Once A Hero (55 page)

Suddenly she felt short of breath. She could not breathe, her lungs lay useless and frozen in her chest. She felt her body begin to burn in its need for air, then that sensation vanished as well. She tried to puzzle together what was happening to her because Larissa's notes had said nothing about this effect—had said nothing about any of this—and she began to wonder if all she had been taught by her grandaunt had been nothing but bait for this trap.

Then she noticed Neal's chest had begun to rise and fall on its own.

Gena hunched forward as her heart began to beat wildly, then stopped altogether. When it started again, after only a second or two, her stomach convulsed. She felt her guts shiver and internal organs quiver. Her hands twitched, her toes curled inward. Every muscle in her body jerked and cramped and released. She thought at first that the spell was stealing seconds of life from her to transfer life into Neal's body, but she rejected that idea because the differences in their species and genders would make the transfer flawed and useless. No, she decided, I am just being used as a road map so the magick can show Neal's body what exists and how to make it work.

Her head jerked back, exposing her throat, as she felt the spell plunge up her spine and into her brain. It prowled around in there, as Durriken might have prowled the curio vaults of rich Kaudian antiquities collectors, examining her memories. She saw everything flick across her mind's eye, yet the spell only lingered over the stories and thoughts, impressions and dreams she had experienced concerning Neal. As if it were picking up all the fragments of a shattered vase, it took every bit of him it could find and sent it flowing into his brain.

Gena knew it was not to rebuild his mind, but to remind him who he had been. If he were to live again, his soul would have to be plucked from Reithra's grasp and put back in his body. The stories, the memories, merely made it easy for him to return. It made his body receptive again.

The spell pushed against the last little reserve of energy Gena held. She resisted, but it pressed her. Without words it conveyed to her its need, not for something of Neal she yet possessed, but for a reason for him to return. It had to be potent and powerful, emotional and eternal. It could not come without sacrifice. And it has to come from me.

Gena opened up and fed directly into it the love for Neal she had seen in Larissa's eyes. Though her grandaunt had never spoken of her feelings for Neal, she never had to. Genevera had seen it from the beginning, and had never seen it dim. She wondered for a moment how Larissa could have prepared all this so lovingly, and then have walked away from it without using it. No logical answer came to her, so she funneled that mystery into the flow and let herself begin to faint.

Her head came down, and she stumbled back against the wall of the tomb as the spell released her. She saw Neal's body convulse, and she cried out reflexively as his head hit the stone pillow on the bier. A second later she found herself slumping down in the corner, too tired to stand, too exhausted even to try to fight gravity. As she went down, she saw Neal's eyelids flutter, and even though she feared she was dying, she knew he lived again. In that realization she knew everything would be fine, and she surrendered to the blackness stealing over her.

Sharp pain ripped through my chest; then came a blackness that I decided was death. Time did not flow, it grew stagnant. Shadow flashes of life, either dreams or visions, occasionally settled on my consciousness the way a leaf floats on a dead pond before slowly sinking to the bottom. They settled down there to molder with the rest of me.

Brilliant searing lights and heat and tingling shook me. The back of my head smacked something solid, but I felt more surprise than I did pain. The aching that had chased me through the darkness had eased. For the first time in eternity I summoned up the strength to open my eyes, and I found them responding to my command. As they opened, I saw a figure in white falling away to the ground off to my left.

I sat up enough to get my left elbow under me and took a good look at her. The sunlight pouring through the arched doorway showed me golden hair I could never forget and glinted off a bracelet I recognized. That she sat slumped in the corner with her chin touching her breast alarmed me, but I saw no blood and knew that were I to touch her, I could do more harm than good to the both of us.

A huge man eclipsed the sun as he ducked his head through the arched doorway. I recognized him more by his size and shape than by the hint of copper in his hair, but I couldn't imagine what he would be doing in Cygestolia. He looked at where Larissa had fallen and shouted "Jenna!" which was an oath I'd never heard the Red Tiger utter before. I wondered if I was dreaming somehow; then I saw him reach toward her, and I knew, dream or not, I had to act.

