The Prince of Exiles (The Exile Series) (29 page)

“Great – what are your intentions with my sister?”

“I want to see her laugh and smile,” Raven responded immediately, eager to fulfill his end of the bargain. “I like it when she smiles – she doesn’t smile
often enough!
I don’t understand her! She has pretty smiles – a pretty good – a pretty smile – don’t you think she should smile more? Right?”

Davydd looked at him, eyes narrowed.

“That’s it?” The red-eyed man asked, incredulous. “Shadows and fire, if I didn’t know you were the Prince of Ravens, I’d think you were just a normal kid. With really too good of a conscience though. I mean, I know she’s my sister, but you
just
want to see her smile? Come on now, she’s worth more than
that!
I mean, you can’t lay a finger on her, she’s way better than you, but you could at least put some effort into
wanting
it. It’s almost insulting.”

The young boy had turned a bright shade of red when he realized what they were talking about, and he was suddenly looking around nervously, smiling awkwardly through his embarrassment.

“No – you’re
right
,” Raven said, struck by a sudden idea. “She
is
better than me. She’s
brilliant
with those daggers! I don’t understand it – she’s just so graceful, it’s like watching a dancer, but a dancer with
daggers
, how
amazing
is
that?!
”

“Oh good gods make it stop,” Davydd said, turning away and rubbing his temples. Did he have a headache?

“Oh,” Raven said, standing up and placing a hand to the hilt of Aemon’s Blade, which he still wore at his side. “I can fix that.”

He didn’t think about it this time, he just did it. He reached out and touched Davydd’s head before the young man knew what we happening, and there was a strange flash like a spark that jumped from Raven’s hand to Davydd’s temple, and then back again.

“Whoa!” Davydd said, taking several steps away, watching Raven with complete surprise, his eyes wide and staring. He slowly raised a hand to his temple … and a look of understanding passed across his face.

“My … my headache is just … it’s
gone
!”

“Woooow,” Raven said, peering at Davydd with intense scrutiny, though not completely sure why. He felt suddenly tired, as if he’d just lost some energy in a great rush. But that thought quickly faded, as all the others had for nearly an hour now.

An hour?
Asked a voice in his head.
No … that can’t be right.

“Tymathy!” Roared a voice. Raven looked around with wide eyes, the world mostly just a haze of bright, blurring colors. But once his vision cleared he saw the young boy who’d been with them suddenly running through the crowded square next to the park, off one of the long cobblestone streets. A horse and cart were barreling down the road, apparently in dire need of getting somewhere fast. Beyond that, on the other side of the road, was a huge bear of a man, with an alarmingly large mustache that was so long and thick Raven’s mind turned the man into a walrus, a strange blubbery creature he’d once seen in a book.

Tymathy –
was that the boy’s name?
– was running straight across the street, headed for the angry walrus man.

What happened next was never clear to Raven, even though he was watching the whole thing. A loud snort of anger and surprise came from the charging horse, a roar of fear sounded from a number of surrounding throats, and then the cart was skidding and crashing to a halt, and Tym was lying broken on the ground.

Shock ran through Raven’s body, and before he knew what he was doing he was up and running across the park to the boy, the world spinning madly around him.

He was the first to reach him – the first to react in any way – and he scooped the small body up into his arms. He reached out through the Raven Talisman and felt the boy’s life – it was there, though it was flickering and far too small.

He was dying.

And then other people began arriving, coming in from all sides. Davydd was the first – he sized up the situation and then looked at Raven, asking him a question that he couldn’t understand. The words just didn’t seem to register in his head – everything was so … so
fuzzy
.

“Stand out of my way!” Called a commanding voice. Raven looked up to see two Elders running toward them, one is deep amber robes and the other in dark gray, almost black, with his hood drawn. The hooded one reached for the boy and moved to pulled him out of Raven’s hands.

Raven made a split-second decision.

“No,” he said, simply, without explanation.

The word seemed to shock them, particularly the one in amber robes–
Elder Spader, the Lawful Elder –
who took a closer look at Raven and realized who it was.

“You can’t help him,” said Raven, “but one of your Elders can – Elder of Healthy, Healthy Elder –
what’s her name?
”

“Elder Keri?”

“Yes!” Raven called out, breaking through the haze in his mind again for a brief second of clarity. “Get her, bring her here – I will stay with him and do what I can. I have the Blade – I may be able to keep him hanging on to life until she gets here.”

Without any hesitation, perhaps knowing Raven made sense, perhaps just knowing that further argument would waste precious time and lead to the boy’s death, Spader stood and pulled the hooded Elder –
Elder Ishamael? Sneaky Elder – Spying Elder – Master Spy? –
along with him, racing as fast as his legs could carry him.

