Relentless (19 page)

35. “HURTS”

“I’M STILL WORRIED
ABOUT RALIN,”
Leesa said from where she lay in the darkness on her side of the bed.

“How so?” Rave asked from close beside her. “Is that thing with his arm still bothering you?”

They lay cuddled together talking, the way they did every night before Leesa allowed herself to fall asleep, usually in Rave’s arms. Ralin was already fast asleep in his crib on the far side of the room. Leesa could hear his soft breathing. The rhythm of his breaths was smooth and regular, belying her concerns.

They no longer bothered putting the sides of Ralin’s crib up—their son seldom moved in his sleep and so was in no danger of rolling off the bed. And if for some reason he wanted out, the two-foot high bars certainly weren’t going to stop him or even slow him down. Since Rave usually remained awake for most of the night, they weren’t worried about Ralin wandering away from his crib.

Ralin had gone to bed without complaint and had fallen asleep easily, the way he did most every night. None of that completely eased Leesa’s concern, however. Incomplete magic could be dangerous, she knew, and Ralin’s accidental passing of his arm through the wall was as incomplete as magic got. She found it difficult to persuade herself there wouldn’t be repercussions from this afternoon’s misfortune.

She pushed herself up onto her elbow. She could barely make out Rave’s silhouette in the dimness, but knew he could see her as clear as day.

“Yeah, it’s about his arm,” she replied. “I know he fell asleep easily enough, but while he was still awake, did he seem a bit more subdued than usual to you this evening? You know, like he was not quite his normal self? Or was I just reading something into it that wasn’t there?”

Rave thought for just a moment. “Now that you mention it, I guess he was a little less rambunctious than normal. It was a nice change.”

“I know, but that’s what I mean. It’s like something was bothering him, but not quite enough for him to complain about it. Maybe it was his arm, or maybe it was something else. Either way, it has me worried.”

Rave sat up. “I think I can bring him over without waking him. I’ll go get him, and you can use your bond to check if anything is wrong.”

Leesa sat up beside Rave and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She leaned over and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

“Thank you. I know I’ll sleep better after I check.”

Before Rave could stand up, Ralin’s voice sounded from out of the darkness.

“Ralin hurt.”

Those two words were all Leesa needed to hear. She was on her feet in an instant and quickly cast an extra bright illumination sphere to light up the bedroom. Before she could even take one step, Rave had already flashed across the room and lifted Ralin out of his crib, cradling him in his arms the same way he did when he carried Leesa. He brought their son over to her.

“Ralin hurt,” Ralin repeated, looking up into his mother’s face with a pleading look.

Leesa’s eyes immediately went to his arm. She didn’t need to focus on her magical bond with Ralin to know what was wrong. While he slept, his wrist and hand had turned blue. Not a beautiful, glowing volkaane blue—no, this was an angry blue, a dark, purplish blue like the color of a bad bruise.

She gently squeezed his hand between her thumb and index finger. His flesh was cool and swollen.

Ralin yanked his hand away. “Hurts,” he repeated.

“What is it?” Rave asked Leesa, his growing concern clear in his voice.

Leesa didn’t look up, unable to take her eyes off Ralin’s arm. “I can’t be positive, but I think the particles of wall still inside his arm might be cutting off some of the circulation to his hand.” Guessing wasn’t enough for Leesa, though—she needed to know for sure. It was time to see what her bond would tell her. “Hold on a minute.”

She concentrated hard on her bond with her son. Everything seemed fine, except for his lower arm and hand. There, his vibrations were all askew, his aura brighter and hotter than normal. She fine-tuned her focus into the offending area even more.

She sensed the problem immediately. Foreign particles that gave off no magical vibrations whatsoever were scattered throughout a narrow band of his forearm, in the exact place where his arm had been stuck in the wall. These were molecules from the wallboard, she knew, tiny pieces that remained inside him from his incomplete dematerialization. She could sense that some of them were clogging his arteries and veins, reducing the circulation to his hand and causing it to discolor and swell.

While she had the offending particles in her magical sight, she searched for something to do, some way to use her magic to destroy or remove them. Nothing came to mind.

Reluctantly, she brought her focus back to the room.

“It’s what I thought,” she told Rave. “Tiny particles of the wall are stuck inside his arm. Some of them are interfering with his circulation.”

Rave frowned. “Can’t you use your magic get them out?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see a way to do it while my mind was in there. I tried to find one, believe me.” Leesa thought of one other source she could try. “Let me look in my book. Maybe it will show me something I can do.”

