heart, Bri extended her own right-hand fingers, with one finger touching Elizabeth’s over the woman’s abdomen, felt loose flesh, the laboring of lungs. Milky eyes stared up at her. Bri swallowed hard. The woman was as tall as the rest of these people. Elizabeth set her other hand, spread to touch Bri’s, over the woman’s crotch.
Bri and Elizabeth matched gazes, breaths.
“Ready?” asked Bri.
Elizabeth nodded. You handle it.
Fear puddled in Bri’s stomach, but she shut it away, hoping her sister couldn’t sense it. She opened herself to the energy. She pulled, gently, gently. It rushed through her like a river. She felt the briskness of the night, an effervescence that twinkled like stars in the sky outside the walk. She swayed.
A woman clasped her shoulders, helped ground and steady her, though she didn’t seem able to grip or work the healingstream. Marian.
Incredible, echoed in Bri’s mind from the sorceress, went to Elizabeth. I’ve never sensed Power like this.
Elizabeth, mind sharper than Bri’s, monitored their patient, cut the healingstream when they were done. Bri wriggled her shoulders and Marian stepped back.
“She’s still very dehydrated and undernourished,” Elizabeth said, looking to Sevair Masif who stood near, and Marian translated. “You’ll ensure that she gets additional treatment?”
“Of course,” said a female dressed in a red robe with a white cross. A medical person.
“Good,” Bri said. The one word was harder to form than she expected.
“Next?” Elizabeth said in a too-brusque voice as if squelching fear. The healingstream was new to her. Elizabeth might have used a surge of healing energy from herself, or touched on the stream, but had never opened herself to it.
Bri had been the one kicking around the world, finding herself in villages or refugee camps with people who needed help while she only had her hands and the healingstream to depend upon. Many times that had not been enough. Then she grasped a wispy thought of Elizabeth’s. She was thinking how she’d shut herself and her talent off and had depended only on her medical training, not her gift, except in rare instances. Many times all her knowledge and training had not been enough.
Once again Bri followed Elizabeth, and they began to establish a balance to handle the cycling energy. Elizabeth learned to open herself, Bri learned to limit and direct the healingstream. Marian stood behind Bri with her hands on her shoulders, steadying, supporting, but unable to join them.
By the time they’d helped six, Bri began to feel the whole jet-lagged incredible event-packed day wearing upon her and moved by rote, summoning the healingstream, sending it into sick bodies. She felt the shadow of Elizabeth’s thoughts as she studied and dismissed different diagnoses. Nothing was familiar about this sickness.
Somewhere between two hours and infinity they were finished and Bri was swaying on her feet. Elizabeth stood with the straightness of a woman refusing to give in to exhaustion then swung an arm around Bri’s shoulders and they were drawn to a moonlit opening to the courtyard. The cloister had been dark, too dark to work in, why had they?
“Light hurts the sick’s eyes,” Marian said, and Bri realized she and the other woman had shared enough of a bond for the Sorceress to pick up on her thoughts, even if they weren’t linked anymore. Dangerous.
“No,” said Marian. She bowed deeply, keeping her gaze on them. “I promise I will never hurt you. Either of you.”
“Huh,” said Bri. She started to lean on the edge of the stone door opening and missed. Was falling. Something oddly shaped set against her and pushed her upward. In the brief contact, she felt a different sort of energy wash through her, tingling from top to toe, clearing her mind, giving her own energy—and Elizabeth’s—a boost.
“Thank you—” She turned to her savior and gawked. A horse stood there, eyes huge and liquid and gleaming with…with…with magic? It whinnied and stepped back. Others like it stood in the courtyard. The smell of resinous amber crumbling into perfume wafted to Bri.
“They’re curious.” Calli walked past them into the stone courtyard and rubbed the horse’s nose. “They say you’re using Power they only dimly sensed and didn’t know how to access. One has gone to report to the alpha pair in Volaran Valley.” She pointed. Bri followed her finger to see a white horse. With wings. Soaring over the buildings on the opposite side of the courtyard and off into a night sky that held too many stars.
Impossible.
Elizabeth stiffened into rigidity. Impossible.
Another whicker came and Bri looked to the horse that had propped her up. Slowly it opened wings at its sides, spread them—huge feathery things.
Ohmygod, Bri said.
Ohmygod, Elizabeth said.
“Ohmygod,” she and Elizabeth said together.
“You’re not in Colorado anymore,” Alexa said.
4
Elizabeth was holding onto sanity as if it was the unraveling edge of a ratty blanket. Too much strangeness. Everything—the people, the humid air, the sky showing too many stars, and most especially the winged horses.
One was still rubbing against Bri in mutual admiration.
Sevair Masif, the man who’d come from Castleton, was ensuring the care and comfort of his people with efficient orders to soldiers and servants. The knot of the more ostentatiously dressed people—including two of the three Coloradan women—attracted his attention. He gave one last order and joined them, crossing his arms and raising his chin.
“We agreed that should the Summoning of the medica be successful and if she fulfilled our great and desperate need, she would stay here at the Castle tonight. The ladies are tired. Why are they not being led to their quarters?” The soft translation came to Elizabeth’s ear and she turned her head to see Calli smiling at her.
Calli lifted a shoulder, sighed. “They argue. Sevair’s a good man, just obsessed with frinks.”
“Frinks?” Elizabeth asked.
“Metallic worms that come with the rain. The dark sends them, too.”
Elizabeth wished she hadn’t asked.
“One of your tasks will be to smooth the way between the City and Town segment of society and the rest.”
Elizabeth shook her head, looked at Calli, then at Bri who was examining one of the horse’s wings. She seemed familiar with the animals, at least was probably familiar with wingless ones. Another change. Somewhere, sometime Bri had learned about horses. No doubt she’d traveled where a horse was still considered a necessity. Elizabeth gestured to the horse and Bri. “Why aren’t you supervising?”
“You’re sharp,” said Calli. “Remembered that I’m the one who was Summoned for the volarans and Chevaliers.” She followed Elizabeth’s gaze. “I can see auras, you know.”
“No.” If she denied all this it might go away
“Yes.
