Proof read by Danaye

Chapter 5

Numair stopped abruptly inside the stall that the young girl had led him into.

A mare was still in the process of washing a newborn colt and it stood guard over a bundle lying on the ground between the hay. Glancing his way, the horse only twisted her ears once and nudged the colt forth. The mare then snorted and lifted her head before trotting over to where Numair stood, completely still.

He waited as the mare sniffed him as if he was a dog. He was about to laugh when another scene similar to this entered his mind, and he held his breath and waited for the mare to accept him.

The girl, the one who had led him here, lingered over the stall just as still as he stood, also waiting.

The mare snorted low, leaving a large blob of slime on his cotton shirt, before she nudged him with her muzzle. As she turned her attention back to the new-born colt, he concluded that he had somehow passed a significant test. However, he was still unsure and Numair decided to just stay still. He jumped when a low voice beside him spoke. He had completely forgotten that the girl was present.

She touched his back and pushed him forth. "You can go to her now," the girl said and smiled up to him. "She has accepted you," the girl said again when he didn't move.

He glanced skeptically down at her, "How are you sure?" Numair was accustomed to being around horses, teaching a man called Stefan had forced him to do so, but he hadn't been around them as much as he would have liked. His duties for the Tortallan Crown were varied and he was always on the move to take care of some kind of danger or some kind of magical issue. It was only in the winter that he had the time to settle himself down and take on new students. He had also been able to reestablish old acquaintances, such as one of his best friends from the land of Sarain.

The girl nodded and pointed to the large blob lingering on his white shirt, "Daine told me that once a horse has marked you, he or she will know your smell forever."

Numair lifted his eyebrows, searching his brain for any knowledge the royal hostler may have told him, but he came up blank.

Someone pushed on his back again.

"For one who really wanted to see his bride, you don't seem to want to be near her now," the girl retorted and walked into the stall. She pulled out an apple from nowhere and offered it to the mare.

"I...," he halted his words before he continued. Shifting uneasily he asked, "What do they do when they don't accept you?"

The girl shrugged while scratching the mare between her ears. "Well, usually they bite, others just kick and some just stomp on a person's feet until they're crushed."

Numair frowned as an unknown expression entered the girl's features while she continued, "The one who is not accepted among the horses is the king's healer. He can't even ride or take a carriage because no horse wants to be near him. Once, when he found her lying in a stall unconscious and tried to heal Daine, he was kicked halfway down the floor of the stable."

He moved over to where the horse rug covered the woman who had helped him the night before. Numair pushed the fabric gently away from her head and the pale tone in her skin was alarming. She had almost killed herself by healing the colt.

"Is she alive?" The girl asked carefully, settling herself beside the colt, who was sleeping. She began moving her hand over the soft, still damp fur.

"She is," he said quietly and sat down pointing to the walls around him, not wanting so have any sounds leave the stall. As for the space where there was no wall, he threw up a shield, "but if she keeps this going she will die."

The girl looked up as Numair took hold of Daine's shoulders and pulled her to him. "What are you doing?" the girl asked with concern in her voice.

He looked down into a face that held slightly parted lips. "I'm going to make sure that the next time she tries to use her magic it doesn't kill her." Settling himself with his back against the stall, he began to meditate, closing all sounds out.

The girl shifted and looked down at the colt, speaking to it in confidence, "Hopefully he doesn't find out that she is cursed."

Daine felt someone touching her shoulder, and when she thought that it would just be a brief contact, it continued further. Daine fought, wanting it to stop, thinking in her half unconscious mind that maybe this someone was the royal healer.

Panicking, but unable to do anything, she only hoped that the animals would feel her need for protection, but nothing happened. She could feel the presence of the mare and the colt and see their colors inside her mind, but two other presences were inside the stall where she lay. One was caressing the new-born colt and held the color of a normal person, but the other one was shining with such bright black colors that she felt her mental hands shield her eyes, but it was in vain.

Daine knew that she wasn't skilled in the art of protecting herself, and the thought that someone was trying to look into her scared her witless. Why wasn't the horse reacting to her fear and why didn't Rajana protect her from this 'unknown' who was forcing himself on her?

Calloused, large fingers came to lay on her temples and shooting words filled her ears and she suddenly found that it wasn't the hardness of the floor she rested on, but a huge chest that rumbled with a male voice.

"Take it easy," he instructed her, but Daine twisted inside herself and tried to catch the large mental hands that probed the place where her gift was located. She fought with all the strength she had, considering unleashing the beast within her to bite the intruder.

She only managed to think the thought as the man behind her continued, "Relax, Daine. You know me!" The voice hesitated a bit, "Or at least you have met me, but don't exactly know who I am yet."

