The Quest for Saint Camber (32 page)

Thank God!

Not that the light did much good. As Dhugal lifted his hand to look around him, he saw at once why he had been choking when he first regained consciousness. He was sitting in water, on a very shallow shelf of rock just at the edge of what obviously had become an underground stream—or river, at this point, for it was too wide for him to even see the other bank of the roiling water that continued to rush past at such a furious pace.

Sand gritted under him as he shifted to take it all in, and his teeth began to chatter from the cold, but he noticed piles of driftwood and other flood wrack caught along the embankment and looming darker against the sides of the cavern, farther from the water. Perhaps some of it was even dry.

Very well. Perhaps he could build a fire. He was going to have to do something to get dry and warm, and soon, or he might as well have drowned. He was a well enough trained battle surgeon to recognize the signs of shock in his own body—and God knew what he might have to contend with when he found Kelson.

If Kelson was still alive, of course. The very thought that he might not be sobered Dhugal fast and lent him strength he did not know he had, to get his feet under him and wobble slowly to a standing position. The effort made him dizzy, and from more than cold and shock, he suddenly realized. He had been too dazed to notice it before, but his head hurt from more than just his long submersion, right at the back of the skull. A quick inspection with his good hand revealed a sizable lump, where he must have cracked it against a rock. He could only hope he did not have a concussion.

His right ankle twinged, too, when he tried to shuffle to higher ground, swelling already in his soggy boot, but he dared not think yet about whether it might be broken. It didn't hurt as much as his wrist; but if it was broken and he took off the boot, he might not get it on again. At least the leather would give him a little support while he tried to search for Kelson. And he could sense no grinding of broken bone as he hobbled as far as a pile of branches and contrived to break off a piece of wood for a crutch, though the ankle did hurt.

He had best shed his waterlogged cloak, at least for the present. The sodden leather and fur must weigh nearly as much as he did; and wet, whatever warmth it might have provided was more than canceled out by the energy he would have to consume, dragging it around. Besides, now that he was thinking a little more clearly, he realized that the air itself probably was not terribly cold down here, even though the water had been, and he was shivering from that. He seemed to recall that underground caverns generally maintained a more or less constant temperature year-round, rather like a wine cellar. If he could get dry, the cold probably would become one of his less important considerations. So if he shed a few layers of his wet clothing—

He nudged his handfire up to hover beside his head and was unlacing his tunic one-handed, anxiously peering into the darkness all around him, when all at once he spied a darker, more regular shape than the piles of flood wrack, lying at the water's edge just a little upstream from where he had come aground. He froze, his head twinging as he concentrated his powers in that direction, but then he was shoving aside the pain of head, wrist, and ankle to hobble in that direction as fast as he could go.

“
Kelson!
” he cried.

He got no response as he approached, but he knew it was the king. The solid silhouette became a lumpy something under a soggy crimson cloak as his handfire drew nearer; and as Dhugal collapsed to his knees beside it in panicked apprehension and began clawing at the wool, he found the prone, scarcely breathing form of Kelson.

“He's alive! Praise God!” Dhugal whispered, though Kelson was not breathing well at all, his head awash on the river bank where he apparently had managed to drag himself, much as Dhugal had done.

Hoping he was not adding to any injuries Kelson already had, Dhugal carefully lifted the king's head clear of the water and, after some little juggling to spare his injured wrist, unfastened the clasp that bound Kelson to the water-logged crimson cloak—which must be at least as heavy as his own had been. That done, he could slide two fingers into the neck of Kelson's tunic and feel for a pulse, though he was not happy at what he read. He tried to get a look at Kelson's pupils, but the angle was all wrong. In any case, Kelson was already in shock, in addition to whatever injuries he might have.

“Got to get him out of the water, get him warm,” Dhugal muttered to himself, dragging the rest of the soggy cloak aside so he could shift Kelson partially onto his side. Thank
God
they had not been wearing mail or even jazerants in the foul weather!

“C'mon, Dhugal, you can do it!” he grunted. “You've got to, or he'll die! Come
on
!”

