Edit April 2010: FFN decided to eat all the scene dividers so I'm having to go back and add them all in again. I'm also removing the review responses. NOTHING ELSE HAS BEEN ALTERED; if you've read this story before, you don't need to read it again (although you're more than welcome to).
Once more, thank you to all my reviewers. I'm slightly worried how much you're all looking forward to this chapter; I'm under a lot of pressure to get it right! Well, here we go...
Numair wasn't sure what he had been expecting. All he had known of Daine's past was what little Onua had told him and he had managed to puzzle out for himself – that her mother and grandfather had been killed by bandits, she didn't know her father, and fire had been involved. That was bad enough, but the story she was telling them now beggared belief and set his mind reeling. Of all the tragic and unpleasant stories he had heard – and there had been a lot, his own included – hers was surely the worst. How had she survived? His respect for this girl grew as she talked, staring blindly into the small fire he had built, not seeing anything but what she was reliving.
When the sorry tale finally came to its conclusion, there was a long silence between the three of them. He wanted badly to say something comforting, but what could you say in response to that? He was helpless in the face of her pain, and too far away to offer physical support. It was Onua who reached out and hugged her, and then the tears started; he knew better than to interrupt and let her cry, using the time to organise his own thoughts in the face of what he had learned.
The first thought that came into his head was that humans really were despicable. The gods knew he'd faced his share of prejudice over the years – there were still people who made the Sign against evil when he walked past – but to try and kill a grief-stricken girl for refusing to allow the bandits to get away with what they had done was inexcusable. Witchcraft and superstition, he thought sourly. Thank the gods Daine hadn't had the Gift as well; there was no knowing what those ignorant fools would have done to someone who accidentally started fires – unfortunately a common problem for young untrained mages, and one that had caused him a few difficulties himself.
As for what she had done, well... Numair understood revenge, a little. Had he been in the same position, he would have done the same. Even murder could be justified in the right circumstances... and he had killed before, for far less noble reasons. He tried not to think about that, but his escape from Carthak had come with a price. It was one of the hardest lessons he had ever learned; everyone had a breaking point, and once you reached it there was nothing, nothing you wouldn't do to make it stop. Silently, he pushed the memories away; this wasn't about him now. That part of his life was behind him; what mattered now was helping Daine to deal with it. She was luckier than he had been; she didn't need to face it alone. Not that he intended to tell her so, not yet. It would be a very long time, if ever, before they had that conversation.
His mind raced; the tragedy of losing her family must have been the catalyst that fully awoke her wild magic – the Gift worked the same way, usually manifesting for the first time during a period of strong emotion. Wild magic was unpredictable, and that coupled with the circumstances had evidently overwhelmed her humanity; that she had been able to overcome it, however imperfectly, completely alone was nothing short of miraculous. Shock and grief could do terrible things to people; it didn't make her insane.
And as for running with wolves... Well, there had been legends about that for as long as wolves had existed, as far as he knew. It was extremely interesting to discover that in this case there was some truth to the tales; maybe someday when the memories weren't so raw, they could have a talk about it. At least now he knew why Cloud seemed unafraid of them; that had been nagging at the back of his mind for weeks – an unsolved puzzle was the most annoying thing in the world, as far as Numair was concerned. It didn't occur to him to be alarmed or disgusted by what he'd heard; he was too busy being interested.
This explained everything, and he certainly understood why she had been too afraid to talk to him. Hardly surprising; if it had been him, he would have found a hole to crawl into and never come out again. No wonder she had been terrified. There was one thing he didn't understand, though. "What about the badger?" he asked, when she was calm once more. She shrugged.
"He comes in my dreams, sort of. He told me he promised my da he'd look after me." She fumbled for her necklace. "This is his claw; he uses it to find me." Falteringly, she described each dream as best she could. "Last night he told me to tell you everything." A little more than merely told her, it seemed; her shoulders were scratched. Onua began tending the small wounds as he thought.
"'Time is running out' – 'the storm will be here'," Numair repeated sourly from the badger's words. "What time? What storm?" He sighed. "I hate omens. They depend on translation, and I was never good at it." If he had been, he would have left Carthak years before he had, and a great deal faster. "If he tells you anything more solid, let me know." She nodded.
"As for the rest... I never heard of a human with wild magic losing contact with his essence – the part that tells us we are human. On the other hand, I've never met anyone with wild magic as powerful as yours. It is conceivable that your bond to animals overwhelms your humanity." He rubbed his hands together, feeling the stickiness of salt on his skin, thinking. "Well, that's easy enough to fix."