Raven turned back to Tym and took in the sight.

The boy’s blood was flowing freely across the cobblestones, and Raven felt the world reeling and heaving about him – he didn’t know the first thing about sewing up a wound. He’d had plenty sewn up on
him
but he’d never been the one with the needle and thread – but maybe using Aemon’s Blade to heal the boy wasn’t like that?

“Wait that’s my – THAT’S MY SON!”

The walrus-mustached man had broken through the crowd and was being held back by Davydd, who had one hand stretched out fending the man off, and another on his dagger, the weapon he used for close-quarters combat.

“What’s his name?” Raven asked quickly, even though he knew it. “Tell me his name – tell me about him, let him hear your voice, keep him engaged and thinking.”

He reached down and ripped a strip of cloth off of the bottom of his shirt and tied it around the boy’s abdomen; it began to turn red immediately. His breath was labored and his crushed chest was heaving irregularly – he must have punctured a lung with a broken rib.

“Tym,” the man was saying, “his name is Tymathy, but everyone calls him Tym. Damned
fool
boy,
what was he doing, trying to get himself killed? I
told
him not to run off – I
told him – shadows and fire where is the bloody Healer?!”

Raven looked up at Davydd and spoke quickly to him, trying not to let his voice slur the words together, locking himself onto Davydd’s eyes and forcing himself to stay on task.

“I’m going to try to heal him,” Raven said thickly, but intelligibly. “But I don’t know if it will work. And I need … what do I need?”

For a single, terrifying moment, the thought almost slipped away, but then his head cleared – finally, blessedly clear! – and he snapped back into focus.

“I need you to keep the father away, and anyone else too. I don’t know exactly how it works, but some types of Bloodmagic can be interfered with when you touch the caster, so make sure
no one touches me
.”

Davydd looked at him with shocked eyes.

“You’re going to do
Bloodmagic?”

“No!” Raven said emphatically, “I’m going to use the
Blade!
But
it
has Bloodmagic, and I don’t know how it
works
so –”

“Keep everyone away, got it!”

Davydd stood and began making noises to the father and the gathered crowd, and Raven grabbed the hilt of Aemon’s Blade as he reached through the Raven Talisman and closed in on the boy’s failing life.

It was growing dark, the feel of it –
the smell of books, old cupboards, dusty blankets, the scrape of ink on paper –
was fading, and he knew he didn’t have much time. Without knowing what he was doing he tried to hold on to the images he was getting from the boy, tried to give them strength, tried to tell the body to heal. But nothing seemed to happen.

He let out a howl of anger and frustration, trying to gall his mind into the right frame of mind. His brow furrowed as he desperately tried to remember what he had done to bring back Tomaz.

And then, not knowing how, he began to pour …
something
… into the boy’s unconscious form. He could feel the Raven Talisman growing hotter and hotter about his neck and shoulders as the hilt of Aemon’s Blade grew colder and colder beneath his hand.

He felt himself growing weaker. His own life was slipping away.

He panicked and tried to pull back, knowing something had gone horribly, horribly wrong – this wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen, he was supposed to heal the boy! He had Aemon’s Blade, he should be able to use the Raven Talisman for healing, not for death, not for destruction, not –

Life rekindled in the small form beneath him. The boy’s breathing eased and was less labored – his eyes fluttered open, and the wound in his side began to shine, not with the dark, glistening red of fresh blood, but with the bright, white light of Valerium.

Voices began to grow louder around them – the voice of the man with the walrus mustache, Davydd shouting for everyone to stay back, the shocked, helpless cries of countless others who had rushed in to assist, clamoring to know how the boy was doing –
can I help? – has someone called for a Healer? – who is –?

Raven’s mind felt like it was being pulled apart. He tried to push it all back together, grabbing the fragmenting pieces, but found he just couldn’t do it. He didn’t have the energy. His life was slipping away, growing dim. He felt weak – he could barely keep his eyes open now.

The boy – Tym – sat up, and the white light cut off. Most of the wounds were gone, replaced by freshly healed skin. He got to his feet without hesitation – his legs were straight and unbroken.

Raven’s vision split and cracked. His eyes rolled back in his head, and darkness took him.

When Raven woke, his mind was still fuzzed and hazy and no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t seem to focus. Everything was dark. Why was everything dark? His whole body felt heavy, as if whatever had been in his system was still there, weighing him down.

Wait a minute – Henri Perci – he drugged me!

