Techromancy Scrolls: Adept (24 page)

My eyes fluttered open, but I wasn't on the lounge in Celeste's quarters. And I couldn't feel her warmth behind me. I hurt all over and I wrinkled my nose, why did Celeste's chambers smell like a wet horse? Why was I wet? I felt steady motion under my belly and my chest was on fire. I lifted my head into the freezing drizzle to realize I was lashed to the back of a horse, and we were moving slowly through the trees. Everything came rushing back to me.

I looked up at the rider who was wearing a bright purple riding cloak. I knew that man. He was the Gypsy lookout. I shivered in the cold then croaked out in Mountain Gypsy, “What's happening?”

The horse stopped and the man turned around in the saddle to look down at me. He smiled a toothy smile at me. “Ah good, you are awake. You are a tough one to survive a fall like that. I think there is more to you than meets the eye, yes?” Then he added, “You speak the tongue of the people?”

I nodded as he dismounted and I winced at the pain in my chest and said, “Yes, but not well.”

He started undoing the ropes lashing me onto the horse, and said in English, “We will use the tongue of the Altii then.” I nodded. Altii means Others. That's what they called those of us who came to their lands from Highland Keep so long ago.

He helped me down to sit on a log at the side of the little trail we were on. I winced as I tried to take a deep breath. He said, “Easy there little one. You fell from the heavens and survived, I think you may have broken some things here and there on your way down.” He waffled his hand back and forth. His grin was contagious.

I took shallower breaths and realized my sword was in its sheath now, and all my weapons and tool pouch were still on me. Then I really looked at the man. He was actually a beautiful man. Can you say that about a man? He had long black curly hair, a dark complexion, and eyes so dark they looked black. His features were chiseled and he had dimples when he smiled. I'm sure the women were swooning all over the man.

He gave me a drink from his canteen. Good lord, the water felt great going down. I nodded that I was okay, and he grasped my shoulder. “Good. We are close to my clan. We can get you where it is dry and warm. To our vrajitoare healer to get you patched up. Then we can see about getting you two back with your people.”

You two? I glanced at his huge draft horse and then my breath caught at the form rolled up in a blanket draped over the back of the horse. I saw Samuel's boots then wretched as I fought back tears. I bit back screams at the pain in my chest as I threw up.

He saw all of this then said in a soft tone, “If it is any consolation. He made a hell of a shot before he fell. He had tagged that vrajitor in the shoulder before that big guy finished the assassin off.” It wasn't of any consolation at all. I had let him fall. I wasn't strong enough.

I shivered as the rain increased in intensity. I realized it was a pitch black night with the clouds blotting out the moons. How long had I been out? He saw my shiver and helped me to my feet. “Come, let's get to camp before you die from exposure little one.” I nodded and he helped me up into the saddle with as little pain as possible, and then swung up behind me. Shielding me from the frigid rain the best he could.

Then he said in his thick Gypsy accent, “Alexandru, of the Lupei family. But please, my friends call me Dru. Except my sister Sylvia, who just calls me lazy.” He grinned at the joke.

I smiled up at the man and said, “Laney. Umm... just Laney. I... was... Laney Herder.” He inclined his head and then turned his piercing eyes back to the night and started humming a Gypsy tune. I absently wondered if Bowyn was okay, and if Celeste was as well. If only one of the shadows attacked us, did the other hit the main caravan? Were we a target of opportunity again?

I thought about the attack. The man wielded even more power than Celeste. In practice, she had only used half of her potential for me to practice grounding out. I always felt great pressure with hers but never pain. I looked at my gauntlets, which were burned through, and I had burns and blisters on my hands. He was just that confident in his power that he could take three of us.

If I hadn't felt the magic, he would have blown the three of us over the edge. But thanks to Sam's speed the bastard was injured, and with a swordsman like Sir Bowyn pressing him, no magic user would have time to pull more magic to him than to defend with.

