The Fall of Neskaya (28 page)

With a click of the latch, the door swung open and then caught on the rumpled cloak. Taniquel swung around to see a figure in a hooded riding-length cape standing framed in the doorway. For a terrifying instant, she thought the ghostly
laranzu
from Ambervale had followed her. But the cape was forest green, not gray.

The man pushed back his hood as he stepped forward. Taniquel’s first impression was of gray eyes filled with light, a halo of unruly copper-bright hair, an expression of deep concern.

“Praise Aldones, you’re safe,” he said. “I thought I’d never find you.”

The thought slipped away as the room went sideways, vision dimmed, and her legs gave way beneath her.

C
oryn rushed forward and caught the woman in his arms before she hit the floor. Even soaking wet, she was surprisingly light, as if all her substance had blazed forth in her eyes, leaving nothing but a delicate shell. As he laid her on the bed, he looked into her face. The firelight touched but did not mask the porcelain translucency of her skin, the masses of midnight-black hair, the sweep of the lashes over deep circles like bruises.

She had called to him in his sleep for two nights now, her voice a song that went beyond pain, beyond longing, beyond courage. He had heard her sobbing in his dreams with a poignancy and power that shook him to the core. And now he held her in his arms, a girl not yet out of her teens.

He shook himself back to practical reality. Her fingers and face were half-frozen. Whispering that he meant her no harm, he gently pulled off her boots and sodden socks with holes worn in the heels. The dress was more difficult, but he knew from his early training as a monitor that she must be dry to be warm. Her skin felt icy. He dried her with the extra shirt from his pack, soft thick
chervine-
kid wool, and wrapped her in the blankets, laying his own cape over them.

She had not awakened by the time he’d seen to her horse and finished his dinner. Her skin felt no warmer and her breathing was quick and shallow. If she had been any of the Tower women, he would not have hesitated to do what must come next. But she was a stranger, not used to the closeness of Tower living. Moreover, she was clearly well-born, and just as clearly hunted and desperate. He had seen the look of terror in her eyes. He pulled off his own clothes and slipped between the blankets next to her. If she survived the night, he told himself, she could berate him all she liked.

The cold of her body sent Coryn’s heart pounding and caught his breath in his throat. He settled in behind her, fitting his legs behind hers as he wrapped her in his arms. She smelled of snow and wet wool and some sweet herb. Lessons in body control came back to him, how to deepen his breathing, to generate more heat. The
cristoforos
developed techniques of staying warm through the terrible winters at Nevarsin, and the workers at Tramontana, where it also got very cold, had adopted some of them for use during long nights of work with little movement. He visualized the core of his body as a furnace with the flames leaping ever higher. Within minutes, the warmth from his own body enveloped both of them. The woman’s muscles softened, she gave a little sigh, and sank into a deeper sleep.

Coryn woke just before dawn, as had been his habit on the trail. Outside, his horse stamped restlessly in the shed. The woman still slept, snoring lightly. Her hair had dried into an ebony tangle. He slipped out from under the blankets and into his own clothes. After adding more wood to the banked coals, he attended to the horses. In the gray light, he saw that the greedy beasts had made short work of last night’s feed. He left them placidly munching on breakfast. The girl’s horse was in poor shape, so he gave it a double portion of grain and covered it with his own mount’s blanket.

The rising sun showed more storm clouds from the north, enough to keep both of them pinned here for days. He filled a bucket with snow for meltwater and went back to the shelter.

“Stop right there!” The woman sat up, blankets clutched to her chest and eyes blazing. “What happened to my clothes?”

Coryn put the bucket down and pointed to the hearth, where he’d spread them out to dry. “They’re still damp. You’ll be better off as you are.”

“I have more, tied to my saddle.”

He shook his head and took a step toward his own pack.

“Don’t move!” Her voice lashed out, imperious enough to stop him in his tracks. She ran her fingers through tendrils of still-damp hair. “They must have been washed away in the river . . . How did I get here . . . like this?”

She glared at him.

“
Damisela,
if I meant you harm, you would not be alive to scold me now. Your clothes were drenched and you half-dead from cold. I’d been out in the storm searching for you—”

“Why? Who sent you?”

“Let’s begin again. I am Coryn of Tramontana, matrix technician of the Third Circle and on my way to train as under-Keeper at Neskaya. And you?”

“Tani—just Tani.”

Coryn sat on the edge of the bed, although she shifted away from him. “You have nothing to fear from me, Just Tani. I knew you were out there because you called to me—” he gestured to his forehead, “—here. Surely you know of such things among the
laran
workers of the Towers.”

She nodded, an oddly pensive expression flickering over her features. “I’m afraid I’ve been . . . ungracious. You were already here, at the shelter. I stumbled in, ate your soup, you put me in your own bed, and I’m treating you no better than an outlaw.” She gave him a half-smile like a flash of sun on the first spring morning. He thought he’d never seen anything so beautiful.

“I—” For some reason, his voice wouldn’t work right. “I’ll make breakfast.”

Tani sat quietly while Coryn stoked the fire, melted the snow in the little iron pot and brought the water to a boil. Then he added the mixture of rolled grain, ground nuts, and chopped dried fruit sweetened from his precious store of honey, the staple breakfast at the Towers. She swayed, struggling to stay upright as she accepted a bowl. He talked of the horses, of the weather, inconsequential things.

