Death's Mistress

CHAPTER 24

Even as the Norukai ships limped away into the night, the pain and terror of their raid lingered in Renda Bay. The villagers pulled together to put out the fires, tend to the wounded, and count the dead—and missing.

Nathan looked down at his gore-spattered sword. His new homespun shirt—which Jann had made for her husband—was now torn and soaked with blood. The wizard found himself staring at the fabric, picking at the sticky, crusty mess. Magic was so much cleaner than this! When he realized he was focusing on such a trivial thing, he knew he was feeling the effects of shock.

He checked over his hands and arms, ran fingers across his scalp to see if he had been injured without realizing it. In the heat of battle a fighter could suffer grievous wounds and never notice until he dropped dead from blood loss. Thankfully, Nathan found only minor cuts, scratches, and a bump behind his right ear. He didn’t even remember being struck there.

“I appear to be intact enough,” he muttered to himself. He looked around at the flurry of people, some standing stunned and helpless while others ran about frantically trying to help. He realized with an ache in his heart that, even though he had briefly felt a twinge of his gift during the heat of the battle, he had no magic now and was unable to heal even his small wounds.

Bannon Farmer looked lost and drained, like a rag wrung out and left to dry. He was covered with blood, clumps of uprooted hair, gray smears of brain tissue, even bone fragments caught in the material of his shirt. During the battle, he had fought as if possessed by a war spirit; Nathan had never seen anything like it. Now, though, Bannon just looked like a broken boy.

But Nathan had to worry more about the injured and the dying. Without powerfully gifted healers, the people of Renda Bay needed to tend their wounded by traditional means. They had only a few trained doctors to care for maladies or injuries, such as when the fishhook had cut poor Phillip’s nose and left a long scar.

Nathan swallowed hard, remembering the man. Jann knelt next to her husband’s body sprawled on the ground in the festival square, the extinguished fire arrow still protruding through his throat. He had died with a look of surprise on his face; at least the man had suffered no pain. Jann wept, her head bowed, her shoulders hitching up and down.

Moving from person to person, Nathan helped the healers bandage knife wounds and wrap cloth around cracked skulls. The victims moaned or cried out in pain as doctors used needle and thread to bind the worst gashes. When the night breeze blew in his face, the smell of blood and smoke overpowered the salty iodine smell of the bay. So much damage …

Fortunately, Nicci had unleashed her full powers, and Nathan knew how formidable the sorceress was. But he was a formidable wizard himself—or at least he had been. If he had possessed his gift tonight, if he could have woven spells just as destructive as Nicci’s, most of these casualties wouldn’t exist. The raiders would have been driven back before they could set foot ashore. These villagers who lay wounded and dead would still be alive, tending crops, fixing nets, or setting sail into the bay for the next day’s catch.

He had failed. Magic had failed him—and in his own turn, he had failed the people of Renda Bay. Nathan Rahl had failed himself.

If only he could have thrown wizard’s fire at the Norukai vessels, incinerated the sails, kept the raiders from disembarking! He could have used a binding spell to stop them from advancing, or even unleashed a sleep web to fell them all like stalks of harvested wheat, and then the people of Renda Bay could have tied up the slavers, seized their ships, freed the captives chained to the oars below like animals in pens.…

Nathan clenched his fists, gritted his teeth, and shouted, “I am a wizard!” Even if prophecy was gone from the world, he could not lose everything. He refused to believe that with the unraveling of prophecy, his other skills had disappeared as well, no matter what the witch woman had cryptically predicted. No, he did still have magic. He knew it. It was part of him. He was gifted!

As anger swirled within him, Nathan felt an unexpected sizzle along his forearms, tracking back into his chest, as if some arcane lightning had shot through his bloodstream. Yes, he knew that spark!

The magic might have gone dormant inside him, but Nathan dredged it out, pulled it kicking and struggling like one of these captives being hauled to a slaver ship. “I am a wizard, and I am in control of my magic!” he said to himself. He could use it to help these people now.

He saw two matronly healers beside a man who made low gurgling sounds. Still feeling the rejuvenating tingle inside his fingers, inside his body, Nathan hurried over to them. He could help.

The victim lay on his back with a broken Norukai spear shaft through his chest. Although the jagged ivory point had missed his heart, it had ripped through his lung. Blood streamed out of his blue lips, and he kept coughing. He spasmed, and the two distraught tenders could do nothing for him.

