Dave Smeds - The Schemes of Dragons

"I can deal with a lowly duke's nephew, especially one who uses blood money to buy a sword," she said.

He bared his teeth. "I was always better than any royal bastard."

She nodded. The old adolescent jealousy, which she had thought long buried, had been reawakened by the temptation of the reward for her capture or death.

He pressed. The Ezenean Offense. She blocked the first move, was late with the second, had to step back. He smiled, both of them seeing in that split instant that she would never be in time to stop the third. His jab drove into her right breast.

The pain nearly blacked her out. Yet she wrapped her gauntlet around his sword, preventing him from pulling it out, keeping him within range. She sliced him across his throat.

An expression of denial crossed his features. Together they sagged to their knees. Enns was dying more quickly than she; her steel had severed an artery in his neck. He let go of his sword hilt and fell face forward in the dust, writhing.

Elenya kept the steel in her body as motionless as she could manage, which, thanks to her shuddering limbs, was not as still as she would have liked. The tip had gone in deep, all the way to her scapula. She waited on the edge of consciousness, winded yet not daring to breathe deeply. She tasted blood at the back of her tongue. She suppressed an urge to cough. She had to avoid going into shock. She had a chance.

Enns's thrashing nearly knocked her over. She ignored it, focusing every last iota of concentration on the amulet at her throat. Her brother was only a few leagues away; if he was not preoccupied with a task, he might hear her summons.

Five seconds. Ten. Then the wordless voice that she had known for so many years called out, and in one brief image she communicated her need.

The familiar tingle of magic rose up along her spine and flared in a hot corona around her wound. She gingerly drew the sword out. Blood trickled briefly, slowed, and congealed. Then, far too soon, the sorcery ended. She gasped. The puncture remained, barely knit, as if it were a day old. She heard a psychic cry.

Alemar. Pain not her own flared briefly in her mind, and was gone. Her brother had lost consciousness.

What had happened? She swayed, eyes drawn to the nearly still body of Enns. The hemorrhaging of his throat was creating a broad stain in the roadway. "What have you done to my brother?" she choked.

The wounded oeikani was mewling. She had not wished to harm the animal. She wanted to put it out of its misery, but it might struggle, and if it jostled her too much it might tear open her wound.

She had another use for her blade. She pointed Enns's face toward the sky, and with great deliberateness etched two characters in the skin of his forehead. "For Milec" it read in the ideograms of the High Speech.

Finally the tears came, and with them the sore throat, the heat in the cheeks. She wept until the droplets fell from her bruised chin and created small specks of mud in the roadway. She would have sobbed had not the instinct of self-preservation told her not to put stress on her lungs. She had not allowed her grief to surface all week, but now she had no reserves left to keep it in. She cried for the first man to brush that special spot inside her since her days in the desert.

"For Milec," she murmured bitterly. Her mourning was all the more intense for the knowledge that he had loved her far more deeply than she could ever have loved him.

Tiny eyes stared at her. A rythni waited, half-hidden in the grass at the road's edge.

She had no doubt it was the same one who had warned her of the ambush. She beckoned, but the little creature stayed back, wary of the scent of battle, blood, and death. Almost any other rythni would have shied away from the scene altogether, but Elenya knew this was a special individual. She had proved that by flying in the face of the swordsman, breaking her race's strict taboo against taking part in violence. She was trembling, frightened by what she had seen and done. This was no queen, able to fend off the censure of her elders.

The creak of old wagon wheels warned Elenya that someone was coming around the bend. She staggered to her feet and managed to hide herself within the woods before the vehicle appeared. She continued across a shallow creek and into a patch of ferns where she was not likely to be seen once she lay down. The rythni followed, flitting like a butterfly from perch to perch.

Elenya needed the tiny being. Her wounds had taken so much out of her that she had to set the amulet, as well as the gauntlet, at her side. The talismans would draw energy from her that she needed in order to heal. She could not summon her brother with sorcery, even assuming he was well. She waved to the rythni, which finally gathered courage and came near.

"Bring help," Elenya whispered.

The rythni sped away. Elenya sighed, made herself as comfortable as she could, resting her head on the cold earth. Within seconds she had faded into unconsciousness.

WYNNETH WAS STANDING next to Alemar when he suddenly stiffened. His eyes glazed. She caught him as his knees buckled. His weight dragged her toward the ground.

"Tregay! Iregg!" she called toward the nearest pair of rebels. "Help me!"

The men sped to her and lowered Alemar to the forest loam. She bent over him, heart pounding, and waved her hand in front of his face. His gaze penetrated her palm, past her face, toward some distant vista. She had seen him don the same expression one week earlier, when he had healed Milec's dead flesh.

"He's casting a spell," she said. A tingle of anxiety stood the hair on her arms on end. Why would he need to work such potent magic without prior notice? His amulet coughed, green illumination blazing through his shirt as if it were gauze. She covered her eyes.

"Elenya," he murmured.

Elenya-in need of healing? "Saddle your oeikani," Wynneth told the group that had collected. "Something's gone wrong at the silk farm." Three men dashed away.

Alemar screamed and clutched his temples. His body arched until everything but his head and feet left the ground. Wynneth gasped. Her husband collapsed, eyes closed, breath rapid and staccato.

She raced through her memories of the instructions he had given her of what to do should something like this ever occur. "Get me a moist cloth," she told Iregg, as she stretched out Alemar's bent legs and draped his hands across his chest. She seized several ferns and fashioned a crude pillow, which she tucked behind his head. Iregg scampered back from the spring, holding out a dripping scarf.

Wynneth draped the fabric over Alemar's nose and mouth. The vigor of his inhalation sucked it partway down his throat. She yanked it free, spread it open again, and held it taut. What next? After moisture for the lungs-yes! Cover the ears, cover the eyes, do anything to block out the outside world, give him less to deal with.

Tregay held the wet scarf while she unwrapped her sash from her waist. The rebel raised Alemar's head and Wynneth coiled the silk around, covering the prince's eyes and ears five layers deep. Finally only the top of his pate peeked out. Tendrils of glossy black hair rose of their own accord, like thin, angry snakes. Tiny pops of lightning zigzagged from strand to strand.

A tear ran down the length of her nose and hung suspended from the tip. She soaked it up with her sleeve. The static from his hair stung her hand, but she left her palm against his forehead. No fever. Instead, a breath of frost scooted up the bones of her arm to her chest. She shivered.

"Blankets!" she snapped. One of the camp women-Wynneth was too distracted to notice who-abruptly unravelled the three she had been cradling. Wynneth cast them over her husband.

His breathing steadied. Tregay was able, at last, to lift his hand away from the scarf. The cloth hung stiffly, like a tent, most of the moisture gone. Wynneth ordered another to be dipped in the spring.