He looked up to find her staring at him. "It is? All this time I've been afraid of joining a herd or a pack or a flock or whatever, and I could've fixed it?" Her tone made him bite back a smile; she sounded utterly exasperated.
"With help from your humble servant." Numair stretched, glad that he had actually slept last night; the spell itself would hopefully be simple enough – he was more or less going to be making it up as he went along – but the concentration it would require wasn't something to be taken lightly. "Are you up to meditating now? I won't let you swim off with the sea lions," he added teasingly, smiling at her until she smiled back.
Onua patted Daine's knee. "I leave you mages to it. I'm going to camp and torture some trainees." More quietly, she added, "Thanks for trusting me, Daine." He nodded agreement with that, barely able to imagine what it had cost her.
"I wish I'd told before," Daine answered guiltily. "Only I was scared – "
Onua stood up, dusting herself off. "After your village hunting you, I'm surprised you made yourself talk to another human again," she said, unknowingly echoing Numair's earlier thoughts. "Don't worry about it. And don't let him work you too hard." That was meant for him, not Daine; he rolled his eyes, smiling slightly.
"She's quite a woman," he told Daine. "You have a good friend in her."
"I know."
"Now – just like meditation." He moved around the fire and settled behind her, gently resting his fingers on her temples as she closed her eyes and began to breathe in the familiar careful rhythm. She didn't know what he was going to do, which was just as well; he wasn't sure she really understood what he'd done that first night to show her that vision, and he was going far deeper into her mind this time. He didn't feel comfortable doing so without explicit permission, but she would never have agreed otherwise and this was very important.
Besides, he wasn't really going into her mind, more... around it. Closing his eyes, he concentrated, visualising the centre of her magic as he had shown it to her before, and then went deeper. Now, if he listened, he could hear her thoughts, touch her memories and utterly destroy her psyche; the idea had always revolted him, frankly. He closed off from that; it wasn't her mind as such that was important here but her personality, her presence. In order to separate her from her magic, he had to get a sense of who she really was. The visualisation was simple enough, a core of white fire at the heart of the copper magic, but that wasn't enough.
The first impression he got was sorrow; unsurprising, given that she had just relived the worst moments of her life. The depth of her pain seemed endless now, but she would heal. There was anger too, a hatred and fury towards the men who had done those things that he didn't think she was even aware of. And the uncertainty and self-doubt he had already seen in her, the vague feeling that she somehow wasn't good enough, which hurt to see, or feel, or however this worked - even he didn't really understand it. She had had a hard life, certainly, one that had driven her to the brink and beyond.
But it wasn't all darkness. Somewhere in the mess of loss and anger there was laughter, and humour, flashes of the girl he was just beginning to understand. And under everything, running right through the core of her, there was an unbelievable strength and courage that awed him; she had endured more in a couple of years than most people faced in a lifetime, and she had come through it on her own and emerged remarkably undamaged by the experience. This was a girl who would never back away from anything, no matter how it scared her.
In the face of such vital determination, Numair felt distinctly inferior; certainly his own personality was nothing so fine. Oddly humbled by it, he took a breath and concentrated on holding the sense of her in his mind, focusing on who and what she was; once he was certain he had it, he reached for his Gift, black fire entering the space where this was taking place. It was nothing physical; the visualisation was only a mechanism, a representation of what was actually happening.
The spell appeared as a glass wall. It didn't have to be; it could have been anything - stone, wood, cloth, or even just light – but he felt that if it was something important then you should put some effort in. The runes written on it didn't really mean anything much either, not to him; they were supposed to aid concentration and focus the mind, but in all honesty the knowledge of what would happen if he made a mistake was more than enough to keep his mind perfectly focused. Still, they wouldn't hurt, and might help.
And just like that, it was done. Numair felt the magic neatly encircle everything he had felt as her, the wild magic falling away as the two ends of the 'wall' met and sealed. Slowly and carefully he eased away and returned to his own body, feeling tired but pleased; a moment later Daine opened her eyes.
"How do you feel?" he asked. She tried to stand and staggered, obviously stiff; so was he, he realised, and began to stretch his muscles as he watched her.
"A bit rusty, but aside from that, wonderful. Am I fixed? Am I all right?"
"You tell me," he replied dryly. "Try the listening again. Sea lions live in groups like wolves and horses. If you're going to lose yourself, you should be able to with them. If not, the Rider ponies are just down the beach."