When Nathan approached, the women shook their heads. The victim’s face contorted with silent pain. His eyes were round and glassy. He coughed again, and a pink foam of blood covered his lips.

“We can only wait for the Sea Mother to take him,” said one of the women. Her face was streaked with blood and tears.

Nathan looked down at the broken shaft of wood, which kept the dying man propped upright. “We must remove the spear,” he said.

The other woman shook her head. “If you do that, he will die. Let the man have peace and dignity.”

“And if you leave the spear in, he will die.” His azure eyes became steely. “There might be a chance. He is beyond your skills, but I have magic—let me try.” The two women stared at Nathan, and he encouraged them to leave. “You go tend to someone you might save.”

They nodded, gently touched the dying man, and hurried off to the other injured townspeople.

When the pair of healers had gone, Nathan grasped the slick, bloody spear. As gently as he could, though there was no gentle way to deal with such an insult to the man’s body, he pulled the wooden shaft out. The man let out a gasping scream. Fresh blood gushed from his mouth, and a bright flow ran out of the ragged hole in his chest. As the man writhed, the wound in his lung made a loud sucking, gasping sound. He would be dead in minutes.

Nathan summoned the magic within him, grasped for the tingle, the touch of his Han, and increased it to a surge, a flow of energy. Additive Magic. He had done this many times before—so many times. It was child’s play for one with the gift, and he knew he could control it.

He pressed his hands against the open wound, pushed his palms down on the streaming blood. He could feel the healing force, and he let the magic flow through him. With his restored gift, he sought out the ripped blood vessels, the torn tissue inside the lung, the brutal hole the spear shaft had tunneled through his chest and back. He could reattach strands of muscle fibers, cement the splintered fragments of bone. He would fix this! He would knit it all together, make this man whole again … whole, as the witch woman Red had said Nathan needed to be. Whole again! The gift wasn’t gone from him. The magic was still his to control, even if he hadn’t yet found Kol Adair.

Nathan gritted his teeth and concentrated harder, forced this man to heal. The magic writhed like a serpent trying to escape, but Nathan made his demands. He could heal. He was in control. He was strong again!

But in a malicious twist, the healing magic fought back, recoiled, and did exactly the opposite of what he wanted. Instead of sealing the bleeding wound, the magic ricocheted and rebounded, becoming a monster that destroyed rather than repaired.

Magic flowed out of Nathan as he pressed down with his hands to stop the blood. The vengeful backlash erupted—ripping the spear wound into a huge gash, splintering the man’s ribs, and turning him inside out. His heart and lungs spilled out in a horrific explosion of blood and tissue. The man didn’t even have time to scream, but lay back arching his neck, then collapsed.

Nathan stared in revulsion and disbelief down at his blood-drenched hands. He had felt the magic. He had tried to heal the poor victim … but instead of just dying peacefully, the man had been split open like an overripe fruit. Nathan had done that! The victim would have died anyway, but not like this!

Nathan staggered back, opening and closing his mouth, but he had no words. He thought he had lost his magic, but this was worse than merely being impotent. The gift had turned against him. If his ability did come back to him, what if he couldn’t control it?

He stared in dismay at the appalling, mangled corpse, sure that a crowd would gather to accuse him of a terrible crime. He wondered if even on her worst days as Death’s Mistress, Nicci had done such an awful thing.

When he looked up, he met Bannon’s glassy gaze. The young man seemed so filled with horror at the events of the night that this new instance had very little effect on him.

Bile rose in the wizard’s throat, and he turned away, his shoulders slumped. He didn’t want Nicci to see this either, though perhaps she could help him understand what had happened. How could his gift have turned so violently against him? For now, even if he sensed magic returning to him, he didn’t dare use it. He might cause an even worse disaster.

Another astonishing realization came to him. What if he had decided to hurl a ball of wizard’s fire at one of the Norukai ships during the battle, and it recoiled on him instead? If the furious white-hot flames had struck back, they could have wiped out half the town of Renda Bay.

Nathan groaned deep in his throat and lurched away from the people who were busy bandaging and tending the injured, splinting broken bones, propping up wounded heads on rolled cloths. He felt ashamed and afraid.

He was dangerous.

Instead, he picked up a bucket and joined the firefighting crews to help extinguish the last blazes that still spread through the town. In that, at least, he could cause little damage.