The Song of Andiene - By Elisa Blaisdell Page 0,84

am not. I welcomed our duel, I looked for it, and they overwhelmed me. They broke my power like a child’s toy.”

Kallan went to her, then, and put his hands on her shoulders. “Sit down and rest. You fought as hard as any of us.”

She obeyed him without a word. He turned to look at his injured comrades. The woman, she was a lucky one. She lay quietly, in a healing sleep. The other man was awake, trying to prop himself up on his elbow. “Lie still and you will heal sooner,” Kallan said.

The other one looked at him with the brilliant eyes of someone in whom a fever is already beginning to burn. “You fought well, Lord Kallan.”

Kallan dropped to one knee beside him, studied his face, nondescript enough, but yes, he recognized him. “One of the palace guards. More pride and high lineage than rank … Syresh … Syresh Mareenfil.”

Syresh smiled. “Since you left, I rose in rank. High enough to find myself bound in heavy ropes, named for treason.”

“You and so many others,” said Kallan. “Here, drink some water and think no more about it. Try to sleep.”

Syresh took a few gulps from the waterskin, then slumped back onto the floor. Kallan looked at the last two, huddled close together.

Kare lay in a death-like stupor. There was nothing he could do. Her wounds were the kind that no medicine but time can heal. Ilbran concerned him more. No color in his face, his heart beating thinly—the grievers had torn him cruelly.

Andiene sat leaning against the wall, her eyes closed, her face drawn and weary. When Kallan went to her and touched her shoulder, she raised her head and blinked her eyes as though waking from some dream. “Do you have power to heal?” he asked.

She shook her head, her face bitter. “I do not know as much as a village herb-wife would.”

“I know that much,” he said. “Of wound-craft, at least, if not of love-tokens. Can you protect me if I go outside? I need leaves to dress their wounds.”

She rose slowly to her feet. “If you stay close by my side, and we do not go far, I can hold a circle around the two of us.”

Her powers were not put to the test. The grievers, the ones that lived, had fled into the forest. Still the ground was littered with the bodies of their mates, lean short-haired creatures, red as a rusty sword. Their heads were barely wider than their muzzles; their narrow jaws were filled with long broken teeth.

“How do they live?” Andiene asked in amazement. “So many of them, and there is little for them to feed on in the forest.”

“Though they are mortal, they are not completely of this world,” Kallan said. “They can live long on the memory of blood and death, or so the songs say. Their masters, who rule the forest, have many servants.”

“How did they come to attack us in daylight?” Andiene asked.

“It is the dark daylight, the time when the star patterns have broken and gone. There is always more danger then, a chance that the protection of the forest ways will break. We had stayed in the safehold for some days, waiting for a more favorable time to travel.”

She nodded, a sardonic look on her face. “I was warned … ” and she gave a little laugh. “What are you gathering?”

“Vulnese.” He knelt to pick the wide soft gray leaves. “This is better than any cloth, once the blood is sealed in the wound. Sandray will grow near the forest trees. Remember: ‘Where evil does endure, there grows evil’s cure.’”

Andiene stayed close beside him, his own guard against evil, though she walked unsurely, like one who has just risen from a fortnight’s sickbed. Under the very shadow of the trees, sandray grew, lush and green. The wide, crinkled, strong-smelling leaves made a fragrant bundle.

When they were gathered, Kallan turned to go back. Though vulnese and sandray were the only herbs he knew, there was one more thing that could be tried, something he had heard only in one tale of the forest.

He kicked one of the grievers, then another. All dead. The red ones were fragile creatures, living as they did on the borderline of mortality. At last, he found one that snapped feebly at his boot. He held it up, and slit its throat, letting the black blood drain into a waterskin.

Andiene looked at him in disgust. He spoke defensively. “I have heard that their