Chapter Fifteen #2
How could he describe it so that others would understand? “Her catalystic gift spins itself into the land and air around her,” he said. “I sense it as a cloud. I should have realized that translocating would tear the connection.”
The crowd who had followed them into the bedchamber murmured, but Jasper didn’t listen to them. He was absorbed in watching the healer, who stepped back to stare in Delia’s direction, her eyes unfocused. “Ah, yes,” she said, after nearly a minute. “I see. Lord Baradine is correct.”
For a split second, Jasper could not remember who Lord Baradine was. It is me. I am Lord Baradine. “What do we do?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Lady Margate, who was apparently unable to stand by without attempting to take control of the situation. “Can you heal the poor girl? She has a wedding to attend!”
The healer frowned. “Lady Cordelia will heal with plenty of sleep, good food, and time. To speed that up would take magical energy of the right type.” She stretched her mouth in a grimace and clicked her tongue.
“If I had not been using my gift to help the king, mine might do. But as it is…” She spread her hands in a helpless gesture.
“What about mine?” Jasper asks. “I have plenty of energy. How can I give it to her?”
The answer, apparently, was that he couldn’t, as it required a healer gift. Jasper tentatively mentioned his healing of Delia’s broken bone, and Lady Bright amended her comment. “A trained healer gift,” she said.
“Is there any way I could pass energy to you, Lady Bright?” Jasper asked.
Now that he looked at the healer, he could see how tired she was—puffy circles under sunken eyes, her body drooping with fatigue.
Lady Bright’s eyes lit up and she said, “That might work. There are stories of powerful mages providing energy to healers, and purportedly, no mage is more powerful than a dragon lord. Let us try it, Lord Baradine.”
She had to coach him in how to feed his power. She turned everyone out of the room first, except for Lady Margate, as Delia’s appointed chaperone.
“Sense my mage-gift, Lord Baradine. Do you have it? Good. Now reach out to it as if you were seeking a space for a translocation. Expect my gift to touch yours. Think of it, if you will, as joining hands.”
Jasper nodded and tried. Lady Bright’s mage-gift burned in his mage sense, a flame of bright orange—even its flickering was tired—a sharp peppermint smell with undertones of ginger and honey, all of which he could taste on his tongue.
He reached carefully toward it with his own gift, using only a trickle of his power.
He felt her gift recoil. “Careful, Lord Baradine,” she said. “You are too forceful. I cannot catch it.”
A thread of power, then. He fed it to her and felt her grasp it. After that, she did the work, though Jasper “watched” carefully to see how she plugged his thread of power into her own supply. A well, he supposed was the best analogy, and one that was close to dry.
He made a mental note to ask what was wrong with the king, even as his own power siphoned into the well. Lady Bright recovered by the second, her exhaustion evaporating, the circles under her eyes disappearing, her body straightening.
“Oh my,” said Lady Margate, after a few minutes.
“Oh my, indeed,” said Lady Bright. “Lord Baradine, you must not pass all your energy to me.”
“No risk of that,” Lady Margate observed, caustically. “All the air around him hums with it. More than I have ever heard in long years of testing newly discovered mage-gifts.”
“I am well,” Jasper assured Lady Bright. “If you are recovered enough to heal Lady Cordelia, please allow me to stay connected so you are drawing on my power rather than your own. I do not suppose my reserves are truly inexhaustible, but I haven’t reached the bottom of them, yet.”
Lady Bright nodded. “Very well. I suppose she is your fated mate, after all.”
She took Delia’s hand. With his mage sense he could see, smell, and feel her redirecting his power as he fed it to her, bypassing the well of her reserves, now brimming over with energy, to trickle into Delia’s own rivulets of magic, and out into Delia’s cloud.
Wound by wound, she soothed and patched, joining rips back together by using his magic as a paste, trimming fringed and tattered edges and layering his magic in place as a bandage.
Jasper felt every hurt as his own. No wonder she had passed out. She must have been in agony. Each mend was a soothing caress, leaving only comfort behind, and as the pain faded, Delia’s unconscious state changed to a healing sleep.
How much time passed, he had no idea. Eventually, Lady Bright spoke in Jasper’s mind. “There. We’re done. You can disconnect now.” Then she repeated the same words out loud, but he was already decoupling his power from hers and drawing it back into himself.
“She is sleeping normally,” he said. “Lady Bright, I cannot thank you enough. I had no idea that translocating would hurt her through her gift, but I cannot help but feel I should have guessed. It is obvious that she is deeply connected to the landscape around her.”
“Of all the forms of wisdom, hindsight is by general consent the least merciful, the most unforgiving,” quoted Lady Margate. “Your concern for your lady does you credit, Lord Baradine. Your assumption that you should be omniscient is less becoming.”
The acerbic comment was somehow more comforting than if she had told him it was not his fault.
Lady Bright stood. “Leave her to have her sleep, and when she awakens, encourage her to eat well and to rest. No magic until she has fully recovered. We have begun the healing process. Her body will need to finish it. I shall check on her before nightfall and again tomorrow morning, but if you have any concerns, please send for me. I shall be with the king. And Baradine, may I call on you for a replenishment of power next time I am drained?”
Not “if,” but “next time,” Jasper noted. “Do not wait to be drained, my lady,” he said. “I have power to spare and will happily help you. And the king, of course. May I ask what is wrong with his majesty?”
After a moment of thought with furrowed brow, Lady Bright said, “I shall leave you to be briefed by Findlater and his highness. My apologies, but I cannot speak to someone about a patient without direct authorization from his closest relatives. I must get back to the king. Excuse me.”
“What on earth is wrong with the king?” Jasper asked Lady Margate, expecting to be brushed off with a similar excuse.
Lady Margate surprised him. “He has fallen into madness, Lord Baradine. The court mages say it is the result of a curse, but nobody has been able to find a hexed-object or a way to remove the curse. Lady Bright and the other healers have been able to arrest the progression of the curse, but not bring his mind back from the hellish landscapes in which it is wandering.”
“The French?” Jasper wondered.
One would not expect Lady Margate to perform an action as common as a shrug, and she did not disappoint, although she managed to convey the same sentiment with an arch of her elegant eyebrows. “One assumes. There is no evidence.”
Which reminded Jasper that he needed to share with Findlater his conviction they had a traitor here in London, with access to private deliberations in inner government circles. And, apparently, the palace.
It was timely, then, that a maid came to say his grace the duke and his royal highness the prince were waiting for the Marquess of Baradine.
“I shall sit with your lady, Baradine,” announced Lady Margate. “Do not fret. You shall not go far and can translocate back whenever you wish. I shall watch over her and make certain she is not disturbed.”
Perhaps Lady Margate was not such a bad old bat after all.