Khanaarre screamed. The spray of venom, a half dozen droplets across her face and chest, burned through clothing and flesh and into her blood. Shinova and Vikatan, sheltering Darjaran and Khanaarre with their own mass screamed with her. So, I realized after a moment, did I.
The wyvern was already dead: its massive head severed from its body, its mouth full of viscous green venom that it no longer had breath to push from its body. The air was thick with the putrid smoke from where the stumps of its neck still burned from the passing my fiery guillotine. I couldn’t kill it any deader.
I could, if I jumped fast enough, catch Khanaarre before she hit the ground. I lunged forward, dropping my knife instead of taking the time to sheath it, half tripping on the skirts that I had eschewed in favor of pants for so many years, now. I stumbled. I fell. I caught myself and skidded to my knees just in time to keep Khanaarre’s head from striking the ground.
I screamed for the healers, then realized that I was shouting in the language of the Compact. By the time I remembered the words of my native language, Darjaran’s own shouts – or perhaps just sense – had brought a dozen giants to the top of the wall, bearing medicine and litters.
I looked at the litters, and at the stairs, and I shook my head.
My wizard’s claw was in my bags, of course, and there was no way I could retrieve my knife through the crowd of giants, so I pulled Khanaarre’s utility knife from her belt. I cut my hand and muttered a few words and a warm golden glow covered the top of the wall, driving out the cold and blocking the wind.
“Apply the antivenin,” I said to the doctor, who had reached us by then, “then tell me where to move them.”
The doctor – a short, square cyclops woman – gave me a strange look, then turned to Darjaran, who shrugged.
“Do as she says, Xijuma,” he said.
The doctor nodded, and applied the topical antivenin to Khanaarre’s wounds first, then moved on to Darjaran’s wounded guards, Viktan and Shinova.
“I need to take them to the bath house,” said Xijuma, “to clean the wounds properly.”
I nodded.
“Load them onto the litters, then I will take them there.”
Still skeptical, Xijuma looked again to Darjaran.
“Obey the priestess,” he said, more firmly than before. And she did.
The litters were giant-sized, of course. Khanaarre looked so small, so fragile in hers. Her skin, usually such a lovely warm red brown, was ashen pale. I had suffered the effects wyvern venom before and lived, but that had been a far lesser beast.
“Step back,” I said, moving to a place in between the three litters, though my eyes were only on Khanaarre. Again, I cut my hand, and began to murmur words of power. The three litters rose into the air. I continued my chant, moving all three litters and the sphere of golden warmth that I had conjured into the air over the encampment and then to the bathhouse, just barely within sight from my position atop the wall.
Xijuma and the others stood frozen, staring in awe. This was not priestess’ magic.
“Go!” I roared. They went. I followed after, descending the stairs as slowly as I could stand, the skirts of my robes held high, and maintaining the spell of warmth around Khanaarre and the wounded giants as they disappeared from my line of sight by sheer bloody will.
The commotion had drawn Elana and Rennin out of the bath, and they were dressed and half armed by the time that we arrived. If I had been three steps further behind, they might have fought Xijuma and the other giants. Under other circumstances, seeing the prince and her consort half-dressed and steaming with the heat of the bath as they ran out into the cold, brandishing weapons at the sight of their wounded comrade, would have been funny, or even arousing. In that moment, it just made me angrier.
“Elana! Rennin!” I snapped at them. “Khanaarre and these giants were poisoned by a wyvern, fucking let the doctor get them into the bath!”
That snapped them back into focus, and I pushed through to help them gather the rest of their things before ceding the bathhouse to the wounded and their caretakers.
“What happened?” Elana demanded.
“A wyvern attacked,” I repeated myself, barely reigning in my temper and worry. “Khanarre, Darjaran, and I killed it, but not before it could spew its venom. Dararan’s guards, Viktan and Shinova, caught the worst of it, but some of the spray hit Khanaarre, too.”
The Vencari blanched.
“Will she be okay,” Rennin asked when Elana couldn’t.
“I don’t know,” I snapped, and left them to sort out their own feelings on that matter.
Lacking any clear course of action, I returned to the top of the wall, where Darjaran was overseeing the disposal of the massive beast. His freemen were pushing the body of the thing off the top of the wall and into the canyon. A band of hands were hauling buckets of sand and dirt up from the desert, burying the severed head and its still-draining poison glands to dilute and neutralize the corrosive toxin. Part of me wanted to claim the head, or at least the skull, as a trophy, but I didn’t have enough room in my wizard’s chest for such vanity. Another part of me wanted to burn it out of spite, but I knew that the smoke would be almost as poisonous as the liquid venom and harder to avoid.
I took deep breaths, trying desperately to get my emotions under control. I was scared. I was angry. I was looking for someone or something to lash out at.
I had promised Khanaarre that I would give her my secrets. I had promised myself that, even if no one else survived this quest, she would. If she had not gotten the antivenin in time, I would not be able to keep those promises.
