Valor of the Healer (4 page)

“By the gods’ mercy and wisdom he was forewarned of the scoundrels’ plans, but they struck a blow against his lady wife.” The guard leader shifted in his saddle and gestured to his compatriots, though deference remained in his voice. “With your leave? Every moment we’re not riding is a moment wasted.”

Snapping out of his shock, Kestar kneed Tenthim out of the guardsmen’s path. “Ride, yes, please.” He beckoned the trio onward. “Don’t let us keep you.”

“We’ll ride to Lomhannor and offer our aid to His Grace at once.” Celoren guided Pasga alongside Tenthim. “Gods’ speed to your search!”

The expressions Celoren won with that pledge weren’t quite smiles—the guardsmen were too haggard for that. But there was thankfulness in their faces as the leader said, “I’m Steffen Athorsen, m’lords. Give my name to the sentries at the gate, and tell them ‘red wolf standing’ for tonight’s password. The Anreulag’s blessings upon you for lending your eyes and swords to our hunt.”

Once they’d thundered on down the road, leaving the Hawks alone once more, Celoren asked, “I trust you’ve no issue with this plan, Kes?” His brow furrowed, and his eyes brimmed with uncertainty. “Did you know what we’d discover?”

“No.” The other Hawk’s look discomfited him. Such a stare from strangers was one thing, but another thing entirely from his partner. “I swear it. I just felt this was the right road to take.”

“Then perhaps the Anreulag Herself guides us tonight.” Celoren didn’t star himself as the guardsman had done, but an uncharacteristic hesitance crept into his voice. “Perhaps She works through you.”

Kestar’s brain shied from that concept as the horses had shied from their amulets’ light, and he dropped his gaze away. “You’re starting to sound like a priest! Where’s the maiden-charmer who’s been my friend all these years?”

“Asleep in his bed back in Camden. I’d join him, except I’ve got a cloud-head to keep an eye on, so there’ll be no slumber for the virtuous for at least another few hours. Shall we see what’s befallen the duke?”

“We shall,” Kestar said, pleased for Cel’s lopsided grin and relieved that he didn’t pursue that troubling explanation for what had sent them out on the hunt.
Why
would
the
Blessed
Anreulag
work
Her
will
through
me
?
I’m
a
Hawk
like
any
other
.

Except that he wasn’t—he’d learned early on that no other Hawks had premonitions like his, and that was a problem he never wanted to examine too closely. His amulet accepted him, and those of his fellow Hawks never spoke against him, so it had always seemed safest to tell no one but his partner of the insights that sometimes came to him. The Anreulag Herself surely had to know—She saw and heard all. As long as he was able to use his insights in Her name, that was enough for Kestar. And whether through him or not, it seemed that the Voice of the Gods had given him and Celoren a purpose this night.

“Let’s ride. If there’s anything to be found at Lomhannor Hall, we’ll find it. Or them.”

* * *

They found the Duke of Shalridan’s estate in chaos. As Steffen Athorsen had pledged, his name and the password got the Hawks through the front gate, though they had to present those tokens of passage three times more on the way to the Hall itself. The ragged, exasperated voices of guards rent the air, along with footsteps and hoofbeats on all sides.

“No sign of them along the southern wall.”

“For gods’ sake, man, get the dogs to sniff them down!”

“Can’t, sir. The bastards poisoned ’em, every last hound in the kennel is down or dead!”

“Eastern grounds are secure. They must’ve doubled back to the west or north.”

By the time the Hawks reached Lomhannor’s main entrance, darkness had yielded to a predawn twilight through which torches and lanterns gleamed like will-o’-the-wisps. They teased at the edges of Kestar’s vision, and as he and Celoren dismounted in the long drive before the Hall, the dream haunted him. He knew what he had to do. Whatever his premonitions were, they led him to magic, and he was a Knight of the Hawk. To hunt down and eradicate magic from the realm was his avowed duty. Still, his clear purpose didn’t banish the veil of unreality that simple sleeplessness tugged across his thoughts—or the memory of light.

Celoren hailed the two yawning footmen who hurried out to meet them, handed off the horses and lantern to one, and announced to the other, “Lad, we know we’re here at an awkward hour, but take word to His Grace that Celoren Valleford and Kestar Vaarsen of the Hawks request an audience at his earliest convenience.”

