recently. The survivor is not likely to live much longer.”
“Shall we go ahead and see?” Tessia asked. “Perhaps I can help this person.”
He looked thoughtful, then nudged his horse forward. Lord Narvelan and Lord Werrin had become unofficial leaders of the group, though this mainly involved putting questions to the others and offering advice rather than actually making decisions, Tessia had noticed. The others would accept any overriding decision Werrin made, as he was the king’s representative, but they tended to become uncooperative if he didn’t let them debate it among themselves first.
After several minutes, Dakon returned.
“Just us and Narvelan,” he said.
To Tessia’s surprise, two other magicians and their apprentices broke away from the others to follow them up the road: Lord Bolvin and Lord Ardalen. Dakon nodded his thanks.
“Did the scout say what the injury was?” she murmured.
Dakon shook his head.
Several nervous minutes later they came upon a tiny stone building at the side of the track. Insects buzzed around the prone forms of two men, one with grey at his temples, the other much younger. Dakon, Tessia and Jayan dismounted, but the others remained on their horses, forming a protective ring around the front of the house.
Removing her father’s bag, Tessia followed as Dakon cautiously stepped through the open doorway. A light flared into existence, revealing a table that filled most of the room. They stopped and glanced around, looking for the survivor.
As Tessia moved towards the back of the room she felt something snag her foot. Looking down, she saw a leg, then squatted and found a young man lying under the table.
He stared at her with frightened eyes.
“You’re safe now,” she told him. “The house is surrounded by magicians – Kyralian magicians, that is. Where are you hurt?”
Dakon brought the light lower and Tessia felt her heart sink as she saw how pale the man was. His lips were blue. He was shivering. She could see no sign of blood, however. Was it an internal injury? The man hadn’t moved. He just stared at her, his eyes wide.
“Show me where you are hurt,” she said. “I can help you. My father was a healer and taught me much of what he knew.”
When he didn’t move, she began checking his rhythms. The spaces between his heartbeats were impossibly long. His breathing was painfully shallow. Dakon reached out and turned over one of the man’s wrists. A thin cut already sealed by congealed blood stood out against his deathly pale skin.
“That’s not enough to kill him,” Tessia said.
The staring eyes were now fixed on the underside of the table. As she watched, they lost their intense focus. A last slow breath escaped the man. Dakon cursed. He reached out and placed a hand on the pale brow. After a moment he removed it. “Most of the energy within him was taken. He didn’t have enough strength left to keep breathing.”
“Could... could you have given him back some strength?” Tessia asked.
Dakon frowned. “I don’t know. I have never tried – never needed to. Never heard of anyone doing it, either.” He looked regretfully at the man. “I’d try now, but I suspect it is too late.”
Tessia nodded. “My father always said it was foolish and wrong to try to reverse death. He’d read of a man whose rhythms were restarted after they’d stopped, but whose mind was never the same.”
“If we encounter another like this,” Dakon said, “we will try.”
Tessia smiled and felt a wave of gratitude and affection for him. This willingness to help even the lowliest of people was one of the traits she most liked in him. In the past weeks she had come to the realisation that this sense of compassion was rare among magicians.
“Is that wise? You will need all the strength you possess if you have to fight the Sachakans,” Jayan asked. As Tessia looked at him reproachfully he grimaced. “Saving one man might cost us our lives, which might cost many more.”
He had a point, she grudgingly admitted. The harsh practicality of his remark only highlighted how different he was from Lord Dakon. Cold, truthful common sense was harder to like than warm, hopeful generosity. Yet it had replaced Jayan’s former disdain and arrogance, giving him a maturity that hadn’t been apparent before, and she had to admit she disliked him a little less now. Only a little, though.
Dakon straightened and sighed. “I suspect it would not take much energy to bring a man dying this way back to a state from which he could recover. A tiny portion of what I take from either of you each night – and so easily replaced. I wouldn’t consider it dangerous unless we were in a desperate situation.”
Jayan nodded, satisfied. As they stood up and left the house Tessia felt a weary sadness. Messages had been sent out to all the people living in villages, farms, forest and mountain cottages in the leys bordering Sachaka, advising an evacuation to the south until the Sachakans were driven out. But many people had stayed, their lives depending on the sowing of spring crops, hunting or other sources of income. They were easy targets for the invaders.
As she, Dakon and Jayan mounted and started back to rejoin the others, Tessia listened to the magicians quietly discussing how long ago they thought the house had been attacked. They had found several campsites of the enemy as well as their victims, but no sign of the Sachakans. She suspected that the magicians had expected the Sachakans to attack them weeks ago and were puzzled why they had not. Some speculated that there were too few of them. They wanted to split into smaller groups themselves, remaining close enough to help each other if attacked, in order to lure the Sachakans out.
But, as Jayan had pointed out, the Sachakans weren’t going to attack unless they felt they could win. They wouldn’t attack a smaller group if another was close enough to reinforce it.
All of the apprentices were expected to stay close to their masters, as much for their own protection as to be a ready source of extra power if needed. Strength was another constantly discussed issue among the Kyralian magicians. They could not know if they had as much stored magic as the Sachakans had. They considered how much power one might gain from slaves, and how many slaves the Sachakans might have with them. They tried to calculate how much power they each held, examining how many times they’d drawn it from their apprentices and how much they used, either habitually or on demanding tasks.
A routine had formed each night, when all the magicians took strength from their apprentices. Neither Werrin nor Narvelan had an apprentice, though apparently Werrin had sent for a young man he had promised to take on when the youth reached the customary age to begin training. The apprentice would travel with a group of magicians who had volunteered to help in the search.
The nightly ritual of higher magic made it clear how much magician and apprentice relied upon each other. One was vulnerable without the other. It was strangely comforting to know that, despite being otherwise untrained and of little use to the group, Tessia was contributing to both her own and Lord Dakon’s protection. And Jayan’s. And thus the whole of Kyralia’s.
And it had one other benefit. It ensured Tessia slept well, despite anger, grief and a nagging fear that if the Kyralian magicians were incapable of tracking down and dealing with a few renegade Sachakans, they had no hope of repelling an invading army.
Asmall exertion of will and magic increased the ambient temperature, and stirring the air helped dry Jayan’s
