Malil finally emerged from the lacuna behind her, and bellowed, “After her!”
Glissa wasn’t sure exactly where she was going. She couldn’t fly-not without help-and even if she could somehow bring Slobad down safely, the goblin would be in even more danger once he hit the ground. She hopped and danced around dozens of small, skittering artifact creatures that had not been here the last time. Why did Memnarch need millions of diminutive constructs? Why now?
The elf girl ducked as a heavy, three-fingered hand swiped overhead. The vedalken were right on her tail. She skidded around the wide base of a mycosynth spire and almost collided head-on with a wall of iron.
No, not a wall … a leg. Her eyes ran up the length of the flat black tower, one of four holding up the massive black ring overhead.
“Oof!” Glissa grunted as a fist connected with the small of her back, where Malil’s blade had skewered her, and she slammed face first into the massive support strut holding up one quarter of the rebuilt Panopticon. Despite the blinding pain, it was exactly where she wanted to be. She dug into the iron surface with the claws at the end of each hand, gaining solid purchase, then kicked back like an angry pack animal. She felt a satisfying crash as one foot shattered a vedalken faceplate. She scrambled hand over hand up the side of the mammoth black support strut.
Every time Glissa pulled herself up another few feet, agony pierced her abdomen, but she kept going, ignoring it. She ignored the warm blood that once again flowed from her wounds, and the greenish copper stains that seeped into her bandages. She ignored the ominous hum of vedalken machinery kicking into gear far below, and growing closer by the second.
She craned her neck and caught sight of Slobad and his vedalken captor once again. They were hard to make out against the dazzling energy output of the core, but they were the only things moving up there. She involuntarily groaned and dug in her claws to continue her ascent when a wide shadow fell over Glissa. Keeping one set of talons firmly embedded in the metal, she slowly turned out, one hand in a fist, to see what she could see.
Malil stood before her astride one of the many varieties of vedalken hovercraft with which Glissa had grown far too familiar over the last few weeks. His arms were crossed, and his cold metal features twisted into a smile. The effort to show amusement looked ridiculously awkward on the metal man, but maybe he just hadn’t had much practice, Glissa thought deliriously. She was fading fast, again. What little blood she’d had left drained into the soaked bandages around her torso. Her grip was slipping.
“Tell Memnarch … he can find his spark somewhere else,” she said, and squinted up at the tiny dot that even now moved through the ring above and disappeared against the bright light of Mother’s Heart. “Sorry, Slobad,” she whispered and let go.
CHAPTER 8
“Please, my Kha, you must hold still,” the healer insisted, “I cannot set the bandages if you keep moving. Now please, just breath as steadily as you can, and be patient. Be my patient, and behave.”
“Only a healer would speak with such impudence,” Raksha Golden Cub snarled with a deep growl, and involuntarily sneezed. Glittering green flies buzzed about the tent, causing metallic dust to swirl in the candlelight. The sounds of battle on the plains, no more than half a mile distant, failed to penetrate the enchantments that helped maintained a calm, quiet atmosphere. Though a fighter born and bred, the leonin Kha of Taj Nar was glad for the brief respite from the howling din of war.
Of course, at the moment that respite made him Shonahn’s only patient, and his childhood nursemaid felt free to speak her mind-at least, now that the two of them were alone. Shonahn’s unusual familiarity would be a gross breach of custom, and a disrespect technically worthy of execution according to ancient law.
Still, he could no more blame Shonahn than he could ever bring himself to punish her for being honest with him. He had almost gotten himself killed.
“If we-ow-if I could … breathe steadi … ly, I wouldn’t be-” Raksha wheezed.
“Hush.” The older female placed a paw over the end of the Golden Cub’s mouth. “Only a Kha would give his healer such grief. How long have I looked after his every cut and scrape? Some thirty years?”
“Yes,” Raksha managed. “Could you just-?”
“Haven’t I always managed to put you back together after these adventures? Remember that time you tried to grow night-blooming razor grass under your bed?” Shonahn’s light brown muzzle split into a grin that exposed only the tips of her eyeteeth. “I must have been pulling blades from your haunches for a day and a half,” she said, wrapping the last length of silver gauze around the bound wounds that cut across Raksha’s chest. The healer closed her golden eyes and purred a soft incantation, and the leonin Kha felt the bandages fixing firmly around his torso. The sharpest of the pain began to ebb away, leeching into the enchanted wrappings. He drew a breath and felt only a tingling where before the pain had been like a thousand razor cuts. The material didn’t just help with the pain, it also expanded with his diaphragm as he breathed, and remained fast against his hide, even as he slipped off the side of the bed and straightened to his full imposing height.
“The nim’s claws have proven to be quite resistant to our healing magic, my Kha,” Shonahn said, flashing teeth in an expression of frustration, “That’s why I had to rely on those stitches, by the way, and the bandages. They’re of Lumengrid manufacture, I found them on my travels. I ordered several lots for distribution to the healer’s corps while I was there. Come to think about it, they’re late. But what do you think? They work, do they not?”
“We did not need stitches … or vedalken trickery … to heal-”
“Yes, you did,” the healer interrupted, “And you must listen for a change, my Kha, to your elder. Grant me that courtesy.”
Raksha nodded.
“You were unconscious when they brought you in from the battlefield. Every binding spell I attempted simply flashed into nothing. You were bleeding to death. The nim have some enchantment-something-that I can’t counter.” She turned and busied herself with putting away her medicines. “The bandages are a stopgap measure, and will let your body heal the wound on its own. I despised turning to the slavemongers for aid, but our losses … many more warriors will die without this ‘vedalken trickery.’” She bowed her head. “My Kha, I must be blunt.”
“You usually are.”
Shonahn nodded in respect. “You must let Yshkar take command of the troops. You know he desires command, even if he won’t tell you directly.” Shonahn left her medical kit and placed a hand gently on Raksha’s shoulder. “And our people cannot afford to lose you. The bandages can only do so much.”
He thanked the gods once more that the old nurse had survived so many campaigns at his side. Her counsel, even when he didn’t agree with it, always prompted him to find a better solution on his own. The Kha doubted he’d be the leader he was if not for Shonahn, and her recent return from journeys abroad had been welcome. Though ostensibly a sabbatical, the wise old leonin had acted as an ambassador with some scattered tribes, forming trade pacts with other humans, goblins, and others that had never met a leonin before.
Still, some of her more outlandish claims were best taken with a grain of salt. In her later years, Shonahn had developed a habit of embellishing her stories for effect. Or maybe he’d just started noticing. She claimed to have seen, for example, a pit in the Oxidda Mountains that went all the way to the center of the world.