Bracing himself against the pain he knew it would cost him and determined not to succumb to it, Dhugal shifted Kelson's torso upright enough to grasp him under his arms from behind, slipping his left arm past the injured wrist to hook at the elbow in Kelson's armpit and spare his wrist as much as possible. It still hurt terribly, and Dhugal thought his ankle surely must collapse under him as well, but somehow he managed to drag the unconscious king as far as the cavern wall, perhaps a dozen paces away. Just as they got there, Kelson stirred feebly and began to gasp and choke, coughing up water explosively from his mouth and nose much as Dhugal had done when he first came to. All Dhugal could do was hold him close until it passed, trying to warm him and praying that, rid of the water in his lungs and stomach, Kelson soon would come around.

But Kelson did not regain consciousness when the spasms ceased, though he did breathe easier, and his pulse seemed stronger. Dhugal laid him on his back and loosened his clothing at the neck, cushioning his head with the wet overtunic he pulled off over his own head, then quickly ran his good hand over the rest of Kelson's body to check superficially for broken bones. There was a fair-sized rip in the right leg of Kelson's leather breeches, with a massive bruise already purpling the thigh underneath, and doubtless he would develop other bruises elsewhere—Dhugal knew
he
was going to have a savage crop of them—but nothing appeared to be broken.

Nothing below the neck, at least, but how about above? Dhugal could already see a lump swelling beneath a raw, bloody scrape above Kelson's right eyebrow, and a graze along the left side of his jaw promised another bruise, at least. He prodded both spots lightly with a fingertip, but neither seemed serious enough to cause too much worry.

But when Dhugal again lifted Kelson's eyelids to check his pupils, only the left reacted immediately to light. The right was dilated, and closed down only sluggishly when Dhugal beckoned his handfire closer.

Urgently, Dhugal ran his fingers under the wet black hair to hunt for fractures he had missed the first time, probing with his mind as well as his hand—and found, to his utter horror, that what he had judged, at first inspection, to be a matte of mud in the hair above Kelson's left ear concealed not only a slowly seeping wound, now clotting, but a depressed skull fracture that was nearly the size of a small walnut.

Fear clutched at Dhugal's throat as he found it, and tears came to his eyes. He made himself take a closer look, praying that he was wrong, but he had seen such injuries too often before. The prognosis generally was not good, even with a skilled surgeon's services and adequate facilities. If Kelson regained consciousness soon, there was reason for guarded optimism—
if
the wound above the depression was only superficial, and no infection penetrated the skull—but his chances decreased for every minute he remained unconscious.

Nor were the signs any better as Dhugal tried to use his powers to rouse the king. The shields that should have guarded Kelson's mind were almost nonexistent—intact all around, but shell-thin, breachable by anyone with even a modicum of power—but Dhugal did not want to risk destroying what little defense the shields might afford. His mental nudge at the centers that controlled respiration did seem to ease Kelson's breathing a little, however. That was not so very different from the monitoring he had begun to learn, while Kelson or his father went into deep trancing.

“Shock's the worst threat, right now,” Dhugal told himself, bending to begin stripping off the outermost layers of Kelson's wet clothes—for that, unlike the head injury, was something he
could
do something about. “Gotta get these wet things off him and keep him warm. I'll build a fire, somehow. The air's not that cold—but, God, I am!”

The exertion helped Dhugal get warm, though, even if Kelson looked no better, stripped to a soggy singlet, than he had before. Dhugal was light-headed by the time he was ready to go gather kindling to get a fire started, and his wrist was throbbing, so he decided to take time out to wrap it before he went. With his teeth and his good hand, he managed to tear strips from the lining of the overtunic he had taken off Kelson; and though he was clumsy, trying to bandage his injury with his off hand, it did feel better when he had finished. He considered making a closer inspection of his ankle as well, but discarded the notion immediately when he realized that the swelling now had immobilized his foot in the boot far better than he could have done on his own. And a more careful probe with his powers confirmed that, if anything was broken, it was also being held in place by the boot, so he had best not mess with it for now.

