LITMIR.BIZ

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out at the carnage in the dying light of the setting moon. “But she cannot aid them all, Lord Archer. By the gods, she cannot aid them all.”

      2

      Surrounded by armed men, the small group at the fire could do and say little. Tess felt Sara’s hand steal within hers, grasping warmly. She looked at the young woman and saw not fear, but determination to weather this somehow. Tom, too, looked determined, but he was staring into the fire as if he saw something there other than the leaping flames.

      “Tom?” she called quietly.

      For long moments he neither moved nor answered. Finally he said, “Patience. Evil will betray itself.”

      The counsel to patience was their only option. It wasn’t as if the three of them were in any position to fight five armed warriors. But Tess felt there was more in Tom’s statement. He did that every so often, making a remark that sounded more like formal prayer than mere speech. At such moments, Tess expected to look over into the face of a wizened old man and not one who had barely reached adulthood.

      “It is a gift,” Sara whispered, as if reading Tess’s thoughts. “He is a prophet. A seer.”

      Tess was startled. True, she remembered little enough of this world. But she couldn’t forebear asking, “Do such exist?”

      “Aye,” Sara answered. “Few they are, rarer than glazengold. One of the greatest is in Bozandar. Tales told at my father’s inn say that when foreknowledge overtakes him, he cannot even see the present, speaking only of the future. Oft his words cannot be understood except in hindsight.”

      “Hmm,” Tess said, feeling an inexplicable skepticism. “Very useful. So easy to predict the past.”

      Sara’s eyebrow arched, and then she shrugged. “’Tis like our powers, Tess. They terrify me. I know not what I do, or how I do it. Do you?”

      Tess shook her head. “It feels like riding an untamed horse. It goes where it wills, and I but follow.”

      Sara nodded. “But for all that, we cannot deny that it is real. At times, I think it is our curse.”

      They both fell silent as they remembered the mage Lantav Glassidor, burning alive as each drop of Sara’s blood touched him as Tess ordered him cleansed. As evil as the hive-master was, neither of them was comfortable with the way in which he had died…even if he had kidnapped and tortured Sara’s mother these past six years.

      Tess was troubled, too, by the scar on her palm. Somehow she had stopped Tom’s sword in midair as he went to kill Lantav, but she had not touched the instrument. Yet afterward this reddened scar had appeared on her palm, as if she had reached out and grasped the blade. It was beginning to fade, but it raised questions about what she had done and how. And why her action had affected her physically.

      Tess turned her hand over and showed it to Sara. “I did not touch Tom’s blade.”

      Sara nodded and turned over her hand. It bore an identical scar. From her palm had dripped the blood that had burned Lantav. “Maybe we Ilduin share each other’s ills.”

      Tess stared at Sara’s scar, and a chill crept down her spine. What was going on here? How tightly were the Ilduin bound? And in what ways? She closed her fist. “I do not know what to think.”

      “Nor I. Perhaps we share the scar because we shared the experience.”

      “Perhaps.” After all, Tess thought, it had been she who had told Sara to cleanse Glassidor.

      And little enough they had accomplished in the end, for as they had traveled south to the Anari lands, they had heard rumors of other hive-masters like Lantav, mages who melded the minds of many into one mind.

      And worse, they had glimpsed the dark power behind Lantav. Something not of this world, Tess thought. Something greater than any power in this world. Something she doubted she and Sara were strong enough to face.

      Tom seemed to draw his attention back from the fire. “Sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “I was daydreaming.”

      “We’re all exhausted,” Sara said reassuringly. “I wish I could lie down and sleep.”

      Tom smiled faintly. “Not with all those swords pointed at us.”

      Tess returned his smile, then twisted to look at the encircling Anari. Giri and Ratha had predisposed her to like their kind, but someone or something among these men filled her with a dark sense of cold, oily evil. One among them belonged to the enemy. One among them was a traitor to his kind.

      She wished she could tell which one, but that sight was denied her. Instead she was gifted only with the amorphous ugly feeling.

      Suddenly the night sky filled with a red flare to the south of them. All of them gaped, never having seen such before.

      Then Tess felt something else. Her head bowed, and her heart ached. “Many are dying,” she said. “Too many.”

      Sara gripped her hand and squeezed it. “I feel it, too,” she said in a hushed voice. “The battle has begun.”

      Two hours felt like two days as they waited for the return of their companions. Tess’s thoughts kept returning to Acher, leader and friend, a man with strength to lean on. A man who still distrusted her, yet protected her. She closed her eyes, willing his safe return along with Giri and Ratha.

      Eventually the sound of heavy, uneven footfalls could be heard approaching across the rocky terrain. The three immediately rose to their feet, and their captors turned their attention and their swords to the sounds.

      Moments later, as if born of the very darkness itself, Archer appeared. Giri and Ratha followed, between them holding yet another Anari, who appeared to have trouble keeping his feet. Farther yet behind them came another handful of dark men. Then no more.

      “We were the ones ambushed,” Archer announced. “Most of Gewindi-Tel were slaughtered.”

      The man being steadied by Ratha and Giri lifted his head suddenly, and the heat of anger blazed from him, almost palpable in the night. “We were betrayed!” Jenah spat. “Betrayed by one of our own.”

      Tess hurried toward him. “You are injured!”

      “Aye, Lady,” Giri said. “A sword gashed his back as he fought to defend his brothers. Let no one question his valor on this night.”

      “Let me see.”

      But Jenah straightened himself and shook off the support of Ratha and Giri. “I need no white healer. I need a sword. I want to know who betrayed us!” Then, his last dregs of strength used up, he crumpled to his knees.

      “Lady,” said Giri urgently, as he, Ratha and Archer formed a protective triangle around the fallen leader, swords drawn. Tom and Sara drew their weapons, as well, and stood back to back.

      Tess needed no further encouragement. She ran forward to the fallen Anari, hoping against hope that she could find in herself whatever it was that had saved a young lad in Derda who had been all but dead from cold and starvation. She had no idea what she had done then, but everyone had been sure she had been the cure.

      Now she knelt and laid her hands on the fallen man’s back, against the hot, wet blood, feeling the slash beneath her palms. She closed her eyes, imagining as vividly as she could that the wound beneath her hands was knitting together, muscle to muscle, skin to skin. Her palms grew hot, as if they were aflame, and she nearly cried out.

      Moments later, the world faded into blackness.

      * * * *

      A healer such as the world hadn’t seen since the White Lady, Theriel, Archer thought, as he watched over the unconscious Tess and the steadily improving Jenah. With his own eyes he had seen flesh heal beneath her hands. Now there was nothing but a scar left across Jenah’s back.

      But the cost to Tess had been great. As the sun began to rise, painting the red desert in

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