Wild Magic (Numair POV) chapter 3 original
Wild Magic (Numair POV) — original Chapter 3
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Numair remained awake exactly long enough to inhale every crumb of the rations Onua gave him and tell Alanna he had the information she needed, and then he was out again like a light.
He felt marginally better when he awoke. He was alone, still nude but for a new bandage around his bad arm, and ached more than anything else, but he could now recognize the accents of the people outdoors as those of friends, not foes. That was Jon's army and Alanna's company, and he was safe.
He simply laid in the cot for sometime more, letting the state of being human and safe and alive sink into his bones, and then the tent flap was pulled aside to reveal Alanna, and Numair relaxed a little more.
She brandished a bundle of clothing and a pair of boots, then said, "Put these on. I don't intend to tan the hides of any naked men."
He winced, then, once she'd left to give him privacy, stood and donned the clothing, enjoying the use of limbs that were neither in agonizing pain nor numb (though his no-longer-broken arm-wing was still dreadfully clumsy). The boots, he found, were too small, and when he went to cast the spell that would stretch them out, lights flashed in front of his eyes and he had to sit down in a hurry.
"Arram?" Alanna demanded, coming back in when the cot creaked. "Arram, what happened?"
He tried to shake his head, then decided that was a bad idea and had to hold it still until everything stopped spinning.
"Arram?" Alanna's voice was softer now that she was closer, her small hand gripping his shoulder. "Come on, I didn't spend a whole day healing you only for you to drop now."
He chuckled roughly, waving away her half-started diagnostic spell. "No. Just more tired than I expected." He gestured to the boots that had fallen between his feet with one hand and kept holding his head with the other. "They're too small. I tried to stretch them, but..."
He could feel the sour look Alanna shot him. "Those were the biggest anyone had, I'll have you know."
He winced in apology.
She swiped the boots off the floor and straightened with a sigh.
Then she swatted his good shoulder with them hard enough to sting.
He yelped in pain and found himself faced with a deep scowl.
"You're a fool, and what's more—you're a simpleton," Alanna informed him. She gestured to the length of him with the boots. "Transforming? With that much poison in your body? What were you thinking? Your giant lug! You're a giant! How much drug do you think they poured into you? Do you have a death wish?!"
Numair shrank back.
She thumped him again, this time lightly over the back of the head, then stomped across the tent to pick something out of the packs. Louder: "Magical exhaustion is the least of what you deserve for that! If Onua hadn't been there—if I hadn't been there—" She popped up and returned with the materials for a poultice. "—you would have been food for the wolves."
"Sorry," he managed weakly, guilt curling in the pit of his stomach, but handed over his arm when she gestured impatiently for it. "I didn't think. I panicked."
Healing herbs and magic conduits were dampened and laid on his newly-healed arm, then covered and bound.
"Think," snapped his oldest friend, one of his staunchest protectors. There were lines around her eyes, he saw now, an aching distance that spoke of a relief so deep it left him humbled. "And rest, and heal. I've put too much work into keeping you alive all these years. I'm not going to lose you to your own fool-hearted nonsense now."
"I will," he promised.
The poultice was a base for a slow healing that had her sitting by his side until he fell asleep again.
The next time, he only woke for long enough to eat, then fell asleep again. The third time he awoke, the camp was awake, but quiet—the kind of quiet that left him wondering if he was needed investigation, but then remembered that Alanna was there, and his magic was still nothing but a soul-deep ache. If he tried to help now, he would only get underfoot.
There was more food left for him; he ate it and laid back in his cot, and was unconscious in seconds.
The fourth time he awoke, both Alanna and Onua were there—Onua providing Alanna with more power as she rounded out the healing.
"When your fingers work, I'm going to have us all write down everything you have," said Alanna. Her violet eyes were cool, steely. "We have no more time to lose."
"Understood."
After a few moments, Alanna broke into a wry, rather mischevious grin. "Did you know—there was a spidren attack last night."
"Spidrens?"
"Your missed it," said Onua, her own grey-green eyes gleaming wickedly. "They came up on us out of nowhere after we'd all gone to bed. Horrible creatures. Heads up on spider's bodies, big as all us people! Who knows what sort of damage they'd've done if they hadn't taken care of it. The men took them out to burn before the bodies could hurt anyone."