“You are . . . very kind,” she said, laying aside her half-eaten breakfast and slumping back amid the covers. Within moments, she slipped into a drowse.

When Coryn returned to check on her a short while later, she still slept, now coughing fitfully. His heart sank when he saw how fragile she looked, the delicate bones showing beneath the fine-grained skin, the hectic flush of color, the huge dark shadows around her eyes.

“Tani.” He touched the back of his hand to one cheek. Her skin burned. “Tani!” She murmured and rolled away from him. Nor did her delirium lighten when he lay damp compresses across her forehead.

Coryn stood for a long moment, irresolute. Kieran and his Tower teachers had emphasized over and over again that he must never intrude into another person’s energy body without their consent. He found the very idea repugnant. Yet to monitor her, to descend into the cell-deep level to fight the fever, he must do just that. Or let her die.

He knelt beside the cot and took one of her hands in his. How frail the bones felt, the skin so thin and soft. A lady’s hand, that not even days of neglect on the trail could disguise. Farther up on the wrist was a mostly-healed sore, just where an archer’s leather guard would rub. A lady, indeed. A warrior queen. He held the hand to his face, the slender fingers cupping his cheek. All he had to do was turn his head slightly to kiss the palm.

Bruise-dark lids fluttered open. For a moment, she stared at him . . . pupils dilated . . . lips moved soundlessly. Then the startled look faded.

“Cor—Coryn? I’m so cold.”

He lay her hand on the blanket and patted it. “You have a fever. From exposure, most certainly. Listen to me, Tani. In the Tower, I first trained as a monitor, learning to use my mind to heal. I can help you fight off the fever. May I do so?”

“Your . . . mind. Oh,
laran.
” Her gaze slipped, and he thought she had drifted back into sleep. A spasm of coughing shook her and he saw how weak she was. “I had that done once, when I was a child.” There was an odd inflection to her words. Had something . . .
happened
to her?

“I will examine your body, not pry into any secret thoughts,” he hastened to say. “It will not hurt. In fact, it would help if you slept.”

“You have brought me nothing but good,” she murmured. “In every way, you have been a blessing. . . .”

Silence lengthened, until he realized that she slept once more.

A blessing
. . . That was all the consent he would get.

He composed himself and went to work, first skimming the outer energy levels of her body, then sinking deeper into the structure of tissues. Tramontana had its share of injuries from cold, so he recognized the frostbite damage in her feet. It was a simple matter to stabilize damaged cell membranes, to increase the flow of blood to bring in added nutrients and carry away the waste of dead cells. She might lose a toenail or two as well as some skin, but these would heal with time. At this level, he also found bruises and a cracked rib, all of which would resolve on their own.

Still deeper, he followed the stream of air through her parted lips, down the breathing passages to the airy sacs of her lungs. Fluid choked the lower lobes, where the channels glowed red darkening to brown. The defenses of her body, weakened by hunger and exposure, responded only sluggishly. He searched for any sign of spore or poison, such as those responsible for lungrot, and to his relief found none. It was a natural illness, one which rarely struck a healthy young adult. Could she have some other, underlying disease?

Calming his own thoughts, Coryn sank even deeper. He checked the channels carrying life force through the glands in her throat, her heart, her liver and spleen . . . kidneys . . . womb.

She was with child, he realized with surprise. Only a few weeks, but there it was, that soft golden glow.

Who would send a pregnant woman out in weather like this? What would drive her to risk it?

Pregnant . . . alone . . . and very desperate . . .

And brave. And heartrendingly beautiful. If he had not been half in love with her already, her plight alone would have brought him to it.

Gently, gradually, he began shifting the fluid in her lungs, reabsorbing it through the membranes which lined the air sacs. Here and there, he found minute pockets of infection, blots of darkness which her body’s weakened defenses could not resist. Into them, he sent pulses of energy, which he visualized as white light. Some dissolved immediately in bursts of rainbow colors, others more slowly. As her lungs began to clear, he sensed the warmth of rising oxygen levels, a pastel iridescence like the inside of a pearl shell. The glowing light drew him, and he paused on his way back to the surface. Music surrounded him, filled him, the rippling arpeggios of harp and woman singing together without words. Without meaning to, against all his intentions, he had brushed against her mind.

For a moment out of time, he saw her, the form of a woman bathed in shimmering radiance. Hair like spun black glass floated like an aureole around her face. Her eyes were open, her mouth laughing. She stretched out her arms to him and then in a flicker was gone.

Coryn returned to his own body, stiff from prolonged motionlessness. The fire had died down, leaving the shelter chilly. Outside, winds battered the shuttered windows with renewed force. He stretched, suddenly aware of the energy drain which accompanied
laran
work. He had thought Marisela overly protective when she insisted on packing extra supplies of concentrated food. Now, shaking with hunger, he gratefully brought out the bars of honeyed nuts.

Tani slept all the rest of the day, while the storm blustered and swept the hills with another few feet of snow. Coryn tended her, tended the horses, and rested to replenish his own energy reserves. He thought a little of what might happen if they were storm-bound for long. His food stores would stretch for himself, but not for two people, even eked out with what had been left in the shelter.

None of this seemed terribly important. He had only to glance in her direction to see the slow, easy rise of her chest, the profile of her face, the contours of shoulder and hip under the blankets. Once she rolled over and stretched one arm above her head in artless grace. In a few hours, in a few days, the storm would break, she would be strong enough to travel, and he would never see her again.