The urZrethi sank down awkwardly on her heels. “Forgive me.”
Sayce turned and dropped to a knee beside her. “Are you hurt?”
“Exhausted.” She held up her mismatched arms. “Shifting can be tiring and we’ve not had much rest or food over the last week.”
Sayce stood and whistled for one of her Lancers. “Find a way to get the sleighs down here safely. We’ll camp here.” She turned back to the urZrethi. “In no time, we’ll have you some food and a place to rest.”
Silide-tse smiled, then held up the mace. “No, no need.”
The Murosan princess lifted her head and an imperious tone entered her voice. “We may be in Oriosa, but you will not refuse Murosan hospitality.”
The urZrethi laughed. “Not at all. The offer of your hospitality is very welcome. Were we in Oriosa, I would accept.” Silide-tse pointed to the northwest with her mace. “You see, this is my home. An hour further into the mountains, and I shall offer you our hospitality and our gratitude. Welcome to Bokagul. By your actions you have proven yourselves friends of the urZrethi, and in our realm, our friends shall want for nothing.”
CHAPTER 37
T he urgent need to help the wounded urZrethi quickly erased the ignominy of being tossed over the Panqui’s shoulder and hauled off through the snow like a sack of potatoes. Kerrigan knew better than to flail his arms or yell, since this was hardly the first time Lombo had carted him off like that. Never before, though, had snow been dashed up into his face so constantly that he had to swipe at it endlessly to keep it clear.
Behind them came Bok, with the chest strapped to his back.
Down in the valley, Kerrigan was deposited very much like a sack of potatoes in the middle of the battlefield. He rolled to his knees and surveyed the situation. Three urZrethi were wounded, but their injuries consisted of minor cuts and scrapes. He crawled over to where two other urZrethi held a third. The third urZrethi clutched at her swollen belly, and her companions likewise pressed their hands to it.
There was a lot of blood. “Tell me how bad it is.”
The copper-skinned urZrethi at the wounded female’s feet shook her head. She spoke in urZrethi, of which Kerrigan knew little and caught even less. Another urZrethi, the one who had been speaking with Princess Alexia, crunched her way over and squatted. “She says Sulion-Corax was slashed across the belly by a frostclaw. Do you know what corax means?”
Kerrigan narrowed his green eyes. “She is allowed to bear children, yes?”
“Yes. She is Sulion-Corax Girsce and these are her sisters and cousins. She is five months pregnant and the frostclaw may have hurt the baby.”
Kerrigan exhaled strongly. “Oh, that complicates things.”
“I shall make it worse for you. If you can repair the damage and save both, good. During that if you learn the gender of the child, say nothing. If it is a male child, and you cannot save both, however, save her.”
The mage frowned. He knew enough of the urZrethi to know their matriarchy had little use for males—aside from breeding—but he thought that a bit harsh. “Don’t worry, I will save them both.”
He nodded at Sulion-Corax. “It will all be well.”
Kerrigan closed his eyes and placed his hand on Sulion-Corax’s. The urZrethi jerked under his touch, but the other urZrethi cooed soothing words at her. He set himself, then cast his diagnostic spell. Since it was elven magick, it flowed through her as if it were rootlets growing through the earth, slipping tendrils in and through her. The urZrethi, being a shapeshifter, had a nature that was highly mutable, but the pain she felt gave him tangible points of reference for his spell.
His awareness of her slowly sharpened, giving him a clear view of her injuries. The frostclaw had indeed slashed her belly and nicked her womb, but the child was yet small. Kerrigan redoubled his spell and fed the tendrils into the baby. He detected no injuries, but checked again.
Nothing. The child was not reporting pain, but something didn’t feel right. The child’s sense seemed diminished in some way. He feared for a moment that the mother’s distress was affecting the child, so he cast a quick spell that dulled her pain and lowered her anxiety. The muted sense of pain she did still project coincided with her wounds, but this did not satisfy Kerrigan.
