An auburn-haired man lay facedown before them, and the grass around him was blackened char and powdery ash. Leeana couldn’t understand why whatever had consumed that ten or twelve-foot circle of grass hadn’t spread further, but she spared a moment to give silent thanks that it hadn’t. Yet even as she realized how lucky they’d been in at least that respect, her brain seemed to be racing off in a dozen directions at once as she tried to find some explanation for how he’d gotten there in the first place. There was no sign of a horse or anything else-the grass around the hollow stood straight and unbroken, with no trace of how he could have gotten here on foot, even if he’d had no horse. It was as if he’d fallen out of the heavens, and his clothing was almost as scorched looking as the grass upon which he lay. And then there was that “glow” only Gayrfressa seemed able to see…
Logic told her she wasn’t going to like the answers to all the questions ripping through her thoughts, but there’d be time to worry about them later. There were more urgent things to deal with at the moment, and she was out of the saddle, dropping the reins to leave Boots ground hitched, almost before the gelding had stopped. Gayrfressa delicately placed one huge forehoof on the reins to make certain he’d stay there, and Leeana gave the courser a brief smile of thanks as she passed her sister on her way down into the hollow.
Thank the Mother I’m wearing boots! she thought, feeling the heat radiating upward from the charred area around the unconscious man. There was a lot of that heat, enough to make the toughened soles of her feet tingle when she stepped out into it, even through her boots, underlining the mystery of why no fire had spread from it. Then she reached him and went down on one knee, extending her hand to touch the side of his neck.
A pulse fluttered against her fingertips. It was weak, racing, but at least it was there, and she exhaled a long breath of gratitude. Then she gritted her teeth and rolled him over onto his back as gently as she could.
His hands were badly seared, blistered everywhere and with deep, angry wounds burned into their tissue, and her stomach knotted as she saw the damage. Burned scraps of skin and flesh hung in tatters around those deeper wounds, weeping serum. It looked as if he’d closed his grip on a white-hot iron, she thought sickly, wondering if he’d ever be able to use those fingers again. His face was burned, as well, although not as badly, and she smelled singed, burned hair. But then her eyes widened as she saw the white scepter on the scorched shoulder of his dark blue tunic.
“A mage! ” she said sharply. “He’s a mage, Gayrfressa!”
‹ A mage? All the way out here? Where did he come from? How did he get here?›
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
Leeana sat back on her heels, staring down at the brutally injured man, then looked back up at Gayrfressa.
“We need help, and I don’t want to move him without a healer. Mother only knows how badly hurt he may be inside!” She rose and reached into her belt pouch for the pad of paper an officer of the city guard carried everywhere. “I think I’m going to have to stay here to keep an eye on him, Gayrfressa.” She found her stubby pencil and began writing quickly. “You’re going to have to give this to Erlis or a Balcartha or- no! ”
She shook her head sharply, discarding the note she’d already started and scribbling a different one in its place.
“Give it to Arm Shahana,” she said instead, choosing not to think too deeply about the possible implications of their discovery and the arm’s mysterious arrival from Quaysar.
She felt Gayrfressa’s thoughts matching her own, but the courser said nothing as she finished her hasty note and tucked it into Gayrfressa’s ornamental halter. The huge mare took long enough to press her nose to Leeana’s raised hand and blow heavily. Then she turned, whirling away, and vanished with the blinding speed only a courser could produce.
Leeana watched her go, then got her canteen from Boots’ saddle and went back to her knees beside the injured mage. Perhaps she could get him to drink a little, and if she couldn’t, she could at least cleanse those hands of his.
Shahana Lillinarafressa stiffened shaky knees and straightened, looking down at the still unconscious man in the Kalatha infirmary. She felt as if she’d just completed a ten-mile run, but his breathing was stronger, and his hands looked far better than they had. Despite which, she was far from certain he’d ever be able to use them again, despite all she’d been able to do. It had always struck her as ironic, possibly even unfair, that champions of Tomanak, the God of War, could heal so much more completely than an arm of the Mother. Of course, not even Tomanak’s champions could heal the way one of Kontifrio’s priestesses could, but at the moment they didn’t have a priestess of Kontifrio.
No, you don’t. And try feeling grateful for the fact that the Mother’s at least allowed you to save this man’s life rather than whining over the fact that someone else got a shinier toy than you did!
“That’s the best I can do, at least for now,” she said.
“And it’s an awful lot better than anything I could have done,” the senior Kalathan healer told her fervently.
“Granted,” Five Hundred Balcartha agreed, standing out of the way to one side, frowning down at the injured man. “Granted, and I’m as grateful as the next woman we had you here to save him, Milady. But what in Lillinara’s name happened to him? And what was he doing out in the middle of the Wind Plain all by himself?”
“I have no idea,” Shahana said frankly, settling gratefully onto the stool the healer pulled over to the side of the bed for her. “Leeana’s obviously right that he’s a mage, so I’m going to make a wild guess here and suggest that whatever happened to him has to have had something to do with his mage talent. But I’ve never heard of anything the magi do that could have produced this.” She gestured at the still raw ruins of his terribly damaged hands and the fresh, livid scars of the lesser burns she had been able to heal completely, crawling up both of his forearms. “It’s like he was holding onto some kind of burning rope!”
Balcartha nodded unhappily. It was her job, as Kalatha’s senior military officer, to recognize and deal with potential threats, and all of her instincts were insisting that “potential threat” was exactly what this man represented. Yet she had no clue as to why that might be.
“I could wish-” she began, then closed her mouth with a click as the injured man’s eyelids fluttered. They rose, and his face twisted as muscles which had been slack in unconsciousness tightened in reaction to the pain of awareness. He sucked in a deep, hissing breath, and then, with startling suddenness, his slate-gray eyes snapped into focus.
He looked up at the five hundred for an instant, then tried to push himself up, only to gasp in anguish and fall back as his hands’ injured strength failed him.
“Gently, Master Mage!” Shahana said. “You’re safe now. I give you my word.”
His head turned, his gaze moving to the arm’s face. He stared at her for an instant, and something flickered in those gray eyes. He let himself settle fully back onto the mattress, yet the tension within him only seemed to grow.
“You’re in Kalatha,” Balcartha told him. “One of my officers found you out in the grass. We brought you back to the infirmary and the Arm here”-she touched Shahana’s shoulder-“did what she could for you. But what in the names of all the gods were you doing out there?”
The mage looked at her for a long moment, then licked cracked and blistered lips…and told her.
Trisu of Lorham swept into Thalar Keep’s great hall like a windstorm to greet his unexpected guests. There were three of them: Shahana Lillinarafressa, Balcartha Evahnalfressa, and the young woman he couldn’t-simply could not, however hard he tried-think of as anyone except Leeana Bowmaster. At least this time she was in trousers, shirt, and doublet instead of that scandalous attire she normally danced around in, flaunting her body at every male eye like the worst, cheapest sort of strumpet. Not that the sight of the wedding bracelet on her left wrist was much of an improvement, especially given the rumors about just who it was she was supposedly “married” to!