I drifted in and out of consciousness and wasn't sure how far we had traveled. But we emerged from the trees under a huge rock overhang that kept the camp dry in the rain. The area was lit up by various burning torches and a large campfire in the middle of a group of amazing wagons. Though it was night, there were people all about, dancing, laughing and singing to a lute and tambourine.

They all silenced when we entered the torchlight. People were suddenly in motion and an old, silver-haired woman, possibly in her late sixties, in flowing gossamer rainbow colored robes, stepped out of one of the wagons and stepped swiftly up to us. Dru slid off the saddle then helped me down as gently as he could. He supported me as I swayed on my feet.

He bowed to the woman and said in the tongue of the people, “Mother, some of the Altii were attacked by a vrajitor assassin. This little one is hurt.”

She stepped up to me and put her hand on my forehead and I felt a kind of magic I had never felt before. Wisps of white power swirled around her gently, it felt so warm and inviting. The silky texture was nothing like the raw, jagged power of Techromancer magic. Though I had a feeling the way it draped upon her in layers, that she was possibly more powerful than Donovan himself.

She didn't really, 'look' at me, but through me. The touch of her magic so gentle, like gossamer sheets of silk enveloping me, cocooning me in radiating peace. Then it was gone and she waved him off with me, saying, “Sylvia, then me. The child has something unresolved, we need to suss it out.” That didn't make much sense to me, maybe I didn't understand Gypsy as well as I thought.

He motioned an arm toward one of the wagons, I took one step with him and started to collapse, but he caught me and picked me up in his arms like a doll in one smooth movement. I winced from the pain in my chest.

I took in the wondrous wood framed wagons. Some were stretched pentagonal shapes and some like a barrel on its side. All were around fifteen or sixteen feet long and had little stovepipe chimneys and overhangs over the driver's seats to keep the elements of the mountains off the drivers. Some had little round glass windows and some square.

I swallowed hard, the wagons were like in my nightmare. I shook it off.

To me, they all looked to be cottages, with large wagon wheels. Like the fanciful drawings and tapestries sold in the Market. I had seen a couple before, when they came to Wexbury for carnival. But not as regal looking as these.

I saw a small boy sitting in a tree off to the side of the wagon, hiding in the shadows, his eyes wide with curiosity. A thin woman stepped out of one of the pentagonal wagons that had a peaked roof like my cottage had. Her arms were crossed over her chest and her long, colorful dress reached her ankles. She had a warm looking hooded jacket of dyed rabbit furs over it, with matching rabbit pelt boots.

Her attractive face was creased in concern as we approached. She had black curly hair, and dark eyes, like Dru. They looked related. She looked to be in her mid-twenties. She said in Gypsy, “Quickly you fool, get her out of the cold.”

I looked up and Dru grinned hugely at her and he said like a petulant child, “Yes Sylvia.” Sylvia... his sister? She held the door open and he went up the fold down steps into the warm wagon. He stooped a little then he put me on a bed on one side of the space that was lit by oil lanterns.

He pulled a blanket over me and turned to the woman crowding him. “Sylvia, this is Laney. She is in need of your assistance.”

She was pushing him toward the door. “I can see that you oaf. Now get out so I can see to her.” He shot us both a toothy grin and stepped out. I noted a little wood burning stove near the door, it was warming the space nicely, ingenious.

The woman pulled back the hood of her coat, and she indeed looked gorgeous like her brother. She grinned at me and rolled her eyes and said in exasperation. “Men. I swear they are all just little boys inside.” I chuckled then gasped, winced in pain, and her brow creased. I could tell she didn't like people in pain.

A little door opened at a wall that seemed to divide the inside of the wagon into two spaces. An older, middle-aged woman poked her head out the door asking, “What is all the ruckus? I'm trying to sleep.”

Sylvia said, “Nothing mother. Go back to bed.” The woman looked at her then paused when she saw me then retreated back and shut the door silently.

I asked in English, “Mother? But I thought Alexandru called the other woman in the camp mother. Isn't he your brother.”

