.
“Marc!” I said loudly. “You’re right, of course. I need to talk to him.”
“Good luck. You haven’t forgotten he moved to Agraden have you?” reminded Dorian.
I hadn’t. “No, but I can still contact him. Have you seen Penny yet today?”
“She’s been tending to Elaine. I’m afraid the girl isn’t doing well,” said Dorian.
“What do you mean?”
“She isn’t breathing well,” he replied, “though I’ve never really understood how a leg wound could cause problems with the lungs.”
Unlike my friend, I had learned quite a bit over the past few years about how the body responded to wounds. In particular, I had an excellent mental map of how the vasculature carried blood, and his comment set off alarm bells for me. “I need you to do me a favor,” I said without preamble.
“Sure.”
“Go to my study and open the cabinet to the left of my desk. I keep magical letter boxes in there. Find the one labeled ‘Marcus’ and bring it to me, along with something to write with,” I said, outlining my request.
He didn’t waste time and moments later he was gone. As soon as the door had shut, I sat up and put my legs over the side of the bed. The world began spinning and my stomach clenched rebelliously. I can deal with that, I thought quietly, if only my head would stop pounding. Ignoring my body’s warning signs, I stood and started my way across the room. I didn’t have to get very far; Elaine was being kept in the guest room across the hall.
By the time I had reached her door, I wondered if I had taken on more than I could handle. I spent several minutes retching as I lost control of my stomach. It was with considerable regret that I surrendered the tea Elise had brought me. Penny won’t be happy about the mess either, I noted.
Gathering my strength once my internal storm had passed, I opened the door and stepped inside. Both Penny and Walter looked at me in surprise. “What the hell do you think you are doing out of bed?!” said my lovely wife by way of greeting. She looked exceptionally glad to see me.
“Morning dear,” I said sweetly.
She gave me an evil glare, “It’s afternoon, genius.” She rose and moved toward me, clearly meaning to escort me from the room. “You don’t need to be in here right now.”
“I heard she’s having trouble breathing,” I replied. Looking over Penny’s shoulder, I could see Elaine sitting partially upright in the bed. Her face looked strained and her breath came in rapid shallow gasps, as though she had just run a race and couldn’t get her wind back. She was watching me from where she lay, and the panic in her eyes was enough to confirm my fear.
Penny’s face broadcast a warning to me. She was trying not to frighten the patient any more than was necessary. Her words were loud and brazen, as though she hoped to distract Elaine from her life and death struggle, “Let me take you back to bed before you infect Elaine with a bad case of ‘stupid’. Honestly, you do something like this every time you’re ill. I would think you’d learn eventually.”
I held my hand up before she got close. “My power has returned, in some measure at least. I need to help her before it is too late.” Walter’s eyes were watching me throughout the exchange.
“You can worry about that when you’re strong enough,” said Penny reasonably, “not today.”
“She won’t live past today if I don’t do something now,” I answered bluntly. That brought her up short.
Penelope’s eyes narrowed as she stared at me in a look meant just for me. There was fear there, hidden in her gaze, fear of losing something she had just regained. “You might not live past today if you do something rash and aren’t strong enough to recover from your mistake.”
“I have to try,” I said, leaning forward to kiss my wife. To her credit, she did not flinch from me, though I surely couldn’t have smelled very good. I found myself leaning upon her afterward, for my balance was uncertain.
“Are you certain this is a good idea,” asked Walter. His features were sunken from lack of sleep and prolonged stress.
Is it a good idea? No, certainly not, I told myself inwardly, but I knew I had to try. “Put your hand on my shoulder,” I said, ignoring his question. “Watch and try to lend me your strength if I seem to be faltering.” As I spoke I eased myself into the bed, stretching out beside my hyperventilating student.
Since my first attempts at healing years ago, I had learned to categorize what I did by what level of connection was required. Simple healing was an act of will, requiring only desire and the ability to manipulate aythar; plain wizardry in essence. There was no contact of minds or spirits, and it didn’t matter whether the subject cooperated or not. Simple healing could close wounds and mend bones, and it was really as much as Walter had ever mastered.
More skillful wizards could, at some personal risk, connect themselves and send their spirit into the patient. Using such a technique gave the w
izard much more control, as they could then use the body’s own senses to inform and augment their magical senses. That was what I had done the first time I had used magic, when I possessed the Duke’s horse, Star. I had done it again when Penny was dying, after being impaled by a ballista bolt.
