Where Light Meets Shadow (3 page)

Kieran sighed. It looked like he
couldn’t expect any comfort during his convalescence. Not that he should be
consorting with the enemy anyway.

The bread, savory meat, and the
mulled wine that accompanied it settled well in his stomach, and the bed
embraced him. His eyes closed of their own will, and he was only vaguely aware
of Alban taking the empty cup from his loose fingers.

Every time Kieran stirred in his
sleep, pain shot through his leg and brought him to consciousness. He wanted a drink
of water, but had no way to seek one out, even if he dared to go wandering
through the Leas stronghold. His injury left him totally dependent on his
enemies, and that dark thought created troubling dreams.

He woke from another vague
nightmare to daylight and the sense that someone had come into the room. He
whipped his head around and registered the fair hair of a Leas.
Where…how?
Fear sluiced through him and, as his mind scrambled through memories, his hand
went to his hip, seeking the hilt of his sword.

Gone.

“You’ll find what you’re looking
for locked in the armory. Though I’ll thank you not to go in search of it. I’d
rather not have to reset those bones.”

A Leas in a richly embroidered
tunic approached him with regal grace, a circlet of richly worked gold marking
his rank.

Kieran’s mind caught up with his
memory.
Toryn Oathbreaker.
He flushed with embarrassment even as his
heart continued to pound wildly. Last night. His broken ankle. His shattered
harp. He wanted to deny the reality of what had happened, but his harp case
leaned against the wall, and the gaping crack in the front showed the remains
of his father’s instrument.

He took a moment to assess
surroundings he had barely noticed last night. White walls reflected sunlight,
brightening the room. The four-poster bed had been carved of warm, honey-blond
wood, a pattern of vines and flowers repeated on the mantel and the trim around
the door. The style of the carving could have almost been Scathlan, except
Scathlan artists generally worked in stone or metal instead of wood.

Toryn sat in the chair by the
bed. “Are you in pain?”

He referred to the ankle, not the
harp, but either way it hurt like a blow from the hammer of the legendary Giant
of the North.

“Some,” Kieran gritted out. “Your
majesty,” he forced himself to add.

A bard should never show a lack
courtesy.

“That is not a title we use
here,” the Oathbreaker said. “You may call me Lord Toryn or my lord.”

A bard should also know all forms
of courtesy, but no one had thought he would need to know proper Leas forms of
address. He wished they had been right in their assumption.

“I’ll have a draught for the pain
brought up with your food, but if you can wait I thought we’d talk a little
first.”

Was the Oathbreaker being
courteous, allowing him to go through his questioning without a mind fogged by
drugs? Or was this a subtle threat that he would withhold food and medical
treatment if he didn’t like Kieran’s answers?

“So tell me how you came to be in
Leas lands.” Toryn’s tone was friendly, but his eyes were keen and hard.

Alban would have told his father
the tale already. The Oathbreaker wanted to know if the story would change with
the retelling. Kieran had nothing to fear, because he was a Scathlan and not a
lying Leas.

Besides, if he had been making
something up, he’d have come up with a less embarrassing tale.

The Oathbreaker listened
impassively, only occasionally asking for more details. Glad for his
storyteller’s memory, Kieran answered his questions confidently. Toryn seemed
particularly interested in the names of the inns where Kieran had stayed and
who he had talked to during his travels.

Kieran remembered again how the
mortals he’d met seemed surprised to see a dark-haired elf. If the Leas had
contact with mortals, Toryn might be intending to use them to verify Kieran’s
story.

It could only help if Toryn did
check, since Kieran was telling the truth. Or at least most of the truth.

Tradition dictated that a
journeyman bard go traveling in search of new material. He needn’t mention his
hopes of reviving the dying culture of the people the Leas had tried so hard to
destroy, nor his fool’s hope of proving that the combination of healing and
bardic magic was more than legend, nor his dream of waking his queen from her
long stupor. For after the war was lost and her revenge denied, Queen Ardala in
her despair had fallen into a living death, still as a statue, neither waking
nor sleeping. No mortal could live so, but the queen’s power preserved her
throughout the long years.

