but it was more a thing to be plucked off, a piece of darkness attached to suck away life in bits and pieces.
She drew that patch of blackness into her hand, into the invisible force around her own body, and let it flow down her into the ground itself. Kartakass swallowed its blemish back into itself with hardly a murmur.
Then Elaine did lay her hand on his chest. She felt his heart underneath the cloth, the skin. It seemed she could have closed her hands around the heart and squeezed. Instead she poured some of that invisible force through her hand and over his heart. The power itself seemed to know what to do. It mended the damage the blackness had caused, healed without Elaine really knowing how it worked. It was not her hand, her knowledge. She was just a tool.
Silvanus took a deep, shuddering breath. Elaine raised her hand from his chest. He smiled, and she could not help but smile back. She released his hand and knelt back from him, hands clasped in her lap.
She was herself again-alone, aware of that invisible force, but distantly-and she felt the distant beat of Kartakass, almost like music just out of hearing. The sensation drifted away until it was gone, and she was herself again. The last thing she sensed was a vague pleasure. The land was pleased.
«^»
FIFTEEN
The night was bitter cold. Jonathan sat by the fire in their camp. He stared into the orange flames until his eyes ached, then turned toward the darkness, night-blind from the light. Tereza sat watch at the edge of the campsite, huddled in her cloak. Konrad had been on watch when Jonathan sat down. How long had he been by the fire?
He wanted to call his wife over to talk, but didn't. She was sitting in the cold dark so her eyes could see without being ruined by the flames, far enough away from the tents that she might see whatever might be creeping on them.
Tereza was guarding; he would not distract her from that. His brooding before the fire would bother her enough. She would worry about his frame of mind. When he sat for so long unmoving, thinking, it was often a bad sign. He tended to black moods, but this was not a mood. He was trying to make sense of what he had seen this day.
Jonathan had always believed magic to be evil, or at least weak, lazy. Most things that magic could accomplish could be done by honest work. The task was harder, perhaps, and took longer, but it could be done.
But this. . raising the dead to true life. Jonathan held his hands close to the flames until the blood was like to boil. The fire did not seem warm enough. Perhaps it was not his body that was cold, but something deeper.
The extra tent they had packed for emergencies was set up against the soft rise of the hill behind him. The elven cleric and his daughter were tucked safely away behind the hide walls. And the two men, the two deadmen, had gone to their bedrolls cheerfully, tired, but not worse for wear. How could that be?
A soft sound behind him made him whirl, his heart pounding in his throat. It was Elaine. She held her white cloak tight about her. There were still bloodstains here and there on the fur.
She was the last person Jonathan wished to see.
She stood there, face uncertain, as if she knew she was not welcome. The hurt in her green-blue eyes cut him like a knife. He did not want to hurt her. For her, he had betrayed everything he thought he believed. He had saved her life, but had he endangered something more precious? And whose fault was that? His? No one's?
He extended a hand to her. She smiled and came to him, taking it. He drew her into the circle of his arm and his cloak, as he had when she was small.
With a sigh, she settled against him. It was the same sound she'd made when she was ten, the first time Jonathan had ever held a child and told the lies that all parents tell, that the world is fair, and adult arms can protect them from all harm. Her hair was soft against his face and smelled of herbs and. . her. The warm scent of a child. No mere perfume could ever disguise it from him.
'Was it real?' she asked, softly.
'Was what real?'
'The elf, he brought those two men back from the dead. I saw it, but I still don't believe it.'
'I wouldn't have believed it either, had I not witnessed it myself.'
'Thordin and Gersalius said no cleric should have been able to raise the dead in Kartakass. Why is that?'
'I don't know.'
'Did you know Gersalius was an outlander, like Thordin?' she asked.
'No, I didn't.' Jonathan wondered what else he didn't know about the wizard.
'Could the elf heal Calum?'
Jonathan sat very still. He had been so busy worrying about magic and the state of souls, the matter of Calum had slipped his mind. It was Elaine, the corrupted magic-wielder, who had thought of Calum and his pain. Jonathan was ashamed of both his for-getfulness and his suspicions.
'I don't know. Thordin has spoken of them healing wounds, injuries, but not disease, not old age.'
'But perhaps Calum would not mind being old so much if he were not in such pain.' She looked up at him, her head still on his shoulder, a mere rolling of eyes. It was an old gesture; for a moment, the little girl looked out at him. Then she straightened, not pulling away, but looking directly at him. Her eyes were honest and unrelenting.
'Do you hate me?' She did not turn away after she had asked it, but met his gaze. Whatever his response, Jonathan would have to speak it into those familiar blue-green eyes.
'I could never hate you, Elaine. You know that.'
She searched his face as if looking for some clue. 'I know you hate magic and all who practice it. Now I am a mage, or learning to become one. You hate that I have magic in me.' The last was statement, pure fact.
Jonathan had to look away from her searching eyes. He stared into the flames.
Her fingertips touched his bearded chin and turned his face back to her. 'Tell me true, no half-truths.'
'You are as dear to me as flesh of my flesh.'
'That is not the question I asked.' She was relentless. Tereza was the bravest woman he had ever known, but even she might not have pushed the question. Tereza might never have asked at all; most people wouldn't. They would fear the answer too much.
'I wish you were not a mage, Elaine.'
'I know that,' she said. Small frown lines formed between her eyes. 'Do you hate it? Do you wish me to leave?' It was her turn to face away. She huddled against him, but would not meet his eyes. 'I wasn't going to ask that, but I couldn't stand to watch you hate me, Jonathan.' She looked up suddenly, the pain in her eyes so raw it made him gasp.
'I would rather go away than watch you grow to fear me.'
'Fear you? I don't. .'
'I saw the look on Tereza's face in the shed that night. I saw your face after my vision.' She shook her head. 'You were both afraid of me.'
'Of your new powers, perhaps, but not of you.' He hugged her to him, chin resting in her yellow hair. 'Never of you.'
'I know you're lying.' Her voice was choked with tears. 'I can read your thoughts like words on a page.'
He pushed away from her, half-tumbling before the fire. His heart choked in his throat. His lips formed the word, and said it soundlessly, a silent hiss: 'Witch.'
Tears shimmered in her eyes like water at the brim of a glass. She widened her eyes, fighting so no tear would fall. 'I have my answer.' She stood, hugging her cloak to her as if it could protect from more than cold. 'When we come back from Cortton, I will pack my things and go with Gersalius. We can go back to his home. I don't think he will mind that I can read his thoughts.'
She turned and walked slowly back to her tent. Her spine was rigid, movements confident, proud, stiff with pain.
He wanted to call her back, to say he was sorry, and he was. He was sorry, so terribly sorry, but he had fought magic all his life. He could not change now. If she had not confronted him, they could have pretended. He