Dealing with both his injuries left him a little weaker in the knees than he had hoped, however, so he decided to have a drink from the hitherto forgotten wine flask, to fortify himself before tackling the task of dragging wood back to Kelson. Later, after he got the fire going, he would have to think about what they were going to eat, while Kelson recovered enough for them to worry about getting out of here in some other manner than the way they had come in, so he knew he needed to hoard what he had; but he did not know whether he could go out looking for wood without at least a swallow or two.

Dhugal's hands shook as he hugged the flask against his chest with his bandaged arm and tried to work the stopper out of the flask with his right hand. He thought with pleasure of the taste of the good Fianna wine he knew Ciard had packed.

But before he could raise it to his lips, Kelson stirred, moaning aloud as he tossed his head from one side to the other and shifted his legs, eyelids fluttering.

“Kelson! Thank God!” Dhugal murmured, wincing as he laid the fingertips of his injured wrist against the king's forehead. “Kelson, are you all right? Can you hear me, Kel?”

With another groan, Kelson opened his eyes, focusing only slowly on Dhugal's face bent anxiously over him.

“Where do you hurt worst?” Dhugal demanded. “Can you tell me?”

“Thirsty—”

Though the swollen lips shaped the word but awkwardly, Dhugal rejoiced in even that glimmer of returning function.

“You're thirsty. Yes, of course. Here, let me help you sit up a little.”

“So thirsty …” Kelson repeated drowsily.

Elated, Dhugal slipped his injured arm under Kelson's head to raise it, cradling it carefully in the crook of his elbow as he held the flask's opening to his mouth.

“It's wine. Is that all right?” he whispered. “You've probably had enough water for a while.”

Kelson did not answer, but only drank greedily, taking four or five deep swallows before pushing the flask aside.

“'S good,” he murmured. “God, it feels like fire in m'stomach, though. Have we got any food?”

“Afraid not. Not right now, at any rate. I was going to build us a fire, but I was afraid to leave you unconscious. If you think you'll be all right alone for a few minutes, I'll get some wood and see if I can get it started.”

“'M not a baby,” Kelson said muzzily. “I'll probably just go back to sleep.”

“Sorry, but I can't let you do that,” Dhugal replied. “You were unconscious, Kelson, I don't know for how long, but you've got a concussion. I—don't know how bad it is, but I want you to try to stay awake for a while. You were practically comatose.”

Kelson blinked, a vague look shadowing the grey eyes. “Comatose?”

“In a coma, unconscious,” Dhugal replied, suddenly wary. “Kelson, are you all right?” He paused a beat. “Do you remember what happened?”

Kelson swallowed with difficulty and shook his head, but the movement made him wince.

“I—have the feeling I should know what you're talking about, but I—”

Suddenly, he went white as the singlet he wore, one hand shooting up to grasp the front of Dhugal's shirt in a death-grip.

“Dear God, everything's blurring. I can't breathe! And my head—”

Even as Kelson said it, Dhugal guessed the cause, thrusting a mental probe into the flask still in his hand and then flinging it across the cavern in rage.

How had he not noticed it? There was
merasha
in the flask—not as high a concentration as what they had drunk with Arilan, but high enough—and something else besides. He did not know what the rest was, but it seemed to be choking Kelson. Already, the
merasha
was eroding what had remained of Kelson's shields in the wake of his head injury, and his breathing—

Desperately, Dhugal yanked the failing Kelson to a sitting position and rammed two fingers down his throat, holding them there relentlessly while Kelson gagged and retched and vomited up what he had drunk, giving Dhugal's fingers a fairly savage chewing in the process. At the same time, he forced the full strength of his powers past Kelson's already tattered shields and seized control of his respiration center, forcing him to keep breathing.

Dhugal dared not hope that was sufficient, though, for whatever had been in the wine was already in Kelson's system—though hopefully not in fatal concentration—and its effects would get worse before they got better. While the
merasha
might be slept off with only a fairly predictable discomfort—though he had no idea how Kelson would weather the experience with his head injury—Dhugal had no notion what the other substance or substances might do. He might not even be doing the right thing to make Kelson vomit—but he knew nothing else to do, under the circumstances.