His eyelids snapped open and he found himself staring at a white-washed ceiling. He sat up – and the room spun around him, and he almost emptied his stomach.

“Careful princeling!”

A hand pushed against his chest and he fell back, landing on the pillow propped behind him. He groaned as his head throbbed. His whole body was sore, as if he’d been bruised all over. He blinked to clear his vision and then his eyes focused on … Leah.

“Are you still mad at me?” He asked. For some reason that seemed very important at this moment.

She cocked her head to the side and stifled a smile.

“No,” she said, “I’m not. You apologized.”

“I was drugged at the time,” he admitted immediately.

“You’re
still
drugged,” she said, “though we gave you a counter-toxin and it’s wearing off now. Just … take extra care in what you say. Think about it
really
hard before you speak. You’ll thank me later.”

“But we’re friends again?” He asked, more forcefully.

“Yes,” she said. He nodded, and then relaxed.

“What happened after … ?”

He couldn’t find the words – thoughts were still slippery, and his tongue felt heavy and too big for his mouth.

“Elder Keri appeared right after you collapsed,” she said, catching on to what he was asking. “She had a team of Healers with her and she commanded you and Tym be brought to the hospital. You were here, nearly dead, for almost a full hour before they got you breathing on your own again.”

“Tym?” He asked. His throat felt raw and his voice sounded hoarse.

Leah’s face softened, and she nodded to a bed to his left. He turned to look and saw that curtains had been drawn around it to give whoever was inside privacy while they rested.

“He’s recovering too,” she said.

She turned to him.

“Everyone in the city is talking about what you did –”

“I don’t care what everyone in the city is saying,” he said harshly, rasping, forcing his voice out. “The boy? He’s okay? Is he going to survive?”

“He’s fine,” Leah said, reassuring him with a simple force of emphasis, holding up a hand to prevent him from rising. “He’s right there, but he’s sleeping now so you can’t see him. He lost a lot of blood, but whatever you did closed his wounds. He had a few bones that needed to be set, but Elder Keri said the most dangerous of those were already taken care of. She said it looked as if half the boy’s injuries were weeks old.”

“I couldn’t heal all of them,” Raven said, swallowing hard. “I didn’t have the strength – I don’t know why. When I healed Tomaz, I did it all, I brought him back from the
dead
.”

“You had the Ox Talisman to draw on,” she pointed out.

“I still should have been able to finish it,” Raven said. “Whatever was in me, the drug, it must have stopped me from being able to do it the right way. I didn’t –”

“You did enough,” Leah insisted, smiling at him with her eyes. He felt calm descend on him. If she said things were fine, then they must be. Right?

“You’re sure?” He asked, almost begging her for confirmation.

“
Yes
,” she said, nodding, all the while holding his gaze. “When Elder Keri checks in you can ask her yourself.”

He leaned back and let out a sigh, and took the moment to focus on how he was feeling. His body still ached, and he felt like he could sleep for a week, but he didn’t seem to be otherwise injured. He could move everything, even though moving was painful. He tried to swallow and realized his throat hurt because it was incredibly dry.

“Water?” He asked Leah.

She nodded and reached over to a table by the bed and handed him a cup. He started to sit up and she bent down to help him.

His heart gave a strange sideways
thump
as she leaned in, the smell of her filling his head. He felt the urge to do something, felt the urge to reach up and grab her, but then she pulled back and just that quickly the moment was over.

He drank from the cup, the cold water soothing his throat, helping him clear his head. He looked around the room. It was long and tall, full of rows of beds, all of which, save the two he and Tym occupied, were empty. The floor was made of a simple light-colored wood and the walls were whitewashed, with windows spaced every so often to let in warm orange and yellow light from the outside. The normal smell of a sick room was notably absent – this place smelled instead of clean linen and fresh air.

“We’re in the recovery wing of the trauma ward,” Leah told him, following his gaze. “We’re lucky in Vale that there isn’t a lot of trauma to deal with. Outside of an invasion of course, like the one a few months ago … but something on that scale is rare. Mostly this place is used by people who live in the woods like Tomaz and hit themselves with their own ax or something. I saw a woman come in once who’d managed to cut herself with a boning knife … that was a nasty thing.”

“Were you wounded too?” he asked, wondering how she’d seen this.

“Eshendai are required to train under Elder Keri and her Healers,” Leah said. “And after the training is done, we have the option to come back here for work when we’re not on assignment. I get a stipend from the military and Goldwyn keeps my rooms the way I like them, so I don’t need the coin. But I like it anyway – it’s a way to help people.”