Gangly with youth and clearly groggy, the footman nonetheless snapped alert at the Hawks’ stated ranks. “O-of course, m’lords,” he blurted. His feet were deft where his voice was not, and he leaped ahead to pull open the Hall’s massive oaken door. “Please come right in. The entry hall’s cold, but there’s a fire in the hearth in the front parlor—I’ll go seek out His Grace at once. Excuse me, m’lords.”

The boy escorted them through Lomhannor’s entry hall, a room that left little impression on Kestar past a sense of intimidating space and grandeur. Tired and chilled as he was, he had far greater interest in the parlor to which the footman led them. Their guide then bolted, leaving them to wait with as much patience as they could muster. Kestar frowned at the gleam of mahogany paneling and fixtures of polished bronze. Thanks to the promised hearth-fire, the parlor wasn’t an unpleasant place to bide their time, but its furnishings echoed the message of the entry hall, power rather than welcome.

They were still standing when the Duke of Shalridan found them. “May my Hall give safe nesting to the Hawks of the Blessed Anreulag.”

The words—a ritual greeting offered to their Order for as long as the Hawks had existed—rang with the authority that infused Lomhannor’s walls, but with a barbed edge to their grace. Holvirr Kilmerredes stood at the parlor door, poised like a bull about to paw the earth. His cravat hung undone, and his golden hair and fine white linen shirt were disheveled. None of these things detracted from the belligerence of his eye. He looked like a man who’d just chased off assassins from his doorstep, and ill pleased to find unexpected Hawks in their wake.

“May our vigilance keep and protect this Hall that shelters us in our flight.” Celoren gave the greeting’s traditional reply, inclining his head to the duke and then gesturing to Kestar. “This is Kestar Vaarsen. I’m Celoren Valleford. You honor us, Lord Kilmerredes. It’s a rare lord indeed who still upholds the ancient proprieties, and on a troubled night like this besides.”

“Forgive our intrusion, my lord. We learned what befell your house tonight on our way up the mountain,” Kestar said, dipping his own head low.

“Vaarsen,” Kilmerredes grunted, eyes gleaming in the parlor’s lamplight. “Of the Vaarsens of Bremany?”

That caught Kestar off guard, and for a few moments disquiet churned through him. With an effort he tamped it down. “Yes, my lord. Baron Dorvid Vaarsen was my father.”

“I see. So then, Vaarsen. If you already know what’s gone on under my roof tonight, why are you here?”

Celoren shot Kestar a look, opened his mouth, and then closed it again without a word. Though the older Hawk had the more facile tongue, there was nothing he could say. Not when the duke had questioned Kestar, and not when Celoren had even less idea of their purpose than he. Composing a swift mental prayer to the Father, Mother, Son and Daughter, Kestar drew in a breath and opted for as much truth as he could risk.

“We received...word, my lord, of possible magical activity on your land.” That was as good a description as any of the dream that had driven him and Celoren into the night. “We rode here tonight to seek your permission to search the grounds. Only on arriving did we hear that Lomhannor had been breached.”

The duke stiffened. “
Possible
magical activity? Your amulets haven’t spoken?”

“No, my lord.” Kestar’s unease grew, but about this, he couldn’t lie. “They haven’t.”

“We’d hoped that if we could search the grounds—discreetly, of course—we might judge the veracity of what we were told,” Celoren hastily appended.

“If you wish to search, sirs, join my guardsmen on the hunt for the criminals who invaded my Hall,” Kilmerredes growled. “Only they could have brought magic here. And I’ll thank you to keep from alarming my people, particularly my lady wife, who lies ill. We need no further disruption tonight.”

“Of course, my lord.” Celoren held up his hands, palms out.

“Indeed, we don’t need to disturb any of your people, Lord Kilmerredes,” Kestar affirmed. “We’ll be glad to assist your men. We can spare the time from our patrol.”

“Thank you,” the duke barked as he spun on his booted heel and strode out the way he’d come. “Pardon me, gentlemen, for leaving you to it. I intend to look after my wife. Speak with my head groom if you require fresh horses.”

A sense of warning pulled Kestar’s nerves taut as a bowstring, yet he could point at no clear indication of what was wrong. Was he imagining things? Had he dragged Celoren up the mountain for nothing?

“We’d best be off to help the search.” Celoren pitched his voice for Kestar’s ears alone even after Holvirr Kilmerredes’s footsteps faded into the reaches of Lomhannor Hall. “If something’s here, perhaps this is the way to find it.”

