Nora felt a light touch on her arm. “It is Mistress Nora, is it not? Aruendiel told me to look out for you.” An older man, slightly stooped, slightly familiar. Aruendiel’s old friend Nansis Abora, she realized after a moment, with relief and some pleasure. “This is no place for a young lady. Would you like to come back to camp with me? I have just been seeing to some of the wounded,” he added, and she noticed his blood-streaked apron.
“I want to make sure that my friend is all right,” Nora said, gesturing toward Perin. The Faitoren’s sword blade had broken off; Perin had his own blade pointed at the Faitoren’s throat.
“That boy there? He looks as though he’s doing a tolerable job of taking care of himself, child, and Aruendiel won’t thank me if anything happens to you while we dawdle here.”
Nansis Abora had a small sled drawn by a pair of mules, in which he was transporting wounded men back to the hospital tent. To Nora’s chagrin, he insisted on treating her as one of the wounded as soon as he noticed the bloodstain on the back of her wool cap.
“It’s just a bruise,” she said, but she had to explain about how she had been hurled across the room when Dorneng’s spell exploded.
“Oh, yes, we felt the spell over here,” Nansis Abora said, chirping to his mules. “Just a bump, though. Not enough to knock over a mouse.” He nodded when Nora described the formula she had used; evidently he knew more math than Aruendiel. “Yes, the surface of a ball increases as the square of its radius,” he said. “So, the bigger it grew, the weaker the spell.”
“I was hoping it would break the Faitoren into little pieces, like the ice demon,” Nora said. But Nansis Abora said that at some point the spell would be stretched so thin that it would dissipate entirely.
When they reached the hospital tent—Nora vaguely recognized the dog-faced figure painted on the outside, one of the healer gods—the magician made her lie down, despite her protests that she was fine, absolutely fine. From her corner, Nora watched Nansis Abora treat the wounded. First he had to determine whether their injuries were real or illusory. The white-faced soldier on the stretcher clutching his shattered knee was soon dealt with: Nansis Abora stripped away the Faitoren spell, and the man walked out of the tent looking as though he could hardly believe his good luck. The next soldier, an abdominal wound, was in a graver state, and Nansis Abora clucked as he examined him. Nora averted her eyes as the magician threaded a needle.
She must have slept all afternoon. When she opened her eyes, it was dark outside. Nansis Abora was occupied with another groaning soldier. His apron was completely red now.
Feeling a strong, urgent need for fresh air, Nora walked out of the tent. The lanes between the tents were full of soldiers and horses returning from the battlefield. She scanned them, looking for news. Had they won the battle? The men’s faces seemed to hold nothing but weariness. Someone in the ranks burst into slightly hysterical laughter, then stopped just as abruptly.
One figure caught her attention as it passed from shadow into torchlight. A tall, dark-haired man, striding through the crowd, who drew her eye because he looked so positively
It was Aruendiel. The light had caught the unscarred side of his face. Nora got a quick glimpse of the rakish young man he had once been—his fine, aquiline features so handsome she almost felt shy. But that was only part of it. Aruendiel looked fresh, almost electric with vitality. His limp was invisible. Where was the decrepit old man of the morning? Aruendiel had been working enough magic for an army, that was obvious.
Nora had just formed this thought when Aruendiel looked in her direction. If he appeared startlingly young, she was equally shocked by the look of absolute desolation in his pale eyes.
“Lady Nora!” Perin’s voice beside her. So he had survived the battle. She felt some tension disappear that she had not previously been aware of. She looked around again; Aruendiel was gone.
In her confusion, it took her a moment to notice the dirty bandage wrapped around Perin’s right elbow.
“You’re hurt!” she said.
He smiled. “A Faitoren tore my sleeve. Nothing to be concerned about. What about your head?”
She could not help smiling back. “Oh, that. Nothing to be concerned about. But the battle—what happened? Did we win?”