In no small part were Numair's recent urges to travel sparked by the chance to see the immortals that had been coming through the barrier as of late, and the news that he had been so close and yet so far from those creatures made him wish, with everything in him, that he had bothered to get underfoot last night.
It was deeply unfair that they had even gone so far as to burn the bodies before he could get a good look at them, even if he reluctantly understood. No one would be in the area soon enough, and leaving highly toxic creatures around to rot was dangerous.
But couldn't they have at least waited until morning?
"I do believe you're the only one who would envy a body the sight of them," Alanna said, amused.
"And I'm the only one who didn't see them," he replied, considering the merits of a good sulk.
Onua let out a snicker at the look on his face. "I knew you'd be furious you missed it."
He grumbled.
She left to fetch food for the two hungry mages soon enough, when Alanna had him doing tests of dexterity, and when she returned, it was with a distant, thoughtful look.
"Alanna says you're to rest," she began when the food was gone, "and I still have to take the rest of the ponies down to Corus the slow way with my assistant. Do you want to come with us?"
He opened his mouth to tell her that he needed to get his reports to King Jonathan sooner rather than later, but Alanna cut him off.
"Yes, he will." A sideways glance showed that she was rather relieved about the offer. "I was going to ask, but you beat me to it." At Numair's look, she said, "I'm sure my company can't spare another horse to fit you."
Onua met his eye over Alanna's head, and matched his wry look with one of her own.
"Looks like you're with us," she said. Then she frowned. "Speaking of, my assistant..."
"I never saw him," said Numair, only now realizing it. "Is he well?"
Alanna had mentioned that he had been in Onua's care as she traveled south with the mountain ponies for the Rider trainees, but the bright lad who was as close to horse-hearted as one could be without a scrap of wild magic didn't pop up as so much as a voice, only—...
Only who?
"Mm, very well," said Onua dismissively. "He got offered a better job in Cría, and I wasn't about to hold him back. I had to hire on a new one quick. Smart girl. Young, but better with the ponies than anyone I've met before."
"Horse-hearted?" he asked, sitting a bit straighter. It wasn't every day you got to meet a new person with a talent for wild magic.
For some reason, that made her snort. "If she was any more horse-hearted, she'd be horse-bodied to boot." The frown returned, her short nails drumming on her knee. "There's something about her—something in her..."
Alanna, to his surprise, spoke up. "I was wondering what you'd make of her, myself. You're better than the rest of us at scouting talents. She's got power, and I confess I haven't the foggiest what it is, unless it's the strangest Gift anyone ever did see."
He thought about the voice of the girl who had accompanied Onua, and the way he had stopped questioning whether she was friend or foe the instant he felt her.
Alanna tapped the jewel at her throat in thought, then shook her head. "She knew the spidrens were coming—warned us of 'em in her own way, and said it was the hedgehogs that told her. When we went to investigate, she shot three arrows overhead, blind in the dark, and they all met their mark."
Onua picked up the dishes and bowls that she had brought their food in, deep in thought herself. "Every time she looked in your eyes, she took sick. Dizzy, that is, like she was taking the poison right from your head. Near walked into a ditch once. She's sure she doesn't have the Gift, and this isn't a trick of the Sight, but... well, see what you make of her. We'll be on the road together for a day and a bit."
Fascinated, Numair tried to stand to follow her out and see if he could meet this assistant of hers.
Alanna got his good arm in her iron grip and forced him to sit back down. "Not you, good sir. You will stay exactly where I tell you."
"Yes, ma'am," he said meekly, and stayed.
Once she was satisfied with his dexterity, she had a writing desk brought in, and helped him share the memory-retention spell with her while Hakim and Onua stood by and helped as they could.
Together, Numair and Alanna unfolded the spell for the information within, and copied it all down as much as they could. When that was done, she left him nurse his aching hand and instead peppered him with questions about his stay, what he'd heard, how he'd been caught, and then how he'd escaped.
Onua got the credit for his well-being, but at once, both she and Numair said it had been someone else—her assistant.
Onua told of how the girl had fished him out of the marsh, splinted his wing, and then nursed him single-mindedly for days, with Numair nodding along as it matched up to his feverishly blurred memories of the time.
"I hate to say it," said Onua, "but he wouldn't have made it, if not for her. It was only through her work that he lasted long enough for Alanna to get to us. Horse lords know if I even would have found him in the marsh before he was some scavenger critter's dinner."
