Where Light Meets Shadow (8 page)

Alban’s chest went tight. Kieran wasn’t
easily shaken. And the first break had been bad. If this were worse, the damage
might be more than they could fix.

“Ask him about his hands,” Father
prompted. “When I came in, I thought I saw—
Ask
him.”

“Kieran,” Alban began.

“He didn’t have time,” Kieran
said.

Kieran was becoming more lucid.
Good, that had to be good.

“He threatened to break all the
bones in my hands,” Kieran continued. “He would have, if your father hadn’t
come in.”

The horror in Kieran’s voice
chilled Alban to the core, as did the thought of all that beautiful music
stilled forever.

“My ankle,” Kieran repeated.
“Please, it hurts.”

The leg was bent beneath Kieran
in a way that couldn’t be comfortable, which could only mean that it hurt even
worse to move it. Not good.

“Here, can you let us have a look
at it?” Alban asked gently.” Just straighten your leg out from under you. Can
you do that? Lean against me, use me for leverage, there you go.”

Kieran took short, quick breaths
through clenched teeth, holding back a cry of pain as he followed Alban’s
instructions. Alban offered his hand, and Kieran took it in a white-knuckled
grip.

Blood had soaked through the
trouser leg. The healing fracture must have broken, and the bone ends poked
through the skin. Kieran took one look and turned his face against Alban’s
chest. Alban came close then to losing his healer’s composure. He wrapped his
arms around Kieran and held him tight. If Father didn’t like it, he’d face his
ire later.

“I’m going to turn your trouser
leg up now so I can see,” Father told Kieran in a perfect healer’s tone,
compassionate but rational. “I’ll be as careful as I can, but it may still
hurt. Are you ready?”

“It hurts already,” Kieran said.
“Go ahead.”

Silently Kieran trembled against
him as his father gently turned up the fabric to reveal the injury. Alban
couldn’t get a good view over Kieran’s shoulder, but he could tell by his
father’s grim expression that the damage was serious.

“Trodaire had better have a very
good explanation,” Father muttered under his breath.

But could anything excuse what
he’d done? No matter what the provocation, and Kieran could be quite provoking,
he was unarmed and injured, certainly no threat to Trodaire. How could he have
done this?

Gentle Trodaire, who had dandled
him on his knee when he was a child.

Trodaire who bore a scar as a
constant reminder of the same Scathlan sword that had killed his husband and
brother-in-arms.

Trodaire had killed that
Scathlan, gutting him alive on the field of battle after he’d already been
disarmed. Alban wasn’t supposed to know that last part, as it was a crime
against honor and the rules of war for which Trodaire should have been punished
and was not, but he’d overheard other veterans talking.

But that crime had been committed
in the freshness of grief and the heat of battle. Alban hadn’t realized that
Trodaire’s anger still ran so deep.

“Can you fix it?” Kieran asked in
a small, scared voice.

“We’ll do everything we can,”
Father said.

Give hope where you can, but
never lie to the patient.
The break had to be bad, if his father were
avoiding making promises.

“We can’t move you until we get
that ankle stabilized,” Father continued. “I’m not going to touch you until I
get as much painkiller in you as is safe.” He met Alban’s eyes. “Stay with
him.”

Toryn rose to leave, but paused
at the doorway and addressed Kieran once more. “This should have never happened
under my roof. For that, I apologize.”

Apologizing, especially to a
Scathlan, could not have come easy to his proud father, and yet he understood why
Kieran let the words fall onto diplomatic silence.

With Father gone, the library
seemed to fill with Kieran’s hard, harsh breathing.

“So, it looks like you were busy
this morning,” Alban said to distract them both. “You have half the library
there on the desk.”

Kieran huffed a humorless laugh.
“I figured out something about the book.”

No need to ask which one. “What
did you figure out?”

“The reason no one’s ever heard
about the books referenced in that old tome is that they’re not books, they’re
tunes and songs. It only took me so long because your people have different
names for some of them and, of course, some tunes I don’t know at all.” Kieran
breathed deeply before continuing. “I thought it was you when the door opened,
and I was all ready to tell you about the progress I’d made.”