Darjaran turned when he heard me approach.
“Yma Rinlo,” he said my old name with awe. “When they speak of the djuunan priestess, they do not speak of her power!” He shook his head. “What disrespect!”
“I prefer it that way,” I said, trying for mysteriously aloof but only managing peevish. I did not confess that Yma Rinlo had never possessed such power. She had been a talented linguist and a competent wonderworker, but never a challenge to the egos of the priestesses who had raised her, let alone a challenge to their actual supremacy. Power, real power, was the domain of Derrek Rowan, the unwanted trophy that came with a life spent in pursuit of forbidden knowledge, always more a burden than a boon.
“Do not be so glum,” he said, clapping me on the back. “This one will keep your secret, if you wish, and your alufin friend will live. Xijuma is a skilled healer, and we have more than sufficient antivenin on hand. And you need feel no guilt over the swiftness of your casting. It was my own shield that was too slow, and Viktan and Shivona might not be alive to brag about their new scars if both you and she had not been here. It has been decades since a wyvern of such size has been seen so far south, and we were ill prepared.”
I nodded thanks, unable to think of any words that would not condemn half of us.
I stood with Darjaran atop the wall, scanning the horizon for any further threats. It was rare, but wyverns did sometimes hunt in mated pairs, or in packs of wyrmlings led by their mother.
Below us, now fully dressed, Elana and Rennin waited outside the bath house while Khanaarre’s wounds were cleaned and treated. Though the giants had been as eager for their baths as we were, they showed no signs of resenting having to wait while Khanaarre, Viktan, and Shivona – the heroes of the hour – received medical treatment. I had always admired that about the Holy Empire: heroism was not measured just by deed, but by risk and cost. I might have slain the beast, but they had faced it without flinching, and it was they who lay unconscious, not I or Darjaran.
Our yurt was being moved closer to the bathhouse so that, when Xijuma pronounced her safe to move, she would not have to suffer more than a few paces through the cold. So was one of the larger yurts, for the benefit of the other two. It had already been determined that, come morning, Khanaarre would ride inside Darjaran’s wagon and that the wounded giants would ride one of the others.
“She is dear to you,” Darjaran said. It was not a question.
I gave a half smile. I did love an understatement, but I was not in the mood for humor.
“Yes,” I said. There was no point in denying what I had just made abundantly clear by my actions. What use psychic discipline when you’re just going to shout to the heavens?
“You can see her, now, if you wish,” he said. “You are a priestess, after all.”
I chuckled ruefully and shook my head. I was certainly the privilege of my rank, but I doubted that she would want me to intrude so.
“I will wait until it is proper,” I said.
The wind that blew across the plains and broke against the wall upon which we stood was bitter cold. Even under all the layers of silk and felted wool and fur and leather, it seeped into my bones. Darjaran hardly felt it, of course. Cold was something that lesser mortals experienced, not the rhu xian. I had been better acclimated to it, once. I had also had better gear. The rhu xian understood the limits of the freemen and the hands, but abstractly. Fortunately the freemen who handled the details guessed better at the needs and limits of llamenan and djuunan.
Khanaarre was moved to our yurt not long after smoke began pouring from the chimney. Elana and Rennin followed at the healer’s heels, holding open the flaps of the tent so that Xijuma could duck in without overly jostling her charge. I bowed my head to Darjaran. He waved me off. I descended the steps of the wall as quickly as I could without tripping on the hems of my robes, and joined my companions.
Khanaarre was still unconscious, possibly the lingering effect of the wyvern’s poison, possibly of the sedative she would have been given before the wound was cleaned. Her face – the only part of her not swaddled in furs – was ashen and sickly, and half-covered by bandages.
“Keep her warm,” Xijuma told me. “I will bring you broth to feed her. She should awake in an hour or two, but she should not sit up more than to eat until tomorrow at the earliest.”
I nodded and thanked her, conveying the prince’s gratitude as well, and held the door flap so that she could leave, probably to check on Viktan and Shinova.
Khanaarre had been placed on the side of the stove opposite the door, where she would be best sheltered from the cold of comings and goings. Elana and Rennin sat beside her, huddled close to one another. I sat beside them.
“Darjaran and Xijuma are confident that she will be well,” I said.
“Do you trust them?” Elana asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“I don’t think that I can stand to lose another companion on this quest,” she said, a hitch in her voice.
I didn’t answer. What could I say? I was personally responsible for one of those losses, after all. Instead, I just looked at Khanaarre and prayed for her swift recovery.
She had hardly spoken to me in days. It seemed very, very likely that she would never forgive me for my upbringing, or for leading the party into the Holy Empire of the rhu xian. It was not entirely fair of her, but it was understandable. Still, whether she ever looked upon me kindly again, I renewed my vow that even if I brought no one else out of this quest alive, she would not just survive but be recognized for the wizard she was.
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