She hurried into the living room, where her magical book sat in its customary place atop the table. Rave followed with Ralin still cradled in his arms.

Leesa sat down and quickly flipped the cover open to an arbitrary spot about a third of the way into the book, only to find blank pages staring back at her. Her heart sank as she looked down at the stark white pages. If the book held an answer for her, it wouldn’t matter where she opened it to. The book’s magic would have shown her what she needed. She pushed the cover closed. Her book was not going to be any help to them.

She looked up at Rave. “Nothing,” she said despondently.

“Ralin hurt,” her son repeated again. His voice was growing more upset each time he said it. The words tore at Leesa’s heart. She had to do something. If she didn’t act soon, Ralin was in grave danger of losing his hand, or worse.

“Can you look again?” Rave asked. “Maybe if you concentrate really hard on what you need, the book will show you a way to do it.”

Leesa hated the worried tone she heard in Rave’s voice, but he was no more anxious about all this than she was.

“I don’t think I can concentrate any harder.” Even as Leesa voiced the words, she reached out toward the book. “But I guess it can’t hurt to try.”

Concentrating as fully as she could on the need to fix her son’s arm, she rested her palm on the cover of the book for several seconds before opening it to another random spot. Once again, though, her eyes were met by nothing but empty white space. She stared down at the pages for several moments, almost as if willing words to appear. When nothing happened, she slammed the book closed.

“Nothing,” she said, her voice tinged with a bitterness she knew was unfair. “Either there’s no magic the book can give me that will help, or whatever exists is beyond my current abilities so the book won’t show it to me. Either way, I’m afraid we’re on our own.”

“We’ve got to do something,” Rave said. “And I think it needs to be soon.”

“I know. Let me go back to my bond again. Maybe I’ll see something I missed last time.”

Leesa turned her focus to her bond with Ralin one more time, concentrating entirely on the place where the tiny pieces of wall infected his arm. Once she was there, she narrowed her focus even tighter, fastening her concentration upon a single plaster particle partially obstructing the flow of blood in one of Ralin’s narrower veins. If she could just figure out a way to get rid of one single piece, then she could eventually get rid of all of them. She imagined the invading piece disintegrating and vanishing, hoping that somehow by visualizing its destruction she could make it happen.

Her effort failed. The particle remained stubbornly stuck right where it was, and the aura around his wrist and hand glowed hotter and angrier than ever.

She looked up at Rave, a glum look on her face. “I can’t destroy the pieces. I tried, but I don’t have the power. Maybe we need to get him to the hospital.” She didn’t really believe the doctors would be able to treat this magical affliction, but she did not want to voice that thought. She needed to remain positive. “Maybe the doctors can do something to heal him. There’s all kinds of new microsurgery techniques being tried every day.”

Rave didn’t believe doctors were the answer either, but something about what Leesa had just said struck a chord with him. He ran her words back through his mind. In a moment, he had it.

“What about your healing power? Why haven’t you tried that yet?”

Leesa felt like slapping herself upside the head. That was a very good question. Why HADN’T she tried her healing power yet? She had been so busy looking for exotic answers to their problems that she had forgotten the simplest one. While she wasn’t certain her healing abilities could get rid of the plaster particles, she thought she could probably treat his swollen, discolored hand, at least. That would be a start, and a start was better than doing nothing.

She gave Rave a quick peck on the lips. “That’s just another reason why I love you—you stay calm when I’m close to panicking. I can’t believe I didn’t think about using my healing magic.”

Without wasting any more time, she took Ralin’s injured hand into both of hers, holding it gently between her palms. Her hands covered his tiny wrist as well. She concentrated hard, visualizing his hand and wrist looking healthy and normal, the way they had before he stuck his arm through the wall. After just a moment, she felt the familiar healing warmth begin to emanate from her palm. Along with the warmth, a soft golden glow escaped from between her hands.

When the glow vanished, Leesa removed her hands. The swelling and discoloration in Ralin’s hand were gone. Relief surged through her as she stared down at the perfectly healthy hand of her son.

Rave breathed a sigh of relief as well. “You did it,” he said, smiling.

Ralin held his hand up in front of his face, turning it slowly back and forth a couple of times as he examined it. “All better,” he said finally. He grinned.

Leesa didn’t want to rain on anyone’s parade, but she knew the problem wasn’t truly fixed yet. She had restored Ralin’s hand to its normal state, but she still hadn’t done anything to take care of the cause of the problem.

