Maria Snyder - Touch of Power

“Everyone get a few hours’ sleep. Flea, make sure our … guest is comfortable. I’ll stand guard,” Kerrick said. He strode from the room without waiting to see if his orders were obeyed.

Flea shot me a lopsided grin. Between the locks of unkempt hair, humor sparked in his light green eyes. “Would you like to sleep on the right or left side of the fire, ma’am?” he asked.

“There’s no need for formalities. My name’s Avry.” I stood near the fire, letting my hands and feet soak in the warmth.

“Oh, I know,” Flea said. “Avry of Kazan Realm. We’ve been looking for you for ages.”

The three men stared at me. “Should I juggle now?” I asked Loren.

He laughed, breaking the awkwardness. “Sorry, but it’s hard to believe that we caught up to you. That you’re standing here. With us. We’ve been following your, ah, adventures for almost a year.”

I hadn’t suspected. That alarmed me. “How?”

“Rumors, mostly,” Quain said. “We’d hear about a child being healed in various towns across the Fifteen Realms. By the time we’d arrived, you were gone. A couple of times you were spotted leaving so we at least had a direction to follow. Sometimes we just had to guess which way you’d go.”

“Pure luck we were in Jaxton when you were arrested,” Flea said.

“Not really,” Loren said. “Kerrick started catching on to her pattern a few months ago.”

“My pattern?”

“Heading generally northwest, and stopping only in the bigger settlements. You’d last about … six, maybe eight weeks before healing a child and taking off.” Loren settled on his bedroll next to the fire.

When I thought about it, he was right. A zing of fear traveled up my spine. If I survived this mission, I would have to be extra-vigilant.

“We’re really surprised you weren’t caught by the locals sooner,” Quain said. He unrolled his blankets.

“Why?” I turned my back to the flames, hoping to dry my damp clothes.

“We had a list of healers,” Loren said. “But by the time we learned of their location, they’d been executed. We always heard the same gossip. That they had been caught by doing something stupid.”

“Like healing a child,” I said. My obvious weakness. Although I’d tried hard to avoid it by keeping to myself and limiting how much time I spent with other people.

“Not that at all.” Flea fussed with his bedroll. “You’re the only one who was smart enough to take off after you healed a kid. The other healers figured the grateful person or parent wouldn’t turn them in. They didn’t bother to disguise themselves like you, either.”

I tucked a short strand of blond hair behind my ear. Some disguise. I cut my hair and dyed it. I still used my own name. It was amazing I hadn’t been arrested sooner. But then I remembered what Loren had said. “How did you get a list of healers?”

He shrugged. “Kerrick had it. He probably raided one of the old town halls for the records. Didn’t the healers have a guild before?”

Before always meant pre-plague. “Yes.” But my name shouldn’t have been on it.

My apprenticeship with Tara had started when I turned sixteen—mere months before the first outbreak. Once the sickness raced across the Realms, she stopped teaching me. Instead of earning my membership in the Guild, I returned to Lekas, my home town in Kazan, to find my family gone. They were either dead or had left. None of the living could tell me. And when the rumors about the healers grew into accusations and turned into executions, no one wished to talk. I had spent my seventeenth birthday hiding in a mud puddle as my neighbors and former friends hunted for me. After three years with no word about my family, I’d lost all hope of ever finding them or even knowing what happened to them.

I glanced around the small cavern. A couple of leather rucksacks slumped in a corner, but other than stone walls and a fist-size opening in the ceiling high above our heads, there was nothing else.

At least the cave was warm and dry. However, I eyed the hard ground with dread, longing for my knapsack. It had held my thin bedroll, money, some travel rations and my cloak.

Flea finished setting up his blankets. But instead of settling in, he swept an arm out. “Ma’am, uh, Avry, your bed awaits.”

I jerked in surprise. “No need to give up your—”

“Kerrick said to make you comfortable. If I don’t, he’ll kill me. Besides—” he flashed me that lopsided grin again “—these are Kerrick’s.”

“Won’t he be mad?” From the way his men acted, he appeared to be someone you don’t want to be angry with you.

“No,” Quain said. “There is always one of us on watch. When he wakes me to take my turn, he’ll just sleep in mine.”

Loren hooked a thumb at the packs in the corner. “He can also use Belen’s.”

The men all sobered at the name.

“He’s the one who provided the distraction last night,” I said, guessing.

“Yeah,” Flea said. His shoulders drooped and he hung his head so his hair covered his eyes. “He probably got lost or something.”

“Belen doesn’t get lost,” Quain said. “He’s probably leading the town watchman on a merry chase.”

“How long will we wait for him?” I asked Quain.

“Not long.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re more important than him. Hell, to Kerrick you’re more important than all of us, and the longer we stay here, the greater the danger.”

As I lay on Kerrick’s bedroll, I breathed in his scent. That same mix of spring sunshine and living green. It felt as if the earth embraced me in her warmth. I cuddled deep into the blankets, letting the shock of being the last healer fade into an ache under my heart. And allowing all the questions I had for Kerrick and his men to be pushed aside for now.

A shout woke me from a deep sleep. I felt safe, which was odd considering my circumstances. The fire had died to embers and the other bedrolls were empty. Alarmed, I jumped to my feet. Voices yelled and echoed from the only direction of escape. I was trapped.

As the noise level increased, I backed away until I stood at the far wall. Something large and dark blocked the narrow entrance. If I could, I would have climbed the rough wall. My first impression was that an angry bear had returned to his cave and he wasn’t happy to find it occupied. The second and more accurate but no less terrifying was a giant man who looked like he could wrestle a bear one-handed and win.

When he spotted me … not quite cowering against the far wall, he grinned.

“There you are,” he said in a reasonable tone. He crossed the cavern in two strides and held out his hand. “Belen of Alga.” Kerrick and his men followed behind him. All sported smiles.

As I shook Belen’s oversize paw, er, hand, I noted he was from Kerrick’s Realm. “Avry.”

“Nice to meet you finally. Here.” He thrust my knapsack into my hands. “I hope this is yours. Otherwise, I went to a lot of trouble for nothing.”

“You shouldn’t have risked going back for her pack,” Kerrick said.

Belen frowned at him. “Nonsense. She needs her things.” He gestured. “Winter’s coming and she doesn’t even have a cloak. You probably didn’t even think to give her yours.”

“I was a little busy saving her life.”

Loren and Quain hid their amusement at Kerrick’s annoyed and slightly peevish tone.

“Well, she’s going to need what little she has if we’re going to travel through the Nine Mountains before the first blizzard.”

I clutched my pack to my chest. “The Nine Mountains? Why?” The plague had destroyed all form of organized government in the Fifteen Realms. It had taken a couple years before the survivors had grouped together to form the small clusters we had now. Law in Realms like Kazan and most others had ceased to be.