The Half Dwarf Prince (19 page)

Rundo hadn’t explained how he had made the trip to Freeman in under a day—they had been pushing too hard to get to Shinestone—and now Jabaal was even more curious. Now was as good a time as any to ask, Jabaal thought.

“How did you get to Freeman so quickly
, Rundo?”

Rundo looked at his friend. “I turned into a hawk and flew there.”

He said it so nonchalantly that Jabaal wasn’t sure if he was messing with him. Jabaal just stared at him across the fire. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“I am.”

Jabaal was struggling with this. Rundo was normally very talkative, very lighthearted; he told jokes and played pranks. Now Jabaal was getting very short answers. Rundo must really be worried about Grundel. Rundo and Grundel had been close when Jabaal left Evermount, but the extent of this worry, the pain he saw in Rundo, told him that that relationship had continued to grow after he left. He saw that Rundo cared as much about Grundel as Jabaal did about Grizzle. He was about to ask how he had learned so much about being a druid, but he realized Rundo was giving short answers for a reason. He thought about how he would feel if he thought Grizzle was dying. He didn’t think he would feel like talking, either. He left Rundo to his silence. Talking would just make this harder for him. Rundo might need to open up, talk about his fears, and maybe even break down, eventually, but right now he needed to hold on to hope. They would deal with the rest if things didn’t work out.

The next morning they were moving again as the sun came up. The sun was directly overhead as they rode into the open fields that surrounded the mountain. Rundo reached out and touched the horses. Through the link he pushed the
tired horses into a run. It was the last mile. Then they were at the mountain. They grabbed their gear, and Rundo led them up the path to the new entrance to Shinestone.

The dwarves at the top of the hill didn’t even question Rundo. He walked into Shinestone followed by Jabaal and Hellen. Outside they were still burning orc bodies. The floors of the tunnels were still stained with blood. It would be a while before the dwarves were able to
attend to that, but it seemed that all the bodies were at least gone now.

Rundo followed the passage down. He had to stop once to ask one of the dwarves
for directions. A few turns later they found Jerrie sitting in a chair outside the room. They hadn’t known each other long, but after only a couple of weeks he trusted this man. They had, after all, been through more in those couple of weeks than most people went through together in a lifetime.

“How is he?”

Jerrie looked at Jabaal and Hellen, then back at Rundo. “I don’t know. His fever is bad. The wound looks okay, I think, but he’s got a bad fever. He shakes a lot in his sleep. I don’t know, Rundo.”

“Rundo
,” Hellen said from behind him.

“Oh y
eah. Jerrie, this is Jabaal and Hellen. Jabaal, Hellen, this is Jerrie.”

Jerrie looked at Jabaal. “
The
Jabaal?”

Rundo nodded his head. “
The one and only.”

Hellen looked at Jerrie. “It is nice to meet you
, Jerrie, but I would really like to take a look at Grundel now.”

“Oh
, of course,” he said as he stood and opened the door. They all walked into the room and found Frau sitting in the chair next to Grundel’s bed.

“Frau,
meet Hellen and Jabaal. Hellen is the healer I told you about,” Rundo said, walking over to the bed.

Frau looked at Hellen. “Please save him. Anything you need
. . .”

Hellen walked to the bed to look at the wound.

“You made it back faster then I expected,” Frau said to Rundo.

Rundo nodded
, watching as Hellen inspected the wound. She put a finger inside his stomach and felt around. She pulled her bloody finger out.

“The wound cut his liver. That was what was bleeding. It wasn’t a bad cut, and it is healing now. That is likely infected. That would explain the fever. I’m going to rub some stuff in and on the wound to fight
the infection. The internal injuries seem to be healing fine. The muscles that were cut are going to take weeks, probably months, to heal. But right now we need to kill the infection. Once we stop the infection the fever should break. I can’t promise that he’s going to make it, even if we beat the infection. His body has been in shock and he is really hot. Even if we save him he might not be the same when he wakes up. A fever like that can do things to your brain.”

Everyone just stared at her. She reached into her bag and took out a yellow
salve, then rubbed it along the wound on the liver. She could feel the roughness of the damaged organ. After that she began stitching up Grundel’s wounded stomach. It was a bad cut. Grundel was lucky that a nicked liver had been all he suffered. The liver usually heals on its own, and there were so many other things that could have been damaged.