The third level of healing was what Moira Centyr had taught me, and how I had actually saved Penny’s life when wizardry alone was insufficient. I had listened to her body and made her body a part of myself, using her body’s physical memory to restore her to the state of physical well-being. That level of healing required an archmage.
Today I faced several new problems, first being that I wasn’t sure my body was well enough to survive the absence of my spirit for any period of time. The second problem was that I was unsure if I could fix her problem with wizardry alone, and my magical senses hadn’t returned to the point yet where I could be confident in attempting to ‘listen’ to her body in that way. In fact I could barely hear even the earth, and it was normally the loudest of the voices in the world around me.
“Elaine, listen to me. In a moment you’ll feel me start, and I’ll need your help. I’m not very strong right now, so if you resist at all, I may not be able to do what’s necessary. You feel as if you’re suffocating, so a sensation of panic is entirely natural, but don’t push me aside out of reflex,” I said soothingly.
She nodded, her eyes watching me as she drew in rapid, shallow breaths. Closing my eyes I began, or I tried to anyway. With my eyes shut, my magesight seemed sharper, but it still wasn’t as clear as I remembered. Elaine’s body glowed with the force of her aythar, and it was made brighter still by her struggle to survive. Sending my thoughts outward, I tried to enter her body but found myself quickly rebuffed. It was hard enough to force myself out of my own form, but as soon as I came in contact with the raging torrent of her aythar, I snapped back into myself.
Part of the problem might have been that I had never attempted to do such a thing with another wizard, at least not while they were conscious, or still fully inhabiting their body. I needed to be stronger; I simply didn’t have the power necessary to push my way inside. There’s a lot of power in the girl, I thought. It’s a shame I can’t use it.
But perhaps I could, in a sense, if I tried to do what Moira Centyr had done to help me when I was trying to save Penny. Pushing my thoughts outward again, I sought Elaine’s mind first this time, as if I were trying to establish a mental link with her. Help me, draw me in.
Her response was powerful, and I found myself caught, as her will latched onto me and pulled me inexorably inward. It was a sensation that was frightening, in large part because I had so little control over it. I was within her now, surrounded and engulfed by her power and simultaneously bombarded by the pain radiating from her lower body. There was a tightness in her chest and a feeling of weight, as though a heavy man were sitting upon her, making it difficult to breathe.
I needed to find the source of the problem. Luckily I already knew where to begin. Follow me and watch, I told her mentally. Narrowing my focus I delved inward. Using the pain as a starting point, I began following the veins leading from her ruined leg back toward her lungs, until at last I arrived at the obstacle causing her problem. A large clot had partially blocked the pulmonary artery leading from her lungs to her heart. If it had been completely blocked she would have already died, suffocating even as her lungs continued to work, unable to return oxygenated blood to the rest of her body.
Wasting no time, I opened the artery with sharp precision and forced the clot outside; her body could reabsorb it later. I might have broken it apart within the vessel, but I feared that smaller parts of it would block arteries further down or seed the formation of still larger clots. Her body briefly sent blood rushing out the opening I had created, until I had sealed it again. Whole once more, the vessel began sending the proper amount of blood back toward the heart, and I felt her breathing begin to slow as her body no longer had to struggle to keep itself alive.
Thank you, her thoughts came to me, along with a profound sense of warmth and affection.
Not yet, I answered. There is much more to do.
I wanted to restore her, completely, as I had with Penny. I didn’t have the strength, but I knew how. Don’t panic when you feel the change. You will have a sensation as if you’ve become someone else; don’t reject it. I need to become you.
What?!
I listened. My own power was small, but she was full of strength, strength I needed if I was to mend her broken body. I couldn’t use her power, but she could. Moira Centyr’s words echoed through my mind as I remembered our conversation from long ago, ‘An archmage does not wield power, Mordecai. An archmage becomes that which they seek to wield.’
What I was doing was dangerous. I had never sought to incorporate another sentient, conscious, human being as part of myself. The danger was similar to what I had done before, but the possibility that I might forget my own identity was greater. Or is it? I had no way of knowing. Pushing my doubts aside I listened, at first merely to the sound of her heart, beating solidly, more easily now that the clot was removed. Gradually I became aware of a vibration, a song, something bright and feminine. It was vibrant and alive, and as I became aware of it, it in turn became aware of me.
