“Lavim,” Tyorl said, his voice low with astonishment, “you killed all of them?”
Lavim, crouched in the darkest shadows of the night-filled cave, looked around. “I wish! One of ’em got away, Tyorl, and he was my favorite, or, he was the one I wanted to kill the most. I should have waited for you, I suppose, but you seemed to be having some temporary difficulty and—”
“Stanach!”
A small and pitying sigh on her lips, Kelida dropped to her knees and laid light, hesitant fingers on Stanach’s throat. She nodded to Tyorl; she’d found a faint lifebeat.
Tyorl’s belly went tight with what the dim starlight showed him. Blood and dirt matted the dwarf’s black beard. A dagger’s trail scored his face between eye and chin. It was the wreckage of Stanach’s right hand that sickened him.
If he had been schooled in the craft of war, Tyorl had also been schooled in other things. An artisan’s hand, someone once told him, is sacred. Without it, there is no bridge between what he envisions and what he can ultimately create. Stanach’s bridge lay in twisted ruin. A low, bubbling moan, thick with pain, startled Tyorl. Stanach, his blue-flecked black eyes flat and dull, looked at Kelida. When Stanach spoke, his voice was only a thin whisper.
“I don’t—I don’t feel my hand.”
A glimmer of panic broke the dullness of his eyes. He shifted a little on the ground and tried to move his fingers. When not even his smallest finger responded, Stanach closed his eyes again.
“Is it there? I feel my arm—but not my hand.”
Kelida tried to speak but found no words. She stroked his head gently, brushed his blood-matted hair away from his forehead. Tyorl, his heart aching, caught the glimmer of tears on her cheeks.
In a voice strangely thick, Lavim said, “Aye, young Stanach, your hand is there.”
“I don’t—feel it.”
For Stanach’s sake, Tyorl mustered a crooked smile and dropped to one knee beside him. “You may thank some god that you can’t just now, but your hand is there, Stanach.” Tyorl’s heart went cold and aching. All the better for you that you don’t feel it, he thought. Aloud he only said, “Rest easy now.”
Stanach’s breath shuddered in his chest. “Piper. They killed Piper. They want—Stormblade.”
Tyorl saw understanding darken Kelida’s eyes. Aye, Hauk, she hopes you’re alive. Lad, I hope you’re dead. They had a few hours at the dwarf. They’ll have been a week or more at you. Gods, I hope you’re dead!
Kelida’s hand dropped to Stormblade at her hip and then jerked away as though her fingers had been seared. She knew she would be dead now if Stanach had not somehow managed to keep silent through the agonizing ruining of his hand.
“No,” she murmured. “Oh, Stanach, no!”
How do you bear the weight of knowing that you live because others are suffering and dying? Tyorl shook his head. You tear your cloak for bandages, you cool the unbearable fire with the water from your flask. Watching Kelida’s gentle hands, listening to her soft words of comfort as she cleaned Stanach’s face and soaked the strips of green cloth for bandaging, Tyorl understood that he had fallen in love with Kelida just as surely as she had fallen in love with Hauk.
No, he thought, no. I’m tired, half sick still, and I don’t know where we’re running to next. I’m a lot of things, but I’m not in love with a barmaid, and a human one at that. No, and not with the woman who loves Hauk.
Tyorl nudged Lavim and walked slowly to the cave’s mouth. He needed air to clear his lungs and his head. The kender rose slowly and followed.
“Lavim, you said one got away?”
Lavim nodded. “He was fast, that one-eyed piece of gully dwarf—” He glanced over his shoulder, saw Kelida, and shrugged. “Lucky for him. Besides, I had my hands full with the others.”
“Aye, you must have.” Tyorl looked downriver. “And that one?”
“Uh, he’s dead, too. Pretty near, at least.”
“So I see. You were a busy fellow for a minute or two.”
“Oh, yes, really busy, Tyorl. There wasn’t a whole lot of time, but did I ever tell you what a good cave-fighter I am, unless I’m outnumbered too badly, and my hands are tied, and I’ve lost my knife, and—”
“Where’s the flute?”
Lavim studied the night sky. “Urn, the flute?”
“The mage’s flute.” The elf held out his hand. “Give. And don’t waste any breath telling me that you don’t have it.”
“But, Tyorl, I don’t—uh, I think I lost it back there in the cave.” Lavim dug into the deep pockets of his old black coat, searched a couple of pouches, and even patted himself down, eyes puzzled and innocent all the while. “I, um, I must’ve lost it back there somewhere. That smell-spell was awfuller than I thought it would be, and, well, to tell you the truth, it kind of startled me. Didn’t it startle you? You looked pretty startled when I caught up with you. You were kind of green, Tyorl. Not a lot green, you understand, but sort of. Around the edges, so to speak.”
Around the edges! Tyorl had no doubt that he’d been as green as moldy bread. He didn’t want to argue the matter or even think about it now. He knew he should go look for the flute himself, but there was something about the dwarf by the river that piqued his curiosity.
“Go find it, Lavim, and bring it right to me.”
“Well, sure, but I don’t really know where I’d look.”
“Look in the cave!”
“Oh. Right, in the cave. Which—?”
Tyorl didn’t hear the rest of the question as he stalked away from the river cave. There was something about the way the dwarf lay sprawled on the bank, arms wide and hands frozen in a grasp at the air that made Tyorl think he hadn’t died of a broken skull or a dagger in the ribs, and that he hadn’t been killed by the kender at all.
Stanach wanted the windswept ledges above Thorbardin. He wanted the peace. His dreams were filled with endless searching for the feel of ancient stone against his back, the frosty scent of gold autumn. He longed for the heatless wash of starlight, the silver spray of Solinari’s light on the early snow, and Lunitari’s glow, edging the crags and peaks of the mountains with crimson.
He found none of these in his fevered dreams, and none in his few moments of waking. All he had was pain.
Pain was what he was made of. Not bone and flesh, nor blood and breath. Each time he tried to climb to the sky, pain stood, a grinning demon with Wulfen’s mad eyes, to block his way. He could not reach the golden sunlight, the diamond night, the sapphire twilight. He was lost in darkness, listening to the weeping of moisture down a black stone wall. When he cried out none heard and no light was brought. He was alone with no way back, no path to Thorbardin under the mountain. Lavim returned to the river cave. As he did, he dipped his hand into his pocket and touched the smooth cherry wood flute. He was almost surprised to find it. Lavim did not consider himself a liar, or even a temporizer. What he said, he believed wholly. At the moment he said it. He cocked his head, listening for Piper’s comment. The mage, it seemed, always had something to say about what Lavim was thinking. Piper had nothing to say now.
Piper, he thought. Piper?
Nothing.
Lavim dropped to his knees beside Kelida. He supposed Piper might be just the least bit annoyed about his improvisation.
Well, he told himself, the flute hadn’t seemed to mind.
Apparently it had played exactly the melody needed to produce what Lavim had come to consider the smell-spell.
A nice little spell it was, too, he thought for the benefit of the silent mage.
Kelida had wiped the blood and dirt from Stanach’s face, cleaned the dagger cut, and covered him with her cloak. With one hand she was carefully lifting his head, with the other holding her water flask to his lips. When he didn’t swallow, Lavim leaned forward and stroked the sides of his throat with his gnarled old hands. The dwarf swallowed once, and then again, though he never opened his eyes.
“Sometimes that helps,” Lavim said. He looked at Kelida and shook his head. “Poor Stanach.”