WandW5

I awoke in jerky, uncomfortable stages. Better than the seemingly endless dreams of falling, falling into a pit filled with flame-eyed zombies staring hungrily up at me, their mouth full of hooked razors. But still no damn picnic, thank you very much.

My bones were hollow, full of broken glass. I felt too weak to even raise an eyelid and also somewhat nauseous. Which was a shame because I was famished as a tyrannosaurus. Would have dearly loved to scout wherever I was for a hamburger, a pizza, several turkeys.

Gradually what passed for my mind cleared a bit and stopped revolving around food and the woeful state of my body. Rustily, I recognized the symptoms of a massive overuse of magic. Mana burn, as they called it cheerfully in a card game I used to play in another world. Mana burn to the max.

The extent of it was scary, most especially because I couldn't quite remember what I had done to cause it. In fact, it was hard to imagine I had power enough to do *anything* that would whiplash me so thoroughly. The fact that my mind wasn't operating really well, also frightening. Mana burn had chewed me up more than once when I was still learning the ins and outs of using magic, but it had always been considerate enough to torque my body alone, leaving my brain intact if somewhat panic-stricken at times.

But at least now that I knew what it was, I knew how to start fixing it. Enough, anyway, to orient myself. My senses seemed to have dulled, too. All I was sure of was that I was at least lying on something soft, that I had pants and a shirt on; more comforting than one would think. But wizard-sight had deserted me and I was in total darkness, and the silence was more like my ears were stuffed with cotton than that the world itself was noiseless. I could hear the slow thump of my heart, the swoosh of my blood flowing, the gurgling complaints of my empty stomach, just fineI supposed gratitude was in order.

Cautiously, I reached for the cool fire inside me, half-afraid it would be gone, a gas flame blown out and me with no idea how to re-light it. No, thank God; buried deep as if protecting itself, but still there. I choked with relief, and nudged it gently. It swirled sluggishly around me, starting like a cold engine on a winter's day at first, then gradually quickening, spinning, pulling green healing energy into me - slowly, carefully, Keith; no more quick fixes.

Incense, of course. And I could now faintly make out swirling patterns in the air. No, on the walls of the tent - must be daytime if enough light showed through the walls to backlight the decorations. I could tell the tent flap was closed, natch, because of the lack of really good light, the smoke-filled air.

I was so pleased with the return of my deductive skills I ventured sitting up; ah, better, I had the strength to do it, though I was still light-headed. Now I was getting thirsty as well as hungry, which was actually a good sign - the burn was healing itself. Half-bemused, I noticed that I seemed to be wearing something, well, lighter and looser than the jeans and teeshirt I had been clad in when I rode like a crazy man right into the middle of those idiots carrying a litter with death as its burden.

A sudden blast of swirling fire damn near knocked my eyeballs to the back of my head and blinded me yet again. And out of the new darkness a cool voice came, deep and musical, inflectionless yet somehow taut with anger. "And you say that

He had touched a light to the brazier near the throne-like chair where he must have been sitting, watching me in the twilight dimness. He was watching me now, expressionless, the grim lines by his mouth deeper than I'd ever seen them. The tinkling sounds, the rustling I heard, must have been him moving. He was dressed in what I privately thought of as full King of the Clans drag, all the ebony hair intricately braided and tied with silver charms. Must have taken hours.

And aside from the elaborate hair, there were the full-throttle ceremonial leathers; not the practical mix of hide and chain mail they wore in battle, but a full body suit, And not stitched together from whole pieces of material, either. No, this crap was braided - I kid you not, braided - from long strips of soft dyed deerskin. It took the tribal women - presumably very patient, obsessive tribal women - months to make something like he was wearing, of course in the king's colors, dark blue and black. It matched his hair and the frozen azure eyes too well; he looked like a Renaissance Faire leather boy's wet dream. High boots, dyed in the same colors. A brief thought - as far as I could tell, we were totally alone, so what was the ceremony?

The rejuvenation spell was working well enough now that I made to jump out of bed, shouting his name - or trying to, my voice hadn't been touched by healing yet. "Carson!" I croaked, well on my way to catching him in a monster hug.

"Stay where you are, *wizard*," he said, and the tone of his voice as much as the words, like cracking ice opening on a pit of poison, froze me in mid-leap. His face was still expressionless, but from my new perspective it seemed like the gaze of a swamp viper. "Try not to behave any more the damned fool than you've proven yourself already."

Slowly, now watching him warily, I dropped back onto the heavy furs of his bed. A memory, fleeting as smoke, of us locked together in passion on that same bed. Not today, I'll bet, I thought irrelevantly.