He pushed his awareness more into the child, and then ran out through the umbilical cord, tracing the link back with its mother. Halfway there he found it. The frostclaw had managed to slice a goodly way into the umbilical cord, cutting off the baby’s supply of blood. Since the cord had no nerves, it could not report pain—hence his inability to detect the problem immediately.
Slowly, delicately, Kerrigan began knitting tissue back together again. He monitored the baby and felt the child become more vital. He checked once again to assure himself that the child was fine, then pulled back out. He repaired the cut to the womb, and then to the mother’s abdominal wall. Finally, he sealed her skin.
He opened his eyes, then sagged back on his heels, before flopping on his side, breathing hard. The left side of his face lay in the snow, which burned a bit against his flesh, but he barely noticed that pain. What little he did notice surprised him, because his healing of the mother and infant should have been enormously painful. Every bit of pain Sulion-Corax would have felt while the wounds were healing had to be experienced. In casting the healing spells, he knew he could let her feel it, or he could accept it into himself. While he would not have wanted her to experience any of it, he never made the conscious decision to pull it into himself.
He considered and discarded the idea that the anesthetic spell he’d cast had taken care of the pain. Since the spell was commonly used, this little solution would have been learned long ago. Based on his conversations with Rym, he wondered if accepting the pain was some sort of brake Vilwan had imposed on magickers or if there was something else happening.
Lombo got his massive paws beneath Kerrigan’s shoulders and pulled the mage into a sitting position. “More than bone-weary?”
Kerrigan blinked. “I’m fine, Lombo, thank you.”
He looked around and saw everyone in the same positions they’d occupied when he’d begun the healing. Alexia looked down at him. “Can you help her?”
“It’s done.”
Will had ridden over and arched an eyebrow in surprise. “Done? You just barely touched her, then fell over. A heartbeat, maybe two.”
“Really?” Kerrigan shook his head. He’d cast the spell the way he always did. No, wait . . . The obvious and urgent need of the situation had been what he focused on, so he wasn’t concerned with himself and how he would do the casting. He quickly thought back to the spells he had cast when fleeing the pirates, both when leaving Vilwan and then leaving Port Gold. He had used incredible magicks, but their use had not exhausted him.
His weariness even now was not physical, but mental. What he had done was very difficult, even under the best of circumstances. For him to have accomplished it so quickly—his mind had clearly been racing, using the magick to repair the damage. That he had done it in so little time left him in shock.
And with a big question. If I am not physically exhausted, the energy used to work the magick did not come from me. What, then, was its source?
Kerrigan looked up and smiled. “Well, that gives me a lot to think about.” He struggled to his feet, leaning heavily on Lombo.
The red urZrethi waved her bladed appendage toward the far mountains. “Please, all of you shall be welcome in Bokagul . . .” Her voice tailed off into a hiss as Bok came up, and she shifted to urZrethi. Of what followed Kerrigan only caught the word “bok” and it was said with disgust.
Kerrigan staggered through the snow to where Bok crouched with hands wrapped round his knees. He rested a hand on the green urZrethi’s shoulder, then looked at the other. “Bok is my servant.”
She tightened her eyes. “He is bok. He is an outlaw. You will keep him restrained.”
Kerrigan patted his matted hair. “Of course.”
br /> Bok warbled placidly.
The urZrethi eyed him closely, then looked over at Princess Alexia. “It’s not far, and you shall be most welcome. The Girsce family rules this duchy of Bokagul, and you will find their gratitude most lavish.”
Silide-tse Jynyn did introduce herself to Kerrigan, then introduced him to the various sisters and cousins of the female whose child he had saved. It actually struck him that saving the child was more important than saving Sulion-Corax. As was explained to him, she had had a dream a week previous and had headed out with her entourage to gather snowberries from a particular grove. The dream had indicated that these berries would be the first solid food the child would eat, so the dream took on the command of law. The blizzards from the north had caught them away from Bokagul, and the Aurolani renegades had caught them on their return to Bokagul.