He touched her shoulder. She offered him a subdued smile, but accepted the implicit forgiveness.
Alanna only barely sat through the rest of the story—there wasn't much, only a report of the troops and creatures that had tried to come after them—then she stood.
"It seems I've a debt, and the gods don't look kindly on those who don't own up to 'em," was all she said before she left.
Hakim watched her go with a fond smile, then waved Numair and Onua over to help him summarize and finish up the reports.
Afterwards, it was just him and Onua again, and one of the soldiers bringing more food, which Numair wolfed down as soon as it was in front of him.
"This is what you get for refusing all your food for days," she informed him, watching the campfire bread and sausages disappear in record time.
He paused, then chewed and swallowed his mouthful before asking, "There was food?" Fishing around in his mind brought up a faint impression of the girl—presumably Onua's assistant—scolding him for not eating his peas, but he was very sure he would have known if there were peas around, especially as starved as he had been.
"How many times did we try to feed you? Meat both cooked and raw, fish, cheese, even bread, once. You were having none of it." She snorted, absently nibbling at her own piece of bread. "It had Daine in a right state. Apparently she's not used to animals not eating for her."
It took him several moments to remember he had been given scraps of something—not peas, but something, possibly several somethings—repeatedly over those few days, and he winced.
She patted his shoulder, and stood. "She's a good girl. She'd've fed you if you'd let her. I'm going to go see if I'm needed. Rest."
He raised his hand in farewell as she left, then considered that as he finished up his meal and kneaded his still-weak hand.
He had circled back to the question of how on earth Daine-the-assistant would have involuntarily shared in the effects of his drugging out of nothing but eye contact, coming up with a hundred and one theories that just didn't fit, when Alanna came back and brandished a new pair of boots at him.
"These had better fit, or I'm cutting you down to size," she grumbled.
Just as none of his theories had fit the mystery of Daine-the-assistant, the boots didn't fit his feet, either.
It was with not a small amount of embarrassment that he let Alanna match up the sole of his foot to the sole of the boot and take note of how his toes hung over the edge. She then muttered a spell of expansion, fine-tuning the size until he could don them and stand in them without difficulty or discomfort.
"Well enough for a few miles of walking?" she asked, then expelled a relieved sigh when he nodded. "Stay safe. You're not going to be casting anything but sparks for a week, and I don't want to see you try."
Then she stood, and, to his surprise, hugged him.
She clapped his back, as was good and proper, but he didn't return the gesture. As much as he knew it was hardly going to hurt a woman such as the Lioness, it always felt a bit wrong to clap the back of anyone who fell a few inches short of his shoulder.
She gave him one last squeeze and stepped back. "Me and the company leave tomorrow at first light. You'll be with Onua and the ponies. Gods willing, we'll meet you in Corus with Sinthya in chains."
"Good luck."
He woke once more before they left—this time, finally, not so starved as to inhale all food set in front of him the instant it was there, though he still ate—and went back to sleep.
When he awoke then, the bustle outside was gone.
He took a deep breath, feeling his lungs fill with air that hadn't been there, and got up with a body that was almost fully healed.
He puttered around the tent first, washing and shaving as best he could manage with what there was in the waterskin, finding a fresh change of clothes and thick socks, combing his hair and tying it back as best he could manage with the hair ties someone, presumably Onua, had left for him. Her hair was much less difficult to wrangle than his was, and the tie was precarious.
The point at which he found himself staring at the tent flap while stretching out his healing arm was the point at which he had to admit to himself that he was procrastinating.
(He wished Alanna and the company had been around when he finally got to meet Daine-the-assistant. Meeting anyone was easier when there were people around.)
"Look who's up," said Onua warmly as soon as he emerged, effectively shattering the wisps of hope that he might slink to the fire and be noticed in his own time. She and her assistant were mending the horse tack.
The young girl looked up sharply, then buried herself back in her leatherwork, evidently as eager to socialize as he was.
He went to sit beside Onua and warm himself beside the fire, careful not to look directly at the girl. Even like this, he could feel the warm tangle of her magic against his mind.
"How'd you find a pair that fits?" Onua asked, pointing her awl to his boots. Then, "There's tea in the kettle, and a clean mug right there."
"Thanks," he said, rising again. When he had a cup warming his palms, he ruefully admitted, "Alanna witched them so they'd fit. Nobody else had a pair even near big enough."
