Thornbear (Book 1)

  The younger man grew more stone-faced.

  Cyhan was well-versed in the silent language of stubborn men. Some had accused him of inventing it. “If you didn’t want them to know, then you shouldn’t have fucked up your arm. Come see me after you get one of them to look at it.”

  Gram’s face flickered with uncertainty.

  “I’d recommend the Count. He might not tell your mother, if you ask him nicely. Elaine might offer the same, assuming you feel like riding to Arundel, but she could talk the horns off a goat. Either way, if I don’t see you this afternoon, looking much improved, I’ll take the matter to the Count myself. Understood?”

  “Yes sir.” Gram took a step back toward the keep.

  “Gram,” said the knight.

  “Yes sir?”

  “Don’t forget, right now the world is made of glass, and that includes your body. Anything other than the most gentle of touches will break something,” reminded Cyhan.

  “Yes sir.”

  “Find me after lunch—or I’ll find you.” The words carried a not-so-subtle hint.

  Gram could feel the warrior’s eyes following him until he had reached the main door to the keep. His first impression as he replayed the encounter was one of unease, but as he thought it over he came to realize that he felt relieved on some level. The older man’s confident competence had settled his nerves, and while he didn’t look forward to seeing him later the solidity of the command gave him a reassuring feeling of certainty.

  He didn’t press me about the details either. Cyhan’s behavior was a stark contrast to his mother’s. She only stopped asking questions when she had extracted every bit of information from him.

  For perhaps the millionth time, he wondered silently what things might have been like if his father had lived.

  Chapter 5

  Ascending the stairs that led to the living quarters within the keep, Gram’s head was trying to work out his best option. He wanted to talk to Matthew before going to the Count, but that was unlikely to happen. He knew his friend well enough to know that he had probably stayed up until the wee hours of the morning working on his project. Matthew was unlikely to rise before the sun stood high in the sky.

  He stopped in the hall that led to the Count’s apartments. There was a guard stationed outside the door that led to the foyer, but that didn’t worry him. Being a frequent visitor, he was unlikely to even be questioned. What caught his attention was a small stuffed bear coming in the opposite direction.

  “Good morning, my champion,” Grace said to him as she approached. In a smaller voice she added, “You don’t want to go in there right now,” as she passed by.

  Gram turned and followed the bear until they had gone around the corner and left the view of the day guard. “What’s going on?” he asked her.

  “Your mother is visiting the Countess and she looked to be in as foul a mood as I’ve ever seen,” said Grace. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

  “Well…” he drew the word out with an embarrassed expression.

  “I thought so,” said the small bear reproachfully. “What did you do?”

  “She thinks I’ve been fighting with the chief huntsman,” he began, unsure what to tell her. He felt trapped. It would be impossible for him to see the Count without encountering his mother again, and if she saw his arm…

  Grace looked at him doubtfully, somehow conveying her disbelief despite the limitations of her features.

  “… and I lost my temper when she questioned me. I may have said some things I shouldn’t have,” he admitted.

  “Oooh,” Grace said in a pained voice, then she asked “Did you get in a fight with the master huntsman?” It was a good question. Rose Thornbear had a reputation for being uncomfortably discerning.

  Gram shrugged, “Well, yeah, but that isn’t how I got this.” He gestured at his swollen arm.

  The bear put one stuffed paw in front of her yarn mouth. “Oh my,” she said worriedly.

  Shit, thought Gram, I didn’t mean to show her that. Why do I keep talking to her? “It was an accident. I was hoping to see the Count. I thought maybe he could fix it before Mother gets a look at it.”

  “You should see him anyway,” advised the bear. “I don’t know a lot about wounds, but if that is as bad as it looks, I think it’s more important than upsetting Lady Rose.”

  “I’ll figure something else out,” said Gram, moving to go down the stairs. He was pretty sure he’d rather lose the arm than face his mother again.

  “No!” protested Grace. “This is serious. I’ll go tell him myself if you don’t come back here!”

  Reaching down with one long arm, Gram plucked her up from the ground. “Then I suppose you’ll have to come with me.”

  “Kidnapping? You are no true knight to treat a lady so! Villain! Cad! Unhand me,” she declaimed as loudly as her voice would allow.

  “Shhh!” said Gram desperately as he descended the stairs. “You’re going to attract attention.”

  “I have no other recourse, since you have taken me captive,” responded the bear in a dramatic voice. “You have left me no other weapon with which to defend my virtue!”

  The young man stopped on the stairs, cocking his head to one side, bemused. “Your virtue? Seriously? Where do you get this stuff, Grace?”

  Grace became uncertain, “Well, that’s what they say in the stories.”

  Gram laughed, “You’ve been reading Moira’s romance novels?” He and Matthew had both teased her about the books she had been reading recently, though neither of them thought to consider the fact that she had gotten the books from the Count’s own collection.

  “Perhaps…”

  “Well I am neither a knight nor a villain, and I have neither a horse to carry you away nor a dungeon vile to keep you in, so you’ll just have to accompany me for a while until I sort this out,” he told her frankly.