His assurance, and the simple fact that his partner believed in what they were doing, heartened Kestar considerably. “Searching for assassins doesn’t fall within our purpose,” he pointed out nonetheless.

“It does if the assassins
are
using magic.”

“Let’s hope they are. Then at least there’ll be a reason I’m leading us both on a chase for wild geese.”

Celoren’s best rakish grin flared. “If we catch any, you can pluck them. I could use a new pillow.”

The humor helped too, lending more spring to Kestar’s step as they ventured back outside. Their horses, he mused, would have barely cooled down from the ride up the mountain. But he trusted no other mount but Tenthim to carry him through several hours’ hunting for fleeing would-be murderers. And more than his companion’s good spirits, the prayer Kestar whispered kept him moving into the gathering morning.

Holy
Anreulag
,
grant
that
there
will
be
something
to
find
.

Chapter Four

Once they’d put several ridges of the Garmbinn Range between themselves and their pursuers, Julian began to think they might in truth elude capture. But not until they plunged into the trackless forest northwest of the mountains did he consider why they’d been able to flee in the first place—and then only because Rab brought it up.

“You’re all right? That girl really did heal you?”

Darkness had yielded to day, though Julian had no idea of the hour. They’d stopped to rest the horses on the deer track they’d been following, a trail so narrow they had no room to dismount, and the younger man had turned in the saddle to face him. The canopy of leaves diffused the sunlight, blurring the angles of green-tinged rays until they could have shone from any direction at all. After damage that should have flattened him—that
had
flattened him—and urgent hours of riding, he was almost spent. But where agony should have blazed, there was only electric warmth in his flesh, flashing out from where his wounds had been and leaving disconcerting tingles in its wake. With them came the recollection of haunted eyes and a hand whose one touch, he realized in cold dismay, had saved his life.

“I’m all right,” he muttered. “We’ve got to keep moving. The elves expect us by nightfall.”

Rab’s blond brows crinkled, and though his words still held his usual cultured drawl, his sky-blue eyes were unsure. “You were shot, your leg was broken, yet you’re not even bleeding. Who and what by all the gods was that girl?”

“How am I supposed—” Exhaustion made Julian’s first few words sharper than he intended, and he bit back the rest. Their erstwhile target’s trackers needed no more ripe an opportunity than a distracting argument to catch up with them. Nor could he ignore the anxiety that stripped years from his partner’s features. Rab never wore that look unless he was alarmed, and it took fire, tornado or earthquake to alarm Nine-fingered Rab. Julian massaged his shoulder, wondering how one girl could rival such acts of the gods, because clearly she’d alarmed them both. More calmly he went on, “You know as much as I. Mage. Girl. I had no time to tell more than that.”

“If she’s a mage she’s elf-blooded, in part or in whole. Our clients aren’t going to like this.”

“Assuming they don’t know about her already, one of many questions I intend to ask at our rendezvous.” Grimacing, Julian nudged his stallion Morrigh back into motion and waved his partner forward. Rab, with his unhindered vision, had to go first.

Only Rab’s right hand remained on the reins, though, as he rode his horse Tornach on ahead. Through the four fingers of his left hand he twirled one of his treasured daggers, back and forth, till the blade’s dance made it seem as though he were playing with a fragment of light. With one last look back, he said, “They also won’t like that we haven’t taken down the target.”

“We’ll handle that when we arrive,” Julian ground out through clenched teeth.

He didn’t like their failure either.

* * *

It took several more hours of hard riding, deeper into the wet forest reaches between the mountains and the coast, before they reached the ill-maintained road that was their destination’s first marker. On a bend that twisted from west to southwest, they found the pile of fist-sized, moss-blanketed stones that might have been an ancient cairn. Three of these, by seeming happenstance rolled onto the ground ten paces away, turned them southward into the trees. Slow going through falling dusk brought them to the great skeleton of an oak, split in half by lightning. An hour from there they caught the sound of a waterfall, and a quarter hour beyond that, they at last reached the secluded pool where their clients had promised to meet them.

By then the moon was high, casting ghostly light down upon the wood. To Julian’s single eye that pittance of illumination was scarcely helpful. Shadows of gray and green dark enough to pass for black bled into one another, playing havoc with his depth perception, until he did well to make Rab out ahead of him. On foot he trudged, for they’d dismounted to ease the burden on the horses, and Rab’s feet and Tornach’s hooves guided his ear with every tread upon a twig or patch of gravel. Rab’s soft, labored breathing warned him his partner was as tired as he and beginning to show it—but that didn’t stop the flow of whispered instructions, for Rab diligently upheld the task of acting as his eyes.