I was in touch now, not with Elaine’s conscious mind, but with her very being, the core that gave rise to the thoughts and feelings she experienced. It was a primal thing, not to be lightly tampered with, for it was the source of life, consciousness, and perhaps even free will.
It was me.
And then I knew no more.
Chapter 32
I woke gradually, feeling a pleasant tension forming in my shoulders until eventually I was forced to stretch, arching my back. I felt uncommonly good, which was unusual, particularly because it was not an adjective I usually associated with waking up or morning. My body seemed rested and healthy. My memory was a little fuzzy though, and for some reason I thought that perhaps that should not have been the case.
Something told me that I should feel bad, but I wasn’t really sure why. The door opened at that point and Penny walked in, her eyes immediately taking in my wakeful state. “You’re awake!” she almost shouted.
“So are you!” I shouted back, thinking she deserved the same encouragement.
Then she started crying.
Damnitt! I chided myself inwardly. I always manage to say the wrong thing, even when I don’t know what might be wrong… or right, for that matter. Seriously, it was a gift. I was the idiot savant of making women cry. You’d think that given complete ignorance of the situation, I’d at least have a fifty-fifty chance of saying something that would make her laugh, but it never seemed to work out that way.
I managed to untangle myself from the sheets quickly enough to catch her before she threw herself into the bed with me. Standing, I caught her in my arms as she ran toward me. It wasn’t long before I realized her tears were of the ‘happy’ sort, which all things considered, is a bit better than the other kind. I considered myself a bit of an expert in diagnosing the different sorts of crying, since I had witnessed plenty of it first-hand.
I spoke soft, comforting words of no particular meaning, while I stroked her hair and held her close, giving her time to wind down. Over the course of my marriage I had learned that frequently tears were a type of stress relief for Penny. Me, I preferred to just go break something or simply ignore my feelings, they usually went away on their own after a while anyway. One of the many differences between us, I supposed.
At some point she gathered her wits together enough to begin a proper conversation, “I don’t know whether to be mad at you for taking such risks or glad that you made it back.”
I buried my nose in her hair, inhaling the soft fragrance of the woman I loved. “You’re such a crybaby,” I said affectionately. “I’m not even sure what happened,” I added.
She growled into my shoulder, but I held her tight so she couldn’t get enough s
pace to take a swing at me. Well, I tried to hold her tight… the earth-bond had given her physical strength far beyond what I could handle. Our embrace turned into a one sided wrestling match, with me laughing as I lost. In the end I wound up flat on my back, in the bed, with her looking down on me. She had my arms crossed and pinned. Tears ran down her nose to land on my chest. I hoped they were tears anyway, the proper definition probably depended upon whether they had exited her eyes and run down the outside… or the inside, of her nose first. I suppressed that squeamish thought quickly.
“You are never to do that again! For anyone, do you hear me? Except for the children maybe, but not even for me!” she declared.
“Do what?” I asked.
“You don’t even remember?!” she said, exasperated. “Typical. Elaine was hurt, do you remember that?”
Memories came flooding back then, the assault on the castle, my poisoning, Lady Thornbear’s harrowing treatments… and Elaine’s terrible wound. I remembered trying to heal her, up to a point, but then my recollection ended in a blank wall. “I don’t know what happened,” I said uncertainly. “It’s all foggy. I started and then, somewhere in the middle I must’ve passed out.”
“Well she certainly remembers enough for both of you!” announced my irritated spouse. “She said you surrendered your life to heal her.”
“What?!” I asked, startled.
“You heard me. I didn’t really understand it, but from how she described it, you somehow ‘became’ her, as in… you ceased to be you. She was able to use your gift to restore her body and yours, but she wasn’t sure whether you would ever wake up. That was the part that really upset me,” said Penny.
As she spoke I noticed that my magesight was back to what I considered its normal acuity, and the voices of the earth and the wind were back to their normal volumes. Whatever had happened, I seemed to be fully recovered. “That does seem foolish of me,” I told Penny.
“You’re damn right it was! And even worse, after it was all over, she apologized to me,” added Penny.