The guardsmen encircled Thelix, creating a prison of chainmail and crossed swords. His hands and feet were bound with thick ropes, and he slouched to one side then the other, as though he might keel over.
Alori supposed that being possessed by a demon would be exhausting, especially one as ambitious as Dantalion.
He looked up at her as she descended the porch steps, his blue eyes burning with rage. It was still both of them in there she supposed, man and demon, except poor old Dantalion was without his precious book. His focus.
How unfortunate that he'd lost what made him powerful.
Alori smelled a hint of irony in the air as she walked up to the ring of guards, standing just outside a gap between their armor.
"Aren't you going to welcome me back, Thelix? What about you, Dantalion?"
Thelix spat on the ground, his spittle mixing with the trampled mud and slush. His discordant grunts of frustration were convincingly beast-like.
"Don't be so smug, little sweetflame. You weren't the one who did this to me. I would have guaranteed you stayed dead, if those two conniving females hadn't stolen my book."
She hated Dantalion's pet names, but she knew better than to show her cards.
"This isn't your land, nor is my power up for grabs." She crossed her arms against her chest, suffering through Thelix's indignant stare. "If you'll excuse me a moment, I have a breach to seal. I'll figure out how to handle you two later."
"Go ahead, princess," Dantalion chided.
Thelix shuffled forward, and the guards pushed him back toward the center of the circle. He stumbled, falling onto his knees. From his new seat on the ground, he laughed at her, shaking sweaty hair out of his eyes, but Dantalion's voice continued to dominate.
"Go ahead and seal it, if you still can. It won't save your friend, though, will it?"
Alori didn't deign to reply. She marched away from the guards, making her way farther down the strand of cottages to where the rest of their group had congregated, close to the road into town.
Kors leaned against the porch railing of the cottage they'd encountered when they first arrived, the one Yuka had gone into looking for villagers. The paladin had taken off his helmet, revealing short brown hair and a square, bearded jaw. He looked about her father's age.
Now that she'd seen his whole face, Alori recalled Kors standing next to the king on several occasions, his expression stern and uncompromising.
He appeared to be deep into the conversation he'd promised to have with Hira.
Myka and Fox-- who looked surprisingly hale and unharmed for having fallen from a dizzying height earlier in the day-- stood off to the side of the guards still crowded around their injured comrade, the one Taelan had called Loven. The very large man was sitting up, resting against a fence post. His helmet and chest plate had been removed, and a white bandage was stretched around his torso and left arm. He had fiery red hair tied in a knot on the crown of his head, and a face full of freckles.
The injured guardsman smiled as Alori and Taelan approached, lifting a scrape-knuckled hand off his knee. She returned the greeting with a slight nod, her gaze slipping to either side of their periphery
Where was the fallen female guard? Alori didn't see a body anywhere, which was both a relief and a concern. Now she would wonder what had become of the poor woman's remains, although she suspected her fellow soldiers had moved her out of respect.
The cold air froze in Alori's lungs moments later when she spotted Reeve, kneeling beside Yuka's prone form inside the open door of the cottage. An oil lamp had been turned on, dimly illuminating the front room's sad tableau.
Alori stepped up onto the porch, her feet numb and stiff in her boots. Yuka's head was propped on a dark blanket similar to the one she'd left behind in the other cottage a few minutes ago. Blood matted his spiky blue hair and right shoulder. Something about his legs looked off. They stretched relatively straight across the floor, but it was as if they'd been dislocated and the joints no longer met in the expected places.
Her tired feet managed to carry her through the threshold before her mind caught up with words that would be appropriate. For several long seconds she just stood there, dumbstruck, devastated by the overwhelming extent of Yuka's injuries.
Fox was standing around chatting like nothing had happened. Loven was able to sit up and wave. But Yuka...
"Stoke the fire and make sure you have your instruments," she told Taelan, her hand alighting on his sleeve. "Please," she added, gently. "I need to get Hira."
Reeve looked up at her, tears streaming down his face. "Heylin's hope, you're all right. Has your magic been restored?"
Alori nodded. "The curse was broken."
Yuka groaned, but his eyes remained slack behind closed lids that were tinged with sickly blue and purple bruises. She stood up a little straighter.
"Don't lose hope, Reeve. I have a plan. Give me a few minutes."
Whether her plan would work or not, was another matter. It was entirely possible that what she had in mind was impossible. However, that wouldn't stop her from trying.
Leaving the bards in the cottage, she walked out onto the porch and cleared her throat until Kors looked up from the railing. Hira cowered several steps away from him, her head hanging low.
