Dagger's Point (Shadow series) (28 page)

Wirax led her to one of the interior tents, and Jael saw that Vani was already waiting outside the door flap, her legs comfortably folded under her. Wirax held aside the flap.

“You may enter,” Wirax told Jael. “Vedara will tend your wound.”

Jael took a deep breath and stepped forward; the flap was cut high for Wirax’s people, so there was no need to duck her head. The transition from the bright sunlight to the darker interior of the tent blinded Jael for a moment, and she had to stand blinking for several seconds before her eyes adapted.

The interior of the tent was lit by animal-fat lamps, judging from the smell, and a good many of them. The floor was comfortably strewn with furs except for the small firepit at the center, where a low coal fire burned. At one side of the tent a cup-shaped depression had been dug into the earth, and this was thickly filled with furs, apparently a bed of sorts. Everywhere were small pouches and pots smelling of herbs, potions, and ointments, perfuming the tent with their powerful aromas.

Tanis was lying on a sort of low table built of stacked blocks of sod and covered with hides. Tending him was a creature that made Jael hesitate near the door flap, almost afraid to move forward.

In general form it was similar to the other grass hunters, but its pelt was not the uniform light tan color Jael had seen; rather, it was mottled in shades of black and dark brown with occasional patches of glistening white. Unlike the other grass hunters she’d seen, Vedara’s hindquarters were like the forelegs, ending in clawed paws. The ears at the top of Vedara’s head, too, were longer, swept up and back and tufted in white fur at the tips.

Most amazing, though, were the
four
arms that sprang from Vedara’s shoulders, one set below the other, all working busily on Tanis.

The long ears swiveled in Jael’s direction, shortly followed by the face, and again Jael almost gasped. Vedara’s face, neither dis-tinguishably male nor female, was built in planes so angular and exotic that Jael was uncomfortably reminded of Durgan and Cesanne. The eyes were slit-pupiled like Wirax’s, but they were a rich, tawny gold rather than silver. Jael thought she’d never seen a more exotic-looking—or beautiful—being in her life. It wore more gold jewelry than any of the others Jael had seen, including a marvelous bracelet in the shape of a dragon coiled around one wrist.

“Come, and welcome, Jaellyn of the Four Peoples,” Vedara said, his—her?—voice as mellow and sweet as wind through el-ven pipes. “He has asked for you. Quickly; he almost sleeps.”

Jael couldn’t bring herself to speak, but crossed the fur-covered floor and knelt on the other side of Tanis, taking his hand. Tanis’s eyes were only half-open, but he seemed to recognize her, squeezing her fingers weakly.

“It’s not as serious as that,” Vedara told her, and Jael swiped impatiently at the tears on her cheeks. “Some blood has been lost, but most of his sickness is only pain and fear and weariness. He woke a little and showed me the potion you gave him for pain. I gave him another, a stronger one. He will sleep, likely until morning.”

“Thank you.” Jael had to force herself to speak, and her voice was barely louder than a whisper. “Can you tell if he’s infected with the shifter sickness? Can you cure him?”

“He carries the taint of the Unformed Ones, yes,” Vedara said, nodding. “But the taint is young and weak. I can slow its progress, but I have not the power of an Enlightened One to reverse that change. Come here and look.”

Jael crept timidly around the table, Vedara moving aside to make room. The raw wound in Tanis’s side had closed noticeably and the bleeding had stopped, but the skin around the wound was an unhealthy grayish color.

“The dressing you used was a good one,” Vedara told her. “There’s no infection but for the taint in his blood, and that I have slowed, as I said. There’s no immediate danger for him. Now I will see your own wound.”

Jael stood, flushing despite herself. Now that she was closer to the strange creature, she realized that despite its delicately featured face, it was certainly male; first, it had no breasts, and second, Vedara’s fresh, musky scent affected her even more potently than Wirax’s had. Healer or not, Jael was embarrassed as she pushed her trousers down over her hips, glad that her tunic hung low enough to cover her. She sat down as Vedara indicated, trying not to tremble as the healer’s long fingers slid the tunic up her thigh to uncover the scratches there.

What Jael saw made her forget her sudden desire. The claw marks on her skin were puffy and inflamed, the skin around them starting to show the same gray color as Tanis’s wound.