  The little bear stared at him for a moment, “There might be another way, if you’ll trust me.”

  “You have an idea?”

  “Let me go back. I’ll fetch Moira to you, and she can look at your arm. She’s almost as good a healer as Elaine or even Mordecai himself,” suggested Grace, ending on a proud note.

  Gram thought about it, “You won’t tell anyone?”

  “Just my mistress.”

  “Don’t tell her ‘til she’s almost here. She might blow it otherwise,” said Gram.

  The bear nodded, “I will have to tell her something, though, or she won’t come.”

  “Just tell her it’s a private emergency. Tell her I’ll be grateful if she will help, but that you don’t know what’s wrong,” Gram told her.

  “That’s a lie,” said Grace disapprovingly.

  “Well, reword it however you have to, you know what I mean,” he answered, frustrated.

  “I can do that,” she agreed.

  “I’ll wait at Matthew’s workshop, in the courtyard,” added Gram as she began to leave. “Someone might think it odd if they see me hiding in the stairwell.”

  Grace nodded, and then she was gone.

  ***

  “What’s all the mystery about?” asked Moira as she stepped into the workshop, glancing around curiously.

  The old courtyard workshop technically belonged to Mordecai, but it had become Matthew’s private domain over the years. It had become so by mutual accord between the twins and was now an accomplished fact. She had no real interest in crafting or enchanting, and he had no desire to have his sister clutter up the place. It was a sign of the distance that had grown between the two siblings as they drew closer to adulthood.

  Still, Moira couldn’t help but look around with a certain amount of interest, both from a barely hidden desire to irk her brother, as well as simple interest. She was surprised to find that Gram was waiting there alone. Somehow that fact made her slightly apprehensive.

  “This,” said Gram, sliding up his sleeve to draw her attention.

  The arm was badl
y swollen, a fact she might have noticed despite his sleeve, but she had long ago made a habit of keeping her mental focus away from the areas hidden by clothing, particularly with regard to boys. It wasn’t something that her father or any other wizard had drilled into her, just a simple result of her natural unobtrusiveness.

  She gave an involuntary gasp at the sight of it, and then again as her magesight explored the wound in more detail. Moira was empathic in the entirely normal way that many people are, and just seeing such a painful injury evoked a complementary pain within her. “How did you do that?” she asked after regaining her internal composure.

  “I accidentally broke the ceiling beam,” said Gram nonchalantly, pointing to indicate the damaged area.

  Her eyes went wide, “Huh?” After a moment they narrowed as her mind grew suspicious.

  Gram shrugged, “I didn’t know my own strength.”

  “Sure,” she answered in a tone that gave no doubt about her lack of credulity. “Is that why your mother is so mad?”

  “Not exactly,” said Gram. “She hasn’t seen most of it. I’d kind of rather she didn’t see the rest.”

  She looked at him with eyes that were growing wider, “You want me to try and fix that?”

  He nodded.

  She shook her head, “You should really let my dad look at that, or Elaine, but she’s in Arundel right now. I wouldn’t know where to start…”

  Moira had learned to heal simple cuts and scrapes from her father, and he had even had her help with some of the farmers’ injured livestock, to give her a feel for more serious problems, but she had never dealt with anything so serious on a fellow human being. The idea scared her. She took a step back.

  “Please!” begged Gram. “If my mother sees this, she’ll kill me.”

  “My father…”

  “…would have to tell my mother,” interrupted Gram.

  “She’s already madder than anything I’ve ever seen,” said Moira. “I don’t think it would be any worse.”

  “Believe me, it could be worse.”

  “Who did that to you?” she asked.

  “The ceiling beam,” said Gram. “I wasn’t lying.”

  “Matthew has something to do with it then,” she postulated.

  Gram was no good at deception, but he didn’t intend to expose his friend’s part. “Maybe—look, I don’t want to tell anyone about this, or drag anyone else into it. Will you just do what you can? Please?”

  “Only if you tell me what you two are plotting,” she insisted, crossing her arms stubbornly.

  “Will you promise not to tell anyone?”

  Moira hesitated; while she had always been something of a free-spirit, she still had a good measure of caution in her. In the end, her curiosity took precedence over prudence. “Alright, I promise.”

  Gram slowly filled her in. He barely mentioned his fight with Chad Grayson, spending most of his time discussing Matthew’s idea to steal his father’s sword and remake it. That was what really interested him, so much so that he explained the manner in which he received his injury almost incidentally. He finished by relating his encounter with Cyhan so that she would understand his reason for urgency.

  “That’s why your aythar is so bright,” commented Moira. “You’re still holding onto what Matt gave you; that might help.”

  “Why?”

  “You will probably heal faster while you have some extra aythar,” she explained, “unless I make it worse.”

  The two of them exchanged worried glances, and then Gram tried to reassure her, “You can do it.”

  She could read his uncertainty as well as her own, but she pushed her fears aside and focused on the swollen arm, letting her focus tighten and descend, drawing her awareness into the bruised and damaged flesh.

