“Or you can drink this,” she said, having found the phial she’d been looking for. “It’s not a healing. It’s not really a medicine. It’s a cheat. It convinces your body it’s well—for a little while—no matter how badly you’ve been hurt—or poisoned. But when it wears off, what it’s done to you has to be paid for with a true healing, or a lot of rest, or both.”
“Why would you make a bad thing like that?” Kellen asked, sounding less than half his age. He rubbed at his head, as if it hurt, dropping the tarnkappa to the cavern floor.
“Sometimes a man needs to be able to walk off a battlefield with two broken legs,” Idalia said. “This will let him do it. But he pays for it afterward.”
Her brother suddenly shook himself, all over, like a dog shaking himself dry. “Gods of Leaf and Star!” Kellen swore, sounding like himself for just a moment, “if you told me it would kill me in a day, I’d still take it. Give it to me, before I get too stupid to know how to drink.”
Idalia placed the thumb-sized glass phial in his hand, blessing the impulse that had caused her to bring it with her when she’d packed for the journey.
Kellen broke the seal and quickly tossed it back, shuddering and gagging at the taste.
Chapter Twenty
The Order of Battle
WHY DID ALL of Idalia’s herbal medicines seem to be made of the bitterest herbs she could find? The taste made his eyes water and his teeth ache, and Kellen swallowed hard, resisting the impulse to retch.
But the disconnected floating feeling that he’d been fighting off ever since he’d killed the duergar was gone. He was himself again. He took several deep breaths.
“I feel better,” he said.
“You won’t in half a day,” Idalia warned.
In half a day the Elven army would have been warned about this trap. At the moment, that was all that mattered.
Kellen inspected the pile of discarded armor and garments. The sheen of goblin poison glowed sickly green to his battle-sight in far too many places. He picked up his heavy fur cloak, inspecting it carefully—it was clean—and put it on, then looked at his armor regretfully.
“There’s no way to carry it safely, and half of it’s covered with goblin spit. I’ll miss it.” He picked up his dagger and his broken sword. “Come on.”
“First let’s do something about your feet,” Idalia said, taking out her dagger and beginning to cut her tarnkappa into strips. “It won’t be much, but it’s better than having you try to walk out of here barefoot.”
—«♦»—
THE return trip seemed to go far more swiftly than the trip in. Idalia’s Potion of False Healing filled him with energy, so that Kellen had to be careful to adjust his pace to hers. He felt as if he could run all the way.
But making their way back through the traps was still a painstaking process, one that required the most exacting concentration. Kellen breathed a sigh of relief when he and Idalia stepped over the last of the trip wires.
Idalia hugged him tightly.
“I never, never, never want to go down there again,” she said fervently.
“Neither do I,” Kellen said. Now that it was over, he could acknowledge the fear—and more, the disgust—he’d felt every moment he’d been down in the Shadowed Elf caverns. There was something horribly unclean about those traps. Compared to them, the goblins and even the duergar had been wholesome.
“I’ll cut up the blanket I left with Cella to make you a pair of leggings,” Idalia said, “but I’m afraid you’re going to have a cold ride back.”
“At least it should be day when we get out,” Kellen said. “I just hope it isn’t snowing too hard.”
They reached the entrance of the cave.
It was dusk. They’d been underground a full day. But sunset wasn’t the only thing that greeted them.
Spread out across the valley, starting a bowshot’s-length from the cavern and running all the way to the stream and beyond, was a third of the Elven army.
They sat on their destriers like statues, as if they had been waiting there for centuries, and were prepared to wait for centuries more. A light snow was falling, and from the way it had collected on their cloaks and armor, they had indeed been waiting here for some time. The only movement was the flutter of the war banners on the wind, and the occasional shake of a destrier’s head.
Facing the army was Shalkan, standing firm right in the mouth of the cavern. His horn glowed deep scarlet, and every inch of fur not covered by his armor was fluffed straight out.
“It looks like they got here early,” Idalia said noncommittally.
Kellen looked out over the assembled host. With a sinking heart, he saw not only Adaerion’s banner, but Belepheriel’s and Redhelwar’s as well.
Ninolion had been wrong. The general had been able to make his dispositions in less than a day. Or else, finding Kellen gone, he’d put everything else aside to bring a force to the nearer cavern.
And now Shalkan was holding them off.
—«♦»—
“GOOD to see you,” Shalkan said, not moving, as Kellen and Idalia walked slowly up to stand with him.
“I was right,” Kellen said. “The whole cavern’s been turned into one enormous death trap.”
“You might want to let Redhelwar know,” Shalkan replied, as outwardly calm as if Kellen had just remarked on the depth of the snow. “Ah, here he comes now.”
The general rode into the first rank of the assembled Knights, but came no closer. Considering the way Shalkan looked, he probably didn’t dare.
“You’d better go out to him,” Shalkan said. “I believe he was unaware until now of how protective a unicorn can be.”
Wincing inwardly at the thought, Kellen stepped out of the cavern mouth into the snow, wrapping his cloak around him as tightly as he could. The snow was knee-deep, and soaked through the rags of the tarnkappa wrapped around his feet instantly. As he had been taught at the House of Sword and Shield, he shut the pain and the cold away in a small part of his mind, and concentrated on the task ahead.
He reached Redhelwar’s stirrup and bowed, as formal a bow as he could manage under the circumstances.
“I See you, Redhelwar, Army’s General,” he said.
But Redhelwar did not greet him in return. Instead, he bent his head only enough to look stonily down at Kellen through the slits in his helmet.
“What do you have to say to me, Kellen Knight-Mage?”
Kellen suspected that this was not War Manners, but the attitude of a commander who is about to issue a great deal more than a simple reprimand. Either way, it did not matter.