Valor of the Healer (3 page)

“Indeed. If you remember that, my girl, perhaps you’ll come back out to work for me in the Hall yet. But we’ll speak of that another time. For now, I need to ask you a question.”

“I must remind Your Grace,” Ulima said severely, “that Faanshi has barely recovered her wits, and she requires rest. Would not the
akreshi’s
time be better spent upon investigating what has befallen his Hall tonight?”

With a rich, low chuckle, the duke said, “Ah, but that’s exactly my purpose.” He leaned in closer to his kneeling slave. “Someone tried to commit a great sin in my Hall tonight. He dared to put hands upon the duchess, and he sought to take my very life.”

Faanshi’s world tilted, thrown off balance by those casual words. In the grip of surprise so great that it drove all else from her thoughts—even, for an instant, the stranger’s frantic memories—she couldn’t repress a gasp.

“I was amazed too, I can assure you. But you needn’t be frightened. I shot the blackguard before he did any real damage. With my own eyes I saw him strike the ground.” The duke flicked his fingers toward his face and slapped one hand into the other to punctuate his last few words.

The girl swallowed at the impact even as realization sliced through her surprise. Her master spoke of guards who tracked the would-be killer to the back of the Hall, of broken bushes and footprints disturbing the ground around and beneath them, where the night’s rain hadn’t reached. For once, though, his voice ceased to matter. Furtive hope made it worth it to ignore him, though she risked a beating—or worse. For a single instant she didn’t care.

The man she’d healed had tried to kill the duke.

As though he sensed her wavering attention, he seized her chin once more and tugged her gaze back up, inquiring with an amiability turned keen as a blade, “You’d like to help me bring a would-be murderer to justice, wouldn’t you, Faanshi?”

“Yes,
akreshi
,” she murmured, holding back a shudder of revulsion at his touch, as well as the wild wish that the stranger had succeeded in his attack. Or that she could unleash her magic upon her master, make him hurt somehow instead of healing him as she’d been made to do before—

No. To crave such things was a sin too.

He smiled in that regretful way he sometimes had, which always made her wonder whether she remembered wrong—whether she really had gone mad four years ago in the stables when the old groom had been trampled by a stallion, whether she’d really killed the man instead of healing him. “I was hoping you’d say that. You’re a good girl deep down, and I know you’ll want to do the right thing. All you must do is tell me whether you’ve seen or heard anything tonight that I can use to catch the scoundrel.”

She’d seen. Heard. Touched.
Healed
. A slave’s hard-learned lessons insisted that she speak, while something else within her balked. Those pangs out of the stranger’s head, explosions of sensation and emotion, still reeled through her mind. One true memory stood out, that of his hand on her head, and his voice whispering that she didn’t have to apologize for her power. He’d tried to kill the man she feared above all else. And she didn’t want to betray him.

Caught between conflicting impulses, Faanshi shivered. She felt each little quake rattling through her down to her very bones, and the hysteria-tinged fury she had to withhold nearly strangled her. “I—”

Ulima clasped her shoulder, a bulwark against her fright. “Come now,
akreshi
. Do you wish to drive her into another fit?”

“I’ll be but a moment longer. If my girl here has had a fit, I mean to know its cause.” The duke’s brows lowered. “Did you see anyone tonight, Faanshi? Don’t make me ask again.”

That was enough to breach the wall around the girl’s words. “There was a man,” she babbled, shame at her confession sweeping through her. “He had ash on his face. He was hurt, and there was another man with him. I heard them run away into the night.”

The duke shot to his feet, his gaze whipping to the high window. “Another one,” he breathed. “No wonder the bastard was able to go out the window so swiftly, with a partner ready and waiting.”

Released from his grip, Faanshi held herself rigid to keep from shaking as Ulima draped her meager blanket about her shoulders. “Will that satisfy His Grace?” her
okinya
said. Beneath the deference, her words were stern and cold.

Grinning, the duke turned and patted Faanshi’s head. “Indeed. I daresay she’s earned an hour out tomorrow and a cake from the kitchen. I’ll have a word with the cook. Get her settled. Then come back up and look after my wife.”

“As my lord commands, so it shall be done.”

The blanket was a talisman, and Faanshi clung to it as much as she dared while remaining on her knees. The duke bid the old woman a good night—but not her, for she was the slave, undeserving of such niceties. Then he was gone, and only when the cellar door shut behind him did more words tumble out through the cracked wall around her throat. “Don’t tell him. I’ll do anything you bid of me,
okinya
, but I beg you, don’t tell him what I did.”

