Sworn To Conflict: Courtlight #3 (3 page)

The Shadow Mage had killed another that she considered a dear friend—the golden griffin by the name of Raina. Fortunately Raina had had her kits before her death, so even now the griffin population lived on despite the Shadow Mage’s attempt to wipe them from existence. Unease rippled through her. What if the Shadow Mage had her? But he had died, hadn’t he? She fought down a swell of panic and breathed deeply. She decided cots and tents weren’t really his style; the Shadow Mage was more apt to bind her to a tree with his shadow vines than see to her care and comfort. But she did need to find out where she was. Swallowing a groan, she pushed herself up again, this time locking her elbows beneath her to keep her balance.

She had just managed to shift her right leg over the edge of the cot she was lying on when the flap of the tent opened and a roar erupted from the entrance. A dark, human-shaped form stood there with light flowing in around it like a halo. The bright sun threw the form’s features into shadows and kept her from getting a good look at whoever it was. 

Startled, she scrambled back to the opposite end of the cot and fought to stand. She managed to push her legs onto the floor and stand with a push of her arms. But she only managed that for a few seconds, when her legs promptly gave out on her. She fell to the floor with what felt like astonishing speed. She was lucky her head didn’t hit the cot. After a few seconds, she knew she was too weak to do more than put her arms underneath her from where she lay on the floor and sit up on her knees. She crouched beside the cot, breathing heavily.

The creature at the tent’s entrance had stopped snarling. Instead, she heard a voice say, “You are not supposed to be out of your cot.”

Ciardis gulped deeply and lifted her head. She didn’t have to look up very far. The creature had come closer.

“I am Healer Maris,” she announced as she crouched in front of Ciardis on well-muscled and furred legs that ended in clawed toes. Maris put her hand under Ciardis’s trembling jaw.

She clicked her teeth and said gently, “Still tired, I can see. It’s a strain just for you to lift your head, kit.”

“A little tired.”

Maris snorted and her nostrils flared. Ciardis eyed the streaked pattern of the fur on her face with fascination. She wasn’t afraid. She was too tired for fear.

“Come,” Maris said as she carefully lifted Ciardis in her arms and placed her back in the cot. Ciardis heard voices—familiar ones—from the tent’s entrance, but she couldn’t see over Maris’s broad shoulders.

“You’re a healer?” Her voice couldn’t hide her disbelief.

Just then the flap opened as a person tried to push their way in. Apparently a small scuffle outside ensued, because that person was pulled back outside and another person’s head appeared in the opening.

She couldn’t make out much about who was trying to get into her tent. Various body parts appeared and disappeared – a hand, an arm, a head. None of the intruders spoke before she heard a gruff voice outside the tent say, “Nay! I don’t care if you’re Lord of the Western Walls. The general has said no one is to gain entrance to the companion’s tent without his say, and you are no one
.
”

The ominous sound of blades leaving scabbards sounded in her weak ears and she heard an irritated sigh come from the gruff voice. “Now, lad, why’d you have to go and draw your sword? You hurt me honor, you do.”

The healer had continued to tuck Ciardis back into her nest of blankets. The only signs that she was paying mind to the tent entrance were the curled upper lip that hinted at a coming snarl and the ruffled fur on her shoulders rising in irritation.

“I demand entrance,” came a loud protest from the outside. A voice Ciardis recognized and could place even in her tired daze.

“Sebastian?”

“Hush, little one,” the healer said. “Sleep.” A command.

“I want to speak with Sebastian,” Ciardis protested as she fought the overwhelming urge to close her eyes and drift back into the darkness. She couldn’t fight it, and slowly her body relaxed as her mind went back to slumber.

Maris purred in satisfaction.

The last thought Ciardis had before she drifted off was,
Damn healers.

She awoke later. How much later, she couldn’t tell. But she felt stronger as well as grumpy and irritated once she remembered what had transpired the first time she had awoken. This time it was easier, though. Her body felt invigorated rather than achy and tired. She momentarily wondered if it had all been a dream. The cat healer; Sebastian’s voice. She looked to her left when a sound alerted her that someone else was present, and she met the eyes of the healer called Maris.

“
Now
you may wake.”