Based on the redness on her cheeks and her puffy eyes, the mendmage was crying or recently had been.
"Princess, it's good to see you up and moving around." Kors stood at attention and bowed a half-courtesy. She might have told him not to bother, but that would have wasted more time. "I spoke extensively with the mendmage while you were recuperating. I trust you're feeling better and have regained use of your magic?"
"Yes." She hadn't put her magic to the ultimate test yet, but judging by how it surged through her veins, she was confident it would heed her command. "I need Hira's help. I have a plan to fix the shield and heal Yuka at the same time. We have to hurry, though. The longer we wait, the more magic will be needed."
Hira lifted her face from the floorboards. Her brown eyes were dark and glossy. Filmy tear stains gleamed on her cheeks, but they were drying. Good. Alori would need the young mender's full concentration, if this plan of hers had any chance of working.
"Mending them at the same time- is such a thing possible?"
"That's what we're going to find out." Alori folded her arms and looked at Kors. "I take it I can trust Hira's help, given that I don't see her in bonds?"
Kors tilted his head side to side, implying the situation was complicated. "Bonds aren't conducive to her trade. If you desire her assistance, I'll place more guards at the door." He pointed at a few of his men, putting them on standby. "Whether she should be held accountable for any misdeeds remains to be seen. She has a story, but they all do."
And part of that story included saving Alori's life. If anyone deserved the benefit of the doubt, it was the frightened young woman standing in front of her.
"Come with me, Hira." She reached her hand out to the startled mendmage. "We have our work cut out for us."
♪♫♪
Inside the cottage, Reeve and Taelan sat on chairs pulled away from a small round table, preparing their instruments. They would play a song Yuka knew, one he could recall by memory. It was the best idea Alori could come up with.
The pleasant sound of their tuning accompanied Alori and Hira as they quietly discussed Alori's plan.
Alori had expected Hira to produce a healer's satchel but was surprised when the mendmage pulled up the dark sleeve of her robe, exposing bands of different colors and textures striping her arm from wrist to shoulder.
Hira had tattooed powdered and pulverized reagents into her own skin!
Thelix had been right, this mage was exceptionally powerful- and clever- if these were the only conduits she required.
"I have a baby daughter," Hira said softly as they cut away Yuka's clothing to reveal his bruised and mottled flesh.
Mendmages required a physical connection to their patient's injuries, of which Yuka had dozens.
Alori's eyebrows rose at Hira's unexpected admission, but she kept silent, waiting for the healer to continue.
"Thelix is the father."
She hadn't expected that.
"I thought we would wed, but when he heard that the princess... that you would be choosing your consort within the year, suddenly our small academy wasn't good enough anymore. He said he was doing it for us, that very little would change once he was at the Conservatory, and he'd be making more money from side jobs. But I knew..." Her breathing became shallow. She shut her eyes for a brief moment. "He changed recently. A few days ago he came to town and his eyes were twitching. His hands were shaking. When he started talking nonsense, I thought maybe he'd eaten toxic mushrooms. All this ranting and raving about demons sounded crazy." Her voice caught in her throat. "He chained me to my bed with silver shackles, so I couldn't get away when he was gone."
"He was possessed, even then," Alori said, although she suspected Hira already knew it. "Did he tell you how he summoned the demon?"
Hira shook her head, using the back of her arm to wipe her perspiring brow. "But I figured it out. It was the book. It contains an arcane incantation in the old language to summon a demon called Dantalion." Tears formed on her long black eyelashes. "He threatened Amira, our daughter. Dantalion was going to kill her if I didn't help him breach the shield. I swear I didn't want to, Your Highness, I just couldn't-"
"I know, Hira. Where is your daughter now, is she safe?"
And where in the five hells had Thelix found that book?
Hira nodded. "Thelix fought against Dantalion's depravity, enough that he was able to convince the demon to let my mother take Amira away when the patrollers evacuated town this morning. He unchained me but told me to wait for him at the cottage, or Dantalion would..."
Alori didn't have to guess what the threat had been. The demon was irredeemable. She would show him no mercy.
"I'm sorry you went through that, but I'm glad you're here now." Alori squeezed her hand. Hira was a slight woman, even smaller than Alori, and yet she was so strong. Alori couldn't imagine carrying the additional burden of a mother's worry through such an ordeal. "I consider it a stroke of fate that I have the assistance of one of the Ville-Realms' most talented mages, just when her help is most needed. This man-" she laid her other hand on an undamaged area of Yuka's arm "-is perhaps the most skilled musician in the Ville-Realms. And those two-" She gestured toward Reeve and Taelan, pride spreading through her, "are his only competition and the greatest composer I've ever met."
