Senneth tried a smile again. “Did you think I was?”
Kirra scrubbed a little harder at what must have been a particularly stubborn streak of ash. “Let’s just say it was the thing everyone was most afraid of. I couldn’t do anything for you. Ellynor couldn’t. That strange woman-Lara-she came by but said you had to heal yourself. She did do something to take away your pain, though.”
Senneth remembered pain, but only dimly. “I had one of my headaches?”
“Well, your hands were clutched around your head and you kept moaning, so that’s what I assumed. But once Lara left, you seemed to relax a little, although you still didn’t wake up.” She glanced at Tayse. “Your husband never left your side.”
“I know he didn’t,” Senneth said quietly. “I felt him here the whole time.”
“I wanted to be here,” he said, “in case you needed me.”
She reached for his hand, and his fingers instantly closed over hers. She felt her throat closing up, but it was stupid to cry now. “What of everyone else? Amalie-she’s safe? All our friends?”
“The princess suffered surprisingly few ill effects from her mortal combat with the personification of evil,” Kirra said. She had laid aside the towel and now she was pulling a comb very gently through Senneth’s tangled hair. “She was tired, of course, but eerily serene. Which was good, since around her there was complete and utter mayhem. On top of everything else, she had just made it indisputably clear that she is a mystic of no uncommon power, and anyone who hadn’t figured that out already was left stunned and nervous. So far there has been no fresh mutiny, but I feel certain there will be a reckoning of sorts when the news is carried to the four corners of the kingdom.”
“And everyone else?”
“The Riders bore some losses, but all of our friends survived,” Kirra said.
Senneth cut her eyes Tayse’s way. The death of any Rider would strike him hard. “Who?” she asked.
“Coeval. Brindle. Moxer,” he replied. “Janni was severely injured, but she’s been healed. Justin was badly hurt in the fight against Coralinda Gisseltess, but Ellynor was instantly beside him, and he is mending quickly.”
“Cammon was deaf for a full day,” Kirra continued. “It was strange, because he found it hard to talk while he couldn’t hear, and so he didn’t say anything, and you know Cammon never shuts up. But just as I was beginning to think I could get used to a Cammon who never says a word, his ears started working again, and now he’s our same happy street urchin again.”
That made Senneth smile. “So what’s the plan? Return to Ghosenhall as soon as we’re all well enough to travel?”
Kirra nodded. “Tomorrow, I would think. Everyone is eager to get back and assess the damage there.”
The tent door fluttered and Amalie’s voice sifted through. “Is she awake? Can I come in?”
“And me?” Cammon asked right after her.
Senneth gaped in horror. “Not while I look like this,” she said to Kirra. “Will they let me bathe first?”
Kirra and Tayse were laughing. “I’ll hold them off,” Tayse said, rising and crossing to the door.
“I’ll fetch bathwater,” Kirra said. “But you won’t be able to keep them out for long, you know. Everyone has been worried about you.”
Senneth smiled faintly. “The way I feel, everyone was right to be worried.”
“Back in a few minutes,” Kirra said, and disappeared behind Tayse.
Alone for the moment, Senneth tested her strength. Her hands were too weak to clench. Her legs moved when she kicked them against the bed, but even that small effort was exhausting. Her back was sore and her vision did not feel particularly reliable. She’d only been awake fifteen minutes and she was ready to sleep again.
She held her right hand out before her, palm-up, and studied its lines and calluses. The other hand she placed over her heart, seeking out the eternal heat at the core of her body. But her fingers were chilled and there was no great combustion rumbling inside her chest.
She balled up her fingers, and splayed them wide, but no fire danced from the tips of her hand.
She remembered those last desperate moments of the battle against Coralinda Gisseltess. As if the Bright Mother had been watching, as if the goddess would take such a sacrifice, Senneth had offered herself. Burn me. Burn my body. Turn me into your elemental fuel. She had not, actually, expected to survive the encounter.
And it seemed she had not survived it whole.
Kirra returned quickly, lugging a small metal washtub, and then made a half dozen trips between the tub and the tent door to fetch buckets of water. Steam rose from the surface of the tub; the water must have been close to boiling.
So Kirra knew.
“Come on, come on,” Kirra said, motioning Senneth over. “I have a nice big towel, almost clean, and a sliver of soap. This water won’t stay hot forever.”
Senneth sat on the bed unmoving. “I’ve lost my magic,” she said.
Kirra nodded. “I know. Come on. Wash up.”
Senneth stood, a little shakily, and discarded items of clothing as she crossed the small space. “How did you know?”
“Your skin was so cold. You were so cold. In you go.”
The tub was so small Senneth practically had to crouch inside it, but the hot water felt unspeakably good against her skin. “Will I ever get it back?”
“I can’t even begin to guess,” Kirra said. “Here, bend your head down and I’ll pour some water over your hair.”
Kirra’s matter-of-fact acceptance of this dreadful truth was making it easier for Senneth to keep talking about it; but it was such a huge thing, so impossible to assess, that she was sure she hadn’t absorbed it completely yet. “Does Tayse know?”
“Maybe. He lay beside you for three days, keeping you warm with his own body. He doesn’t know much about mystics, but he knows a lot about you.”
Senneth shook her head. It was hard to tell whether those were tears on her cheeks, or stray rivulets from the water Kirra was pouring over her. “There have been so many times I cursed my magic and what it had made me,” she said, trying not to sniffle. “But the thought-of having it leave me-of being completely ordinary, completely ignored by the gods-Kirra, it feels so strange. I don’t know that I will still be me.”
Kirra was briskly rubbing soap in her hair, and Senneth could feel the silky lather bubbling up against her ears. “I hardly think the gods are done with you so soon,” she said. “You have proved too useful so far. If indeed your magic is gone, they will find some other way to employ you.” She paused long enough to pour another bucket of water over Senneth’s head. “Certainly Amalie will want your services, whether or not you can burn down Ghosenhall.”
Senneth sniffled again. “Maybe I can become a Rider. I suppose now there are even more openings in their ranks.”
“Maybe you can become a teacher. I bet Jerril could use you to train all those wild Carrebos mystics, even if you don’t have magic of your own.”
“But I want magic of my own,” Senneth said softly, and started crying in earnest.
Kirra instantly threw her arms around her, heedless of splashing water and Senneth’s wet skin. “I know you do, Sen. And maybe someday you’ll get it back. But for now I don’t care. Tayse doesn’t care. Nobody cares. We thought you might be dead, and you’re not dead, and all of us would have given up our magic if it meant you wouldn’t die. So we know the gods still care about you, or they would have let you go.”
SENNETH was able to compose herself enough to face the others when, twenty minutes later, her hair was combed and she was dressed in clean clothes. They burst into the tent as quickly as the small flap would allow-Justin, Donnal, Cammon, Amalie, Ellynor, Valri, Tayse again-each of them hugging her with an unrestrained delight. They permitted her to eat more food and vied for her attention to tell, and retell, their own individual parts in that last spectacular battle. She listened, exclaimed, teased Cammon about his deafness, examined Justin’s latest wound, commended Ellynor on her healing skills, and generally warmed herself at the fire of their affection.