  The bones are strong and whole, but I can see where they were joined, she thought. He did that right, but some of these vessels were just sealed, without even attempting to pair them up with their matching severed halves. She could also see a lot of blood had infiltrated the tissues and been left there.

  Eventually the body would reabsorb it, but it would take time. The unrepaired blood vessels would be a bigger problem. They were the real cause for the excessive swelling; the circulation in his arm was inadequate. Over time his body would probably replace the vessels, growing new ones to compensate, but it might take a year or more to fully recover.

  Most of her knowledge was purely theoretical, the result of lectures from her father. The fact that he had been able to show her the inner workings of the body without actually needing to cut anyone open had also been a great advantage. Still, she had never done more than fix very minor wounds in people and a broken leg or two in local sheep.

  She had also never worked on a wound that had been undisturbed for a day or so.

  Quietly, she formulated a plan, though her stomach began to flutter with uneasiness as she considered it. Make a cut and coax the old blood out first… There were other things that needed to be connected, other channels that carried fluids besides blood. Her father had had a name for them, but her mind failed to present it when requested. No matter, I don’t need to know their name to stitch them together.

  She began.

  Gram stiffened despite himself, and then several sharp pains forced a raspy cry from his lips.

  Moira looked at him in chagrin, she had forgotten to do something about the pain. “I’m sorry! Wait I can make that part better.”

  Like her brother, she was having trouble remembering which nerve controlled sensation in the arm. But if I do all of them it will probably cover it. She located the nerves in the shoulder and followed them back mentally, until they reached the spine. There.

  Gram collapsed. He could control his neck and everything above, but his arms, legs, everything else—it was gone. “What have you done to me?” he cried in alarm.

  Moira responded with a few words that were definitely not lady-like. Crap, I didn’t mean to block that much. After a moment she attempted to reassure him, “I blocked more than I meant to, but that’s alright. You can still breathe, otherwise you wouldn’t have been able to say anything, and your heart is still beating, so I think you’ll be fine.”

  “Fine?! What if you stop my heart next?!” The loss of mobility had robbed Gram of his composure, and he began to panic, twisting his head forcefully back and forth as he attempted to reassert control over his body.

  “You’ll need to be still,” said Moira, trying to soothe him with the same soft tones she had often heard her mother use with Irene when she was little.

  Her voice had the opposite effect though, making Gram even more fearful. “Undo it! Let me go, Moira!” His voice was loud, as if he might be ready to start yelling for help.

  Unsure what else to do, she placed her hand over his mouth, pushing his head back down. “Shibal,” she said, exerting her will and attempting to put him to sleep. However, his necklace, the same type that everyone in Castle Cameron wore, prevented her magic from affecting his mind directly.

  Gram’s teeth bit down painfully on the meat of her hand, and she jerked it back before slapping him reflexively. “Stop that!” she exclaimed before immediately changing course. “Oh, I’m sorry, Gram. I didn’t mean to do that!”

  “Just let me have my body back!”

  “Sorry, I can’t do that. Just relax, I’ll fix this.” Unclasping the chain around his neck, she repeated her spell, “Shibal.”

  Fighting to move, Gram felt her power smothering his consciousness, his eyes closed even as he struggled, and darkness overcame him.

  Chapter 6

  Gram waited outside the great hall after the noon meal was finished. He had eaten at one of the low tables, hoping to avoid his mother. She had spotted him, of that he had no doubt, though she gave no sign of it as she nibbled on her food at the high table. She didn’t call out to him or otherwise attempt to force him to his customary seat. No, that would have created a commotion, something she would never do. She would w
ait, like a spider, biding its time. He would have to face her eventually, and she knew it.

  The thought sent a cold trickle of sweat down the back of his neck. He loved his mother. In the main, she was warm and kind, incredibly sweet and intuitive, despite her fierce intelligence. But when she faced an enemy, she was implacable, cold, and calculating. Gram had seen it before, mostly in her political dealings, but now he felt an echo of the fear those opponents must have experienced.

  He had never spoken to her that way before, never rebelled so openly. She had had little occasion to punish him in the past, not since he was a small child, and that had been different. Now he was nearly a man, and he feared that he had broken something with her that could not be repaired.

  Cyhan walked through the doorway and passed him without even a glance. He turned in the hall and headed for the entry hall that would lead him outside. Gram followed without a word.

  Once outside, they headed for the main gate, which led into the walled town of Washbrook. Gram moved up to walk beside the older warrior once they had left the castle environs. Cyhan didn’t say anything until they had walked a hundred yards or more, but then he turned and stopped.

  “Let me see it,” he said without preamble.

  Gram drew back his sleeve to display his forearm. The swelling had eased considerably, and the color had improved dramatically. The blacks and purples were mostly gone, replaced by yellow and faint brown patches. A small, faint, silver line marked the inside of the arm where, for some reason, Moira had opened the skin and then resealed it.

  It ached when he clenched his fist, but the pain was much less pronounced than it had been that morning. Then, it had throbbed and burned constantly, whether he moved it or not, while now he almost didn’t feel it when it was at rest.

  “Looks a lot better,” noted Cyhan. “The Count?”