Masques (Sianim #1)(46)

The glass desert had been fertile soil once.

He walked until well after the sun rose, following no visible trail - losing them in the wilds as best he might. He stopped when they reached the cache he'd set up on his way here, far enough off the trails that they should be safe for a while.

He opened the bedroll awkwardly, unwilling to set her on the hard ground, and gently placed her on the soft blankets. His arms were cramping and sore from carrying her, so he had to stretch a bit before he did anything else.

Her darker skin hid the flush of fever, but it was hot and dry to his touch. Her breathing was hoarse and he could hear the fluid in her lungs. He rolled the second blanket up and stuffed it under her head to help her breathe. Efficiently, gently, he cleaned her with spell-warmed water.

On the dark skin it should have been more difficult to see the bruises, but her skin was grey from illness - revealing the darker patches. Some were obviously old, probably from her initial capture. But fresh bruises overlaid the old ones.

Three ribs were either broken or cracked; he wasn't well enough trained in healing to tell the difference. The ribs and a large lump on the back of her head seemed the worst of her wounds - both were more likely the result of her initial capture than any torture.

Her fingernails had been removed, swollen knuckles revealing the violence of the method used to pull them. The toes on her right foot were broken, the smallest torn off completely. She had been whipped with efficiency from the top of her shoulders to the backs of her knees. But these would heal in a few weeks, except of course for the misplaced toe.

He pulled out the bag of simples that he had brought with him. He wasn't a healer by any means, but he'd picked up enough to bind her wounds.

When he was through cleaning her back, he covered it with a mold paste and wrapped the bandage around tight enough to help her ribs. He splinted the toes and cleaned and bandaged her ankles, hands and wrists.

It was while he was working on her wrists that he noticed the large sore where the inner side of her arm had been skinned. He stilled, then very gently covered the sore with ointment and wrapped it.

It was one of the ae'Magi's favorite games. The inner arm was tender, and a man who was skilled with a skinning knife could cause significant pain without incapacitating his victim. The ae'Magi usually did something extremely nasty first to "soften" the victim.

Carefully Wolf opened Aralorn's mouth and examined the inside of her cheek, the roof of her mouth, under her tongue, and her teeth. Nothing. He looked inside her ear and said a few soft words of magic. Nothing. As he turned her head to look at her other ear, something sparkled in the sun. Her eyes.

Carefully Wolf held her face in the sunlight and examined her eyelids. They were both, on careful examination, slightly swollen, but it was the seepage that told the real story.

He held his open hand several inches over her eye and murmured another spell. When he look his hand away, he held four long, slender, steel needles, barbed like a fisherman's hook. The needles were sharp enough that they slid in with little pain, but every time the eye moved the sharpened edges of the needle cut a little more. They were not the expensive silver needles, but the cheaper iron-based steel - made primarily for coarser work.

He looked at them for a minute and they melted, leaving his hand undamaged. As he removed them from her other eye, he wished passionately, and not for the first time in his life, that he knew more.

True healing was one of the first things taught to a shapeshifter, but for a human magic-user it was one of the last arts learned. Increasing the efficacy of herbs was the best he knew. He doubted that in this case even a shapeshifter could heal her eyes - he seemed to remember something about wounds made with cold iron being more difficult than others. He put her in a soft cotton shirt that reached to her thighs. For lack of a better idea, he put a cold compress over her eyes and bound it tightly in place.

He had reached the end of his expertise. Tiredly, he covered her with another blanket and lay down next to her, not quite touching. He slept.

* * *

HER WORLD CONSISTED OF VAGUE IMPRESSIONS OF VISION AND sound. She saw people she knew, strangely altered. Sometimes they filled her with horror, other times they drew no emotion from her at all. There was Talor as he'd been the last time she'd seen him in Sianim - then something happened to him and he was dead, only he was talking to her and telling her things that she didn't want to hear.

Sometimes she floated in a great nothingness that scared her, but not as much as the pain. Her body was a great distance away, and she would pull back as far as she could because she was afraid of what she would find when she returned. Then, like the stretchy lubris rope that children played with, something would snap and she would find herself back in the midst of the pain and heat and terror. Someone screamed; it hurt her ears and she wished they would stop.

* * *

THIS TIME HER RETURN WAS DIFFERENT. BESIDES BEING HOT, she was also wet and sticky. The pain was dimmed to bearable levels; even the ache in her side was less. There was something that attracted her attention and she concentrated, trying to figure out what it was. It had called her back from her nothingness into somewhere she'd much rather not be. She decided in a moment of pseudo-rationality that she needed to find it and kill it so she could be free to go away.

She looked for it in her dreams, and fragments of memory touched her. There was something terribly wrong with her eyes. Cold iron whose wounds were permanent. It had bitten and chewed and ...