Ciardis opened her mouth to protest that she would wake when she wanted to, but shut it before a sound could escape. The healer might decide she needed more sleep if she didn’t. “How long have I been asleep?”

The healer said, “You’ve been in a deep sleep for three weeks. Your magic has been fully renewed now and your body is well enough to pull you from the sleep.”

“Where am I?”

The cat’s eyes narrowed as she reached down to put her knitting needles into a bag at her feet. “You don’t remember?”

“Should I?”

“You spoke with soldiers before you collapsed. You were aware and half-froze yourself to death for some time before I came to you. It must have escaped your memory. As for where you are...it’s best if you speak to the commander first. What is your name?”

“You don’t know?”

The cat eyes narrowed as she said in a flat tone that hinted at violence, “Merely checking to see if you do. Magical fatigue can cause more than physical exhaustion. Memory loss and reduced mental capacity are two of the more common side effects. What you did was exceptionally dangerous.”

A pause. “Ciardis Weathervane.”

“Your age?”

“Eighteen.”

“And where were you before this, Miss Weathervane?”

“On the outskirts of the Ameles Forest with friends.”

“Friends?”

“Friends,” she confirmed. Ciardis wasn’t sure how much this healer knew or even what sort of trouble she’d been dropped into this time. She couldn’t tell her about the secret mission with companions, assassins, and a prince. Not without more information.

“Friends that drained you of magic?” said Maris.

Ciardis ran the tip of her tongue over her dry lips. “Please, may I have some water?”

She was evading the question.

“We will speak on this,” Maris said, flashing her sharp teeth.

Ciardis had a feeling it was going to be an unpleasant conversation. This healer looked stubborn, like a cat that wouldn’t let go of its prey once it locked gazes with the terrified creature.

Maris rose and walked out of the tent with her tail twitching behind her. She returned quickly and helped Ciardis to sit up as she drank down the water with packed snow at the bottom of the cup. The freezing water jogged her memory like nothing else could. Ciardis flashed back to standing outside in the cold air and staring over a huge chasm between mountains. General Barnaren had been there, and he had said she was in the north.

In the freaking
north
.

She began coughing as she fought off panic at the thought of what that meant. Children in the villages were told tales of horror about the North. Hordes of wild creatures and a vast army that would devour the realm. Spluttering over the water, she turned frantic eyes on the healer, who sat on the cot calmly beside her.

She could barely get her words out. Maris thumped her on the back with wide paws as she said, “Calm down. Wait and speak.”

Ciardis managed to get out her thoughts at last. “Is it true? Are we in the North?”

The healer’s slanted eyes gave nothing away. She flicked her ears towards the tent entrance but didn’t turn her head. Then someone cleared their throat outside. An announcement rather than a request that they were coming in.

General Barnaren parted the tent flap and strode inside. After him came the man Ciardis Weathervane least wanted to see, even while stuck on a frozen tundra and possibly surrounded by hundreds of strange people.

“Lord Crassius,” she said, crossed her arms resolutely and staring at both the general and the lord angrily. “What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same, Miss Weathervane.”

“Lord Crassius is here at my invitation, Miss Weathervane.”

She turned her angry gaze from where it rested on Lord Crassius to General Barnaren. “And where would ‘here’ be, sir?”

“The encampment for the soldiers under my command in the North.”

“What we like to fondly refer to as the Ice Field, Miss Weathervane,” Lord Crassius interjected with a bit of wit as he bit into an apple in his hand. As Ciardis watched him take a careful bite, her stomach rumbled in hunger with embarrassing loudness in the confines of the small tent.

“And why am I here?”

“You don’t remember?”

Ciardis flashed back to the battle between herself and the Shadow Mage—the man known as Timmoris. “I found a silver stake in the Shadow Mage’s pocket.”

“A stake?” said three voices in confusion.

Ciardis shrugged. She didn’t have a better description than that. The object was a metallic silver and covered in runes. She’d been curious about it, that was all.

“General, when will you send me back home?”

The three adults surrounding her exchanged hard glances.

“Perhaps we should get you something to eat first,” said Barnaren with a look at the Healer.

