He played. The song wrapped around her like her mother’s arms. Her fear abated, replaced by the smell of hearth fire and laundry soap and drowsy sunshine. She felt her mother’s body curled around her. And in Caelia’s own arms, she held her son, his sleepy sighs filling her with peace.
Caelia fell asleep to the feel of her mother rocking them both.
Chapter Six
Magic
Caelia woke to the smell of roasting fish. Her belly clenched hard, making her nauseous. She tried to sit up in the hammock and instantly fell back. Her sore muscles tore a groan from her throat. But she had sat up! The forest take her—which she supposed it had—she would never take her body for granted again.
“You’ll loosen up the more you move,” Gendrin’s voice called from somewhere below.
Gendrin. The enchanter who had saved her with magic.
Her leg ached. She glanced down, neck screaming. Blood crusted her leg from when the lizard’s teeth had grazed her. She groaned again. “I hurt too much.”
The boughs shifted, though there was no wind; Gendrin was climbing up. A moment later, he peered down at her from above.
She hadn’t had a chance to take a good look at him before. He was deeply tanned and barrel-chested, his head shaved—save for one long, thin braid behind his right ear. His prominent nose and brows framed his dark eyes. His beard was thick and wiry, with the faintest hints of auburn.
Not an especially beautiful man, but not an ugly one either. And yet there was something about him. A steady presence that made it hard to look away.
He studied her too. She wondered what he saw. “You have magic?”
He shrugged. “Where I’m from, all men have magic.”
“Not the women?”
“No,” the word was heavy with emotion she didn’t understand—sadness and anger and bitterness. “Not women.”
Of course not. The world seemed intent on keeping women utterly powerless. “Why?”
“The same magic that lends my music power over emotions also binds my tongue. I can’t tell you more, Caelia. You’ll have to figure it out on your own.”
He reached into his pocket and withdrew a wooden box. He slid it open, revealing six vials packed in straw. He took out the second one and held it out to her. “Here. This will cleanse the remaining venom from your body.”
She drank the antidote, not caring if it tasted like pepper if it made the pain go away. She eyed him warily. “Are you manipulating my emotions now?”
He replaced the empty vial in the box. “Only when I play my music. And you can stop looking at me like that—I have a feeling you’d stick me with a pitchfork if I ever tried to manipulate you.”
“Or break the flute over your head before you even got started.”
He laughed. He looked nice when he laughed. “I promise I won’t use it on you without your permission first.”
She let him pull her into a sitting position, biting the inside of her cheek to keep from groaning again. She took stock of their surroundings. They were in an enormous tree, bare of most its leaves. Forest surrounded them, the river rushing past. Below, a small fire let off lazy smoke. A little pot boiled and fish sizzled on a rock nesting in the coals.
“The River Weiss?” She pointed with her chin.
Gendrin followed her gesture. “Yes.”
Which meant her town was downstream, though she could only see more forest. She couldn’t have gone too far in the few hours she wandered. Less than a day’s walk and she would be back with the rumors, sharp and piercing, that would surround her like an angry cloud of hornets for the rest of her life.
“Where are you from?” He had a strange, precise accent—one she’d never heard before.
“Hamel. You?”
He glanced upriver. “A place far different from anything you could ever imagine. Or believe.”
Longing and pain were at war in his gaze. A woman, maybe? “There’s nothing upriver but more forest.”
“How would you know?”
Could such a thing be possible? But then, she supposed no one had ever really been able to go into the forest and find out. Yesterday, she would have scorned anyone who believed magic was real. That was before she’d seen it. Felt it.
She looked him up and down. His tunic, trousers, and cloak were all finely woven, pied fabric. The design and making were foreign from anything she’d ever seen before. A pan pipe and some sort of flute hung from around his neck. Those things coupled with his strange hair made it clear he wasn’t Idelmarchian as she was.
“Why were you in the forest?” he asked.
Harben’s words echoed through her, I’m going to find you, and when I do . . .
Shuddering, she rubbed at the bald spot on the back of her head; Harben had pulled out a chunk of her hair. “I—I saw a man murder my friend.” Her voice choked on the last, a sob rising in her chest. “He chased me in.”
Gendrin swore.
Caelia pushed the fear and horror and sorrow deep—she wasn’t out of the forest yet. “Will the beast and the gilgad hunt us now?”
“They winter in the hot springs. You happened to fall into their nest. As for the beasts—they hunt at night.”
She was safe, at least for now. She sagged in relief, though guilt still ate at her for her cowardice. “Why are you in the Forbidden Forest?”
He eyed her, his gaze seeing far more than she was comfortable with. “You’re not the only one running from something.”
“What are you running from?” she whispered.
He looked away. “The fish are going to burn.” He held out his hand.
She understood the need to keep secrets, perhaps better than anyone. She took his offered hand. He braced himself and hauled her up. The pain surged, but she forced herself to ride it out. After a moment, it eased.
It took far longer than it should have to get down the tree, and far too much holding hands with a man she barely knew. By the time she’d reached the bottom, she collapsed against the trunk, her whole body aching.
He went to the fire and used a stick to push the cooking rock out of the coals—when had he woken up this morning? Leaving them to cool, he wrapped a bit of leather around the cookpot handle and brought it to her along with the pack. He rummaged around inside and pulled out bandages, salves, and the like.
“I’m no healer, but I can clean and stitch.” His dark eyes asked permission.
She winced but nodded. He pulled up her shredded, filthy skirt, revealing her pale legs coated with a fine layer of dirt and blood. Embarrassed at her state, she braced herself and looked. Long parallel lines began as puncture wounds and ended as welted scratches on her outer thigh, above her knee. Not as bad as she’d thought.
Gendrin hummed low in his throat. “This won’t even need stitching, though I’ll have to clean it. Gilgad bites tend to fester.”
He used his knife to extract steaming bandages and let them cool a bit before laying them on the side of her leg. She sucked in a breath at the heat.
“That’ll soften the scabbing.” He went back to the fire and tested the cook stone with his fingers. Finding it cool enough, he set it between them with the larger fish facing her. Using his knife, he scraped the meat off the bones for her in one clean swipe.