The High Druid's Blade (The Defenders of Shannara, #1)(65)

When the door finally opened, there she was, exactly as he remembered her. Brilliant green eyes, honey-colored hair artificially streaked with silver, perfect features, not very big, sort of on the short side, but immediately unforgettable. He’d fallen in love with her the moment his father hired her to care for him—she only fifteen, he still a child and not yet even aware of what real love was, but spellbound even so. His mother was dead by then, and his father didn’t want him to grow up without a woman’s hand. So Leofur had been brought in to care for him in those years before his father remarried, and even at eight years of age he was smitten from day one.

A hopeless infatuation, of course, but it was one he still remembered as if it had happened yesterday. When she left, he had thought he might follow her. But by then he was realizing how hopeless it all was, and so he had chosen not only to quit thinking about her but also to not see her again.

That had been three years ago, and this was the first time he had been able to make himself come looking for her. She gave him a flat, expressionless look, her smooth face hiding the surprise that flashed momentarily in her eyes.

“Can we come in?” he asked, trying his best not to give away his own feelings on seeing her again. “Please?”

She stood where she was, her gaze shifting between the girl and him. “How bad is this?” she asked finally.

“About as bad as it could be,” he admitted. “We need to get off the streets right away.”

Without another word, she stepped aside, holding the door open to allow them to enter and then quickly closing it behind them.

“Sit her down at the kitchen table,” she told him, hurrying ahead to move several stacks of clothes she had been sorting. She glanced back at him as she did so. “I wondered if I would ever see you again.”

He nodded, his face gone flaming red. “I just couldn’t,” he said.

At the end of things, he had told her he loved her. Just before she left them to go back to her own life. He thought maybe she might take him with her. But instead she sat him down and told him she couldn’t do that. He would have to stay with his father until he was old enough to be out on his own. What she was telling him, of course, was that she didn’t love him in the way he loved her. It was a terrible moment; he had felt destroyed.

“Who is this you have with you?” she asked.

“This is Chrysallin. She’s from the Highlands. Arcannen took her prisoner and locked her away in Dark House. He’s working with that old crone, Mischa.”

He went on to tell her everything—all about the first kidnapping that was meant to lure Paxon Leah to Wayford, the rescue and escape that followed, the second kidnapping and how he had learned about it by chance, and his own rescue of Chrysallin that had brought him here.

“I couldn’t leave her. I couldn’t let what was happening to her continue.”

“Which was some sort of magic?” Leofur turned to the girl. “What were they doing to you?”

Chrysallin looked startled. “I asked! I begged them to tell me! But they wouldn’t answer. Not the Elven woman. Not any of them. They just kept hurting me! They cut me and broke my bones and pulled the skin from my body. They used metal tools to make the pain worse, and all I could think about was how they were taking me apart, destroying me. The way they were making me look …”

Leofur shifted her eyes to Grehling questioningly. What? She mouthed the word soundlessly.

He shook his head. I don’t know.

“Where are you hurt?” Leofur asked the girl.

“Everywhere! Can’t you see?” She was instantly hysterical, wildeyed. “Look at me! No one can see me like this.”

Leofur moved over to sit next to her, taking her hands in her own. “But there’s nothing wrong with you, Chrysallin. Everything is fine.”

The Highland girl gasped in disbelief. “How can you say that? Look at my hands, my fingers. Look at my body!”

And she ripped open her nightshirt to reveal a perfectly flawless breast and shoulders.

Leofur gently pulled her garments back together and took Chrysallin in her arms and held her as she sobbed uncontrollably. “I think it would help if you would lie down. But first let’s give you something to help you sleep.”

She prepared some tea—or something that looked like tea—made of leaves she poured from a small pouch. Chrysallin drank the pungent liquid obediently, now and then glancing to make certain Grehling was still there. When she was finished, she allowed herself to be led over to the couch and placed on it. Leofur brought out a blanket and wrapped her in it, and in moments she was asleep.

Leofur motioned Grehling to join her at the kitchen table. “Well, something’s certainly been done to her. She thinks she’s been tortured, but there’s not a mark on her. How did this happen?”

“Mischa used magic.” Grehling fidgeted, nervous still in her presence. “Bands of greenish light. They were all over the room when I found her, hundreds of them, wrapped around her like ropes. She was twisting and thrashing, and she was clearly in pain.”

“She has to be made to understand there’s nothing wrong, that it’s all in her mind. But it can wait until after she sleeps.” Grehling started to reach for the bag that contained the leaves used to make the tea given Chrysallin, and quickly Leofur held up her hands. “Not that, Grehling,” she said sharply. “There’s more in that tea than what you need just now. Here.”