"What about your own magic?" she said as he blew on the hot liquid.
"I'm dry for the moment," he said absently, using the cover of his drink to study her assistant. "Tapped out."
In theory, he knew that the sizes he estimated as a hawk were rarely accurate unless he had some distance on the subjects, and not once had he ever seen Daine at a distance.
In practice, realizing that the girl who had carried him and held him on her lap and moved him from pack to saddle, whose magic felt like a merry, robust hearthfire even at its most mild, was barely taller than Alanna and much narrower besides bemused him greatly.
In the physical world, with human vision that was unobscured by drugs or illness, Daine was a wild tumble of dark curls tamed by a headscarf, waifish and gawky in the early stages of that awkward transition from childhood to adulthood—about thirteen, if he had to guess—with solid boots and thin hands and eyelashes long and dark enough to notice from several feet off.
She hunched over her leatherwork, grimacing as she wrestled with the straps with a surprising amount of deftness, and he moved to help her before he could think twice about it.
"Thanks." she whispered after she'd completed the final stitches. Up this close, the core of her was even more notable for the sheer density of wild magic inside her.
"You look different," he said impulsively.
"What?" she said, startled into looking up. Her far-northern complexion was touched with a pink blush, and her eyes were big and somber, just as not-quite-lost as the rest of her.
They were also, he noted with some measure of private amusement, a pretty shade of blue-grey. It really is always the blue eyes, isn't it.
"You were a lot bigger," he explained with a smile.
Her small face lit with a shy grin. "Seems to me you was a bit smaller, now I think of it."
He returned the fixed strap and went back to his seat, the ice broken—for both of them, it would seem.
"I'd be dead if it weren't for you," he said, picking up his tea again. "You're called Daine?"
She nodded. Despite the lingering remains of her grin, she still looked oddly sad, and it made the gesture somber.
"I'm glad to meet you, Daine." And oh, wasn't he ever. "I'm Numair Salmalín."
"I thought it was Arram," she said, and sending a chill down his spine. A near total stranger associating that name with him...
He glanced at Onua, who was now focusing on her own leatherwork with an expression not unlike a cat who had been caught pushing something off of a table.
"Arram's my boyhood name," he explained carefully, glancing back to the girl. "I go by Numair now."
She accepted that at face value, thankfully. "The honor's mine, Master Numair. Why didn't you change back?"
Why indeed, he thought, rueful. "I was stuck."
"Stuck?"
If anyone deserved an explanation, it was her, so, feeling not unlike he did when he had to explain just what he'd done this time to the castle's head healer, he gave her the simple version of what Alanna and the others had been wrangling out of him: "When Sinthya caught me, his mage fed me drugs. I panicked, and shape-shifted. I didn't remember I was full of all the drugs it takes to knock out somebody my size."
"You're lucky they didn't kill you," Onua reminded him.
"You're right," he conceded to her. Then, back to Daine, "By the time you found me, I couldn't tell ground from air anymore. The food you offered? I didn't know it was food. Not that I was able to keep anything down." He drank more tea in honor of a stomach that wouldn't reject anything and everything put in it, then wryly murmured, "It'll be a long time before I take hawk shape again."
Her eyes lit, and then she hit on the one mystery left eating at him: "That's why you had funny eyes. And that's why you made me dizzy."
"I wanted to ask you about that," he said, leaning forward, elbows on knees. "Onua says you got sick, disoriented. I can't understand how. She says you don't have the Gift—"
"Odd's bobs!" Daine burst out, making him jump. Her color had risen again, but not from shyness. "I don't see why this Gift is so grand. It comes and it goes. You can't do too much of it at once, and you need all kinds of rules. It's more trouble than it's worth." She got to her feet; his stomach lurched uncomfortably to see there were tears glittering in her eyes. "But whenever I turn around, somebody asks if I have it." Her tears brimmed over, mouth quivering. "I'm good with animals—isn't that enough?"
He was still blinking when she picked up and left for the wood at a furious pace.
He glanced at Onua, who was wincing into her work. "What did I say?"
She sighed and put it down. "Her mother was a hedgewitch," she said, the term said in tones distinctly more exasperated than he was used to hearing from her. "She and Daine's grandfather were killed by raiders in January. She wanted Daine to have the Gift, not just whatever she has with animals. Fool woman kept testing her, as if she thought the girl would develop it overnight."