Pain. It was the only thing she could focus on and it overshadowed every word he said. The meaning of what he tried to say didn't matter, only the pain that spread through her veins.

Daine took the only step she could think of that would protect her. She had done it a couple of times before. It wasn't that she liked it, calling the beast forth was nothing she was a fan of, but in situations like this she would give anything to be away from the unknown man behind her. Giving the beast access to take over the fighting, she saw how copper teeth embedded themselves into the black fire that was trying to probe her.

She screamed loudly. Unleashing a small amount of the beast would only sting her a bit, but unleashing more of it without turning into it fully was like thousands of daggers stabbing her.

"Stupid," someone whispered in a low voice near her ear, and somewhere inside herself she faintly remembered the voice from somewhere, but it didn't matter.

Daine tried to add more power into the beast, but someone was trying to prevent her from using her gift. She knew that she had exhausted herself in the healing of the mare and then when the colt had been stillborn, but her magic was always keen to come back quickly. If the person holding her down would just leave her alone, she would be up and around.

A fire of black erupted inside her mind and copper teeth lashed forward, biting like a snake would, and held back the black fire that was trying to violate her.

Someone growled low, right beside her right ear, as strong arms pulled her into safety. Incomprehensible words filled her mind, transforming from common to a language she didn't understand.

The beast's teeth bore into the black fire when it reached its destination and everything erupted inside her, filling her with memories.

Suddenly, she lay among crumbled walls that smelled of newly extinguished fire. She was curled up like a small child, sobbing over the cold body of her mother, as the reality of her family's death hit her. It was just too much. The person who was doing this to her was to be punished.

Daine screamed in anger. Whoever was probing her was accessing her memories without permission. She didn't want to relive the past, but the smell of smoke was too real. She wanted to scream, wanted to fill her lungs with the smoky air, but she feared that they would come back. She feared that they would find that they had missed the twelve-year-old girl coming back from a visit to the neighboring village and they would kill her like they killed her family and the animals.

The feeling of grief gave her more power. Copper teeth embedded themselves into the black fire and everything surrounding her from the memory was gone. Something bright flashed on the inside of her eyelids, and as quickly as that something could, it attached itself to the copper fire that lived beside her own self.

Fingers resting on her forehead were holding her as the copper fire inside her attacked the thing with new and refined force. The bright thing that had been left behind initiated its own war, to claim her and to fight for control.

Daine screamed again as the pain hit her multiple times. She was being pulled up into a sitting position and held against a warm body. She wanted to open her eyes, to scream and to fight along with the copper fire that tried to neutralize the thing that had been left behind, but she couldn't – it wasn't in her human nature to fight as such.

Even though she wanted the bright thing gone, it gave her something. Something she hadn't thought that she could feel again after so many years. She suddenly wanted to accept the changes and the male voice in her ear encouraged her with tender words and promises, but the wildness inside her was the one that didn't accept the new and strange feeling as the thing inside her formed and expanded.

The strong arms holding her firmly in place gave in and she could suddenly breathe. The tightness leapt from her chest as the bright light suddenly changed and became mingled with the copper fire.

The beast didn't stand a chance and she knew that it was the feeling of defeat that would give the beast the one final boost of power. It scared her as her control over it slipped out between her fingers and the beast decided to fully take over her body and mind to attack the new thing the man had left inside her.

Hands closed around her wrists and she felt pain hit her hard as the wildness tried to transform her against her will. It stretched every fiber in her body and transformed every cell of her body's structure in an effort to push away the last thing that made her human. She knew it had been her will of humanity that had held the wildness back for years, but now she was loosing that fight too, just as she had lost the right to choose her own future and husband.

Daine pressed her teeth together as the pain multiplied and the wildness succeeded in changing some parts of her. As she began to think that the pain would only get worse, it suddenly subsided as recognizable words filled her mind. "I'm not going to hurt you," they said and she suddenly knew the man behind her. It was him. Relaxing, trusting his words as she did during the night, she gave in and accepted that the beast was just a part of her. The knowledge that she couldn't control it was the key to the solution.

The wildness stopped and, tilting its beast-head to the side, it seemed to accept the new and strange thing the man behind her had left. As the feeling of acceptance spread, she cried with relief.

Feeling wet tears rolling down the skin of her cheeks, she allowed the memories to fill her. They were as much a part of her as the beast inside her was. She was overwhelmed with images of a burning house, a hunt through the woods where her one hand still held on to the blood-dripping dagger after the rape - it all burst forward as the beast surrendered to the new thing. The beast crept back, like a wounded animal, behind the shining wall that flashed with unknown signs.

