“In there?” Alfred couldn’t believe it. To walk in a hargast forest in a windstorm was madness, suicidal. But maybe that’s what Hugh had in mind.
Alfred had long begun to suspect that Hugh the Hand couldn’t go through with his “deal” to cold-bloodedly murder the child, Bane, who traveled with them. Alfred had been watching the assassin’s inner struggle with himself. He could almost hear the curses Hugh was heaping on his own head, cursing himself for being a weak and sentimental fool. Hugh the Hand—the man who had killed many before this with never a qualm or a moment’s regret.
But Bane was such a beautiful child, ingratiating, charming . . . with a soul blackened and warped by the whispered words of a wizard father the boy had never met or seen. Hugh had no way of knowing he, the spider, was being caught in a web far more devious and cunning than any he could ever hope to spin.
The three of them—Bane, Hugh, and Alfred—entered the hargast forest, forced to fight their way through a tangle of underbrush. At last they came to a cleared path. Bane was in high spirits, eager to see Hugh’s famed flying ship. The boy darted ahead. The wind blew strong, the branches of the hargast trees clashed together, their crystalline tones harsh and ominous in Alfred’s mind.
“Oh, sir, shouldn’t we stop him?” the Sartan asked.
“He’ll be all right,” Hugh answered, and Alfred knew then that the assassin was sluffing off his responsibility, tossing the child’s death into the lap of fate or chance or whatever deity, if any, this dark-souled man thought might bear the burden.
Whatever it was had accepted it.
Alfred heard the crack, like the booming of the perpetual storm of the Maelstrom. He saw the limb fall, saw Bane standing beneath it, staring up in rapt shock. The Sartan lunged forward, but he was too late. The limb fell on the child with a shattering crash.
He heard a scream, then, abruptly, silence.
Alfred dashed forward. The fallen branch was huge. It completely covered the path. The child’s body was nowhere to be seen. He must be buried underneath the wreckage. Alfred gazed in hopeless despair at the broken branches, their edges sharp as spears.
Leave it. Don’t meddle. You know what this child is! You know the evil that brought him forth. Let it die with him.
But he is a child! He’s had no choice in his fate. Must he pay for the sin of the father? Shouldn’t he have the chance to see for himself, to understand, to judge, to redeem himself, and perhaps redeem others?
Alfred glanced down the path. Hugh must have heard the branch fall, must have heard the scream. The assassin was taking his time, or perhaps offering up a prayer of thanksgiving. But he would be along soon.
The gigantic branch would take a team of men with cables and ropes to move—or one man with powerful magic. Standing over it, Alfred began to sing the runes. They wove and twined themselves about the tree branch, separated it into two halves, lifted each half up, deposited each half on either side of the path. Beneath the shattered limb lay Bane.
The child wasn’t dead, but he was dying. He was covered with blood. Crystal shards had pierced the small body, there was no telling how many bones were crushed and broken.
Bring life to the dead. The Wave must correct itself. Bring life to one and another will die untimely.
The child was unconscious, in no pain, his life seeping away rapidly.
If I were a physician, I would try to help him live. Is what I am capable of doing wrong?
Alfred picked up a small shard of crystal. Hands, generally so clumsy, moved with delicacy and skill. The Sartan made a cut in his own flesh. Kneeling down beside the child, he traced in his own blood a sigil on the boy’s mangled body. Then he sang the runes and, with his other hand, repeated them in the air.
The child’s broken bones knit together. The torn flesh closed. The rapid, shallow breathing eased. The grayish skin grew pink, flushed with returning life.