Alban heard what Kieran didn’t
say, about how quickly the world had changed, about how excitement and pride in
his discovery changed to pain and fear. He pulled the Scathlan a little closer.

What had happened here today? Now
was not the time to ask Kieran, not when he risked starting a debate over
fault. He didn’t want to argue with the Scathlan while he was in so much pain.

“I’m sorry about earlier,” Kieran
said. “I was just frustrated with the book. I shouldn’t have taken it out on
you.”

“Do you think I care about that
now?”

To draw Kieran’s focus from his
injury, Alban told him how he’d met up with his cousin Sheary after leaving the
library. He put as much energy as he could into livening Sheary’s tale of the
morning’s hunt until his father returned with what they needed.

#

Kieran could taste the herbs in
the wine, bitter and slightly gritty. He drank it down without hesitation. When
Alban shifted his hands to his shoulders, preparing to take his pain, though,
he shrugged away from the touch.

“What are you doing?” Hurt tinged
Alban’s voice, clear to Kieran even in his drugged state.

He hadn’t meant to offend him,
but of course the Leas had taken it that way. He fought the drug’s haze to find
needed words.

“I don’t want you to take the
pain. It’s too much.”

He expected Alban’s protest, but
Toryn spoke first. “My son is a prince and a healer. He is strong enough to do
this.”

Alban returned his hands to
Kieran’s shoulders and leaned in to whisper in his ear. “It won’t hurt me, though
it may tire me. I don’t actually feel the pain I draw away from you.”

Too frightened of what was coming
to remain resolute, Kieran nodded. He felt Alban’s energy connect to his, and
then Alban’s mind nudged his own, pushing Kieran gently toward a drifting
half-sleep. He hadn’t done so that last time, but back then Kieran would have
fought him if he’d tried.

The sensation was strange, and
should have been frightening. Instead, the touch of Alban’s mind felt soothing
and sweet, like the refrain of a favorite song. Experimentally, Kieran thought
gratitude back to him and felt the contact warm in answer.

Toryn warned Kieran that he was
about to begin. He felt Alban tense, like a horse leaning into the traces.
There was pain still, but it seemed remote and easy to ignore. Kieran drifted.

And then Toryn said that it was
done. Alban dropped his hands, tried to stand, and staggered back. The touch of
his mind retreated, and Kieran tried to follow, first with his thoughts and,
when that failed, with his eyes and voice.

“Alban! You said you wouldn’t be
hurt.”

His friend slumped against the
nearest wall, pale and breathing hard. “It’s not pain. As such.”

“As such.”

Without Alban holding him into a
half-trance, Kieran’s injury clamored for attention once more, but with the
drug still in his system and the bones reset and rebound it was almost
bearable. How much had Alban done for him, and at what cost?

“My son needs to learn his
limits,” Toryn said darkly. “He and I will be having that conversation at a
later time. After I get you back to your room and you explain what happened
here today.”

Ice balled in Kieran’s stomach.
He had done nothing wrong, but would the Oathbreaker believe that?

“Alban, go lie down. The couch in
my rooms is closest,” Toryn said.

“But Father, Kieran—”

“I’ll get your Scathlan back to
his room. Right now, you’re in no condition to help.”

The Oathbreaker had just put a
good deal of effort into putting Kieran back together. He had no rational
reason to fear injury from the lord. Still he wanted Alban. But Alban had done
enough.

Toryn handed him his fallen
crutches. “I don’t think you’re going to be steady enough on your feet right
now to do this without help. Take the crutches on your injured side—you’ll want
both of them later—and I’ll steady you from the other side. Do you think you
can manage that way?”

Kieran dreaded even trying. If he
said no, Toryn would probably have guards come with a stretcher. The
humiliation and vulnerability of being carried by Leas scared him worse than
the stairs.

“I’ll manage.”