It only wanted to lick its wounds and be left in peace until it was called forward again by its owner. Daine stayed on the other side, the safe side, speaking calmly to it as she had with every animal she had met.

The man behind her had tamed the beast and her along with it. Daine felt alone for the first time after feeling hands touching her shoulder. She continued to speak while she laid looking at the shield. Her inner voice was becoming a faint whisper, reassuring her that everything was going to be okay.

Whatever she had expected, it wasn't the scene that was happening before her eyes. Everything she knew of mages was just completely wrong.

Rajana had, from where she sat, expected some kind of spectacular show with lights of every color floating over their heads, but only screams were filling the air.

She had seen him point to the walls and felt the air buzz with something odd. The oddness still hadn't left the stall at all. It had only grown. She had first shrugged the oddness away, thinking that it was because she was in company of mages.

She'd glanced up the first few times that she had heard a strange noise, only to find that it was the mare drinking from the water trough. She had then ignored them — until she had heard his voice. He had first spoken in common, speaking softly to Daine. When his voice spoke in an unknown language, Rajana crept forth, feeling an intensity in his words.

When she saw Daine scream, she stood, unsure if this had been the right decision to lead him to her instead of the library.

She stood only two feet away the whole time and looked for signs that it had gone too far, but Master Salmalin, or Numair she corrected, held so tender an expression for the woman lying in his arms.

His eyelids were closed down over his dark eyes, but it wasn't that - it was the way he spoke to her, the way his fingers laid on her temples and the way he just...

Rajana looked away, scarlet in her pale cheeks. It was wrong to stare like she had just done, but she couldn't leave Daine alone with him. She would never forgive herself if anything bad happened to her, but the mage had promised to help her friend and she supposed that was what he was doing now.

The colt had lifted its head and Rajana returned to it, sitting down so she could still keep an eye on what was going on. Around her, the stall was filled by an immense energy that leapt from the man as he pulled the young woman to him, holding her wrists to keep her down.

Something had gone wrong, Rajana concluded. For the second time in her life, she saw fingers being transformed to claws and hands covered by fur. She was frightened by the sight, but she also knew that he would prevent the transformation from being fulfilled.

As the air around her was filled with screams and incantations, Rajana buried her head in her arms, getting ready to feel the roof of the stable coming crumbling down over them, but nothing happened.

She suddenly looked up as the oddness in the air was lifted, the agonizing energy gone. Her breath was caught in her throat as she saw salty water stream down over Daine's cheeks.

Numair stroked his large, tanned hand down Daine's cheek and rested his chin upon her brown, curly hair. The tenderness he showed had her heart beating hard in her chest as she took in the scene in front of her.

'How could a man love a woman such?' She wondered as the crying settled down and Daine became still inside his arms. 'He doesn't know her at all, but still he was showing the same tenderness for Daine as only a beloved husband would do – as if it was meant to be,' she thought. She swallowed when she saw him lean down and place a kiss upon Daine's flushed cheek.

The man untangled himself, letting down the shield around them, and noises from the other horses in the stable reached Rajana's ears.

He paused and looked around. When he met her scared eyes, he smiled reassuringly at her.

"Is she fine?" she asked with a voice dry as dust.

"She's fine," he replied and shot out a large fist to support himself against the wall.

She stood suddenly and hurried over to him with a field-bottle filled with water. He took it from her with gratitude and she looked questioning up to him as he drank all the water.

Swallowing the last drop of liquid, he lowered the field-bottle, smiling down at her. "She's fine," he assured her again and turned to look where he had left her. "She'll be sleeping for a few hours, as will I."

Rajana nodded and took the bottle from him. She watched as he walked over to Daine and picked her up in strong arms as if she was made of fragile glass. "Where are you going with her?" she asked concerned.

"I'm taking her to her room. It's very well that she sleeps here, but we also have to keep the king's orders in mind, do we not?" Numair replied and pushed open the door to the stall.

She rushed forward exclaiming, "You can't just go out there just like that," she pointed outside, "with her in your arms. You are in Galla. Things may not be the same as where you come from."

He turned to her with his dark eyes ablaze. "I know, but it would be a waste of powers if one didn't do this," he said and vanished before her eyes.

Rajana stood frozen to the spot as the man, Daine's future husband, suddenly disappeared from her sight.

With a sigh, she left the stall and closed the door behind her. She had a feeling that nothing would be the same as before. With this, new times were coming and she wondered if it was for the better or the worse. She knew only one thing for sure.

The Black Robed mage was going to be the perfect husband for Daine, if the older woman would just allow him.