Every so often, though, like the clatter of a distant wind chime, the voice of the girl in the duke’s cellar echoed across his thoughts. The noise of water didn’t silence the resonance of what she’d done to him, throbbing in his bones. As Rab tied the horses to the nearest tree, Julian rubbed again at the shoulder that should have borne a bullet wound. Uncanny prickles crackled down his right arm, straight to the wrist where his false hand was attached, while he edged down after his partner into the little ravine the waterfall had carved into the forest.

For an instant his forearm pulsed with a familiar pain, twelve years in the fading, yet entirely new. With a grunt of reaction Julian stumbled, and Rab whirled back to him. “Rook? What—”

An arrow sliced the air an inch and a half away from Julian’s ear, overriding all else. He hurled himself to the ground. Rab let out a sizzling oath, pivoted and dropped into a crouch and flashed a dagger in each hand, all in one swift motion.

“Gods damn you,” Julian yelled, “
tàe
hallekìan
divarrè
!
Tàe
hallekìan
divarrè
!”

He couldn’t see Rab move much in the gloom, but Julian shot his hand out to him anyway before he sought a target for his blades. As they both froze, his bellow provoked a response in Adalonic, as cool and liquid as his Elvish had been rough.

“You weren’t due until tomorrow, assassin.”

The voice rose through the waterfall’s rushing as though born out of the ongoing spray. After a moment’s concentration, he identified the speaker, the one male among their clients. The elf’s voice was distinguishable from those of his female compatriots by a slightly lower pitch, dipping into what would be tenor ranges for a human.

“Complications came up, Jannyn. Rab and I are too cursed tired to ride around the verdant wilds long enough for tomorrow to dawn. Will you let us come down, or do you plan to try to put out my other eye with your next shot?”

A frosty chuckle wafted up from below. “Don’t give me ideas. Are you seeking more mutilation than what’s already been dealt you, or are you simply a fool?”

“I’m the one who’ll be riding off into the verdant wilds with a terminated contract if you insist on this pointless posturing.”

Silence. Rab spun his dagger through his fingers; Julian scowled and squeezed his eye shut to block out the sight. Tired as he was, the glint of moonlight off the blade was mesmerizing. Closing his eye, though, was a mistake. Another echo of the girl’s power flickered through his muscles, bringing heavy, numbing grogginess that stung the inside of his skull with an overwhelming need for rest. Yet despite his hazed awareness, he caught the second voice that rose from the hollow.

“Let them pass the Ward and come down. There are no others nearby, and the Rook’s said they come in peace. We’ll hold him to his claim.”

Alarrah, the oldest of their clients, spoke with a voice as cool as Jannyn’s but with no hostile edge. A burst of agitated Elvish answered her, first from Jannyn and then from Tembriel, the third of the trio. Their words pealed like irate bells, too rapid for Julian’s meager skill with the language and almost too soft to be heard over the waterfall. But the others seemed to make no impact upon Alarrah’s resolve. She leveled determined syllables back at her companions, and then called in Adalonic, “I’ve lowered the Ward, gentlemen. Come down. Slowly, with your hands out where Jannyn and Tembriel can see them. The slightest sign of treachery will mean arrows through your throats.”

“Sheathe,” Julian said at Rab’s querying glance, not bothering to whisper—the elves would easily hear him even through the waterfall’s incessant din. The younger man obeyed, though with reluctance Julian couldn’t begrudge. Near blind with exhaustion wasn’t the state he would have preferred to be in when explaining to three irascible clients why their contract was unfulfilled. Putting away their weaponry only made it worse.

Rab led the way into the ravine, moving now with greater caution though neither he nor Julian could sense the magic of the Ward on the path. Elven blood and divine aid were the only ways to detect the workings of power, or so the Church preached.
So
why
is
her
power
still
stabbing
through
you
,
eh
? Julian drove off the sardonic thought and focused instead on making it down the rocky hillock. His supple boots let him find and feel the right places to step—as long as he kept awake enough to pay attention.

No telltale flare of magic intercepted them as they climbed down the steep curve of the path to the waterfall’s base. But when they reached the open ground beside the pool that caught the water’s flow, yellow radiance exploded across his line of sight. As his vision abandoned him completely, panic at his sudden blindness roiled through him, driving his hand to the nearest of his knives.