She seemed surprised I knew what they had said, then chuckled as she poured some water from a pitcher into a basin and pulled up her sleeves to wash her hands. She spoke in accented English, “Yes, he, unfortunately, is my kin. The lazy man.” But she was smiling, showing she teased.

Then she explained, “No, our mother is Elaine here. The woman out there, Udele, is the leader of our clan, Mother is her title. She would be like the leader of a keep for you Altii. Each of the fifteen clans has a Mother.” A matriarchal society? I did not know that about Mountain Gypsies.

She reached for the blanket and prompted with her eyes for permission. I nodded and she pulled the blanket away. Then the woman went about undressing me. She seemed familiar with armor. Oddly, I didn't feel self-conscious about it. It felt almost like a serene ritual for some reason, as she cupped each piece gently and placed it carefully in stacks on a little table that had three small chairs next to the stove.

I winced when she rolled me onto my side to detach my breastplate. She looked at the huge dent in the armor for a second, then she removed my trousers and tunic. I crossed my arms over my chest and crossed my legs in modesty as she folded them carefully and placed them next to my weapons and armor.

She turned back to me and shook her head and gently took my arms and placed them at my side. Then she took a cloth and dipped it into the basin and proceeded to wipe my skin clean. She hummed a slow tune as she washed me and gave me a reassuring smile. She paused at the red and blackening bruises on my chest and looked back at my breastplate. She said softly, “Your armor saved your life.”

She rolled me to one side to clean and examine my back, she paused and stopped breathing when she traced the scars there, then she started breathing again and continued her tune. When she was finished, she stopped humming and held my hands to examine the burns and blisters from the magic attack. She smelled them and almost growled, “A vrajitor attack.”

I nodded and said hoarsely, “Rogue.”

Her eyes narrowed then she said as she placed my hands back at my side, “We will get back to your hands, the most pressing are the broken ribs, you may have internal bleeding. May I...” She trailed off looking for the words then said in Gypsy, “May I use invasive magic to heal your body?”

I blinked. Magic could be used to heal? Then I remembered how different Mother Udele's magic had felt. Maybe they could reverse injuries like we could roll back time on the decay of metals. I nodded and she smiled and she stroked my hair with one hand then put both hands together and held them over my chest.

I was enveloped again by a tapestry of fine white mists and I felt warm and at peace like I was swimming through translucent veils of mist that were all around me. I reached my hands out and I could actually feel the gossamer fabric of the magics, like the fluttering wings of butterflies.

She stopped and the mists seemed suspended around me as she smiled slyly at me, “You are elemental like us, I have not seen your like, it is an amber presence that encompasses so very much. That explains how you survived that strike to your chest that should have killed you even with your armor. You need to relax your power, let me in.”

I looked at her and realized everything was brighter and richer in my vision. I was so fixated on the mist that I hadn't realized my own power had risen up to meet it in a joyful dance.

I closed my eyes and took deep breaths and calmed myself. My magic receded, then suddenly the mist intensified and seemed to suck into her hands and I could feel them press into my very being from where her hands hovered a hair's width from my chest. I grunted as I felt the warmth press against my injuries. Soaking into them, numbing the pains. I smiled at her in wonder. She had strain on her face and her eyes were closed.

She whispered in English, “You have some damage to some organs. One moment.” I felt heat bloom in my gut and serenity wash through me. She started panting and I could see sweat forming a sheen on her face. Then she smiled. “There, now the bones.” I could hear a crinkling sound inside me and the pain went almost fully away.

She gasped and opened her eyes and panted. Then she looked up at me and said, “I will need to rest to deal with the bruising, but it is just superficial. I wanted to use what I have left in me tonight to give your hands relief.”

She prompted with her eyes and I gave her my hands, she turned them palm up and said, “They were done with corrupted...” She searched for the word and said it in Gypsy, “power,” Then continued in English, “There may be some scarring.”