#

Alban lay on the couch in his
parents’ sitting room, feeling ridiculously like a badly behaved child sent
away for a nap. Maybe he could convince his father that he had overextended
himself by accident? Embarrassing, but better than the truth that, once he made
connection with Kieran, once he realized the extent of the damage to his ankle,
once he touched mind-to-mind and felt the warmth and trust of his reciprocal
answer, Alban had lost all healer’s objectivity and could do nothing but spare
his friend to the last scrap of his strength.

It had frightened Alban, the
extent to which Kieran gave over to him, the extent of the compatibility of
their minds. Lacking experience with this sort of link, the bard must not know
how unusual such an easy, close joining was. Exhausted and with a throbbing
head besides, he didn’t want to think about the implications right now.

Nor did Alban want to think about
how hard it had been to walk away and leave Kieran to his father’s care. He
closed his eyes and drifted into a restless half-sleep until his father’s voice
jerked him awake.

“I swear, Alban, my life would be
much simpler if your stray Scathlan had broken his neck rather than his ankle
when he fell from that horse.”

Alban sat up abruptly, heart
pounding. “Father?”

His father dropped into the chair
opposite and buried his head in his hands. Alban waited, worry mounting with
each passing second. When his father looked up, his face was bleak, anger
simmering in his eyes.

“The damnable thing is, the
Scathlan hasn’t even done anything I can blame him for. Other than wandering
into our territory and getting himself hurt badly enough to require sanctuary
in the first place. And wasting a whole lot of time prevaricating.”

“Prevaricating?”

Father sighed deeply. “Apparently
he thought he was in trouble for being in the library alone. He was trying to
avoid implicating you for leaving him unguarded. I never thought I’d be
engaging in a verbal duel with a Scathlan trying to shield my own son.”

Alban sat up straighter. “He did
that?”

Should he feel touched, amused,
exasperated? Oddly, he did not feel surprised.

“I told him he was a guest, not a
prisoner,” Alban said.

Father scrubbed his face with his
hands. “Apparently Trodaire was under a different assumption. I’d like to
disbelieve the Scathlan’s assertion that the only provocation was his presence
in the library. But it matches too closely Trodaire’s own story. Though he
couches it in terms of the Scathlan using the knowledge in our libraries for
his own evil ends.”

Alban shook his head. “Do you
know what Kieran has been doing?”

“Honestly, I don’t care.”

“I showed him that ancient book
on combining healing and bardic magic. The one we could never figure out. He’s
become obsessed with it. He thinks he’s making some progress.”

His father responded with a
skeptical scowl, a sure sign of his foul mood. Normally he’d be intrigued by
the news.

“I knew having a Scathlan around
would be trouble. Too many of our people have too much reason to hate him on
sight. And, of course, if I had any hope of getting rid of him before spring,
I’ve lost it now. Trodaire, ironically enough, has seen to that. I’d have never
sent him to the library for a book I needed if I knew that your stray was there
without you. I thought you had enough sense not to leave him wandering the
castle alone. You know how others might react to a Scathlan.”

“Usually no one else uses the
royal library. I thought it safe enough.”

Alban decided to omit the argument
with Kieran that had provoked him to stalk out. It didn’t make Alban look any
better, and it made Kieran look worse.

“How bad is it, really?” Alban
asked.

A bard that couldn’t walk and
ride wasn’t quite as bad as a bard that couldn’t harp, but his life would not
be easy.

“There’s still a chance he’ll
mend without permanent damage. Though he’ll need daily healing to accomplish
it. Trodaire has managed to unintentionally foil any hope I had of separating
the two of you.”

“I still don’t understand why—”

“Don’t play the fool, Alban. Your
Scathlan does it better. I may have been occupied with setting bones, but I saw
how he turned to you for comfort without thinking, and how you gave it.”

“I’m a healer, I—”

“If you cuddle all your patients
like that, you’ll have their spouses after you with a broadsword, prince or no.
And I would have had to be dead not to notice that what happened in the library
went far beyond a simple healing bond.”

“I don’t think he knows the
difference, Father. I hope he doesn’t.”

 Bad enough to know he was
being a fool over the Fool. He didn’t want to face Kieran’s amusement over the
situation. Worse still, his pity. Or, at the very worst, his discomfort,
knowing that the one he relied upon for healing desired him.