Vedara, however, appeared untroubled by either the inflammation or the obvious signs of the shifter sickness. His long fingers probed the wounds very gently, and he smiled, patting Jael’s shoulder reassuringly.

“You tended your friend with more care than yourself,” he chuckled. “But the Unformed Ones are dirty and their claws often carry disease—nothing that cannot be treated, of course. The Four Peoples are more susceptible to such infections than we, and to the blood taint of the Unformed Ones. Lie down, and I’ll clean and dress these.”

Jael obeyed, once again miserably self-conscious, alternating between arousal and humiliation. The infection of the scratches bore poor testimony to her skill in field medicine, and the fact that both she and Tanis had become tainted with the shifter curse bore equally poor testimony to her skill as a warrior.

Vedara, apparently oblivious to the effect of his scent on his patient, gently cleaned the scratches with a liquid that burned like fire for a moment, then dressed them with an ointment that was as cool and soothing as the liquid had been burning and painful. He padded the scratches with a sort of soft moss, then bandaged her thigh firmly with a wide band of soft leather.

“Your friend will not have the use of his arm for some days.” Vedara said, smoothing a last wrinkle from the leather. The touch of his fingers on her thigh made Jael shiver. “But you should have no difficulty. Once your Enlightened Ones have cleansed the taint from your blood, you can both be healed completely.”

“I don’t know any—any Enlightened Ones,” Jael stammered, wishing he would take his hand away so she could put her trousers back on.

“So Vani said.” Vedara smiled again. “You don’t know your clan, and your blood is not as theirs—at least to look at you. But we will help you find your kinfolk.”

“Thank you,” Jael whispered. She sat up and hurriedly reached for her trousers. Vedara stopped her, however, taking her hands in two of his own, his other two hands cupping her face.

“I smell your heat,” he murmured. “The scent of your kind acts as potently upon us as ours does upon you. Perhaps at one time in the dim past we were all one folk. But my folk and yours are not made for mating one with the other.”

“I know.” Jael’s face was flaming now, and she wished miserably she could just sink into the earth beneath her. “I didn’t mean—”

“Shhhh.” Vedara traced Jael’s lips with one fingertip. “Your desire honors me. The beauty of your inner self shines like the sun. I envy your mate.” He glanced over at Tanis.

“Tanis? But we’re—” Jael stopped, confused. Just friends? Not anymore, not for some time. And more shame to her for almost forgetting him entirely in her lust for this strange creature, when she’d spent long nights wondering how anybody could be so foolish as to let the heat of their loins cloud their heads!

“You’re right,” Jael said abashedly. “And thank you.”

“You are most welcome, my bright one,” Vedara said fondly. “Now come outside and let my people speak to you and touch you and wonder at you and feed you, and let Wirax ask you far too many questions, and then you, too, can rest.”

Jael scrambled into her torn pants and let Vedara lead her back out of the tent. Although it was only midafternoon and the sun was still high, the grass hunters had prepared a feast for her and laid it out on low sod tables similar to the one in Vedara’s room. Some of the meat was still roasting, but the rest had been cut into joints and laid on the tables. Jael had not expected fruits of any kind—it was still spring, after all—but she was surprised that there were no succulent spring greens on the table, as she’d seen a good many of them growing on the plain. There was meat, flat rounds of bread, bowls of what looked like baked mushrooms, and a bowl of what appeared to be some kind of blood pudding, but that was all.

Well, she’d never cared much for greens anyway.

Following Vedara’s and Wirax’s example, Jael seated herself a little awkwardly on the ground at the low tables. She quickly saw the reason for their particular type of construction—when the grass hunters folded their legs under them, the sod tables placed the food at a comfortable height for the hunters’ long torsos. Jael quickly found that the only way she could easily reach the food was to kneel upright. It would certainly be far too embarrassing to have to ask Wirax for cushions to sit on—not that she’d seen any cushions in Vedara’s tent anyway.

Jael quickly found that the deceptively simple food was as delicious and cunningly prepared as anything she’d ever tasted. The gamy meats were roasted to a turn and strongly flavored with seasonings Jael did not recognize. The bread was soft and nutty, perhaps made of some kind of starchy tuber. The mushrooms added just the perfect earthy flavor. To Jael’s surprise, there was nothing to drink with the meal but water, but the water had been flavored with some wild herb, fresh and tangy.

