He felt dizzy for a moment, and shrugged it off, closing the lantern door and watching the small flame steady to brightness. His momentary weakness didn’t matter. What mattered was why he should be able to do this at all —or should have been able to cast the Mageshield that had saved his life when the Demon had first attacked him. His Gift should be gone, burned from his brain.
But it hadn’t been. It had merely been… sleeping. And this made no sense at all. He was grateful, no, more than grateful, he was elated—but it made no sense at all.
No Mage would have let him leave the City with his Gift intact, even if they expected him to be dead within bells. And it could not be an accident.
It must have been deliberate.
Undermage Anigrel had done this deliberately. But why? Had he hoped that the young Apprentice, if he left the Gift intact, could somehow use the High Magick to get himself beyond the reach of the Hunt? But that couldn’t be right, because his magick
Cilarnen shook his head. Whatever Undermage Anigrel’s motives, he had more pressing concerns now. He picked up the lantern and left the stable.
It was snowing, and the snow had swept the smell of smoke from the air. It should have been peaceful; it wasn’t. It was early evening, but the streets were oddly dark and quiet. Without cloak or hood, Cilarnen shivered in the cold night air. He felt unnerved and unsettled, and the silence filled him with an edgy energy.
He’d meant to go directly to Grander’s house—as he shook off the last veils of sleep, he became more worried about what had happened to his friends—but as he walked up the street, he neared the tavern next to the smithy and finally started to hear voices. He hurried toward them.
As he approached, a strange Centaur male hailed him.
“You! Grander’s boy! Come and help!”
Cilarnen came at a run.
The Centaur who had hailed him was one of the warriors who had arrived earlier that day. He was still bloody from the fight, and one arm was splinted and in a sling, but he looked vigorous enough. Looking past him, Cilarnen could see that both the forge and tavern had been converted to a makeshift hospital, and were filled with Centaur wounded.
“Someone said you were a Mage. Have you Healing skills?” the Centaur demanded.
Cilarnen shook his head, his spirits falling. “None,” he said. “Wirance—or Kardus—”
“Both occupied with worse cases than these. They will come when they can.” The Centaur looked weary. “I had hoped…”
“If there is anything I can do, I will do it,” Cilarnen said quickly. “I work in the stables. I know you are not horses, but—”
“An able body and a willing pair of hands counts for much, if you are not afraid of blood,” the Centaur said.
“After today, I do not think I will ever be afraid of it again,” Cilarnen said bleakly.
—«♦»—
FOR the next several hours, Cilarnen worked at the direction of others, stitching wounds, changing poultices over burns, and helping to draw limbs straight so they could be splinted.
Because those who had been lucky enough to escape injury were needed elsewhere—to search through the rubble of smashed buildings for trapped survivors, to build firebreaks, and to lend their strength (whatever that meant: Cilarnen wasn’t sure) to Wirance’s Wildmage spells—the injured had been left to tend to each other. Cilarnen learned, in scraps of conversations during the work, that the snow was Wirance’s doing, so that the fires the Demon had set could be contained and extinguished, since the well had been destroyed. Half the homes of Stonehearth had been either damaged or destroyed outright in its attack, though this part of the village, the farthest from the square, was untouched.
It seemed to Cilarnen that there was no end to the wounded and burned…
And then, suddenly, there was. He found himself with bandages in his hands, and no one to put them on. “Here,” said Comild, taking them from him gently and putting them with the rest of the scavenged supplies. “Go and wash yourself—there’s water over there.” He pointed with his chin, and Cilarnen saw a bucket, and at the same time, realized that his hands were sticky with blood and unguents.
Holding down a surge of nausea, he hastened to cleanse himself as well as he could.