“You like helping people,” he said, watching her out of the corner of his eye, pretending to examine the room. He had the urge to just stare openly at her, but he was fairly certain that was coming from the dopalin. Yes. Just the dopalin.

“I do,” she said. “I didn’t for a long time. Tomaz was the same – when we joined the Kindred we had a lot of work to do on ourselves. But eventually, you heal and you move on. And when I did the training to become an Eshendai and I had the chance to help people here – to help people in a way that only a few can – I found that I really did like it.”

They lapsed into silence as Raven drank more water.

“Tomaz actually just stepped out,” Leah said, awkwardly filling the sudden gap in conversation, “he should be back soon. He’s grabbing Mary –”

“Oh! Shadows and light, I left her –”

“Yeah, he went looking for you when you didn’t come back –”

“Of course, that makes sense, I was about to go back to him but –”

“But you got drugged by Henri Perci,” she said, her face darkening as she said the words. “Did anyone see it happen?”

“No,” Raven said, thinking back. “They saw me at the drinking house we went to, but otherwise all anyone saw was us talking. I don’t even really understand how he did it.”

“From what Davydd described, I’d say it was melted down into a liquid form. It can be injected directly into the bloodstream, but that would incapacitate a
horse
, and while you certainly weren’t unconscious, you weren’t in your right state of mind either. It was most likely diluted – did he offer you something to drink?”

“Yes,” Raven said, thinking back. “I drank a whole skin of water he gave me. That’s the first I remember feeling strange … feeling very thirsty. Everything after that is hazy at best.”

“Diluting it in water will certainly do the trick,” rumbled a familiar voice from the far end of the hall.

They turned to see the hulking form of Tomaz walk in with Elder Keri
 
just behind him; she was accompanied by two women in long, baggy, white shirts and pants.

“I turn my back for
one minute
,” Tomaz chastised before he’d even reached the bed, “and you go and get into trouble.”

“To be fair, I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“When do you ever get into trouble on purpose?” Tomaz grumbled. “Usually trouble just finds you. You’re like the little lost puppy from the story.”

“I don’t think I know the story?” Raven asked, looking around.

“It’s not a real story,” Leah said. “No one knows it, Tomaz just brings it up all the time. It isn’t real.”

“It is too!” Tomaz rumbled insistently.

“Okay, tell it to him,” she retorted.

“Can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Don’t remember it all.”

“See?!”

“As lovely as this banter is,” Elder Keri said, pushing Tomaz out of the way, kindly but forcefully, “I need to examine my patient. How are you feeling?”

“I ache,” Raven said truthfully, “and I’m parched, but otherwise I’m fine.”

“Good,” she said, reaching up and feeling for his pulse as she glanced at a large clock at the end of the hall to time the beats. “No adverse reaction to the dopalin it looks like. You ingested a heavy dose – much more and it could have had serious side effects.”

“How do you get much more serious than telling your mind to everyone you meet?” Raven muttered.

“In order of severity: blindness, paralysis, and death.”

“Ah. Well, that would be worse.”

“Yes,” Keri said, removing her fingers from his neck. “But thankfully it wasn’t that bad. In fact, you seem like you’re ready to go. You’ll be fine by the end of the day – though I suggest you take it easy. Whatever it is you did to heal this boy … I’m grateful for it. You saved his life, but it nearly cost you yours.
 
Thank whatever gods you pray to that you’re young and your body is resilient. When I first laid hands on you, you were a breath away from leaving this world. If I hadn’t arrived when I did, you’d be dead.”

Raven felt suddenly cold, as if the temperature of the room had dropped several degrees. He swallowed nervously; both Leah and Tomaz looked grim.

“Now,” Keri concluded, “all that is left is the legal matter of the fact you ingested dopalin.”

“Wait – what?”

“Dopalin is illegal,” the Elder said, looking at him sternly. “And while I can understand the desire to experiment with mind-altering substances, after all I was young once too, you should never have flaunted your use so flagrantly.”

“Wait – no, you don’t understand, that’s not what happened –”

“I will vouch for him,” Leah said immediately. “He would never –”

“I take full responsibility as his caretaker while he’s here in Vale,” Tomaz broke in with a heavy rumble, looking sternly from Raven to Elder Keri. “He has been staying with me, and I assure you that he hasn’t had the chance to – ”

Keri firmly held up a hand, silencing them both. She was still the kind, matronly woman she’d always been, but there was something of a fierce, protective mother about her now that told them quite clearly she would brook no nonsense. She was in control, and that was final.

“So you didn’t take it purposefully,” she said. “An accident then?”

“No,” Raven said immediately, “Henri Perci slipped it to me.”