Before he could draw, the brilliance diminished till it was barely brighter than firelight. It had no source that Julian could see, but it was more than enough to limn the female standing at arm’s length before him. A ponytail pulled her dark auburn hair in tight along her skull, accentuating her high cheekbones and pointed ears before bursting forth in a riot of curls behind her head. She was shorter than Julian and far more slender, but her gold-green gaze was implacable. So was the silver head of the arrow three inches from his throat.

Tembriel, sister of Jannyn, was as inclined as her brother to the bow—but her talent for fire magic was a new and unwelcome surprise. What else hadn’t the elves told him and Rab about themselves?

What hadn’t they told them about the girl in the Duke of Shalridan’s cellar?

“If you’re just going to shoot me,” Julian growled, “you could’ve spared yourself the cheap theatrics.”

“Even a small fire-gift has its uses,” the she-elf said. “Mine was to get before you and ask one question. If I don’t care for the answer, you won’t have a chance to see what further cheap theatrics I can do.”

Where was Rab? To his left as always, protecting his blind side, but he was held in place by the bow of Tembriel’s brother. Jannyn’s eyes, a lucent gray like moonlit fog, were no more hospitable than his sister’s. Neither elf looked much older than his partner, but that was no measure of their ages. Never mind their reputed centuries-long lifespan, no elf Julian had ever seen had eyes that looked anything less than ancient, filled with the wary suspicion of a people who spent every waking moment hiding and hunted. That suspicion glinted in Tembriel’s and Jannyn’s eyes now. It cut into Julian’s panic, bringing the surety that if he and Rab so much as twitched fingers toward their weapons, they’d die.

His night vision slowly returned, adjusting to the unearthly light, and restoring what little there was to see of his surroundings. The waterfall, pale against the darkness, roared to his left. Behind him was the path they’d descended, the only access to the pool. On all other sides, the high, spray-dampened walls of the hollow cut off any easy views from above. There was no sign of Alarrah. Julian forced himself to stay alert, for he couldn’t relax, not yet. If he did he’d faint where he stood, and until the elves backed off he couldn’t allow himself that weakness.

Resigned, he told Tembriel, “I’m at your disposal, lady.”

“Then answer. Swiftly. Why are you here before your own appointed time?”

“We were betrayed. Our contact in Lomhannor Hall was discovered and has very possibly been hanged by now. Kilmerredes had a trap waiting for me.”

Jannyn cried, “He’s not dead?”

“Your reputation doesn’t name you a man who merely wounds his targets.” Tembriel’s eyes never left Julian’s haggard features. Her arrow never left his throat.

“I reached his bedchamber,” Julian said. “But the duchess, not the duke, was in it. She damn near stabbed me.
He
charged in with three guards and a bloody pistol. They knew I was coming.”

“Is this why you’re here early?” For all that his sister was the one who wielded the fire magic, Jannyn’s expression flared with far more open fury than hers. He lunged, and only faltered when Julian struck him a blow with his false hand, low and hard across the belly. The elf stumbled back, panting, but his anger roiled undeterred. “Damn you! The bastard killed our parents before our very eyes in your precious war. He killed Alarrah’s father! We paid you to kill him, and all you can bring us are excuses?”

A snarl burst out of Rab, and his daggers snapped back out into his hands. Julian flung out his living hand to stay him, and with it, flung unyielding steel into his voice. “Use either of those blades, man, and by Tykhe I swear I’ll kill you myself.” To Jannyn, he added, “After I kill you, because if you come at me like that again, that’s exactly what’s going to happen.”

As furious as Jannyn, Rab shouted, “He calls your honor into question! You were shot doing their work for them and he—”

“Assassins have no honor,” Jannyn seethed. “Humans have no honor!”

But his sister started, her eyes going wide as she looked Julian up and down. “Shot?”

“I believe this is where I come in.” Alarrah finally revealed herself, slipping out from beneath a low overhang of rock behind her companions. She was of a size with the other she-elf, fair where Tembriel was dark, with a gentler cast to her features. Unlike the others, she bore a thoughtful expression that promised at least the possibility of compassion. “If you’d been shot, the
òrennel
wouldn’t have healed it, and the wound would scream in my senses.”

Jannyn, his stare locked with Rab’s, drew his bowstring back another inch. “More excuses, more lies! You saw him come down, Alarrah. He doesn’t move like an injured man.”