Magic's Price

He's not dead, or there'd be a body. Besides, I'd know if he was dead. That means they took him away somewhere. They left a trail even I can follow, which means wherever they took him, I can find him. And if I can find him, maybe I can get him loose.

He took steady, deep breaths of air so cold it made his lungs ache, and looked up at the dark, star-strewn sky. Night had fallen while he'd cried himself senseless; there was a clear quarter-moon, so he should have no trouble reading the trail the ambushers had left. The moon was amazingly bright for the first quarter; so bright he had no trouble making out little details, like the drops of blood slowly oozing from the stump where poor Yfandes' tail had been chopped off -

Suddenly his breath caught in his throat. She's bleeding! Dead things don't bleed!

But if she isn't dead, why does she look dead?

Magic - has to be. And magic's the only way they'd have taken Van down . . . like the magic that got Savil and the others. And since I didn't see anything that acted like a mage before I - Well, that means it was probably a magic weapon, something any fool could use. Probably something still here.

Galvanized by the thought, he began searching Yfandes' body meticulously, thumblength by thumblength, searching for something - anything that might qualify as a weapon. He wasn't certain what it would be, except that he had a vague notion it might be something very like that leech-dagger - the ploy had worked once, and people tended to repeat themselves . . . another dagger, maybe, or an arrow.

Almost a candlemark later, he found what he thought might be what he was looking for; a tiny dart, hardly longer than the first joint of his index finger, buried in Yfandes' shoulder, hidden by her mane. It tingled when he touched it, in the way he'd come to associate with magic. Maybe it wasn't what he thought it was -

But he gripped it as carefully as he could, and pulled, praying he wasn't leaving anything behind.

Yfandes drew a great, shuddering breath. Then another.

And suddenly Stefen was bowled over backward into a heap of bloodstained snow as she surged to her feet, and pivoted on her hindquarters, teeth bared, eyes rolling, looking for a target.

Her eyes met his.

Brodie ignored the aches of his body, the noisy breathing of the child beside him. He found himself doing things he never thought he could, driven by a rage that increased with every new injury he uncovered.

The young man had some slight Gift of Healing, and a boundless store of energy, which was certainly what had kept him alive all this time.

The Feel of blue-green Healing power was unmistakable, and Brodie approached the man's injuries cautiously after he first passed the man's low-level shields and encountered it. It was well that he did so. ...

Dear gods- Everywhere he looked there was Healing magic; low-level, but comprehensive. There was a fine net of Healing holding each critical hurt stable, sealing off the worst of the bleeding, keeping the swelling down. Brodie had to insinuate himself delicately into that net, replacing its energies with his own. But once he did that, he found that he now had an awesome amount of power available to him - such a tremendous amount that it was frightening.

He isn't a Healer - and I can't See that he's a mage, much less an Adept-class - but where in the gods' names did he get this reservoir of power from? What is he? And why is it Dark wants him?

But there was something subtly interfering with Brodie's own powers, and keeping the man from doing anything effective about his hurts. Then Brodie identified what it was - when he finally had a breath to spare and could take a more leisurely look at the major repair work he had ahead of him.

For when he probed into the man's abilities, beneath a shell of external blockage was something that Brodie suspected had to be Mage-Gift, though the blockage had it so sealed off that until then the Healer had not seriously considered that the man might be a mage. But Mage-Gift tied in and integrated with all the others in quite a remarkable way, so that interference with it rendered the rest of the man's abilities ineffective or impaired.

Brodie smiled, withdrew a little, and contemplated the external matrix of the spellblock. From within it was perfectly smooth, perfectly created to leave no crack and no opening that a mage so entrapped could use to break it open.

But from the outside - that was a different story entirely. The outside of the thing was rutted, creviced and full of weak spots. Brodie had no doubt that even a simple Healer like himself could find some way to break it open. After all, if a Healer could get through another person's shields to treat him, he ought to be able to break into a blocking-spell providing he could find something his power could work on. Half the battle was being able to See what was wrong; or so his teachers had always told him. “If you can See it, you can act on it -” was the rule.

Brodie had never heard of a Healer breaking a spell, but after all the things he'd done so far, things he'd have sworn that he, at least couldn't do, he was willing to try this one.