An acrid smell, like burnt flesh and clothing, suffused everything. I prayed it wasn't coming from him.
Suddenly the guards who had been exercising across the yard reached me, running full tilt. Without asking, four of them picked me up and carried me toward the house at a trot.
“Aber—” My voice came out a feeble croak. “Get Aber—”
“They have him, Lord Oberon.” The voice sounded distant, as though he stood at the far end of a long tunnel.
Somehow, I managed to focus on the speaker, a young officer with close-cropped blond hair and a slightly hooked nose. He supported my left shoulder as they carried me toward the house at a trot.
“Dead?” I whispered.
His lips moved, but I couldn't hear the words this time. My hearing seemed to be cutting in and out.
Then I started coughing and couldn't stop.
“—lightning hit you, sir,” he was saying. “Jace went for the company doctor. Don't try to talk, sir. You're both safe.”
“Aber—” I said.
“Can you hear me—Lord Oberon? Lord Oberon?”
“Yes…” My voice sounded like a frog's croak. “Is Aber—is he dead?”
His voice sounded louder this time. “Alive. Don't try to talk, sir. He hit his head. He's going to need stitches, but he should be all right.”
“Thanks.”
My brother still lived—that was all I needed to know. I allowed myself to relax.
They reached the door to the house and carried me inside. I hated feeling like a cripple, but didn't have the strength to object.
The young officer and his men set me down carefully on the floor next to the wall. They all crowded inside, out of the storm, out of harm's way.
My hearing definitely seemed to be returning. I heard crashes of thunder now, though it still sounded flat and far away.
Stripping off his jacket, the young officer folded it into a makeshift pillow and slipped it under my head.
“What's your name?” I asked him.
“Captain Neole.”
I began coughing again. The smells of burnt flesh and fabric grew stronger in the close, confined space. After a minute, I realized the smells came from me.
When I turned my head, I saw that Aber now lay beside me. Blood slicked the right-hand side of his face and pooled on the floor under him. A cold panic swept through me. He wasn't moving. Maybe Neole had made a mistake—
I pressed my eyes shut as a coughing fit struck.
The next thing I knew, a white-haired old man was bending over me, his weathered face creased with worry. I must have blacked out again; he hadn't been there a second ago.
He was the castle doctor—I recognized him from Juniper. I had seen him after the first great battle, the one in which Locke and Davin had fallen.
“Lord Oberon? Can you hear me?” he demanded, clapping his hands in front of my face to get my attention.
“Yes…” I whispered.
He held up a pair of fingers.
“How many?” he demanded.
“Two.” I began a new round of coughing.
“You'll live, I think.”
He moved over to Aber, knelt, and felt my brother's pulse.
“Well?” I demanded.
“Unconscious,” he said without looking at me. Leaning forward, he probed Aber's head with his fingers. “A shallow scalp wound. It looks worse than it really is. Unless he has some other injuries I can't see, he should be fine in a few days. Your family heals fast.”
Suddenly Aber stirred and moaned and tried to sit up. One hand went up to his head, but the doctor caught it and pressed it down at his side.
“Lie still,” he said to my brother. “You need stitches.”
“Wha—” Aber muttered.
The doctor called for needle and thread, and his assistant produced both. Then, as I watched, he peeled back a loose flap of Aber's scalp and plucked dirt and sand from the wound. It must have hurt; Aber began to thrash. At the doctor's command, six soldiers sit on my brother to keep him down. Two more held his head in place.
“Healing salve!” the doctor called.
He accepted a small jar from his assistant and smeared a greasy yellow-gray concoction liberally onto the wound. Without a second's pause, he began sewing the piece of scalp back in place. His stitches, I noticed, were small and neat.
My brother's wound, I saw, extended across the forehead, just above the hairline. It would leave an impressive scar after it healed.
Unfortunately, he would have to go bald or shave his head to show it off.
I glanced over at the open door. The sky, a dusky gray color that boiled like a soup cauldron, flickered constantly with lightning. I had never seen a such a fierce display of nature's fury. Tongues of light reaching halfway across the sky. Others leaped down and hit the ground, sometimes close and sometimes distant.
The doctor tied off the thread and motioned to the soldiers, who released Aber.
“Anything else hurt?” the doctor asked him.
“Everything!” my brother groaned.
The doctor snorted. “Rest for ten minutes. If you can't walk, these men will carry you to your bed.”
“Thanks for caring.” Slowly and carefully, Aber sat up and felt his head. “Ow!”
“If it hurts, don't touch it,” the doctor said without sympathy. “Let the salve do its work.”
“How many stitches?” I asked.
“Thirty-two.”
Aber groaned again.
“Don't complain,” I told him. “
“I wasn't the target,” he said.
“Then you think…?”
“It might have been an attack. On you.”
“I was afraid of that,” I said. I had a feeling the serpent-creature in the tower of bones might be to blame. After all, I'd killed four of his men and ruined his assassination attempt. That had to bother him. What better way to retaliate than with a lightning storm?
“Or it might not have been,” Aber said, sighing. “How will we ever know?”
“Quiet, my lord,” the doctor said briskly to me before I could answer.
Like all army doctors, he had the bedside manner of a half-wild goat. “Let me look you over.”
I lay unflinching as he poked and prodded me from skull to shinbones. Nothing seemed to be broken, though my skin felt raw. He commented on the number of heat blisters on my hands and face.
“I was lucky,” I said.
“Damned bad sort of luck, if you ask me,” he said. The words sounded clear and close by. My sense of hearing had almost returned to normal. “A lucky man would not have been hit. You do have your father's constitution, though. Any lesser man would be dead now.”
I raised my hands and studied them. Tiny white blisters covered the palms and backs. Not good, but it could have been a lot worse. From the pain I'd felt, I had half expected my hands to be burnt to ash and bone.
“See?” the doctor went on, standing and dusting himself off. “You're barely hurt. A little salve, a few days' rest, and you'll be all right.”
“Thanks.”