He looked more serious. “Well, the Faitoren are in retreat. We took about a hundred prisoners, a dozen dozen killed or wounded. Most of the rest are penned up on their own lands.” There was no exultation in his voice, though.
“And the losses on our side?” Nora asked apprehensively.
“We lost about the same.” Perin drew a breath as though to continue, then hesitated.
“Who?” At least Aruendiel was all right, she thought frantically. Or was he?
Perin’s eyes were kind. “That witch Hiri—Hiris—the one we saw this morning. I’m sorry to bring you this news. You knew her.”
“What happened?” Nora grabbed his hand in agitation.
“That dragon we saw, and the monster leopard—” he began. Nora listened with a sinking heart. Raclin had attacked a line of troops, and Hirizjahkinis had loosed the Kavareen on him. Raclin once again took to the air, but not before clawing the Kavareen across its flank.
The leopard recoiled. Whether from pain or confusion or sheer viciousness, it pivoted and pounced on the nearest living thing: its master, Hirizjahkinis.
“I was not close enough to see,” Perin said, “but they say that the leopard’s mouth was like a cave. She was gone in an instant.” Then the Kavareen rampaged up and down the lines, gulping down soldier after soldier, human and Faitoren alike—and growing even larger.
“It was Lord Aruendiel who stopped the thing. He did something that made it cower for a second, and he got it to vomit up a couple of soldiers.”
But not Hirizjahkinis. The Kavareen leaped over a line of cavalry and went bounding south across the marshes. Aruendiel and some of the other magicians gave chase, to no avail.
“No wonder he looked so terrible,” Nora said. Her heart felt like a wild bird in her chest, trapped and frantic. “Oh, Hirizjahkinis.” The brightness that was Hirizjahkinis consumed by the Kavareen’s dark—it seemed baffling, too painful to think of. Perin said something about honoring her grief. Nora was suddenly aware of the gentle pressure of his hand on hers. She squeezed back in distraction, then dropped it. “I have to find Aruendiel. I have to—”
She went running down the line of tents in the half-darkness, straining to glimpse Aruendiel’s tall figure. The flickering light from torches and campfires showed soldiers looking back at her with curiosity. Had he gone this way? The farther she went, the more crowded the lane became; she had to dodge and squeeze her way among the soldiers. A man with a lazy, crinkling grin squinted down encouragingly.
“Do you know where I can find the magician Aruendiel?”
“Missy, you don’t need a magician when you’ve got me.”
After a while, she found herself on the other side of the encampment, the noise and hubbub of the tents behind her, nothing but icy night before her. A sentry gave her an odd look. With an empty feeling, her face wet, she turned and slowly found her way to the hospital tent.
It was some comfort talking to Nansis Abora, whose blue eyes clouded when Nora told him the news. “Such a sweet lady, always so lively. What a pity! And a fine magician. Dear me, I must have known her for—how many years?” He puzzled over that, splinting a soldier’s wrist. “She came with Aruendiel to Semr when I was still at court. Six dozen years or more. Oh, this is a blow for Aruendiel, I’m sure.”
“He looked miserable just now. Where is he?”
“Oh, he’ll be in war council half the night, my dear child. They’ll be wanting me, too, even though I don’t have much head for strategy. Poor Hirizjahkinis! You know, I used to wonder why Aruendiel didn’t marry her, although I never said anything to him about it. He was so obviously fond of her.”
“I don’t think she would have had him,” Nora said carefully.
“No, perhaps not. He can be prickly, Aruendiel can. Let me see that leg,” he said to the soldier.
Aruendiel did not appear that night, although Nora hoped he would. She spent the evening helping feed the wounded soldiers, those who were awake and able to eat. Many were sleeping; it seemed that Nansis Abora believed in the liberal use of poppy juice. Afterward, she had trouble sleeping herself, although it was the first time in almost a week that she’d had a bed of any kind and real blankets. Just that morning, she had taken Hirizjahkinis for a ghost. A few hours later, Hirizjahkinis had hugged her for saving Aruendiel. And now she was gone. No