Jael ate hugely, thinking guiltily of Tanis as she enjoyed the fresh, juicy meat and soft bread. Despite the seemingly festive occasion, the grass hunters were a casual people and there was little ceremony to the meal; hunters came, ate, and left as they pleased. To Jael’s surprise, despite the obviously friendly manner each of the grass hunters showed, except for Wirax, Vedara, and Vani, they gave Jael a wide berth. The youngsters, just like young elves, ran wild, snatching at food and running between the adults, occasionally pausing to stare wide-eyed at Jael.

Wirax let Jael eat her fill before he spoke.

“You said you’ve never known your clan,” he said. “Yet you’ve come near to where the mountain folk live. How is that so?”

“My mother remembered a few hints about her—my father,” Jael said. “She knew his folk had once lived to the north of Allanmere, our home, but that his people were going to move west. After that I followed legends. Even though my father’s people had passed twenty years ago, people remembered them. They called them ghost people, windwalkers. I followed the stories, and that path led me—in a roundabout way—here.”

“Windwalkers,” Wirax said, nodding. “You are of the Wind Dancing Clan, then.”

“Then why did you bring the riding beasts?” Vani asked. “You would have come faster without them.”

“Vani,” Vedara said chidingly. “Her companion is not of that kind.”

“That’s part of it,” Jael agreed. “I didn’t want to come alone. But I don’t know that I’m a—Wind Dancer?—either. I can’t run like the wind. I can melt stone sometimes.”

Vani and Wirax exchanged surprised glances, but Vedara nodded sagely.

“We remember the ones who came from the east,” Vedara said. “The spirits in the grass whispered to me of their arrival, and I sent a message to the Four Peoples, who came to the foot of the mountains—all of them, even the old and the young. There was great celebration among the Four Peoples at their arrival, and they feasted with us for many days. I heard it said by the Enlightened Ones that although those people were of Wind Dancing Clan, there had been Stone Brothers born among them from time to time. But tell me your father’s name again.”

“His name was—is Farryn,” Jael said. “I suppose he would be with this Wind Dancing Clan. Do you know them?”

“We trade with the mountain folk,” Vani said. “They come to us several times a year to barter their metal goods and baked clay pots for our pelts and herbs and woven baskets.”

“Several times a year?” Jael asked, dismayed. “But do you know where they live?”

Wirax pointed to the mountains.

“We meet them at the foot of the mountains, at the caves where we pass our winters,” he said. “There’s a road of sorts, but we have never taken it. The plain is our place and we have never left it.”

“You don’t know how far it might be to their home?” Jael asked worriedly. “Tanis and I aren’t equipped for the mountains.”

Wirax shook his head.

“We’ve never seen their home,” he said. “But we sometimes communicate by messenger birds. I will send such a message to the Wind Dancing Clan, if you like, and they can meet you at the foot of the mountain, if you wish to wait.”

“But we have no way to know how long it might take for them to get here,” Vedara reminded him. “And Tanis and Jaellyn require the treatment of an Enlightened One.”

“Why don’t you have any—uh—Enlightened Ones of your own?” Jael asked curiously. “I mean, since your land borders the forest where the skinshifters live anyway.”

Vedara settled back comfortably.

“There’s a great magic in the heart of the mountains,” he said. “We believe the heart of the world is there, and that the Four Peoples are the guardian of that heart. But just as your blood flows outward from your heart, so, too, does the magic of the world’s heart flow outward into the land here. That magic changes all it touches. Our folk were shaped by that magic, and to this day, some of us are shaped to hold a greater portion of that magic within us.” He raised his four hands in illustration. “The Unformed, too, are shaped by that same magic, but by magic gone awry, as magic often does. The power in the land here is so strong that it changes all it touches, and for that reason, only the simplest of magic can be used safely. Only the Enlightened Ones, who are accustomed to wielding the power of the world’s heart, can use it safely.”

Jael frowned but said nothing. What Vedara had told her was a pretty legend, but it left many things unexplained—where the skinshifters had come from originally and why others could be infected with their curse, why mages far to the east could work powerful spells when they were so far separated from the magic of the “world’s heart,” or where and how the humans and elves, both of whom had come from the east and were only now slowly moving west, had originated. But then, Jael realized, one could walk into any five temples in Allanmere and hear five completely different stories of how the world began, none of which explained everything satisfactorily, and the elves were certainly no better. Maybe what Vedara said was true—for these people, in this place.