Despite her tattered pride, her voice broke on the last few words. Yet she would not hold them back. It put them both in danger—great merciful Djashtet, they could both be whipped if the duke found them out—but the memory of the stranger was a gleam of defiance in her heart. Moreover, Ulima seemed to understand, and as she helped Faanshi back upon her cot, her whispered reply carried a great weight of resolve.

“No, my child, I don’t believe I shall.”

Chapter Three

Kestar Vaarsen, riding into the town of Camden with his patrol partner Celoren, glanced west to the nearby mountains—and instead of the wall of dark clouds that had threatened a thunderstorm for hours, he saw a burst of radiant sunlight.

The sight transfixed him. But before he could point it out to Celoren, before he could even take a second look, the light vanished. He might have dismissed it as a trick of the eye, save for a nagging sense that something important had just happened. Or soon would.

Another
premonition
.

He’d had them before. Each one that came to him on a patrol led invariably to an incident of magic—and to a mage that he and Celoren, as Knights of the Hawk, would have to apprehend and turn over to the Church. But even as they found an inn they could afford in the town, tended the horses and downed a dinner of pork stew, bread and cheese, nothing more came to him than that fleeting vision of sunlight. Neither his amulet nor Celoren’s, sacred pendants that would flare in the proximity of magic, warned of anything they needed to seek. There was nothing to keep him and Cel from seeking beds they ardently yearned for after hours on the road. For once Celoren didn’t even flirt with the serving girls. And though the innkeeper lit up when he saw his instrument case, Kestar dodged that portly worthy’s invitation to play in his common room that evening.

For nearly four hundred years, the avowed duty of the Order of the Hawk had been to hunt down elven users of magic and purge them of their gifts. Hawks had ridden on their hunting patrols for as long as the Order had existed—such was the unshakeable truth of their purpose, as immutable as the might of the Four Gods, and as clear as the words of the Anreulag, their Voice. Hawks patrolled in times of peace or war, in all seasons of the year, when mages ran common and free and when they were so rare that Hawks could ride circuits for months on end without uncovering a single one.

Kestar had learned not long after his anointing that boredom was a hazard every member of his Order had to face, for mages had indeed grown scarce over the past several decades. He and Celoren had found nothing on their past five patrols except an increasing number of Tantiu immigrants in Shalridan, a particularly dismal crop of peaches, and a steady stream of young women (and a few young men as well) eager to take their minds off the long, uneventful hours they spent in their saddles.

So it had gone on their current ride until they’d reached the town. But even as they collapsed in their room for their night’s sleep, the memory of light stayed with him. He drowsed off, lulled by the beating of the rain outside, only to dream over and over again of the radiance on the mountain. And at last, in the smallest hours of the night, he snapped awake.

The premonition was back, and it was stronger now. Kestar was certain, without a single cause he could have named on earth or in the heavens, that something vital had just taken place. Something to do with that glimpse of light.

Their room looked no different than when they’d arrived, save for being darker. Window shutters kept out the cold wind and any noise from the street, and the candle stub on the table by the door was as lifeless as the ashes in the hearth. His saddlebag and soft padded mandolin case were still neatly stacked beneath the chair. There wasn’t much else, just his folded uniform, his sheathed sword propped against the bed, and his amulet on its cord around his neck where it always rested, the silver warmed by his body’s heat.

Kestar rubbed his thumb over the knotwork pattern stamped on the amulet’s surface. If the blessed silver had tried to tell him anything in his sleep, it was silent now.

In the opposite bed Celoren sprawled, his rangy frame overflowing the down-filled mattress. One foot dangled off the end, one hand out from under the quilt that only partially covered him. His nightshirt, as rumpled as his bedclothes, gaped open at his chest to reveal his own silver Hawk’s amulet. Where Kestar’s was an intricate knot in the rough shape of a shield, the edges of it following the knot’s pattern and its rounded corners attracting his fingertips whenever he was in thought, the other knight’s pendant was a disk etched with a delicate rendition of a birch tree. Now that disk was dormant, only a faint glimmer against Celoren’s skin.

Celoren wasn’t going to like this. In truth, neither did he. With a tired sigh Kestar moved to his gear and rummaged into his saddlebag for his flint and tinder. He wasn’t loud, but the noises of his motions roused Celoren nonetheless.