Sitting up and spinning around on my rump, I got my feet beneath me and launched myself at Beltran. "Don't touch her. You can't touch her."

Beltran looked utterly surprised at the sound of my voice. He folded around my shoulder. I heard a satisfying ooofff as my tackle carried him back out of the small building and crashed the both of us to the greensward. I bounced up off him and rolled through a somersault, but as I spun to face him, dizziness washed over me. The world swam before my eyes, and before I could focus them, a heavy left hand clouted me over my right ear.

The ground hit me harder than the fist had, but not by much. I rolled unsteadily to my feet and felt a hand grabbing my right shoulder. "Neal, hold. Berengar, stop."

I twisted around, pulling my shoulder from beneath the old Elf's hand. "He almost touched her, doomed her."

"Neal, friend, he will not hurt her."

I frowned. "Do I know you? The only Elves I call friend are Larissa and her brother, Aarundel. She is in there, and her brother will kill Beltran if he touches her."

"In the old days I would have indeed done that."

I blinked my eyes and took a good long look at the Elf standing before me. Long white hair draped over his shoulders. He wore a black eye patch and stood as tall as my best friend had, but his muscles had atrophied. His skin had an almost transparent quality to it, as if he were more spirit than flesh. "Aarundel? What did the Reithrese do to you?"

Aarundel shook his head. "They took my eye, Custos Sylvanii, but no more."

I frowned despite the pain growing at the base of my skull. "But you look so old. Your grandfather, Lomthelgar, he does not look so old. What happened?"

He shrugged. "I aged. Five centuries have passed since you last saw me."

That cut my legs out from under me, and I sat down hard. "Five hundred years? But . . ." I glanced back at the small stone blockhouse. "Your sister, she has not aged."

"She is my granddaughter, Neal, by my son Niall." Aarundel crouched, then sat on the ground beside me. "Many things have changed, my friend."

The man with whom I fought emerged from the blockhouse with a sylvanesti in his arms. I waited for a volley of Elven arrows to cut him down, but none came. I looked up and knew I sat beneath the Consilliarii tree and watched this most grotesque violation of Elven law being perpetrated right here. Aarundel barely glanced at the Man dooming his granddaughter to exile, and the Man seemed more concerned for her than for his own fate.

"How can he be carrying her?"

"I can because I am strong and considerate, old man." He lay her down in the shade and rubbed one of her wrists. Ignoring me, he looked at Aarundel. "She is breathing and has a pulse. She fainted from whatever went on in there."

I reached out and grabbed Aarundel's left arm. "What has happened? Why is Beltran here? Wait—can he be Beltran? Five centuries?" I closed my mouth as my mind became a chaotic jumble of ideas and fears warring for control of me.

Aarundel patted my hand with his right hand. "There are many things I will explain to you, my friend, gladly. I know this is abrupt and confusing." He pointed to the man kneeling beside his granddaughter. "This is Count Berengar Fisher of Aurdon in Centisia."

I frowned. "Aurdon? I remember the Fishers of Aurium. Are they related?"

Berengar looked up while his hands continued their massage of the sylvanesti's wrist. "They are the same, Neal. What you knew as Aurium is now known as Aurdon. It has grown and changed since you last saw it."

Five centuries! I stared down at the ground and picked at the grass growing there. It felt the same to me as it had when last I touched it. I plucked a piece and put it in my mouth. It tasted and smelled the same. That was something, something normal, and I clung to it. If this was all a dream, I would laugh in the morning and if not, I now knew a new definition for nightmare.

Aarundel's arm bones felt as light and frail as a bird's wing in my grasp. "Larissa?"

My friend shook his head. "She has gone beyond, Neal. With Lomthelgar and my parents."

"Marta?"

"She waits here, with me."

The sylvanesti responded to Berengar's efforts to revive her with a groan. She tried to sit up but would have failed had Berengar not shifted around and placed his hands beneath her shoulders. As her head came up, and I saw her face for the first time, I felt a fist crush my heart. It was not what I had experienced when I first saw Larissa, but an imperfect echo of it. She looked enough like her grandaunt that I was reminded of the person I had now lost.