Although she wanted to smile in earnest, it was difficult. There were so many loose ends, so much opportunity left to fail. Somehow, she managed to rally a wisp of hope.
"If any ragtag group of mages and bards can heal this man and seal a trifling breach, I daresay it should be us."
Hira's answering smile didn't reach her eyes. "Thank you for the compliment, Your Highness, but I used up most of my energy healing you. I don't know how much help I'll be."
"We'll help each other," Alori said, to convince herself as well as Hira. "Now, let's get started."
♪♫♪
Reeve and Taelan fitted their violins under their chins and began a slow, intricate harmony. Alori recognized the arrangement from sheet music that had been delivered to the palace last spring, one of Taelan's earliest submissions. She'd demanded her father play it over and over. Then she'd sent a handwritten request for the same piece for piano. It had arrived less than a week later.
Her eyes found Taelan across the room. She let herself admire his elegance and concentration, before closing her own eyes as gently as his already were. Hira clasped her hands, allowing the mind-meld to form a loose channel between them. The goal was to siphon enough of Alori's magic into Hira, so that the mendmage could heal Yuka while Alori concentrated on repairing the shield.
"I'm going to fill the pathway between us." Alori spoke in a slow, deliberate voice. "But instead of drawing power from you, I'll be sending it to you. Let me know when you have enough."
Hira squeezed her hands in understanding, her fingers trembling. Mind-melds required a channeled elemental spell, which required a strong connection with Eala. It wasn't painful, but some found the persistent goosebumps the spell created uncomfortable.
Alori was used to it. Her magic roared to life with the barest provocation, proving again that her hunch had been correct. Her harebrained scheme had succeeded!
Now, if her new theory was also correct, the act of orchestrating two major magic performances in such close proximity would act as its own conduit of sorts, elevating their combined efforts so that maybe, if they were careful and judicious, they would have enough power to repair the breach and heal Yuka at the same time.
They began slowly. Alori was mindful not to flood the pathway to Hira, as she knew from experience that doing so in reverse could cause the channel to fail. If that happened, it would be hours before they could make a second attempt. And with Yuka in such bad condition, and the breach a continuous, unpredictable threat, they didn't have the luxury of waiting out amateur mistakes.
Alori wasn't sure if minutes or half an hour had passed when Hira finally pulled her hands away, but Taelan and Reeve were still playing the same song. Either that or they'd ended and begun again without her noticing.
"I think I have enough," Hira whispered. There was a sweet, musical quality to her voice, almost like she was singing along with the violins.
Alori smiled to herself. That was a good sign. The same thing happened to her when she listened to Taelan's songs. She focused her energy on the breach with renewed determination. It was like floating outside her body. She'd been hovering over Yuka and Hira, concentrating on filling the mind-meld pathway with magic, but now she floated outside the cottage, rising in her mind's eye in a similar way as she had when she'd been in death's weightless, twilit void.
The breach was about thirty feet off the ground, jagged and shaped like a stretched out star.
Alori frowned. The magical properties within the tear had shifted during the intervening hours since she'd created the repair design. Her patch now needed significant tweaking. Either more time had passed than she realized, or the breach had shifted more quickly than was typical.
It wasn't really a problem, more like a nuisance. Hira had enough magic to heal Yuka, which left Alori to work without distraction. Reconfiguring the elements within the repair patch wouldn't take long. Dantalion didn't have his book, and Thelix was in Kors' custody. Unless a new demon crawled through the breach before she got it closed, she was confident they would prevail. They had already accomplished the part of the plan she'd been most nervous about. The rest was less intimidating.
Taelan and Reeve transitioned into the second movement of their song, either for the first time or the second.
"Hira!" Alori raised her voice above the heightened tempo of the strings. She had almost forgotten the final element to her plan. "Try to connect with Yuka. He knows this song. If he's lucid enough to follow along, it might speed things up for you."
"Okay. I'll give it a shot."
Alori had never practiced difficult magic accompanied by multiple bards. During the yearly Moon Cherry Festival she was often joined by her father and a few select bards from his era for the commencement ceremony, but those performances were for fun, like the other day when she'd danced on stage while Yuka and Taelan performed.
This was her first time experiencing Taelan's music in the field, with the composer himself among the players. The sensation was intoxicating. The music carried her toward the answers she needed faster than she could have hoped. The tweaks to the repair seemed to write themselves, magical sequences jumping out at her and falling into place without the usual head-scratching of trial and error. The reconfiguration was done before she felt even the slightest strain on her abilities. She didn't know if Taelan and Reeve felt the significance of the performance the same way she did, but she assumed they felt something. Their playing was seamless, the intensity of the interplay between their instruments more pronounced than usual.
