She lay on her back in the darkness, her ears ringing, wondering what she was doing there.
“Kerowyn?”
She blinked, trying to remember where she was, and who that voice could belong to.
“Kerowyn?” The voice certainly sounded familiar.
She sat up., and her head screamed a protest—but it all came back. Eldan, the rescue—
“I’m in here!” she cried, hearing her voice echo back at her from deeper in the darkness with an elation not even her aching head could spoil.
“Are you all right?” She looked in the direction of the voice, and saw a lighter patch in the dark. That must be the entrance, screened off by bushes so thick
“Pretty much,” she replied, getting carefully to her feet, and sitting right back down again, prudently, when her head began to spin. “Can you bring the horses in here? Right now my knees are a little shaky.”
“I think so.” There were sounds of someone thrashing his way through bushes, leaving, then returning. “It looks big enough. Hang on, I’m going to make a light.” She winced at the sudden flare of light, and looked away, toward the rear of the cave. Interestingly, she couldn’t see an end to the darkness. When she looked back again, Eldan had a candle in one hand, and was leading Hellsbane in, the horse whickering her protest at being taken through scratchy bushes, but obeying him readily enough. Which was a miracle.
“She should be breaking your arm, you know,” she said conversationally, as Eldan coaxed the mare down the slippery gravel slope to the bottom of the cave. “She’s trained not to obey anyone but me, or someone I’ve designated that she’s worked with in my presence. She should be trying to kill you, or at least hurt you.”
“One of my Gifts is animal Mindspeech,” he said, just as casually. Then he dropped the reins, grinned at her thunderstruck expression, and scrambled back up the slope, leaving the candle stuck onto a rock.
“Oh,” she said weakly to the mare. “Animal Mindspeech. Of course. I should have known....”
“Doesn’t this hurt?” Eldan asked, peeling blood-soaked and dried cloth away from a slash on her leg. The wound wasn’t deep, but it was very messy; she was bleeding like the proverbial butchered pig.
And now that they were safe, it definitely did hurt. Quite a bit, as a matter of fact.
“Yes,” she replied, from behind gritted teeth. “It hurts.”
“Then why don’t you yell a little—it might do you some good.”
“It isn’t going to do any good to howl, much as I’d like to,” she pointed out. “And there might be someone out there to hear me.”
He sighed, and repeated what he’d just told her earlier. “One of my Gifts
“Call it force of habit, then,” she replied, clenching her fists while he continued to clean the wound as he talked.
She’d already done the same service for him, finding mostly bruises, and a couple of nasty-looking cuts and burns where the priestess had tried a little preliminary “work” on him. He proved to be quite a handsome fellow; lean and muscular, a little taller than she was, with warm brown eyes and hair of sable-brown, but with two surprising white streaks in it, one at each temple. He had high cheekbones, a stubborn chin, and a generous mouth that looked as if he smiled a great deal.
“I don’t think this needs to be stitched,” he said, finally, “Just bandaged really well.”
“That’s a relief.” She allowed herself to smile. “Thanks for taking care of everything. I’m sorry I had to find this place with my head.”
Eldan had spent a couple of candlemarks pulling up armloads of grass and bringing it into the cave for the horses, then hunting up food for the humans. That was when he’d assured her that his Gift of understanding animal thoughts would keep him safe. Somehow she hadn’t been too surprised that he’d brought back roots, edible fungus, and fish. Obviously if there was going to be any red meat or fowl brought in, she would have to be the hunter. And that would have to wait until tomorrow, since she’d managed to give herself a concussion when she fell.
But the ceiling of the cave was high enough that a fire gave them no problems, and the hot fish, wrapped in a