The Scathlan did not fare well
after the war. There was no interest in new songs, and precious little interest
in old ones. The old festivals were no longer celebrated, since celebration
seemed disrespectful to the queen.

The hunting had been poor, and
the elders said it was because the woods needed the energy from the old rites
to replenish the creatures. And anyway, too few men survived to hunt, and too
few babies were born in the years following the war to grow into young men who
hunted.

No one took initiative to
establish new trade or to maintain the relationships already there. The
Scathlan were now truly shadow-elves, a mere shade of what they had been before
the war.

If Toryn used his association
with mortals to spread enmity against Scathlan, Kieran would have more than a
bit of trouble making his way as a travelling bard.

Just because the Leas weren’t
cruel enough to let him freeze to death or be crippled by a badly healed
injury, it didn’t mean they wouldn’t try in other ways to thwart his hope of
helping his people. For that matter, the king had not promised to release him
after he was healed.

On that last point, Kieran
intended to take matters into his own hands once he had mended. Growing up,
he’d been called a troublemaker and a rapscallion, both true enough.  The
escapades that had earned him those names gave him the skills he needed to
squeeze out of windows and climb down walls.

A knock on the door interrupted
the interview as Alban arrived, bringing a tray. Kieran had expected a servant.
No highborn Scathlan would lower himself to such a task, although Brona might
sneak a special treat to his rooms if Kieran were hurt or feeling poorly.

“Hello, Alban, did the morning
hunt go well?”

Kieran had slept in late enough
for a hunt to start and finish? Yes, by the angle of the sun, he had.

“Well enough, Father,” Kieran
said lightly. “And with more conventional results than we had last night.”

“We were just finishing up,”
Toryn continued. “You will be teaching your new stray to use crutches today?”

“After he eats, Father. And can
you leave off with the jest? I know it’s aimed at me, but our guest does not,
and it’s making him uncomfortable.”

Kieran flushed, even more
uncomfortable to be referred to as though he were not there, and to have it
acknowledged how much the Leas king managed to get to him.

“Of course,” Toryn said smoothly.
He bowed slightly to Kieran. “My apologies if I have disregarded the rules of
hospitality.”

After breaking a solemn oath, not
to mention the prohibition of making war against others of elvenkind, Kieran
would think the laws of hospitality would not matter much to the Leas king. He
kept the observation to himself. The rules of civility for a good guest doubly
bound a bard, and the vulnerability of his situation added a practical
incentive.

Kieran wasn’t really hungry, his
ankle hurt too much to think about any other demand his body might have. Still,
he knew he needed food to keep up his strength, and he had no say in when his
next meal might come.

Kieran hadn’t complained of his
cold as it was scarcely life-threatening. Still, Alban had brought an herb tea
for his congested chest as well as a painkilling draught.

Alban sat with him as he ate, the
stiffness of his posture and the stillness of his face betraying the
awkwardness of the situation.

Kieran’s bardic instincts for
smoothing out moments of social discomfort engaged, and he asked about the
morning hunt.

Alban told him about a small, but
well-fed buck and the larger one that got away, and then talked of memorable
hunts from the past—memorable for their spectacular and humorous failures. When
Kieran chuckled at his subtle, self-deprecating humor, Alban’s posture relaxed.
His blue eyes reminded Kieran more now of summer skies and less of winter ice.

Somehow, all of the food and all
of the painkilling draught were gone.

“We need to get you up on
crutches,” Alban said.

Kieran noticed that a pair stood
in the corner. Had he really slept so deeply among his enemies that they came
into his room
some time
in the night or morning and
he didn’t wake?

“I can figure them out on my own
if I need them,” Kieran said. “They can’t be that hard.”

“Have you ever used crutches
before?”

“No, why?”

He’d broken his arm once, and his
ribs a couple of times, but he’d never had an injury that required him to
hobble around using a pair of sticks.

“It’s not as easy as it looks.
And if I leave you to your own devices, you’ll put it off. It’s natural enough,
you’re in pain and the ankle is telling you not to move. But if we don’t get
you up and about, the rest of you will be the worse for it. Not to mention that
you don’t seem the type to enjoy lying abed for the month or so it’s going to
take the bones to knit.”

