Cale tried to speak but nothing came out.
Riven was there, shouting something, his sabers whirring. He must have retrieved them. Still she remained on top of Cale, holding Jak and the assassin at bay with claw and tooth. Cale, helpless and dying, could do nothing.
It occurred to him then: she had devoured his holy symbol. He had failed his friends-was Riven his friend? — and his god. His vision began to go dark. He gasped for breath. He tried to shift his chest free of her weight but was too weak.
Then, somehow, Jak was on her back, straddling her the way he might a horse. He was shouting, his face flushed and contorted with rage. Tears poured down his face.
As though from a great distance, Cale heard him screaming, "Die! Die!" and with each word, he stabbed her-in the side, in the throat, in the back. Again and again.
The creature roared, showing Cale a mouthful of teeth, and reared up.
Strangely, when she got off of Cale, he felt no relief. His chest still felt as though a hundredweight sat atop it. He knew then that he would die. A rib had pierced a lung. He was breathing through blood.
The creature drove Riven back, plucked Jak off of her back by the scruff of his neck, and brought him around to her face. One, twice, she cuffed him about the face. He went limp, and she opened wide her mouth.
A sabre blade burst from her chest, spraying blood. She looked at it in surprise, dropped Jak, and whirled-
— to receive a cross cut from Riven's other sabre, clean through her throat. Her head flew from her body and her huge frame crashed to the ground, missing Cale by a handspan.
The assassin wasted no time. He spared Cale only a glance before he went to Jak and kneeled at his side. He tapped the halfling's cheeks.
"Fleet! Godsdamnit, Fleet!"
Jak's eyes fluttered open. Riven pulled him roughly to his feet and dragged him over to Cale. Cale tried to speak but couldn't manage it.
"He's dying, Fleet," Riven said. "Heal him. Now."
The assassin looked over his shoulder at the forest. The combat there had ceased. Or at least Cale could no longer hear it.
Jak nodded but his eyes welled. He kneeled, put his hands on Cale, and whispered a prayer to Brandobaris. Cale's pain eased some, but his forearm continued to bleed. His lungs still barely functioned.
Jak looked him in the eyes and mouthed the words, I'm sorry.
Cale understood. Jak had used his spells to counter the creature's spells. He had no more healing to give.
"Another, Fleet!" Riven demanded. "Another!"
Jak shook his head and muttered, "I don't have another. It's not enough." His voice broke when he said that last.
Cale tried to smile but could not. He was fading.
Voices from behind.
Jak jumped to his feet with a snarl, blades in his fists. Riven too whirled around. Cale couldn't see but he could hear:
"… tracking you for days. You missed me in Starmantle so you hire curs? They were running as though the Hells had been emptied behind them. What are-"
"Magadon," Riven said. "Come here!"
Magadon. It took a moment for the name to register. Riven's guide from Starmantle.
Magadon stepped forward and appeared in Cale's sight. Clad in woodsman's garb-weathered green cloak, calf high leather boots, broad belt and wide-brimmed hat-he looked every bit a guide. He wore a bow over his shoulder and held a long sword in his fist. He looked to the corpse of the creature beside Cale and his eyes went wide.
"Slaadi," he said.
Riven grabbed him by the shoulder and made him look at Cale.
"Forget that," the assassin said. "Help him."
Shaking his head sadly, Magadon said, "He's done for, Drasek."
In a blink, Riven had a blade at Magadon's throat.
"Not so," Riven hissed. With his other blade, he pointed back across the clearing to someone that Cale couldn't see. "Hold your ground or he dies, then you. Fleet."
Jak, though obviously confused, interposed himself between Riven and Magadon's comrade, blade bare.
Magadon must not be alone, Cale dimly realized. It occurred to him then that Magadon and his comrade must have been the riders who had tracked Dreeve's pack from Starmantle.
"It's all right, Nestor," Magadon said over his shoulder.
"Godsdamned right," Riven hissed. "Now do it. I've seen you do it before."
Looking down at Cale, Magadon said, "He's too far gone."
"You better hope not. Do it!"
Cale saw the struggle on Magadon's young, cleanshaven face. The man couldn't have seen more than thirty winters.
"You don't know what you're asking," he said at last.
"Yes, I do," Riven said, and he pressed his blade into Magadon's flesh.
The guide stared at Riven's eye, found nothing, and slowly lowered himself beside Cale. Riven's blade stayed at his throat the while.
"I suppose you do," Magadon said, and grim humor tinged his voice.
Riven put his mouth next to the guide's ear and whispered, "If he dies, you're dead too. I don't need a guide without him."
At that, Magadon actually smiled.
"I see you haven't changed, Drasek."
He removed his hat and looked Cale in the face for the first time. Cale saw that his eyes lacked color. They were solid white except for his dark pupils. Ridiculously, those eyes called to Cale's mind knucklebones that had just come up adder's eyes. The most unlucky of rolls.
"This won't hurt," Magadon said to Cale. "Not you, anyway."
Despite the attempt at levity, Cale heard the dread in the guide's voice. Magadon put two fingers to Cale's forehead and two fingers to his own. Instantly, a charge ran the length and breadth of Cale's body and he felt his mind connect to Magadon's, conjoin. The feeling would have frightened him had he not been so weak. For a fraction of a heartbeat, he was not his own man.
Almost as quickly as it had begun, their minds began to separate. As Magadon's mind pulled away, he drew Cale's pain after him. Cale's vision cleared, ribs righted and reknit, slashes closed and sealed, and the stump of his wrist stopped bleeding.
And with each step of the healing process, the wounds that had healed in Cale manifested on Magadon. The guide groaned as his ribs shattered, and he gritted his teeth as his skin split.
The entire process took only moments.
Afterward, Cale was whole but for the stump of his hand. Magadon was ruined.
The guide collapsed beside him, eyes squeezed shut, face contorted with pain. Cale would have healed him if he had had his holy symbol. With nothing else for it, he sat up, put a comforting hand on Magadon, and looked up at Riven.
"What have you done?"
"Saved you," Riven said unemotionally, and nodded at Magadon. "Watch."
Cale watched, wide-eyed, as Magadon visibly gathered himself and attempted to concentrate. Before Cale's eyes, the slashes in the guide's flesh faded, and his ribs healed.
"Dark," Jak whispered from behind him, watching with one eye while keeping the other on Magadon's comrade.
Cale too was amazed. He had seen Magadon cast no healing spell.
"How?" he asked Riven.
Riven's mouth twisted with distaste.
"Back in Selgaunt," the assassin said. "I told you I once knew a mind mage. Now you do too."
"Psionicist," Magadon corrected, groaning as he lifted himself into a seated position. "Mind mage sounds ridiculous."
Riven scoffed.
Cale helped Magadon to his feet and asked, "You healed me with your mind?"
Magadon looked him in the face with those knucklebone eyes and replied, "I established a sympathetic bond between us and took your wounds as my own. I healed myself with my mind."
Cale absorbed that, still astounded.
"So you can only heal yourself?" he asked.
Magadon nodded.
A thought occurred to Cale and he asked, "Can you pass the wounds to another?"