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on his wounds struck her like a fist.
She knelt and touched him. His fever burned her hand, even through his cloak. His wounds had soured
into that kind of poison that raced through the body quickly. Fear pounded at her until she couldn't think.
The one thing that could help him was gone. Was this her punishment for trying to wield magic? The
blackness pulsed and grew until the firelight could not illuminate him. It pooled in his center, a knot of
death.
Her eyes filled as she looked into his face. He knew it. "I can't bear it," she thought, and found she had
whispered it aloud.
"Yes, you can," he said roughly, his breath rasping. "It is the way of the world."
Her stomach clenched. Not Karn! The magic had saved him for some reason. The world must need him.
She needed him. She knew she must try, no matter how empty she felt.
She seized his knife and ripped his jerkin and the cloth of his shirt to reveal the jagged, festering wound in
his shoulder, throbbing with blackness. It looked two days old and more. She sliced the bandage about
his thigh. His breeches opened over a putrid gash that screamed at her. She prayed for the power to
come as it had come before, in a rush that would make her faint. Rocking on her knees, her soul bare to
the elements, she howled silently for it to come.
There was no rush. She felt only small. She couldn't think for the panic, for the shrieking of Karn's
wounds. It wasn't coming! Sobs choked her as she rocked forward against his body. Without thinking,
without hope, she placed one hand full on his thigh, the other on his shoulder.
A shock charged out through her palms. Her lips pulled into a grimace. Again and again her body jerked
against his, as the power surged through her. At last, she collapsed against him, limp. She struggled erect
and pulled her hands away. In the flickering light she could just make out a pink-skinned circle, the only
evidence of the jagged rent in his shoulder. The muscles under the smooth skin of his thigh bunched and
released as he blinked slowly into awareness.
He was healed, so much better than with her crude stitching long ago. The magic had been there all the
time, lurking inside her, waiting for what it wanted to do.
A shuddering breath filled her lungs. Wait! She scrabbled at his clothing until she revealed the old scar on
his hip, the jagged line on his other shoulder she remembered so well. Could she not mend her former
lack? She almost crowed in satisfaction. He would be a cripple no longer! She placed her hands
deliberately on those old wounds.
Nothing happened. She pressed her hands into his flesh, feeling the warmth, the shock of longing that
touching him engendered, but no more. For long minutes she stayed that way, rocking gently back and
forth, until she knew it was no use.
She opened her eyes. "The magic won't heal the old wounds," she whispered. Why would it save him but
not make him whole?
He sat up with a grunt of effort and took her in his arms. "Would you change who I am?" There was a
smile somewhere behind his eyes. "I am haltr now." He used the Danish word. "It is the price I paid to be
who I am."
"Your Danegeld?" It hurt to think of what he had lost.
"No, Britta," he said, serious. "One chooses to pay Danegeld, to banish what one fears. But when what
you fear comes back, the cost increases."
She looked at him, considering. "I see. You did not choose your wounds," she said. "But then it was
Danegeld when you tried to pay with your life on the beach, to banish fear of what you had become."
He nodded. "As you paid to make your magic go away once." He fingered her hair.
She hesitated. "That was not the only reason I lay with you." Did he not know how she yearned for those
days when they thought the magic gone? "But as you say, it didn't go away."
He let her go awkwardly. "The world's gain." Resignation echoed in those words.
"I don't care about the world." She shook her head.
He reached out to smooth her hair behind her ears, then thought better of it. "You would be a great
teacher, Britta."
She breathed out sharply. "I don't want to be a teacher. I don't want to end like Wydda, or live a life of
isolation like the abbess." What she wanted was impossible.
He looked down at his hands as though they didn't belong to him. The tension of not touching filled the air
around them, until she thought neither would ever speak or move again. She had to say something, she
told herself. But what was there to say?
Karn finally spoke, as though his words would choke him. "I know what I want."
Britta's gaze darted about his face. He wanted to go viking to lands where triumph and women and riches
awaited. Say it, Britta urged silently. If you say it, I will be released.
His voice seemed torn from his throat. "I want& what I fought for, Britta I want you."
She stared at him, struggling to push down the elation that threatened her resolve. It didn't matter. He
wanted her as she had been in Stowa, barren of magic, not as she was now.
"Hush," he said, and touched a finger to the tears on her cheeks. The shock of that touch started the
sobs. "You don't have to say it. A woman with your power would not live in the fens with one who limps
and tills the land." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]