Chapter 4
“What is it?” a gruff man asked, leaning down to look at Tashama. She shrank deeper into the shadows.
“I cannot tell. It’s too dark over here.”
Panic coursed through her blood, worried when they discovered she was a woman. Then what?
“Is he wounded? Why doesn’t he speak?”
“What is that sweet scent?”
One of the men touched Tashama’s shoulder, and she cried out to their surprise and her own. “It’s a woman.” He took a step back.
“You’re mistaken. They wouldn’t have thrown a woman in here like this.”
“Are you hurt?”
“I’m—I’m all right,” Tashama said.
“Can you stand?” He touched her arm.
“Ah!” she cried out when his jagged fingernails poked at the cuts on her arm.
“She’s hurt.” His voice was shadowed with concern. “Get the healer.”
“No, no, really, I’m all right.” She tried to stand.
“No, miss, just sit.”
“Who is she?” one of the men whispered.
“Tashama.” Her voice was soft and high compared to the men’s deep voices, and she felt more out of place than before.
Deadly silence prevailed, then hushed voices encircled her when the word soon spread concerning the woman in the prisoners’ midst.
“That name is forbidden to us.”
“Where is she?” a hurried voice asked, his light footsteps treading on the ground close by.
A torch was brought to bear on her. She squinted at the sight of the bright light and covered her sensitive eyes. A renewed rush of voices ensued.
“She’s not one of us!”
“Yes, but she’s not one of them either.”
“What is she?”
The healer leaned over her and touched her hair, tangled in her ribbon now with more of it undone from the braid than not.
“My arms.” She stared into his blue eyes as dark and deep as the lake she’d been to earlier. His ash-blond hair hung loosely about his narrow shoulders. “They were cut by…”
“They attack our women now!” one of the men shouted.
The cry was repeated throughout the gathering crowd. Sentries rushed to double the guard, and several shouted orders on top of the high walls to watch for trouble.
The healer rubbed his smooth, pointed chin. “Carry her to my tent.”
“I can walk, for heaven’s sakes.” She attempted again to rise.
One of the men grabbed her up, then cradled her in his arms. He headed toward the healer’s tent, ignoring her protests. His lumbering gait rocked her back and forth like a rowboat on an unsettled sea. “You’re not one of ours,” he said.
Tashama frowned at the bulky brute of a man. His body odor repelled her. She tried not to breathe. “Who is in charge here?”
“General Karam. He’ll wish to question you, but after the healer has seen to your wounds.”
Nearing the tent, she observed a circle of fair-haired, strapping men wearing brown leather tunics and leggings, standing around the lighted area, gaping at her.
She was carried inside the hospital tent, where twenty cots were lined up across the back.
Only two were empty. Several of the wounded prisoners sat up on their thin mattresses when the man laid her in one of the vacant beds.
“She’s shivering hard,” he said.
Tashama’s teeth chattered when she opened her mouth to speak. “I must lead my people.”
The slightly built healer nodded and pulled up her sleeves, using caution.
“She’s delirious. Cover her with the blanket, Sergeant.
” The healer motioned to a shelf filled with woolen blankets.
“You, there, Private,” he said to a man peeking through the tent entrance, “make yourself useful and get some of those aloverat leaves for me.”
Tashama wrinkled her forehead. “I cannot stay here.”
The sergeant pulled the blanket over Tashama, while the healer grabbed a candle and shone it into her left eye. She closed her eyes.
“Hand me a cup of that tea,” the healer ordered.
“But the general wishes to speak to her, and it’ll make her…”
“Yes, yes. Do as I say.”
The sergeant shuffled off to get the tea while the private stood by with the aloverat leaves. “Wet them down in the solution in that pan,” the healer said.
When the sergeant brought the tea to him, he helped Tashama to sit.
“What is this for?” She breathed in the minty-moist fragrance. The steam rose to the tip of her nose.
“To warm you.”
She nodded, then sipped the concoction. “It tastes like mint julep.” Her face warmed, then her body slowly heated as the mixture circulated through her system.
You thought I would be mistreated here, Aleron, but my people are good to me. They warm me as the heat of your body did.
She swung her legs over the edge of the mattress.
“Whoa.” The healer grabbed her arm and pushed her legs back onto the cot. “You must stay in bed and drink the rest of the tea.”
“I feel warmer already.” Her words sounded slightly slurred.
“More,” the healer insisted.
“I’m not able to drink…”
“She’s not like our women at all.” The sergeant shook his head.
“Drink the rest, miss.”
Tashama studied the sergeant’s light blond hair, cropped short in a military manner, and finished the tea. Her eyes met his amber ones, then she touched his hand. “You’ll be free soon.”