“What? What time is it?”

“It’s too dark to read your watch. Let me light the candle.”

“Damned infernal hour to be awake,” Celoren mumbled in sepulchral tones, several steps deeper than his normal baritone. One hazel eye cracked open, only to close once more at the sudden pinpoint of flame on the candle’s wick.

Stoically ignoring his own abandoned bed, Kestar pocketed his tinderbox and pulled on his uniform shirt. As he tugged the russet-hued linen into place and tied the black-and-white laces at his throat, he shot Celoren a small rueful grin. “I couldn’t agree with you more.”

“Then why in blazes are we not sleeping?”

Kestar’s grin faded as he dressed. This was the part Celoren wouldn’t like. “It happened again, Cel.” Next came the leather doublet that proclaimed him, via the hawk symbol stamped into the left breast, a Knight of the Hawk. Only as he was buckling on his sword belt did he pause, conscious of wisps of dream still tugging at his awareness, the touch of a pure wind, the clarion warmth of sunlight. “It was more intense this time. I won’t get back to sleep, so I’m going out to look for what caused it. You don’t have to come.”

Celoren groaned, rolling onto his side to glare at him. “You know, it wouldn’t be any great sin if you had these little premonitions of yours during a civilized hour of the day.”

“I do, not that civilized hours occur for you any time before noon. And you
don’t
have to come.”

“If I don’t, my cloud-headed partner will get himself waylaid by gods only know what in the night. And I can’t have that.” Celoren yawned, rubbed his eyes, then hauled himself to his feet to get himself clothed and armed. More soberly he added, “Has your amulet spoken?”

Kestar frowned at his quiescent amulet, once more rubbing his thumb over it before slipping it beneath his shirt. “Nothing.” He made a frustrated face. “Just like all the previous times.”

Celoren stepped over, taking him by the shoulders and turning him about. “You’re sure of what you sensed?”

“No. But so far I’ve never been wrong.”

“So far,” Celoren agreed. Then, his mouth quirking, he shot his forefinger out to point at Kestar. “But an unholy hour of the night isn’t a proper time to start, so there’d damned well better be something out there that requires Hawks’ eyes. If there isn’t, Holy Father and Mother help me, I’ll get the first priest I can find to excommunicate you so fast your head’ll spin.”

“There will be.” Kestar fought back a grin. Celoren’s bluster carried no real pique, and in fact had become a kind of ritual between them over the two years they’d ridden together as full-fledged Hawks. Cel would search with him. He merely needed to channel his bemusement into action, and Kestar knew how he felt. The premonitions bemused him too. “I’ve no idea what, but there’ll be something.”

It took little time to prepare themselves, with church-issue greatcoats over their uniforms, swords at their sides, the candle blown out and left on the table with a note explaining their absence in case they didn’t return by morning. They didn’t bother to lock the door. The innkeeper had sworn he kept a safe establishment, and they had nothing worth stealing except their amulets, weapons and Kestar’s mandolin—and at any rate, no one would be bold enough to steal from Hawks on patrol. Once their eyes readjusted to the darkness, they slipped down to the inn’s back entrance and from there out into the night.

“Where are we headed?” Celoren said once they reached the inn’s little stable.

Kestar paused at the stable door, glancing westward. “The mountains,” he murmured. The gloom of night and foul weather hid the jagged peaks of the Garmbinn Range, but he knew they were there. They traversed most of Kilmerry Province from northeast to southwest, and the ride down to Camden through the nearest pass had caused much of his and Celoren’s exhaustion on this leg of the journey. What drew his eyes, though, wasn’t the memory of the day’s travel.
Sunlight
coming
down
the
mountain
. “Due west of here.”

“The peak right by the town? Are you sure?”

“As much as I can be.” Kestar thought hard, hoping for any other detail that might clarify their purpose. Nothing came forth. Due west it was, and hopefully whatever power granted him his premonitions—the gods or the Anreulag watching over one of Her Hawks—wouldn’t make him search every ridge and incline for ten miles before showing him what he apparently needed to seek. “Why?”

“The Duke of Shalridan’s summer home is up there. He owns that entire slope, most of the town we’re standing in and half the bloody province to boot. If you’re sure about this, we’d better have something more substantial than a dream to go on if we’re riding up his mountain in the middle of the night.”