“The particles are still inside his arm,” she explained to Rave. “I don’t know if my healing power can do anything about them or not, but I’m going to try.”

Rave nodded. “I understand.” He gently grabbed Ralin’s arm around the elbow. “Hold still, Ralin. Mommy has one more thing to do.”

Leesa placed her hands around the narrow band on Ralin’s forearm containing the pieces of wallboard. As before, she concentrated on visualizing both the inside and outside of his arm the way they had been before he stuck it through the wall. This time, though, she felt no healing warmth from her hands. No golden glow leaked from beneath her palms, either.

When she took her hands away, nothing had changed. Ralin’s arm was still speckled white. She knew it would be the same underneath the skin. The offending particles remained stubbornly in place.

She looked up at Rave and shook her head. “It didn’t work. This isn’t a wound or an injury, at least as far as my magic is concerned. The particles cause an injury, for sure, but they don’t seem to be one. Maybe if they became infected it would be different, but they’re not. They seem to have become assimilated as part of Ralin’s arm and are not being attacked by his immune system. It must have something to do with the dematerialization.”

“What does all that mean, exactly?” Rave asked.

Leesa sighed. “It means I’ve bought us some time, that’s all. Unless we can come up with some way to remove the pieces from inside his arm, the same thing is just going to happen again.”

“If it does, will you be able to heal it again?”

“I hope so. But how many times I can keep doing it without Ralin suffering some permanent damage, I have no idea.”

Rave set Ralin down onto the floor. As the boy scampered away, he seemed none the worse for his ordeal.

“We’d better think of something soon, then,” Rave said softly to Leesa as Ralin leaped nimbly up onto their bed and began bouncing joyfully, seemingly fully recovered, for now at least.

“I know,” Leesa replied as she watched Ralin bounce off the bed and onto the floor without a care in the world. “Maybe something will come to me in the morning, but right now, I’m fresh out of ideas.”

36. FROM BAD TO WORSE

LEESA’S FEARS PROVED WELL-FOUNDED.
The first thing she did when she awakened the following morning, after giving Rave a quick good morning kiss, was to check on Ralin’s arm. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and headed directly to his crib. Pale daylight leaked into the bedroom through the thin curtains, but she called forth a golden illumination sphere as she crossed the room to provide better light for her examination.

She found Ralin lying on his back, eyes open. He smiled happily up at her. She reached down and tickled his ribs for a long moment, drawing an extended series of playful giggles from him. The sound warmed her maternal heart even more than usual. Finally, she pulled her hands away from his sides and turned her attention to his arm.

At first glance, everything appeared fine, and she let out a soft sigh of relief. A closer look, however, showed her that the tips of his fingers were beginning to darken. The bluish hue wasn’t all that obvious yet, but when she held the affected fingers next to his good hand for comparison, the difference was clear. She knew it was only a matter of time before Ralin’s entire hand began to discolor and swell, just as it had the previous night.

How long it would take before his hand got to the point where he started complaining about the pain again she had no idea. She didn’t know what time it had been when the pain awakened him the night before, but she guessed it had been twelve hours or more after he had stuck his hand through the wall. Surely less than half as many hours had passed since she had healed him. The effect of the tiny particles on his circulation was slow, but so far it also seemed to be unstoppable.

She was tempted to use her healing magic on him again immediately, but she resisted the urge. She still wasn’t sure if there was a limit to how many times she would be able to heal his hand, and she didn’t want to waste any of them until his condition grew much worse than it was at present.

“His fingers are beginning to turn blue,” Rave said from close behind her, just in case her human vision hadn’t yet detected the difference.

“I know,” Leesa replied without turning around. “I expected this would happen, but was hoping I would be wrong.”

“Are you going to fix it again?”

Before she could reply, Ralin stood up on his bed and jumped down onto the floor, landing lightly and easily on both feet.

“Not yet. It doesn’t seem to be bothering him right now, and I don’t know how many times I’ll be able to do it before it stops being effective. I think I should wait for a while and see what happens.”

She watched as Ralin padded toward the doorway to the living room. When he reached it, he twisted his head around and looked back at them.

“Ralin hungry,” he said.

Leesa grinned at Rave. “It looks like we’ve got more pressing matters at hand right now. Our son is hungry.”

Rave returned her grin. “That’s the human half of him, for sure.”

As the morning wore on, Leesa and Rave kept a close eye on Ralin. For the first few hours he seemed his normal, almost hyper-active self as he played in the backyard, racing across the lawn, swinging on the new swing Rave had installed and even climbing up into the trees. He no longer used the rope as a means to ascend the tree—instead, he took a running start and scampered up the trunk to the first branches like a giant squirrel. His hand didn’t seem to be bothering him at all.

