His ears sought the sounds of pursuit, she supposed. He would hear it long before her.
Chapter Five
In the shelter of the cave, Shan slumped against the rock wall, fighting the bone-deep weariness of constant pain. As a member of the Shistra-Phail—the elite warriors of the Feyna—he possessed unearthly powers of recovery, but no one was invulnerable. Shan had seen his kindred die of wounds like this. Only their Seers healed the Shistra-Phail. It had always been that way. Now it seemed a deeply stupid tradition.
Anala, who had only lifted a sleepy head when Jeren left, slid to his side and pushed her head into his hand, nuzzling him to express her concern. As the girl approached, the wolf growled. Jeren halted, leaning towards them, but heeding the wolf’s soft warning to keep her distance.
“Please, Shan, let me help. Tell Anala I can help.”
“Do you know what you’re asking?” He sighed. “You aren’t even Feyna.”
“I’m all you have right now.”
He nodded more in resignation than agreement. “Go on, Anala,” he murmured, shooing her away. “I’ll be all right.” He didn’t add I hope.
The wolf retreated across the cave and lay across the doorway, her ears twitching. She watched them with suspicious eyes.
Jeren knelt at his side and ran one small hand down the length of his leg, testing the damage. Shan made no move to resist her as she took his own knife from his belt and began to cut the material. She touched him gently, and his skin felt heated beneath her fingertips. An infection perhaps, already. Not a good sign. She tried to smile up at him, but he recognised the concern in her features, the tightness around her eyes. She braced her hand against his leg to pull out the arrow.
“Ready?”
He nodded, his jaw firming as he gritted his teeth, waiting for the agony he anticipated.
Her voice warmed with sympathy. “Close your eyes.”
Shan felt Jeren still herself, like a Seer preparing for a healing. But she was human, undeniably so. Confused, he relinquished control to her and prayed she really did know what she was doing. He prayed that letting her do this wouldn’t damn him.
What choice did he have? There was no other way now.
“Tell me about your home.”
Shan was surprised by both her request and the change in her voice. Confidence enriched her tones and his senses prickled with the proximity of something else, an energy he could not define. It took him a moment or two to formulate any reply at all.
“The mountains,” he began tentatively. “The northern end of the Mother’s Back at the foot of Sheninglas. It isn’t as far north as we are now, and the valleys give more shelter. It’s a beautiful place.”
“Go on.”
“My family is not large. I have a younger brother and—I had a sister, Falinar. We called her Fa…” Anxiety tingled the back of his neck, worrying the base of his brain. This didn’t feel right. Anala whined. It should have alerted him at once, but he felt trapped in warm honey. His voice continued to flow, unable to stop. “She’s dead now. I’ve been Shistra-Phail since I came of age. Ariah wanted me to consider a craft, but by then it was already too late.”
Don’t ask me why. Please don’t ask me why…
Dull pain flared inside him, not just from his injury. This was old pain, an unhealable wound. No one wanted to be Shistra-Phail. Not really. It entailed leaving family and friends, those so beloved that nothing would induce him to let them see what he had become. He had been driven to it by the need for vengeance, the need to fight and kill.
He struggled against the memory of Falinar’s corpse, her broken remains.
Jeren’s voice shook. “Ariah’s your queen, isn’t she?”
He breathed a sigh of relief and the ache faded away. “We have no queen, Jeren.” He wanted to look at her, but couldn’t even find the strength to open his eyes. He felt her at his leg, but not what she was doing. There was no pain now, none at all. “Jeren?”
“What is she, if not a queen?”
“She’s Ariah.”
Jeren gave a brief snort at that answer. Perhaps she thought him evasive. Well, few Holters could easily understand it. Ariah was Ariah. You did things for her not because she commanded, but because she asked. A subtle difference, but an important one.
“And what brought you south from Sheninglas?” The girl sounded tense, as if she was the one undergoing the trial. He could smell the beading of sweat on her skin.
“I seek a brother Shistra-Phail, missing just over a week. He was last seen near here and Ariah asked me to find him, or find out what had become of him. She sensed a dark fate surrounding him, but Haledren…”
Her hand closed uncomfortably on his calf muscle.
Then the pain he had expected from the start seized him in its teeth and shook him. Jeren wrenched the arrow and his cry out of his body in the same instant. He jerked towards her, sitting up, instinctively making ready to defend himself.
Moving as quickly as a striking serpent, she pushed him back. He didn’t have the strength or the wits to resist. She flashed a tight smile at him, apologetic perhaps, and pressed a dressing against the welling blood. Deftly, she bound up his lower leg.
“Come on, Shan. Tell me about Ariah! What does she look like?”
Once more, the pain ebbed. He could picture Ariah’s face, see the amusement in her eyes.
“Sometimes she’s like a little girl, sometimes like my great-grandmother. I was five when I first saw her, and I remember she had flowers in her hair. Blue flowers. I don’t know where she got them.”
“There. Open your eyes.”
He didn’t want to obey at first. The image of Ariah was so clear, so comforting, Ariah as he had first seen her, perfectly preserved in his memory. Ariah smiled at him and her eyes sparkled.
Her eyes were dark brown. Jeren’s eyes.
Shan gave a startled yelp and sat bolt upright. Jeren slumped back, her shoulders drooping with exhaustion. Her eyes weren’t sparkling now. They were dull with the need for sleep, with the after effects of pain.
Ariah’s eyes weren’t brown. They were the same silver-grey as all the Fair Ones. Suspicion flared hot in his stomach. “What did you do?”
She looked away, refusing to make eye contact, but there was no hiding the guilt written plain on her face. “We should be on our way. They’ll find us here. Do you know somewhere we can both be safe?”
He exhaled slowly, watching her as if she might bite him.
What did you just do to me, Jeren? What did you do?
Tears trembled on the edge of her eyes. She didn’t speak. She just sat there, waiting for him to do something, to say something else, to help her.
Safe? There’s nowhere we could be safe, you and I. Not together.
A shudder ran through him. Thinking that way was madness. Why would they need to be together? Why would they even want to be together?
“I’ll find somewhere,” was all he said. What else was there?
He only hoped it was a promise he could keep.
Shan walked ahead of her most of the time, making a path through the snow that she could easily follow. Anala circled them continually, running in wide arcs, always returning to Shan’s side and casting wary glances at her. Threatening glances.
Time and again, Jeren saw in her mind’s eye Shan’s disgusted expression when she had healed him. He was no fool. He knew something unnatural had happened. Not even the most skilled healer could have removed that arrow with as little pain. Over the past day he had flinched whenever she touched him, however inadvertent the contact.