wishsong?
Behind her, Rone moaned softly, thrashing beneath the blankets that covered him. She turned slowly to find his face, bending close to stroke his forehead. His skin was deathly pale now, feverish, hot, and drawn. His breathing was worse as well, turned shallow and raspy, as if each breath were an effort that sapped him of his strength.
She knelt beside him, her head shaking. The tonic had not helped. He was growing weaker, and the poison was working deeper into his system, draining him of his life. If it were not stopped, he was going to die…
Like Allanon.
«No!» she cried softly, urgently, and she gripped his hand in hers as if she might hold back the life that seeped away.
She knew in that instant what she must do. Savior and destroyer — that was what the shade of Bremen had named her. Very well. To those thieves from west of Spanning Ridge, she had been destroyer. Perhaps to Rone Leah she could be savior.
Still holding his hand with her own, she bent close to his ear and began to sing. Softly, gently the wishsong slipped from her lips, floating like invisible smoke through the air about them both. Carefully, she reached out to the sickened highlander, probing for the hurt he felt, searching out the source of the poison that was killing him.
I must try, she told herself as she sang. I must! By morning he will be gone, the poison spread all through him — poison that attacks the spirit as well as the body. Allanon had said it was so. Perhaps, then, the Elven magic can find a means to heal.
She sang, sweet and lingering tones that wrapped the highlander close about and brought him to her. Slowly, he began to cease his shivering and thrashing and to become still beneath the calming sound. He slipped down into the blankets, his breathing growing steadier and stronger.
The minutes slipped away with agonizing slowness as the Valegirl sang on and waited for the change she somehow sensed must come. When at last it did, it came so suddenly that she nearly lost control of what she was about. From the ravaged, wasted body of Rone Leah, the poison of the Jachyra lifted in a red mist — dissipating out of the unconscious highlander to float above him, swirling wickedly in the dim light of the oil lamp. Hissing, it hung above its victim for an instant as Brin interposed the magic of the wishsong between its touch and the body of Rone Leah. Then slowly it faded into nothingness and was gone.
On the bed beside her, sweat bathed the face of the Prince of Leah. The drawn and haggard look was gone, and the breathing was steady and even once more. Brin stared down at him through a veil of tears as the wishsong died into silence.
I have done it, she cried softly. I have used the magic for good. Savior this time — not destroyer.
Still kneeling beside him, she buried her face in the warmth of his body, her arms holding him close. In moments, she was asleep.
Chapter Twenty–Eight
They stayed on for two days at the Rooker Line Trading Center, waiting for Rone to regain strength enough to resume the journey east. The fever was gone by morning and the highlander was resting comfortably, but he was still entirely too weak to attempt to travel. So Brin asked permission of the trader Stebb to keep the use of the tack room for one day more, and the trader agreed. He provided them with food for their meals, rations of ale, medicines, and blankets, and he refused quickly all offers of payment. He was happy to be of help to them, he assured the Valegirl. But he was uneasy in her presence and he never quite managed to let his eyes meet hers. Brin understood well enough what was happening. The trader was a kind and decent man, but now he was frightened of her and of what she might do to him if he refused it. He would probably have helped her out of his basic generosity, but fear had added urgency to his impulse. He obviously felt that this was the quickest and most expedient way to get her out of his life.
She remained for the most part within the confines of the little tack room with Rone, seeing to his needs and talking with him of what had befallen them since the death of Allanon. Talking about it seemed to help; while both were still stunned by what had happened, the sharing of their feelings brought forth a common determination that they must go forward to complete the quest that the Druid had left to them. A new closeness developed between them, stronger and more certain in its purpose. With the death of Allanon, they now had only each other upon whom to rely and each felt new value in the other’s presence. Alone together in the solitude of their tiny room at the rear of the trader’s stables, they spoke in hushed tones of the choices that had been made to bring them to this point in their lives and of those that must yet be made. Slowly, surely, they bound themselves as one.
Yet despite their binding together in spirit and cause, there remained some things of which Brin could not bring herself to speak, even to Rone Leah. She could not tell him of the blood that Allanon had taken from his own ravaged body to place upon her — blood that in some way was meant to pledge her to him, even in death. Nor could she tell Rone of the uses to which she had put the wishsong — once in fury to destroy human life, a second time in desperation to save it. She could speak of none of these things to the highlander — in part because she did not fully understand them, in part because the implications frightened her so greatly that she was not sure she wanted to. The blood oath was too remote in purpose now for her to dwell upon, and the cases of the wishsong were the result of emotions that she promised herself she would not let get away from her again.
There was another reason for not speaking to Rone of these things. The highlander was troubled enough as matters stood by the loss of the Sword of Leah — so troubled, in fact, that he could seem to think of little else. He meant to have the sword back again, he told her over and over. He would search it out and reclaim it whatever the cost. His insistence frightened her, for he seemed to have bound himself to the sword with such need that it was as if the weapon had somehow become a part of him. Without it, she guessed, the highlander did not believe that he could survive what lay ahead. Rone felt that without it he must surely be lost.
All the while she listened to him talk of this and thought about how deeply he seemed now to depend on the magic of the blade, she pondered as well her own dependence on the wishsong. It was just a toy, she had always told herself — but that was a lie. It was anything but a toy; it was magic every bit as dangerous as that contained in the missing Sword of Leah. It could kill. It was, in fact, what her father had always said — a birthright that she would have been better off without. Allanon had warned her as he lay dying. «The power of the wishsong is like nothing I have ever seen.» The words whispered darkly as she listened to Rone. Power to heal — power to destroy — she had seen them both. Must she be as dependent on the magic as Rone now seemed to be? Between her and the Elven magic, which was to be master?
Her father had fought his own battle to discover the answer to that question, she knew. He had fought it when he had struggled to overcome his inability to master the power of the magic contained within the Elfstones. He had done so, survived the staggering forces it had unleashed within him, and then cast it aside forever. Yet his brief use of the power had exacted its price — a transmutation of the magic from the Elfstones to his children. So now, perhaps, the battle must be fought yet another time. But what if this time the power could not be controlled?
The second day drifted into night. The Valegirl and the highlander ate the meal brought to them by the trader and watched the darkness deepen. When Rone had grown weary and rolled into his blankets to sleep, Brin slipped out into the cool autumn night to breathe smells that were sharp and clean and to lose herself for a time in skies grown bright with a crescent moon and stars. On her way past the trading center, she caught sight of the trader as he sat smoking his pipe on the empty veranda, his high–backed chair tilted against the rail. No one had come by for drinks or talk that evening, so he sat alone.
Quietly, she walked over to him.
«Evening,” he greeted hastily, sitting forward a bit too quickly in the chair, almost as if he were poised to flee.
Brin nodded. «We will be leaving in the morning,” she informed him and thought she detected a look of immediate relief in his dark eyes. «But I wanted to thank you first for your help.»
He shook his head. «No need.» He paused, brushing back his thinning hair. «I’ll see to it that you have some supplies to get you through the first few days or so.»
Brin didn’t argue. It was pointless to do anything other than simply to accept what was offered.
