Chapter 5
He heard her then, calling out for him. “Here!” he bellowed back.
“Oh, Peter!” she said, the thud of her feet so quick he knew she was running to him. “Did you hear what they’ve done? The transfer to the WA?”
“Yes,” he said, getting up. “I suppose we should take it as a certainty that they know I was helping you and your sister.”
“Is there anything I can do to fight this?”
He sighed. “Nothing’s occurred to me.”
She let out a sob. But her voice trembled only a bit as she said, “What about my experiment? Could you feel any of it?”
He’d given it zero thought since arriving in dreamside, as intriguing as it had been, because it was overshadowed by everything else. But he forced himself to concentrate.
“What was the difference between the first time you held my hand, the second time and the third time?” he asked.
“Answer my question, then I’ll tell you. I don’t want to influence your impressions.”
Spoken like a true scientist. “In some cases I thought I could feel the first time, faintly, but mostly I couldn’t. I always felt the second time, at least by the end of it.”
“And the third time?” A great deal of emotion seemed packed into that question.
“Basically the same as the second time—”
“Damn it!”
“—except when you touched my head.”
She sucked in a breath. He rushed on: “I don’t know how to explain it. Pressure, I suppose—like being pressed at from all sides. Just shy of painful.”
“Forehead, cheek, scalp—which one?”
“All of them, but more for the forehead than the rest.”
“OK. OK,” she said, though whether she was excited or upset, he couldn’t tell.
“The first time, I was just laying my hand on you. The second time, I was trying to send you … raw magic, basically. That’s what I’ve been doing every time I visit, trying to give you magic.
If the weapon steals life force, and if life force is somehow connected to magical potential, then perhaps what we draw on when we cast spells is something that could be shared.
I thought that might be the way to wake you. ”
His mind raced.
“I know it’s a ridiculous number of ifs,” she murmured. “And probably hokum to boot.”
“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “I would have said there was no such thing as ‘raw magic,’ only magical fuel and those who can wield it, but that was before I saw the difference between an explosion powered with a pig and one powered with a man. And before I saw you cast magic with no visible fuel at all.” He paused. “What were you doing the third time?”
“Trying to attack this horrible barrier.”
He looked at the darkness around him and swallowed, throat raw.
“Peter,” she said, and she was upset, definitely upset, “what you felt when I was touching your head—do you think that means …”
He gave in to his trembling legs and sat again, resting his forehead on his arms. “Whatever magic is trapping me, it’s probably lodged in or around my brain.”
“If I break it, you might die.” Her voice wavered, unnaturally high.
“Yes.”
“Are there wizard brain surgeons? Could I find someone who would have the expertise to deal with this?”
“I can’t imagine. There’s no neurology program at the Academies, and this is too cutting edge a problem, anyway.” He sighed. “Were you giving that attack everything you’ve got?”
“I wasn’t, no. I thought I’d better be careful, not knowing how it might affect you.”
“When you wake up, do it again. Full out, this time.”
“Peter—”
“I don’t want to live this way—I don’t want to be at the mercy of the magiocracy!” He stopped, closing his eyes, which changed nothing because darkness was darkness. “I understand what I’m asking isn’t fair. But I beg of you to try. Right away, before they take me.”
The only sound for a moment was her breathing—sharp intake of air, shaky release.
Then she said, “I will.”
“Thank you,” he whispered.
He tried to think of what else they needed to talk about in what might well be their last conversation. He couldn’t tell her he loved her, not now. That would simply make this worse.
“I’m so sorry,” he said finally. “For hiring you against your will, for baiting you to break the law, for the Vows, for entangling you in my weapons mess—for everything.”
“I know. I’m—I’m sorry about Plan B, I truly, truly am.”
He swallowed, the unresolved, probably unfair hurt feelings sticking in his throat. (No, not probably unfair. Definitely so. His apology list was far longer than hers.) “I know,” he said simply, leaving it at that.
Neither of them spoke for a long moment.
“Do you want to live?” she asked suddenly.
“What?”
“Do you want to live and come out the other end of this coma, or are you hoping I’ll kill you?”
He hesitated, but only because her delivery was so fierce it took him aback.
