“He’s breathing!”
I heard the voice, but I couldn’t be sure whose it was. I was exhausted and all I wanted was sleep. The endless night around me was warm and comforting, and I felt myself drifting.
“Mordecai isn’t!”
That sounded like Penny, but the voice was muffled, as if it came to me from a great distance. She said other things as well, but I could no longer make them out. I just needed rest. I would ask her what she had said later.
Mordecai! Come back! We need you. Elaine’s voice was loud and annoying and it cut across the distance that had muffled the others with no loss of volume.
Shhhh, I thought back at her. I’m trying to sleep.
You mustn’t sleep here. Your body is dying. You have to return to it, came her anxious reply.
Make me, I replied rebelliously. Her continued presence wouldn’t let me relax.
I can’t. I can’t see you Mordecai. I can’t follow you there. You have to return. Her thoughts sounded almost frantic now.
Fine, I thought back. If it will shut you up. One of these days I’ll find a way to convince people to let me get some decent sleep. Angrily I focused my awareness and once again I felt my body close by. Seeing it from the outside, it seemed foreign to me, and a great lethargy had sapped my energy. With slow effort I began trying to re-enter, but it felt as though a shield of some sort prevented me from reaching my goal.
I saw myself then, a fragile light beginning to fray and fade at the edges, like old cloth. I made one more desperate push. With a sudden ‘pop’, I broke through and once again I felt flesh enfold me. Drawing breath again for the first time seemed like a monumental task. My heart leapt to life in my chest, and I found myself lying on cold stone, gasping and coughing for air.
Penny held me now and I felt her tears on my face. As she cradled my head, she said nothing and for a moment we were both content. Her lap was a peaceful place, and her hair filled the air around me with a sweet scent. All in all, I could think of no other place I might prefer to be… except for all the crying.
“You’re going to drown me,” I told her, in a weak attempt at humor.
She looked at me with tear streaked cheeks, “It would serve you right, you bastard. You nearly died this time.”
I smiled weakly, “You should see the other guy.”
“What other guy?”
“Exactly,” I agreed.
She frowned at me, but I heard Dorian chuckling behind her. At least he understood my humor.
Chapter 10
The next few days passed slowly. My experience on the edge of death had exhausted me far more than I had expected. Worse, I had begun hearing a faint song, one that I had never noticed before, a dissonant sound. I avoided thinking on it directly, but it bothered me.
After a week had passed I returned to Albamarl, to see my friend Marc. Since I had been convalescing over the past few days no one expected to see me out and about, so I took the opportunity to sneak out and visit him without any of my usual escorts.
He was surprised to see me when I turned up one afternoon. I had teleported into the house in Albamarl, and after a brief search I found him downstairs. He appeared to be organizing a chest of clothing and other sundries. “You’re going to leave that soon?” I asked suddenly.
“Holy!” he exclaimed, as he jerked and fell away from me. “Damn Mordecai! You scared me within an inch of my life.”
“That was my plan,” I retorted.
He grimaced before standing up and embracing me. “I heard you nearly found an early grave yourself.”
“The rumors of my demise are greatly exaggerated.”
“I’m sure Penny didn’t appreciate your close call,” he observed.
I snorted. “I probably would have passed on, but she wouldn’t give the grim reaper permission to enter the room. Did you hear about her battle with the assassin who tried to kill King Nicholas?”
Marc laughed, “Yes indeed. For a woman who is no longer your Anath’Meridum she still has the instincts of a rabid tigress.”
“You try chasing four children around all day… the man is lucky she was in a good mood,” I replied.
“He survived?”
“No, her final blow broke his nose and killed him near instantly. If she had been in a bad mood, she might have drawn things out for a while,” I explained. “The one good thing that came of the whole thing is that the King of Gododdin now regards her as his personal savior.”
Marc grinned, “You can never have too many friends.”
Those words and his smile sent a shadow across my heart, as I thought of his words at our last meeting. There are some friends you can never replace, I thought silently. “Where is Marissa?” I asked, hoping to distract myself from those thoughts.
“Shopping,” he replied simply. “There are a hundred different things we need for our journey.”
“So we have the place to ourselves?” I said amiably. “Like a couple of old bachelors.”
“Hardly,” he remarked. “You haven’t been an old bachelor since… hell, you were never an old bachelor! You went straight from teenager to married life.”
“You have me there,” I admitted.
He shrugged. “Stop changing the subject. Did they ever figure out who tried to assassinate you?”
“James had the palace searched from top to bottom,” I began, “and by the time it was done, they found two more accomplices hiding in the wine cellar, not that it did us much good. We still aren’t even sure who their primary target was.”
“They wouldn’t talk?” Marc frowned.
I shook my head, “They took poison. They were dead within half an hour of being captured.”
“Fanatics,” Marc noted. “You had best be careful my friend.”
“That seems like a snap judgment,” I offered.
“Not many will take poison.”
I thought for a moment, “Perhaps they preferred that to torture.”
“Did they find out how they got into the palace?” he asked.
“According to the seneschal, they were all hired as guardsmen over the past year. They didn’t have to ‘get’ in, they were supposed to be there,” I said, relating the news I had heard from Dorian two days before.
“And they all had guard duty in the dining hall on the same day?” Marc asked with a curious tone in his voice.
“Of course not,” I said dismissively. “As they soon found out, they slew several of their fellow guardsmen and took their places on the roster that evening. They found the bodies hidden in the stables.”
“You’re lucky there were only six of them,” Marc observed. “From what I heard described, they nearly killed Walter and King Nicholas both.”
I nodded, “That’s one thing that still has me puzzled. Why didn’t they have all six of them attack us in the dining hall? Only four of them came at us there, while the other two were found hiding in the cellar.”
Marc stared back at me. “You’re right. If they weren’t participating in the attack, why hide at all? They could have made a second attempt later. It isn’t as if anyone knew they were associates of the assassins in the dining hall.”
Something tickled the back of my mind but I couldn’t lay my finger on it, and after a few minutes of musing over it I decided to worry about it later. Often my mind needed time to work on things in the background before presenting me with a fully formed idea after a few days.