Chapter 27
In the morning or after the sun had risen, Connacher brought the healer in to me. I lay on my stomach in a pool of blood with my new clothes in shreds scattered around me. Vaguely, I was aware of the gasps of horror as the newcomer saw my back but I was also floating in a blank void to keep the pain at bay. Blackfin had not given me that, it was something my fractured state now possessed.
“Lift him on the table,” the rough-voiced man spoke and several sets of hands lifted me in one stiff piece as if I were a plank of wood. One cursed as he slipped in my blood but did not drop me. My body slammed into a tabletop that was cold my belly.
“He’s not dead, is he? He’s stiff as a corpse. I see bones in that mess.”
“Shut your mouth, Egan. If Connacher hears you, you just might join him. Bring me hot water, bowls of tallow and clean linens from my workroom. By the Dragon’s Beard, what a mess. What am I to do with this?” He bitched the entire time as he cut off the remains of my clothes and prodded at my wounds.
Slowly, I felt the faint trickles of healing magic wash over me and begin to repair what the wizard had done. By the time the soldiers or helpers had returned with the healer’s items, Connacher had returned to my side.
“What did he do to warrant this, Conn?” The healer demanded.
“He escaped the cells in the quarry. He makes a habit of escaping,” the Elassai Wizard said flatly.
“I see that by the slave collar he wears. Unusual metal, never seen one black and gold before.”
“It was created to control only he as a silver one with dayied cuffs did not.”
“Well, if you expect him to serve you after this beating, he’s in no condition to get up, let alone work. What does he do? Too small to be a quarry slave. Maybe a pleasure slave? Bit scrawny for that, if you ask me. Besides, I checked for that, he’s not been used that way.”
“Really?” Connacher seemed skeptical. “His last master was clearly a sodomite.”
“Not with this boy. Not yet,” the healer said positively. “His sexual rhythms have not been disturbed. He’s no virgin but definitely inexperienced. Bring a good price if you sell him.” I felt him lift my eyelids and study my eyes, run his fingers down my cheekbones and part my hair. He half-rolled me and explored other parts of my body. “Half-human and half-Elassai. Noble blood at that.” The healer’s voice sharpened. “Connacher, who is he?”
“A slave I picked up from Agenor’s farm out on Middens Middle. He was found in the Caladia River broken in many places. Agenor found him and deduced he fell from the glacier, thought he might be one of the people of the Lost City.”
“That’s got to be 400 miles from Agenor’s! He fell that far and traveled that distance down-river?”
“It seems the boy has an infinite ability to survive,” Connacher returned. “When will he be mobile?”
“Healed or mobile?”
“Mobile.” His voice was cruel, almost as deadly as the human wizard’s was.
“A week. Less if I force healing but it would leave me in a weakened state. Where do you need him and for what? That makes a difference in his mobility.”
“He is an assassin and I need him able to ride, fly and infiltrate.”
“Then, maybe you should have thought of that before you nearly crippled him. I can push him to Thursday. That’s four days. He’ll be in severe pain but I suppose you don’t care. It won’t incapacitate him–too much.”
“Do it, then. Don’t feed him, I’ll do that.”
“Whatever you say, Connacher,” the healer shrugged and went back to work on me. He finished some time later, tied me loosely to the table and had his helpers carry it with me on it into a room I recognized from my previous encounter. I was back in the room with the small cage. I made an intense effort and turned my head to see the thing that was healing me. An Elassai mage dressed in country attire, clean cut and younger than I’d expected. I reached out a hand and gripped his sleeve. Begged him, “Please don’t put me in the cage.”
He shook off my hand and cursed. “Don’t touch me, spiorad narnhghlan.”
“I’m not,” I denied. “I’m not an unclean spirit.”
“Then what are you?”
“Yfed gwaed,” I gasped and he pushed away from me in total shock. Stared at me and ran out of the room crying for the Elder and the guards. I turned my head away as the pair stood in the doorway guarding it as if I were some kind of invincible monster. I couldn’t even raise my body off the table let alone attack and harm anyone.
The guards brought back the Healer and held him until the Elder was called. The minute the younger man saw the wizard, he berated him, asked him a million questions and became incensed at the answers. It took a great deal of verbal badgering for Connacher to calm him down and only with major threats. I learned the Healer’s name, it was Linter Aganas and he was the younger cousin to Connacher as they shared the same magical bent. One was a wizard and the other a healer.
“Quiet, you fool,” Connacher hissed. “Don’t make me do something you’ll regret.”
The healer sputtered to a stop. “Like what?”
“I think you know me well enough for that, Linter. I do not wish to explain to our family how you came to be poisoned, shot or stabbed. I assume you do not wish to be my pet’s first mission?”
“What is your mission?”
“I will aim him at the Emperor, Gleneden of Ehrenburg and then the Lyr,” Connacher said, his eyes lost in his visions of grandeur. “He will destroy the other beings that live in the ice, courtesy of the human wizard, Blackfin. And then, this slave, this creature bound by three masters will deliver up the Wizard Blackfin to my very hand.”
“If you haven’t crippled him,” the healer retorted. “Let me go. I won’t say a word about this on my oath as a healer.”
“I know you won’t, cousin,” Connacher smiled and spoke a spell that bound the man’s tongue. Only then did the guards release him.