“Peter,” she said, ferocious now, “I will only battle this dragon if you promise me you’re in here, fighting just as hard to get out! Don’t you dare give it anything less than everything you’ve got, do you hear me? Promise me!”
“I promise,” he said immediately.
“I refuse to let you give up or think this doesn’t matter! I love you, and—”
He waited for the rest of what she would say, blood roaring in his ears—she loved him? Seconds ticked by. “Beatrix?” he said.
She didn’t answer.
“Beatrix? Are you there?”
Silence.
His heart pumped faster and faster. She must have woken up. Soon, the attack would begin. He had to get out—he had to live. Good God, she loved him!
He examined the barrier entrapping him, hoping Beatrix’s earlier experiment made small inroads with it, but he saw no cracks in the dragon’s hide.
The pressure began as a light touch at first, tentative and brief.
Then it returned, ratcheting upward. He gritted his teeth against the suffocating impression of being pressed at from all sides and did the only thing he could think of to fulfill his promise to her: He pictured attacking his prison in exacting detail.
He imagined one, a dozen, a hundred, a thousand cracks.
But no pinpoints of light broke through the awful darkness.
Eventually the pressure made it impossible to do much of anything at all. Disjointed thoughts: Shouldn’t have asked—can’t take this—stop—
That was when he saw it: tiny, the size and color of a nickel.
He stared at this possible breach with desperate hope, willing it to grow with what little ability he had left to focus.
But it didn’t. There was nothing but agony, a harsh sound and the vast blackness around the little gray splotch, until even the splotch began to fade.
The worst of the torment was in his lungs. He couldn’t breathe.
This was it—the end.
Beatrix’s voice filtered through, far off and crackling with fear over what he suddenly realized was the frenzied beeping of medical equipment. “Fight, Peter! Fight!”
With a soundless howl, he put all he had left into a last-ditch attempt to sit up and pull oxygen into his burning lungs.
A flash-bang of disorienting noise and brightness exploded around him. He heard voices without knowing what they said.
Then the overwhelming light receded and he could see.
Doctors and nurses surrounded him, eyes wide, mouths open, their shock not one-tenth of his. He was half-sitting, half-slumped on the bed, his lungs more or less working.
“Beatrix?” he said, or tried to say—more croak than word.
“Wizard Blackwell,” a doctor stammered, “can you hear us?”
“Yes.” He still sounded nothing like himself. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Yes, I can.”
The people around him stopped staring and rushed to prop him up with pillows, take his blood pressure and do a flurry of other things to him.
“Beatrix?” he said again, looking around, not seeing her.
“Miss Harper is just outside,” one of the nurses said in a soothing voice. “We told her to wait in the hall.”
“For God’s sake, let her in,” he cried.
The gaggle of people hesitated, but one of them did as he asked. She came haltingly, looking at him without blinking, as if she were afraid the scene before her eyes would disappear if she closed them for even an instant.
“Peter?” she said. She sounded afraid, and he realized what she had to be thinking—that he was alive but irrevocably damaged.
“I’m all right,” he murmured, and took her hand. “You saved me.”
Beatrix, who had such control dayside that he’d never seen her tear up in public, broke into racking, heaving sobs.
“Really, miss,” a doctor said in a patronizing tone that strongly suggested “compose yourself” and “we have work to do here” would follow.
“Give us ten minutes,” Peter said, staring the man down.
“Sir, we need to—”
“I’ll stay right outside the door in case he needs immediate attention,” said the older nurse with the sweet face who’d fetched Beatrix. “There’s no danger in it, doctor.”
“Very well,” the man grumbled, and everyone—everyone except Beatrix—cleared out.
He held on to her hand, trying to put into words something that would convey what he owed her and how he felt about her, his heart pounding in his chest.
“You’re really, really all right?” she asked.
“Yes, I seem to be. Beatrix—”
She kissed him. The speed and ferocity of it would have erased any doubt that she’d meant what she’d said, had the thought occurred to him while trapped in the coma.
She loved him. Of her own free will she loved him.
He put a shaking hand on her cheek and leaned in to their first dayside kiss initiated by her, hardly believing it was really happening.
It was over a few seconds after it had begun. She pulled back, fingers to her mouth, looking stricken.
“What is it?” he asked, jerking from incandescent happiness to dread.