By the time she finished, Numair was wincing too, chest aching in sympathy. No wonder she seemed so sad. Heartbreak was a heavy burden to bear. He would know.
He thought about the tears on her cheeks, the spark and the lost look in her eyes, and his chest ached a little more.
"I'd better go after her," said Onua with a sigh, making to get up.
"No—when she cools off, I'll go. You and Alanna were right. She has real power. Not the Gift, though." He tapped two sticks together, turning the feeling of Daine over in his mind. "It's wild magic, pure and simple. She's brimming with it. I've never seen a human with so much."
"You felt it then."
"I felt it when I was a bird, half crazy and dying," he said dryly. If anything, he might have mistaken her for a minor god, if he'd been thinking clearly enough to make assumptions.
Onua sighed. "Be careful with her, Arram. She's hurting."
"I will." If nothing else, absolutely nothing else—she deserved that. He stood with a groan. "Use Numair, will you? I know you trust Daine, but there's no telling who else might overhear. I still have enemies in Carthak who'd like to know where I am."
She made a face. It was odd to be around her and not be alone together; she usually called him by that name because it was the first they'd been introduced by, all those years ago. "You're right—Numair."
He grinned at her. "Come on—what great sorcerer has a name like Arram Draper? I have to have a name to fit my calling, don't you think?"
"All mages are Players at heart, I swear," she grumbled, picking up her work again. She was smiling. "Can't do magic unless you have all kinds of robes and props and a big audience to cheer you."
She waved him off then, and he left in the direction Daine had gone.
He made sure to wander a bit, just to give her a little more time, and when he did find her, she was in the middle of greeting a woodchuck.
As he watched, she got down on her belly in front of it, so she could look it in the eye as they spoke. He couldn't hear the words, but the woodchuck chittered eagerly in reply, and whatever was being said, he had the feeling it wasn't a one-sided conversation in the least.
He could see, perhaps, why her mother had kept testing her for the Gift, if the hedgewitch hadn't known what wild magic was, but the damage done...
She held her hand out to the woodchuck, and and giggled when he snuggled into her palm like she was a heroine in a particularly romantic retelling of certain myths. The woodchuck then chirped a goodbye and trotted off into the bush.
Slowly, making certain to make some noise, but none loud or sudden, he came forward as she got to her feet and brushed away the leaf litter and grit.
"He seemed to have a lot to say," he said.
She didn't startle, but instead looked after the critter with a fond smile, like Numair had come up on her after she had been speaking with another human. "Oh, it's the usual spring talk." Usual? "Freshening up the burrow, getting nice-smelling leaves. I told him where to find some wild mint."
That opened up another world of questions he desperately wanted to ask her, but even without Onua's warning, he would have known not to press; it was plain to see that she was still nursing open wounds.
Then she jumped, turning red as she looked at him with no small amount of distress. "Master Numair, I—"
He cut off the apology with a smile and a, "No offense taken—if you stop calling me 'Master.' If I'm to help with the ponies the rest of the way, we may as well use first names."
It worked, and her immediate distress receded. Anxiously, timidly: "Is Onua mad at me? For losing my temper?"
He shook his head, intending to assure her—and lost his hair tie to the leaf litter as the motion broke its hold. "Gods bless it..."
Daine helped him search, and by the time they found it, she had let go of her nerves altogether.
"It's easier if you wet it before using it on your hair," she said wisely as they walked back to camp. "When it dries, then it shrinks."
He blinked. Why hadn't that ever occurred to him? Granted, with a mane like hers and, presumably, no hair products to help her with it, perhaps she simply had practice. "Good advice. Your hair gives you trouble?"
"Oh, Goddess, my hair's so dratted thick I don't even bother with ties," she sighed—then giggled, and looked up at him with only the faintest traces of heartache left in her eyes, replaced by the shy warmth of spring green. "This is a very strange talk were having."
He grinned back. "Boys worry just as much about their looks as girls do. We only hide it better."
"Seriously?" she asked, delighted.
"Seriously," he assured her. "You should see the lotions I put on my hair to get it to behave."
They reached the camp then, and Daine went off to gather the remainder of her leatherwork with a smile still on her face.
Catching Onua's searching look, he winked, and a measure of tension left her sturdy frame, in favor of a wry smile of her own.