“Help me sit him up,” she said to no one in particular. Jerrie and Jabaal sat the unconscious Grundel up in the bed. She took a small vial of liquid and slowly poured the liquid into his mouth. She waited for him to swallow. It wasn’t a lot of fluid. He coughed, and then he swallowed. She nodded to Jabaal and they laid Grundel
back down. “That should help fight the infection.” Then she pulled out a needle, sucked fluid out of another vial, and injected it into Grundel’s arm. “That should help his body break the fever.”

“What do we do now
?” Frau asked.

“All we can do now is wait and see. I will give him some more medicine tonight, and twice a day until his fever breaks. When the fever breaks we will know he beat the infection.”

Grundel fought through Shinestone for at least the hundredth time. Every time it was the same. Every time they fought off the orcs. Every time Verrator tried to stab Frau. Every time he jumped in front of her, and every time she kissed him before he died. He didn’t understand why he kept living through this over and over. Why couldn’t he change it? If he knew what Verrator was going to do
, why couldn’t he change it? Sometimes between the battles being replayed he would hear voices. Usually it was Frau, but sometimes it was Jerrie. New voices came now. Between refighting the battle he heard Rundo and Jabaal. He was trying to figure out why he was hearing those voices, but then he had to fight. The trolls had Shinestone. He fought through the tunnels, Jerrie saved him, and he saved Jerrie. Rundo had saved them all a bunch of times. He was really getting good with that druid stuff. Then it happened all over again. They saw that the dwarves of Tiefes Loch hadn’t even tried to take the entrance. He turned on Verrator, but he was already moving to strike at Frau. He dove in front of her, he felt nothing at first, but then he felt fire in his gut. He listened as Verrator told them about how big the dwarves of Tiefes Loch were and how they were going to take over all of the kingdoms. He was almost to the part where she was going to come to him. It was worth fighting through every time just for this part. But just as she turned to him everything changed. It was different this time. Everything was going dark. Was he dying before she could kiss him?

Jabaal was sitting in the chair next to Grundel’s bed when his eyes started to open. They had all been taking turns watching and waiting for him to wake up. His fever had broken yesterday. Hellen said he was out of the woods. Now he just had to wake up on his own. She said it could be hours or it could take weeks. It took a day
, and Jabaal smiled as he watched his Grundel’s eyes flutter open.  Grundel looked around, trying to figure out where he was.

“Are you dead
, too?” Grundel asked Jabaal.

Jabaal couldn’t help but laugh. “Do you think a
paladin of Kalime would end up in a dwarven mountain in the afterlife? No, Grundel, I am not dead, and neither are you.”

Grundel let the words sink in. He was sure he had died. He had even relived that moment over and over. He had relived it all.

“Oh no.”

Jabaal looked at him curiously. “You lived through a terrible wound that could have easily kill you
, and you say, ‘Oh no’?”

Grundel looked at his father’s best friend. “Frau. I thought I was dying. I
—”

Jabaal put a hand on Grundel’s shoulder. “I know. Rundo and your friend Jerrie have updated me. That is going to be a difficult situation.”

“I will just have to leave here. I can’t be with her, and I can’t be around her and not be with her,” Grundel told Jabaal. He knew Jabaal had been a good friend to his father. He couldn’t think of a better person to talk to about this.

Jabaal was smiling. “Grundel
, there are a lot of things that are going to happen in the near future. Frau is going to need you, I think. I also think she will have her own opinion about you leaving. Remember, whether she thought you were dying or not, she expressed that she had feelings for you as well. She has also spent more time next to you since you were injured than anyone else. I don’t think she is going to just leave.”

“I can’t be with her
, Jabaal. She just became queen. My father was going to lose his throne because of me. I won’t let her lose hers.”

Jabaal laughed. “And you think she is just going to let you decide that for her
, huh? Listen, Grundel, I’m not saying you are wrong. I am saying that you are going to have to talk to her about this. From what I’ve seen, she’s going to have something to say. It wouldn’t hurt to talk to your father, either. A council of kings has been called. The other kings are coming to Shinestone. Why don’t you just worry about getting better now? There is still a lot of fighting to be done, from what I understand. You can worry about the future after we get through the now.”