The smile on Aarundel's face was all that kept my spirit from dying right then and there. "This, Neal Elfward, is my granddaughter, Genevera. Gena, this is Neal Roclawzi."

She bowed her head toward me, letting her thick braid slither over Berengar's hand and her shoulder. "This is a dream come true for me, meeting you."

I nodded, unable to think of anything to say. My mind yet reeled at my existence. My hands came up and touched my chest. I saw no bruise, no indication that my battle with Takrakor had ever taken place, yet the absence of Aarundel's eye told me it had. "My wounds." I grabbed Aarundel's shoulder. "I was dying. What happened?"

Aarundel glanced down. "You died."

Genevera smiled at me. "I saved you. I repaired you and brought you back to life."

My jaw dropped. "I was dead?"

"Yes, but I fixed you." She frowned at the disbelief in my voice. "The magick, the spells woven into the tomb . . ."

"Tomb?"

She looked back toward the stone structure, but my attention was drawn more to the fact that she moved so like Larissa, than to the building. "That was your tomb. I triggered the spells in there and brought you back. I healed you."

"You brought me back to a world I do not know. You have healed me."

Gena nodded emphatically. "Yes, that is what I did."

I stared at her wide-eyed. "But I never wanted to be healed."

"What?"

"I never wanted to come back. And you bring me back after Larissa has gone beyond?" I turned to Aarundel. "How did this happen? How did you let it happen?"

Aarundel steeled himself to reply. "There are many things that I must explain to you. . . ."

I wanted none of it and let my confusion slip over into irrational anger. "Why couldn't you just let me stay dead? I may not have been of an Elder race, but that should not make me your plaything. How could you think so little of me?"

Aarundel stood abruptly and, grabbing my arm, brought me up with him. He shoved me against the Consilliarii tree, and I saw the old fire smoldering in his eye. "Damn you, Neal, you know it was not that! You and I, we were brothers. You said so yourself."

"I would have let you die, brother."

"And I watched you die, brother, inch by inch as Takrakor's magick gnawed its way through you." He jerked his thumb back into his chest. "I was with you when you took Cleaveheart from Jammaq, and I have rejoiced every day that you were brave enough to come to Jammaq to steal Marta and me away from the Reithrese. Can you deny me wanting to rescue you from the last of their perfidy? Can you fault me for wanting to let you see my sister one more time? Can you fault me for hoping, one day, that you and I might walk again together through the vales of Cygestolia?"

He straightened up and watched me closely. "If you can, then know, brother, that the same fault is harbored in your breast, for I have done nothing here for you that you would not have done for me. Go ahead, tell me I am wrong. Do so and I will apologize, but I will not regret what I have done."

The man Gena had brought back from the dead covered his face with both hands. Leaning back against the Consilliarii tree, he hung there halfway between upright and prostrate. Part of her expected him to sob, but her mental image of Neal the hero killed that idea instantly. That was the sort of weak emotion of which she did not believe he was capable.

She shivered because much confused her. She had not considered what his reaction to being resurrected might be. Well, she had, but she had assumed he would respond with gratitude. All Men she had known carried with them a fear of death. In Rik it had been small and in others all but crippling. She had thought that any Man offered a chance to defeat death would readily accept it and be overjoyed at being returned to life.

Neal seemed to resent what she did for him, and resent it greatly. More surprising than that was her grandfather's apparent anticipation of that resentment. He had known what to expect from Neal, but he had chosen not to warn her. That was a side of her grandfather she had never known before, and it scared her.

"Grandfather, what is happening here?"

Neal lowered his hands. "Explain, Aarundel, if you can."

Aarundel lifted his head and appeared defiant in the face of their questions. "On the road, after you had been given that sleeping draught, it became obvious you would die. You had clearly stated your preferences about magick, and Cletine was unable to reverse the spell that had been cast upon you, so our disagreement on that point was moot. Cletine was able to use a spell to isolate you within time. It managed to slow the damage being done to you by Takrakor's magick. My intention, in having him cast that spell upon you, was to allow you to see Larissa one more time. That was, I felt, the least I could do for you."