Maris nodded and ordered, “Have something brought.” She was speaking to Lord Crassius, but she hadn’t turned around.

General Barnaren sighed and pinched his nose. An uncharacteristic action for a man that Ciardis knew as stoic.

“As much as I would wish for Miss Weathervane to take her meal here,” the general said reluctantly, “there are others in our party who wish to see her.”

Ciardis watched the pair with surprise. It looked as if the general was actually
avoiding
the eyes of the healer beside her. He’d turned his head aside and wouldn’t even look in the healer’s direction. Sure, she was a
kith
, a cat woman with claws to match, but he couldn’t be afraid of her, could he?

Ciardis turned curious eyes from the general to the healer. And then she reassessed. The healer’s fur stood on in and her eyes had narrowed into tiny slits with glowing chips of orange fire in them. Her claws had descended from their retractable sheaths and her lips were fully curled back to reveal her bared teeth. Yes, he could very well be afraid of her. Ciardis was certainly terrified.

She caught a glimpse of Lord Crassius out of the corner of her eye. He stood at the entrance watching everyone with the casual elegance with which he watched everything, as if it were all a spectacle for his enjoyment. A glint was in his eye, and she saw a half-smile on his face as he contentedly munched on his apple. Spoiled nobility didn’t know danger when they saw it.

“Who is it that wishes to speak with me?”

The general turned uneasy eyes on the girl sitting in front of him primly with her dark hands folded in her lap and riotous curls ruffled charmingly about her head.

“His Imperial Highness Prince Sebastian Athanos Algardis, Lord Chamberlain to the Emperor Richard Steadfast, Lady Arabella of Nestor, and Lady Mage and Companion Vana Cloudbreaker,” the general answered shortly.

Ciardis blinked at the assembled party that awaited her. She felt uneasy. Unease where she should feel joy upon seeing Sebastian. His betrayal still hurt. He had lied to her about her family, about her brother’s existence, and had kept that knowledge from her. Those were the highest sins in Ciardis’s eyes. She had grown up an orphan in Vaneis. Alone except for a few ‘strategic’ friends, more like spies, such as Mags, the girl who had told her about her former beau’s infidelities. All she had ever wanted was a family, but she had learned early on that no one in the village wanted her. She had been nothing. A burden on the villagers, an abandoned orphan with no home and no family. Until she was seven, she hadn’t even been able to start paying the villagers back for the food and grain sacks she slept on.

She bit the inside of her cheek in indecisiveness. She didn’t really have a choice, though.

Standing up, she turned to General Barnaren. “Thank you for the care you have shown me, sir. Would you please have someone escort me to the waiting party?”

The general responded, “I will do it myself.”

Carefully she placed a hand in the crook of his elbow and stood on slightly trembling legs. She may have been sleeping for three weeks, but she still felt exhausted.

She steadied herself and raised her head high. It wouldn’t do to appear weak.

C
iardis followed General Barnaren as he emerged from the tent into the bright sun. He nodded to the guards that stood at attention on either side of the entrance. As they stepped out into the chilly air and she walked forward ahead of him on the cold and barren ground, she took her first look around in three weeks. The landscape in the distance was foreboding, broken only by the chill of cold, icy winds swirling through drifts of snow. But her more immediate surroundings were filled with soldiers moving to and fro, busy with assignments. It looked like a disturbed beehive with armed men hurrying on assignments, wagon carts full with supplies trundling east, and the occasional chatter of voices carrying in the air. Always male. Always burly. She pulled her cloak a little tighter about her.

She had no problem with men. But these soldiers were no doubt some of the very same type that had passed through her home village and the surrounding communities, drinking their way through the bars, whoring with the local women, and generally destroying two or three properties before moving on. In fact she was sure the gap-toothed lumbering giant to her right that carried two large iron spokes was the same one that had beaten the farrier’s son until he was unconscious for half a day over a girl. Men like him, men like all of them, had no respect for themselves and likely wouldn’t have any for her, either. She needed to get out of here. Back to where she belonged. Back to Sandrin. She turned away in disgust after one man turned and paused walking to give her a quick wolf whistle and a lascivious wink. Ciardis focused her attention on General Barnaren, who was conferring with two compatriots at the moment.