The healer helped her to lie down, but the sergeant’s mouth gaped open. The healer shook his head. “Her words are not her own.”
“Are you sure she has not the gift, Healer Throckmorton?”
“She hasn’t.” He studied her left arm and brushed away the glass still clinging to her skin. She closed her eyes. “She’s sleeping now.”
In a dreamlike state, Tashama found herself listening in on the conversation of the men while her body felt imprisoned on the hospital bed.
“What do you make of her?” the sergeant asked.
“I don’t know.” The healer brushed the glass from her right arm. “Get me the green box on top of that chest.”
She opened her eyes, only able to see their actions in a hazy, ghostlike fog.
The sergeant returned with the brass box and handed it to the healer.
He dug around in the container, then pulled out a thread and a needle.
Afterward, he slipped the threaded needle through her skin.
The silver sliver moved in and out…in and out…
with a calm, methodical manner. She turned her head when one of the wounded men climbed off his bed.
“They’re not injuring our women now, are they?”
The sergeant folded his arms. “She’s not one of us.”
Tashama opened her lips slightly to speak, but found the words wouldn’t come. I am too, she tried to say.
After wrapping her arms in the leaves and covering them with a linen wrap, the healer moved his chair next to the cot. She stared at him through the mist, and her eyes locked onto his. The prince…why can he not be kind like you? Her thoughts drifted to the palace where Aleron had sat on his desk.
Muscular legs with just enough hair to make them sexy…not beastly. She sighed deeply.
“Is she awake? She cannot be. Nobody can stay awake after drinking the tea.” The sergeant shuffled his feet.
“She’s not awake. Just dreaming.” The healer turned to the private. “Give me some of those cold compresses.”
“But her eyes are half open. She watches you; she watches me.”
The healer shook his head. “She hears not a thing, nor can she see. When she awakes, she’ll remember nothing.”
Balthazar, where are you? Tashama wrinkled her nose as the pungent odor from the compresses touched her nostrils.
You could have given that sorcerer of Aleron’s a taste of his own magic.
She smiled broadly. Then again, I could have, too.
No, Balthazar said, be careful…be careful.
But he wasn’t supposed to abandon me either.
She tried to roll onto her side. The healer and sergeant turned her onto her back.
The healer applied the cool compresses to her eyes. “These will help to draw out the discoloration from her skin.”
“Did they beat her?”
No, Tashama attempted to answer, but her lips wouldn’t obey.
“I cannot imagine so—they don’t beat our men.”
“Where’s the woman?” a voice boomed.
“Lower your voice, General,” the healer warned.
A cold, wet cloth wiped her cheek.
“Did they do this to her?”
No, Tashama tried to respond.
“She’s sleeping. I had to sew her wounds. Questioning her is your line of business.”
“Fighting is my line of business.”
Tashama felt the warmth of the general’s body drawing close. Aleron, she thought, your body next to mine…your breath on my cheek. How I long to be held tightly. She reached out to touch him. Hands pushed her grasping fingers away.
“The damage?”
“She had cuts on her arms—some deep enough to require the needle.”
“From swords, daggers—what?”
Glass.
“We’re not certain. I’ve never seen such a weapon before, like shards of ice that don’t melt.”
“Who is she?”
Tashama, her mind tried to force her tongue to say.
“She used a name forbidden to us, General.”
She waited with great anticipation to hear the forbidden name.
“Tashama,” the sergeant said, his voice a harsh whisper.
Early the next morning, Tashama listened to the sounds of men’s murmured voices in the tent hospital. “They say she is Tashama.”
“She cannot be. She’s dead.”
Her brows lifted slightly. Light drifted toward her, and she opened her eyes while the veins of leaves screened them. The leaves were pulled away, and the light burned her eyes. She quickly closed them.
When she opened them again, she watched the healer study her face. He nodded. “The discoloration is gone. You certainly look more human today.” He unwrapped her left arm. “I’m afraid I was so busy attending to your wounds, I neglected to ask your name.”
“It’s…” The healer touched the stitches he had sewn, then, recalling the fuss her name had caused the last time she mentioned it, she said, “Mary.”
The healer’s eyes grew big, he sat back in his chair, and stared at her. “Mary?”
“Well, yes, isn’t that all right?”
“I’ve never heard of such an unusual name before.” He examined her right arm. “How old are you?”
“Well, if a woman will tell you her age, she’ll tell you anything.”
The healer frowned at her.
“It’s a joke. I’m twenty-three.”
“Are you linked?”
“Linked?”
“Do you have a mate?”
“I’m supposed to have.”
“Who?”