She leaned in and whispered, “I shouldn’t have done that. I have no idea if we’re being recorded, but we’d better assume so.”
Undoubtedly. He looked around, casting about for a safe topic while taking in the room he’d been lying in for a month, and noticed there was no other bed. “Where did you sleep last night?”
“Here,” she said, gesturing to the chair she was sitting in.
“Good heavens, how did you manage that?”
Her beautiful crooked smile did not disguise the exhaustion around her eyes. “Not well.”
He looked more closely and saw how pale she was. Ill, even. She’d made herself sick saving his life. “You ought to go home and—”
“No! I’m not leaving until we get you out of here.”
He took her hand. “I don’t know how quickly I can arrange my escape.”
A knock on the door was immediately followed by an even bigger group of medical professionals than the one that had left.
They were clearly operating on a different definition of “ten minutes” than the rest of the world.
Then he noticed that one of the men in the gaggle was a wizard, and the desire to have leaves at hand—just in case—was so strong his fingers twitched.
He glanced at Beatrix and saw the grim set of her mouth. “This is Wizard Cleary, who was here last night,” she said. “Just for the record, Peter, do you have any desire to be transferred to the WA?”
“None whatsoever,” he said.
Cleary wore a pleasant smile. “You’ll continue to need care, and I assure you it will be the very best—”
“Thank you, but no.”
Cleary’s smile did not slip. “The WA will be happy to help, should you require it later.”
“Good day, Wizard Cleary,” Beatrix said firmly.
As Cleary left, one of the doctors made a noise that seemed to be a swallowed snort. Peter caught the man’s eye and the doctor grinned.
“Gentlemen,” Peter said, “what has to happen before you can discharge me, and how quickly can you do it?”
“You have to understand, you’ve been in a coma for a month,” said one of the doctors—the grumbler, not the grinner, though even that doctor looked taken aback.
“Oh, I understand,” Peter said dryly. “I was aware during a good bit of it. Can you get me unhooked and see if I’m capable of walking?”
They finally negotiated that they would let him give eating a try, see how he felt in an hour and then let him attempt to stand.
“Wait,” he said to the nurse, seeing “Weller” embroidered on her dress and realizing this was the woman who’d always had a kind word for Beatrix.
Quietly, so as not to be overheard by the retreating doctors, he said, “Would you do me the tremendous favor of bringing something substantial along with the liquid food?”
“You really must ease your stomach into it, sir. You don’t want to make yourself sick.”
“Not for me,” he murmured. “For Beatrix. Please, she’s been here all night and I don’t know the last time she’s eaten.”
“Oh!” Her disapproving look vanished and she beamed at him. “Let me see what I can do,” she added in a conspiratorial undertone, and bustled out.
His plan to get himself sprung from the hospital that day, on the other hand, came to naught.
He could walk, but he was so wobbly that the doctors were unanimous in their determination that he would need to stay another day at a bare minimum.
There was talk of a brain scan until it was nixed by the grinning doctor, who turned out to be Alvarez, an older and gaunter man than Peter had pictured.
“Cerebral angiographies aren’t safe,” Alvarez said, once it was only the three of them in the room. “I wouldn’t want one myself.”
Peter nodded with a frown, wondering how many patients had been given one anyway. “There’s no alternative?”
Alvarez rolled his eyes. “Why bother making grants for medical research when spells are the end-all, be-all?” Then he seemed to recollect to whom he was talking. “Uh—no offense meant, Wizard Blackwell.”
Peter snorted. “Absolutely none taken.”
“I do want a wizard doc to have a look at you, though. You know, just in case a few of those end-all, be-all spells might actually help. He’ll be in tomorrow.
” Alvarez cocked his head. “I have to say, your recovery is nothing short of remarkable. I’ve never had a patient come out of a coma and immediately start talking sensibly, eating and walking.
I might have to revise my opinion that wizards bleed red like the rest of us peons. ”
“I think I’m just lucky.”
“In more ways than one, I’d say.” Alvarez gave a meaningful jerk of the head toward Beatrix, deeply asleep in her armchair.
Beatrix, the reason he wasn’t dead. Beatrix, who loved him.
“Yes,” Peter murmured, gazing at her. “Very lucky.”