Drawing more power up from the ground and through her body, Alori coaxed the magic from her consciousness into being. With her eyes still tightly closed, she moved the repair patch into place with an arcane chant of binding. The patch slipped easily into the hole in the shield. The edges fused as they aligned, glowing white and then fading.
It was done. No scar remained, not a single trace that a breach had ever existed. It seemed almost too easy, but she wouldn't begrudge a rare stroke of luck.
It took several more minutes before Hira announced she was finished deescalating Yuka's injuries and was able to move onto his more superficial wounds.
For the briefest moment, Alori thought she heard the violins falter. She could have cried, she was so relieved. Somehow she wasn't exhausted, though. The whole process had been invigorating, like a rush of adrenaline. But it wouldn't last forever.
"I have him, it's working," Hira said, tapping Alori's knee in excitement. She slowly scanned Yuka, her hands hovering over his body. His pale skin shone from within, the mottled bruises and angry redness fading as she treated him.
The palace employed half a dozen mendmasters, experts whose work Alori had witnessed many times over, but she hadn't been certain a mind-meld was possible with an unconscious patient.
To say she was impressed by the diminutive country healer, would have been an understatement.
Eventually Hira pulled her hands away from Yuka. Her shoulders drooped and she blinked heavily, but the wide grin on her face said she was pleased with a job well done.
Yuka's eyes fluttered in his sleep. He was no longer quivering and shaking, and his breathing had slowed down. The once gruesome wound on his head was a diffuse red mark that might have been an angry blemish. His pale feet listed to either side below a pair of strong, unbroken legs.
Hira told them he would sleep for a while. "He was eager to help," she chuckled. "At one point he said, 'Leave it to Tae to pick a funeral dirge for the occasion.'"
Alori grinned. The song hadn't been that melancholy.
"It wasn't a funeral dirge," Taelan grumbled. Either he wasn't in the mood for Yuka's levity, or the joke had gone over his head. Maybe acting like his best friend hadn't nearly been killed was the only way he knew how to get through the pain.
"Don't mind him, he's just jealous he didn't write it."
Reeve tucked his violin and bow into its velvet-lined case. A bit of color had come back into his cheeks, and he looked slightly less haunted.
"Reeve, why don't you wait here with Yuka until he wakes up?" Alori slowly unfolded herself from the dusty wood floor. She hadn't realized how uncomfortable she was, until she tried to stand up and her knees cracked in more places than she'd thought possible. "Hira, I think we have some additional business to attend to outside."
Panic flashed in the mendmage's round dark eyes.
"No, please, don't worry." Alori held up her hands. "I'm not going to put you in bonds. I'm inviting you to witness Dantalion's demise."
She thought Hira would be thrilled at the idea, but that wasn't the case.
"Will Thelix be executed, too?" The young woman's hands, which had been so steady during the healing session, now fidgeted with the folds of her cloak.
Alori snapped her mouth shut. Dantalion's fate was sealed, but she hadn't decided what she would do with Thelix. Have him sent to the palace, she supposed. Her father would make the final decision as to his punishment, once Thelix was in the king's custody. But executions were rare in Ville-Saseum. Historically, they had been carried out only after a second chance at redemption failed. There were far less lethal sentences that might suffice for those who could be rehabilitated, and death was not necessarily the cruelest fate for the Ville-Realms' worst offenders.
As much as Alori wanted to hate Thelix, his actions hadn't been fully his own. Knowing that he was the father of Hira's child further complicated matters.
She grabbed Hira's hand, helping the mender stand up. "He won't be executed, I give you my word. My father will be furious and likely throw him into the darkest dungeon cell he can find at the first opportunity, but Thelix will stand trial like anyone else. I can't tell you what the verdict might be, but it won't be death or abject torture."
Hira looked down at their clasped hands. "Thank you, Your Highness. I... I think you will make a fine queen one day."
"Less than two years to go," Alori quipped, as if it was a joke she found amusing. It wasn't. The future terrified her. What she should have said was thank you, but she was terrible at accepting compliments. "Come on, Hira." She tugged on the mendmage's hand, gathering all the imperial confidence she could muster. "Let's show Dantalion what happens when he messes with an angry mama bear."
"I want to see this. I have a feeling it's going to be good." Taelan slung his violin case over his shoulder and met the two women by the door, offering Alori his arm and a dashing smile that set the blood in her veins on fire.
She prayed he was right.