Getting the wagons down into the valley had proved less of a problem than Kerrigan would have imagined. With the urZrethi, Lombo, and lots of rope and horses, the descent went fairly easy. Peri did not remain in her cart for the trip down the hill, but instead was introduced to Silide-tse. The urZrethi warden gave her a message and directions on where to reach the entrance to the Girsce domain.
The journey northwest took four hours, and mountain shadows shrouded the valley as they made the trip. The bodies of the frostclaws had been tossed onto their sleighs as Lombo had not mangled them overmuch and they were reported to be good eating. Kerrigan had never tasted their meat before, but Crow gave him an encouraging nod, so he withheld comment.
At journey’s end they drew into a narrow valley that twisted back and forth several times before opening into a slightly larger valley capped by a sheer stone wall. The cul-de-sac was large enough to fit their entire company, but only just barely. When riding through the narrow confines, Kerrigan had looked up and noticed that a small number of archers could harry any troops trying to lay siege to the entrance, and he was pretty sure this was a point not lost on the urZrethi.
The entrance to Bokagul itself impressed him. The sheer wall rose a hundred yards and glistened with ice that formed from melting snow above. At the base stood four figures carved in bas-relief from the grey stone. The two in the middle were smallest, and represented urZrethi. They stood small and squat, their hands touching the rune-decorated circle defining the entrance. Above them, and much taller, were two shapeshifted urZrethi who had the birdlike legs many used for walking through the snow. Moreover, their upper arms had been transformed into wings, which touched wingtip to wingtip over the entrance’s circle.
Silide-tse paced beside him. “You know, Adept Reese, the urZrethi believe, someday, that the truly gifted among us will be able to shape wings and fly.”
He nodded. “I have heard the legend. It is a wonderful dream.”
“Yes, it is.” She smiled. “Perhaps the child you saved will be the one with a light enough spirit to reach that goal.”
“I should be delighted if it were so.”
Silide-tse bounded ahead, but before she could extend a hand to touch the keystone, the massive disk rolled aside. Peri stepped back out into the cold, festooned with delicate gold chains and rings that sparkled with jewels, and cloth of gold that replaced the modest garments she normally wore. She was even laughing, which wasn’t that rare an occurrence, but remarkable enough to surprise Kerrigan.
Pouring out of the doorway behind her came a host of urZrethi. They crowded around the cart that had once been Peri’s home but had been given over to Sulion-Corax for the remaining journey. The urZrethi babble, which he could not understand, rose and fell with joy and sympathy, and was shot through with mourning for those who had fallen. As per urZrethi custom, the bodies were left where they fell and while the place of their passing would be noted, their bodies would not be recovered nor venerated.
Other urZrethi, to the last all male, came out to take the horses and guide the sleighs.They moved sluggishly and timidly, but went about their tasks efficiently. One even approached Bok to relieve him of his chest, then stood blinking when Bok growled. Silide-tse called that male off and gave him another assignment, which he undertook impassively.
Silide-tse drew the core company aside while other urZrethi directed the Lancers and Freemen to the billets awaiting them. The warden led them down well-lit corridors that were remarkably tall for so short a people. The illumination came from fat candles perched on metal stands. The reliefs carved along the walls were interspersed with colorful mosaics, all of which depicted men and elves in scenes with urZrethi. Kerrigan faintly recalled stories that might coincide with some of the scenes, but it struck him that these must have been taken from the urZrethi versions of the tales, since the urZrethi seemed to have the others at a disadvantage—which was seldom the case in man-tales.
Silide-tse led them to an inordinately large and oddly shaped room. A low, rounded corridor—low enough that both Resolute and Dranae had to duck their heads and Lombo was forced to crouch—opened into the first of two spherical chambers. The second chamber was smaller than the first, and its floor was set three feet higher, though their ceilings reached the same height. Opening into both spheres, small, round entrances led to other rooms, and just to the left of the corridor entrance the larger chamber had a huge hearth.