As the sun climbed higher into the autumn sky, however, he began looking down at his afflicted hand more and more frequently, sometimes shaking it vigorously in an apparent effort to fix what was wrong with it. He gave up climbing through the trees and kept his playing down on the ground or on the swing, holding on with just one hand. Even from across the yard, Leesa could see that his hand had darkened considerably. Still, he hadn’t voiced any complaint yet, so as difficult as it was, she continued to watch and wait—and to worry.

When the swing reached its apex about five feet above the ground, Ralin jumped forward, landing softly and tucking his small body into a rolling somersault before rising nimbly to his feet. It was one of his favorite moves, something Leesa had watched him do dozens of times before. This time, when he stood up, he stared down at his hand longer and with seemingly more intense concentration than he had previously. He rubbed it with his right hand for a few moments. When he lifted his healthy hand away, a beam of green energy suddenly shot from his palm, striking the back of his injured hand directly in the center. Leesa screamed as her son cried out in pain. She heard Ralin’s skin begin to sizzle.

As usual, Rave reacted instantly, bolting across the yard and knocking the hand issuing the green beam to the side. The magical energy skimmed across Rave’s shoulder, burning it with an audible hiss before shooting upward and blasting a thick branch in the tree above. Rave grabbed Ralin and leapt to the side as the heavy limb crashed down right where they had been standing just a second before.

Leesa reached their side a moment later and grabbed Ralin’s arm. She had to choke down a cry of anguish when she saw what their son had done to himself.

His magic had bored a hole completely through his swollen and discolored hand. The skin around the wound was rough and charred. The smell of his burnt flesh nauseated her.

She glanced up at Ralin’s face. His features were tight with pain, but he made no sound. She thought he might be in shock.

Quickly enveloping the injured hand between the palms of her hands, she called forth her healing magic, struggling to force the image of the gruesome injury from her mind and replacing it with a picture of a normal, healthy hand. It took a moment longer than usual, but finally she felt the familiar healing warmth and saw the golden glow that told her the healing was taking place.

When she took her hands away, the wound had healed fully, as if it had never been. His skin was completely unblemished. Ralin’s fingers remained slightly discolored, though. She put her hands around them and called on her magic again, but nothing happened. As she had feared, there seemed to be a limit to how often she could heal the same injury completely.

Ralin studied his hand. By his expression, he was pleased with the change.

“All better,” he said, either oblivious to or unconcerned with the remaining discoloration.

Leesa turned to Rave, who was watching from close beside her.

“This is exactly what I feared,” she said. “I can’t keep healing him over and over. Each time, it’s going to be a little worse.”

For the first time, she noticed Rave’s shoulder. A large piece of his shirt was torn away, revealing a nasty looking jagged burn mark on his skin.

“You’re hurt!”

Rave turned his head and looked down at his shoulder. “It’s no big deal. I’ve had worse.”

Leesa placed her hand atop the burn. “I don’t care if you have. This is one wound I know I can heal, so that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

Rave knew better than to argue, so he stood still for the few seconds it took Leesa to mend his shoulder. When she pulled her hand away, his bronzed skin was smooth and unblemished.

“Thank you. I just wish you could heal Ralin that completely.”

“We need to talk about that. It’s not just the impaired circulation, though that’s bad enough, especially as my ability to fix his hand continues to fade.” Leesa glanced over at Ralin, who had climbed atop the fallen branch his magic had blasted from the tree. He seemed perfectly content playing among its leafy limbs. “I think that somehow his magic is trying to fix the problem. That’s why he attacked himself. Even if I keep healing him for as long as I’m able, I think this may happen again and again. He could maim, or even kill himself next time.”

Rave looked toward Ralin. “Can’t you shield him in a way that would prevent his magic from hurting him?”

Leesa sighed. “I don’t know. His magic might take a different form next time, or a different route. It might even attack the area internally. I don’t think there’s any way I could stop that.” She took another look at her son. He turned his head and smiled at her, causing her heart to ache even more at the thought of something happening to him.

She made a decision she’d been hoping to avoid. “I don’t think we can afford to wait any longer, Rave. I have to try it.”

Rave nodded grimly. Leesa didn’t need to elaborate on what she was talking about. They had discussed her dangerous, last resort plan once before, and they had agreed to wait until there seemed to be no other choice. That time had finally arrived.