“If there’s magic being worked up there, our authority takes precedence over any secular ranks, even dukes,” Kestar said, but the words sounded tentative even to him.

“
If
being the crucial word.”

Crucial enough to mean the difference between riding as active Hawks and being drummed out of the Order in disgrace, if they angered a powerful nobleman like Holvirr Kilmerredes by intruding upon his estate without just cause.

“I’m sure,” Kestar said at last. His certainty was ethereal, likely to fade into mist if he explored it too closely. But it was there. Something within him that he trusted, dreaded and couldn’t name wanted him to go up that mountain. “We’ll ride up only as far as we must, and avoid the duke’s home unless we have no other choice.”

Slowly Celoren nodded. “All right, but for gods’ sake, Kes, let’s be careful.”

Celoren appropriated a lantern from its hook by the stable door to light their way. Celoren’s chestnut Pasga took being roused and saddled in genial stride, but Kestar’s blood bay Tenthim was no more pleased than his rider at the prospect of a late-night excursion. It showed in the set of his ears and tail as Kestar coaxed him awake, and only a sugar cube convinced him to accept bit and bridle. He was too well trained to balk more than that, but Kestar wouldn’t have blamed the beast for shying away when he tried to mount, or refusing to be led out of the stall.

After all, he was being asked to carry his rider to look for something that might be only his imagination. If he’d been Tenthim, he’d have been angry too.

They rode for the town’s western reaches, the lantern glowing wanly against the night, flickering with the rhythm of Pasga’s trotting and the breeze that skittered down from the nearby slopes. The oddly familiar feel of the rainwashed wind, bracing against Kestar’s cheeks, pulled him a little straighter in the saddle. They were riding in the right direction.

But to what?

* * *

“Halt in the name of Holvirr Kilmerredes, Duke of Shalridan! Halt and state your business!”

The voice hailed them out of the darkness, accented by the clattering hooves of three approaching horses. As Celoren pulled Pasga back along the sloping mountain road, taking the lantern out of his line of sight, Kestar spotted the leader of the trio of guardsmen. He was a big burly fellow with red hair and beard, clad like his fellows in the livery of Lomhannor Hall, and sitting a horse that stood two hands over Tenthim. Scowling, he hurled a glare like a gauntlet at the Hawks.

Kestar nudged his stallion forward and lifted his empty hands. “The business of the Church, sir. We are Knights of the Hawk riding in the name of the Blessed Anreulag. We ask your leave to pass.”

Squinting, the man who’d hailed them gestured toward Kestar’s neck. “Your amulets then, if you would. If you’re who you say, show us.”

Though he was unaccustomed to being challenged for his rank, Kestar couldn’t deny the request—anyone in the right clothing could claim to be a Hawk, but the amulets would show their power only for true members of the Order. Nodding back at Celoren, he drew his forth. Then he cupped it within his palm, dipped his head and breathed the prayer that was the sign the guardsmen sought.

“Holy Voice of the Gods, light the way for Thy servants to stoop and strike in Thy name.
Ani
a
bhota
Anreulag
,
arach
shae
.”

Celoren murmured the words with him, his baritone blending with Kestar’s tenor into one voice. But the words were incidental, nothing more than a gateway for the energy in the silver. A miniature star of power sprang into life through his fingers, driving the chill from his bones, and the pall of his premonition’s confusion along with it. Reverently he squeezed the silver a little tighter before releasing it to settle, still aglow, against his chest.

Tenthim shifted, shuffling restively in contrast to Kestar’s own calm. He leaned forward to stroke the stallion’s head, but his eyes remained on the guardsmen’s leader. “Will that suit your purpose, sir?”

The other horses, as sensitive to the presence of power as Tenthim or Pasga, edged back on the road. As unsettled as their mounts, the guard leader’s companions shot looks at the Hawks and then at each other, and one sketched the four-pointed star sigil of the Church across himself. Their leader, however, was unperturbed.

“It’ll do, m’lord.” He dipped his head in gruff obeisance as the light from the amulets faded. “Forgive our hesitation, but there’s been an attempt on the life of His Grace the Duke tonight, and the assassins are still at large. My companions and I ride to Camden to alert the watch.”

Kestar and Celoren exchanged alarmed glances. The comfort of his amulet’s power aside, the thought of his premonition signaling an assassination flooded Kestar with dread. “Is the duke unharmed?” Celoren demanded.