She closed her eyes, and he stood slowly, stretching as he waited. After a moment she opened them again and grinned at him in such pure delight that he couldn't help smiling back at her. "Did you forget who Daine is?" he asked lightly.
"Nope," she answered happily.
"Sure you don't want to plunge into salty water and eat live octopi?" he teased. "That's what they eat, among other things."
That earned him a suspicious look. "What's an octopi?"
"One octopus is an octopus. Two octopuses or more are octopi."
"So what's an octopus?"
"I take it what all this means is you were able to stay Daine."
"It does. What's an octopus?"
He laughed. That's my girl. "All right, magelet. Let's go to sea."
The rest of the day passed in a blur of marine life, the atmosphere between them much more relaxed and happy and the lessons far more enjoyable. Nonetheless, it was a relief to seek his bed that night; the spell hadn't taken much power, but the effort and concentration involved had drained him.
So, naturally, only a couple of hours later he was woken up by Daine's voice softly calling him. "Numair?"
What could you possibly want at this time of night? Groggily he opened his eyes and sat up. "Daine? Is something the matter?"
Her answer surprised him. "I've an otter with a broken leg here. I hate to disturb you, but – now I'm doing better with the magic, I thought there might be a chance I could – "
The prospect was possibly the only thing interesting enough to wake him up. "Of course. Come in." Shaking off his weariness, he lit the inside of the tent so they could see what they were doing. "Sit." She did so, cradling the sea otter in her lap carefully. "You'll go deep, but into your patient instead of yourself," he explained. "You need to see – " he squinted at the otter "– her bones from the inside – do you understand?"
"I understand right enough. I'm just not sure I can do it."
"I can help with that part," he reassured her. "What you must do on your own is apply your magic to the break and will it to heal. You need to burn out any infection. Make sure the muscles, veins, and nerves knit together, not just the bone." She probably knew all that already, but better safe than sorry.
"The strength of your desire is what will complete the task. You must want this to work more than anything, and keep on wanting it, no matter how weary you become. That's the hard part – maintaining the concentration to finish. As it tires, your mind will want to attend to something else, just as it does in meditation. You'll get a muscle spasm or an itch, and you'll want to see to it. You can't – not unless you plan to resume splinting your friends and hoping you can keep them quiet long enough for an injury to mend."
Numair watched her staring at the otter. The memory of what he had sensed in her mind was still fresh, and he wasn't at all surprised when she looked back at him with fierce determination in her eyes. "I'll do it. Let's go."
This was a new experience for him as well as for her, but it wasn't difficult as such; as with what he had done earlier, it was the concentration that took the effort more than the actual magic, although it would be draining her strength as well. He guided her through the otter's body to the broken paw, and showed her how to shape her magic around the injury, then settled back to watch – figuratively speaking. The rest had to come from her; all he could do was show her the way.
Numair watched with silent fascination as the copper fire of her magic helped bone to form and repair the gap, followed by marrow inside the splinters of bone. The exact mechanism escaped him, but just watching from outside was interesting enough, and he was surprised to feel a faint touch of envy as the healing continued. Some things he could do with his Gift were amazing, such as the spell he had done earlier, but so much of what he could do was destructive and violent. It would have been nice to be able to do something benign and gentle... The thought dissolved as the healing continued and he watched intently until finally new skin closed over healthy tissue and it was done.
By this time Daine looked exhausted, swaying where she sat. "How are you feeling?" he asked. She stared at him blankly, seeming not to have heard him, her eyes closing despite herself; he barely caught her as she collapsed.
Aware of eyes on him, he turned his head and met the curious gaze of the sea otter, apparently none the worse for the experience; no wonder, since all the energy for the healing had come from Daine. He leaned sideways carefully and tugged open the tent flap, allowing the animal to leave, then looked back at his student, now happily snuggled into his bedding and so deeply asleep he doubted a thunderstorm would wake her.
Smiling wryly, he drew a blanket up over her and found another for himself, crawling out of the tent and going to curl up under one of the wagons for the rest of the night.
There you have it, folks. I hope this is what you all wanted to read; I know you were all looking forward to this chapter. I rewrote it several times, I have to admit; hopefully it wasn't a waste of time. I was hoping to reach 50 reviews before updating this time, but 49 is still pretty good and I didn't want to keep you waiting any longer. Next time: Numair gets totally irrational (that was so much fun to write) and we have fun with griffins.
As always, please keep reviewing.
Loten.