Silide-tse moved to the hearth and whispered a word, which started a pile of stones in it glowing like embers. She squatted before the fireplace, with her back to it, and opened her arms.
“This is a coric, and this is how we live. The lower chamber here is the common room and off it are the sleeping chambers for a family’s males.” She shot a hooded glance at Bok, who immediately retreated to a sleeping room near the entrance. “Male visitors, especially those who have come to get a daughter with child, are usually housed closer to the upper chamber. That is where our women reside. The Coraxoc, or matriarch, would have that central chamber. Her fecund daughters would have the chambers either side, and then the rest of us occupy the others.”
Will counted heads. “Three women, eight men. Six chambers down here. It will get crowded.”
Silide-tse shook her head. “The male chambers comfortably sleep six.”
A snort sounded from within the hole housing Bok.
Qwc landed on Will’s shoulder. “Qwc takes up no room. No snoring, either.”
The urZrethi frowned. “You are guests. You are free to do as you please. If you wish to observe our conventions, this would please us.”
Crow nodded. “We understand. Perrine, you shall be given the Coraxoc chamber.”
Silide-tse’s face brightened. “You do understand. Splendid. You will excuse me, then. I shall let you get settled and shall return with provender for all.”
Kerrigan opted to share a chamber with Bok. The long, narrow room had a low, arched ceiling and no decoration at all, unless one counted unintended patterns worked at random in the plaster. He chose the stone pallet on the right and snatched a second straw-filled mattress to insulate him from the bed’s chill.
Bok had shrugged the chest off and had set it at the head of his bed, while he curled up on the lower half of the bench. He’d already fallen asleep and Kerrigan was tempted to drop off as well, but a sudden clapping sound in the main room caused him to squat-walk over to the entrance and peer out.
Silide-tse had returned and had already shifted her shape back into something decidedly more human. She led a troupe of urZrethi who brought in a bunch of wood that was quickly fitted together into a low table. Others brought pillows to ring it. After that bowls, plates, cups, forks, knives, and spoons appeared, and every place was quickly set with far more utensils than any one person would ever use. Silide-tse, watching over the whole proceeding barked an order, and yet one more of each utensil was set out.
The urZrethi waved all of the guests into the main chamber and appointed them specific places around the table. As they sat, male urZrethi filed in, two behind each member of the company, and yet more came bearing tureens of soup and steaming platters of
meat and heaping baskets of bread. Kerrigan’s stomach immediately started growling and his mouth watered.
He and the others fell on the food as if they’d not eaten in a month, which they had, but only tavern fare and road rations, which might well have been mud in comparison. Oddly enough, Kerrigan noted that while spoons, forks, and knives were whisked away between courses, the plates and bowls remained. The servants shifted their hands to serve different courses, then retreated to wash their hands between courses. Kerrigan began to wonder if the urZrethi had little use for utensils since they could shape their own. As a result they supplied many and took them away between courses in lieu of having their guests wash their hands—which made no sense since they were not eating with them.
That sort of idle speculation was the height of Kerrigan’s intellectual activity. He ate a great deal and drank more, since each dish seemed more delicious than the last, and each new wine had nuances he’d never tasted before. The food kept coming and in such quantities that even Lombo leaned back from the table and patted his distended belly right before letting loose with a belch strong enough to make the dinner table vibrate.
That did not so much end the meal as cap it, and everyone laughed aloud, including Silide-tse.
She clapped her hands and the servants departed, but the table was left as set, with enough food still there to feed the Freemen. She glanced at Kerrigan. “I shall leave this for your servant to clean up.”
The mage nodded. “You are very kind.”
“You are owed a debt. This is the least we can do to repay it.” She smiled. “I shall return in the morning. Sleep well, all of you.”
CHAPTER 38
E rlestoke wasn’t certain, but he almost wished the day had not dawned clear and cold. The cold he could have done without. The frigid air managed to work itself into his clothes, and no amount of movement seemed to warm him. But then again, he wasn’t moving all that fast.