Grundel thought about what Jabaal had just said, and then he realized something. “We? Does that mean you are staying?”

“You think I am going to let you all do all the fighting? Do you think I’m going to let your father go to war without me? I would never hear the end of it, plus Hellen has decided that she is going to be needed more here than she is in Freeman.”

Grundel looked at Jabaal. He had been one of the most amazing fighters Grundel could have ever imagined. He had seen him fighting through the orcs at Evermount. He had been surrounded in the blue glow of Kalime. He had cut through orcs, leaping and diving and rolling. He fought like Jerrie
, only enhanced with the powers of his god. He had lost his leg, though.

Jabaal had apparently understood his suspicion. “If I can walk on it
, I can fight on it. Kalime will guide my swords and give strength to my legs, real and fake.”

Frau walked in the room then. She stopped just inside the door when she realized he was awake. She looked from Grundel to Jabaal. Jabaal stood up.

“I’ll come back and check on you later. Remember what I said.”

When the door closed behind
Jabaal, Frau walked to Grundel’s bedside. He tried to sit up but a sharp pain in his stomach told him that was not going to happen. He hissed as air passed through his teeth.

“Don’t try to sit up. The blade cut through your stomach muscles. It will be a while before you can get up. That means that you are going have to just
lie there and listen to what I have to say.”

Grundel was about to protest but she put a hand up and stopped him. “Don’t say anything, just listen. Grundel
, I don’t know what has happened to us; I don’t know what could happen to us. I knew I felt something for you before, but when that sword went through you I felt lost. I haven’t known you long and I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I know I don’t want to lose you.”

Grundel was going to tell her how they couldn’t, how duty had to go first, but something stopped him.
He remembered his last dream. He remembered how he felt when she didn’t kiss him.

“Frau
, I have been fighting my feelings for you. My father nearly lost his throne because of me. I don’t know what is going to happen with us, but Jabaal had a good point. I don’t know if we will even both make it out of this war alive. I am yours, as an advisor, a friend, and more—if you want it—until this is all over with. When this war is over, if we are both still alive, we can figure out what happens after that.”

Frau stared at him for a long time
, saying nothing. Then she leaned forward and pressed her lips against his.

“We do what we can now. We fight the Tiefes Loch. Whatever Bordin has for us after that
, we will just have to take the healer’s advice.”

“Who
, Hellen? You talked to Hellen about me?” Grundel asked.

“No
, I haven’t talked to anyone, but when we didn’t know what was going to happen with you she said all we could do was wait and see. Now we don’t know what will happen with us, so I say we just wait and see.” Frau said to Grundel softly. Her lips were inches from his, and she could feel his breath against her lips.

The door opened behind her and she stood up. Rundo ran into the room followed by Jerrie, Jabaal, and Hellen.

Jabaal looked at them apologetically. “I told him to let you all talk, but he said I could move or he would send me flying down the tunnel. He looked like he was actually going to do it.”

Rundo was already at Grundel’s bedside. He looked back at Jabaal. “I told you I would.” He looked back at Grundel. “How do you feel?”

Grundel hadn’t really even had a chance to think about it. He felt the pain in his stomach, but he checked everything else now. His fingers and toes worked fine. It hurt to move anything below his waist, but he dealt with it. “Everything seems to be working. How long till I can move around?” he said, looking to Hellen.

“Your liver wasn’t damaged badly
, but your muscles were. Just based on how quickly you are already healing, I would say you can start getting out of bed in about a couple of days for a few minutes at a time. It will be a couple more weeks before you will be able to really move around, and you will feel pain in the area for months,” she told him.

Grundel accepted the news. They all talked for a while before Hellen told everyone they had to get out so that Grundel could rest. Grundel tried to argue, but no one else was going to argue with Hellen. He lay in the bed alone. He was alive, he had Frau
, at least for now, and he would soon have a war to fight. He needed to focus on his recovery. According to Hellen he would be able to move around by the time his father and the others arrived to start preparing for the first dwarf war in thousands of years.