A month! Sweet Grace, he’d
forgotten how long it had taken to heal before. A month or more among his
enemies.

Alban must have taken his silence
for agreement, for he brought the crutches over and began the instruction, then
pulled the blankets off Kieran and demanded that he get up and try it.

It rankled, taking instruction
from someone younger, albeit only by a few years, and from the son of Toryn
Oathbreaker. Alban may be a prince among his people, but to Kieran he was
nothing more than an untrustworthy kinslayer, even if, like Kieran, he had been
too young to participate in the war.

Worse, the crutches weren’t as
simple as they seemed. He struggled, hopelessly uncoordinated, and he
accidentally put weight on his right ankle and stifled a scream. Kieran snarled
at Alban when the Leas rushed in to prevent him from doing more damage to the
injury so carefully set and splinted.

He felt like the bumpkin in a
traveling play, a failure,
the
fool everyone called
him. Not only had his brave, reckless quest left him dependent on his enemies
for hospitality, but he couldn’t even manage a simple pair of crutches.

Worse, he could see Alban
laughing at him behind his hand.

“Get out!” Kieran was in no
position to issue commands, and he knew it. “Get out and leave me alone.”

Even to his own ears, he sounded
like a petulant child.

“I’m sorry,” Alban said. “It’s
just that you remind me so much of myself when I broke my leg a few years ago.
As a healer, I thought I knew everything there was to know about crutches.
Turned out that theory is one thing, practice quite another. I got so
frustrated that I refused to continue. My father gave up and let me alone—all
alone with nothing to do and all my books on the other side of the room. I
learned fast enough.”

#

Alban winced at his own
stupidity. It was hard enough to get his own people to respect him as a healer,
between his age and his father always at his shoulder, reminding him without
meaning to of all he had to live up to. And this Scathlan was everything he’d
been led to
expect.
. .hard-headed, snappish, and easy
to offend.

He’d thought for a moment when they
had been talking of hunting mishaps that he’d seen a glimmer of something else.
In those moments when his face had relaxed, the elvenness of Kieran’s features
came through despite the odd coloring, and Alban could see the handsome,
charming bard who’d made it so far from home on nothing but a smile and a song.

Illusion, all an illusion. Yes,
he’d been warned that Scathlan were capable of seeming civility, even
friendship, as a cover for their hard, cold souls.

And now he’d given this Scathlan
an excuse to dismiss him as a healer, when Alban really needed his respect so
he could heal well and they could be rid of each other sooner.

Kieran stared at Alban after his
revelation, expression unreadable, probably wondering what sort of idiot he’d
been saddled with as a healer.

And then Kieran burst out
laughing, laughing so hard that tears ran down his face, so hard that Alban had
to reach out to keep him from falling. The laughter was contagious, Alban
laughed too, laughed freely, as though with his cousins, leaning into Kieran
helplessly to balance them both.

The dry, rational part of his
healer’s mind identified the body’s need for releasing tension. Neither the
situation nor anything he’d said warranted such humor. Yet it felt good, as
though some dam had burst within him to let clear, life-giving flow water over
a desolate land.

Looking at Kieran, he saw
something similar in the Scathlan’s face.

“I’m not sure books would do it
for me,” Kieran said. “You could try a good mead or a comely lass.”

Why the sudden, swift
disappointment at the last? Alban looked away to hide his reaction.

“Or even a handsome lad of a
certain bent.”

He hoped Kieran didn’t notice his
blush. Simple, animal attraction was all it was, attraction that could be and
must be ruled. Anything else would be inappropriate between healer and patient,
between two enemies.

“If you work on the crutches,
I’ll see what I can do about some mead with your dinner. Anything else you’ll
have to arrange on your own.”

Kieran sighed theatrically. “I
suppose I’ll be living the life of the virtuous and boring for the near future
then.”

Whether motivated by the promise
of mead or simply refreshed by the laughter, the Scathlan did better with the
crutches, well enough that Alban could be assured that he would not be utterly
helpless in bed when Alban left him for the afternoon.