Well. I'd wondered what the ceremonial occasion was. Apparently, for some reason I couldn't even begin to fathom, it was gonna be the ceremony of Open a Can of Whup-ass on yours truly. I fought back all the startled, angry questions brewing in my brain, and waited for the can-opener.

He observed my retreat with a certain grim approval. Then, in a softer voice but with no give in the steel of it: "What the hell were you thinking, leaving the safety of the camp? Stealing a horse - "

"And blasting your guard's ass," I interjected, unable to keep my mouth shut; it hadn't taken long, given the bite of contempt in his tone. I switched off the rejuvenation spell abruptly. If I was feeling well enough for my temper to begin to boil, I didn't need healing anymore. "Let's not forget the trouble *that* caused you!" *Ungrateful bastard. Arrogant snot asshole!*

"Ah, yes," he sneered back, not giving an inch. "Stunning a guard who was only doing his job. Taking the most spirited horse in camp, and you with the riding skills of a thirteen-year-old girl! You deserved to have your neck broken!"

" - and as for what I was thinking," I barged ahead, now more than ready to yell but forced, dammit, to keep my voice soft to spare the still-cranky throat, "I was thinking of saving your ass, you dumb shit!"

He took a step forward, turning even paler at my tone, then stopped dead as if forcibly reminding himself that murder was not an option here. His clenched fist, instead of striking me, suddenly lashed down and slammed into the ornately carved cabinet near him with a crash that made me jump.

"'Saving my ass'? Goddamn you to hell, *we are at war!"* Oh, great, he was in full-throated battle-roar, the whole camp would hear him. And without the sense to yell at me in English. By now I was too mad myself to feel afraid of him, although I was damnably envious of his ability to shout at me. "You are NOT a warrior, in case you've forgotten! You were ordered to stay in camp - "

"Oh, yeah, I forgot, the useless weakling wizard playing with little scrying spells at home while the big, bad invincible fighting-man goes out and gets his ass shot up with arrows!"

"And well it would have been if you remembered it," he growled, ignoring - or more probably not even noticing - the touch of sarcasm in my statement. "And your scrying was to be concerned with enemy movements, scouting - "

My jaw dropped. "What - the FUCK!" But like the wimp I was, I slammed the lid down on my own sudden, immense rage and stammeringly tried to salvage the situation. "Be reasonable, Carson - yeah, I was worried about you, and fer Christsake you were badly wounded - "

"WHAT?" I leaped from the bed, danger be damned, reconciliation be fucked. Apparently in his fine rage he'd forgotten all about the fact that my own "worst injury", being nearly eviscerated by a demon, kicked ass on every scar he had or probably ever would have. I could almost feel that torso-length trophy burning in sympathy with my now high state of piss-off.

"Unconscious - nicked lung - shit! Stop trying to excuse your own stupidity! You didn't even check to see if we'd *won* the battle; you might have been taken by enemies, tortured, killed, while trying to save me from a scratch! I've survived worse injuries a score of times and I didn't need your help, then or now!"

"Oh, really?" I pulled back from him; we'd been nose-to-nose - or as close to it as two people with a foot of difference in their height could get - screaming in each other's faces and glaring like basilisks. But now instead of heat, a cold fire blazed through me and I smiled up at him, bitterly. "Well, you wouldn't have survived this one, *king*. Do you happen to know what darrlzyd is?"

"No," he admitted after a pause. I could tell he didn't give a damn, either, but something - the way I smiled at him, I think - had led him to quiet down and listen. Still glitter-eyed with fury, but listening. Well, good for him. About fucking time.

"Darrlzyd," I stated in my driest lecturing tone, "is a poison or drug made from a certain plant found in the southern swamps of this wonderful land. That arrow that *scratched* you was coated in it. I don't blame your healers for not noticing, it's not a common poison. And it has to be healed from inside out - something only us useless wizards can do." I studied him with every bit of the contempt he'd dished out to me, cruelly pleased that now I seemed to have his full, intense attention. "I don't suppose you know, either, what it does, you ignorant fuck, do you?"

"It rots the flesh," I instructed him, almost cheerfully. "Not that slowly, either; there wasn't much left of the big, bad warrior's left lung when I got to it, I had to do a full repair job as well as reversing the poison. Lessee, I'm assuming this is the day following when I so idiotically disobeyed orders and went chasing unnecessarily after you - "

His head shook, minutely; there was a chinkling of the stupid charms in his hair. "Three days - three days it took you to wake - " His voice had turned uncertain, finally; something else was there that I refused to acknowledge at the moment.

"Oh, I see. So essentially I've been getting a tongue-lashing from a corpse." I continued, eyes locked on his, slightly hating myself but too furious to care. I couldn't hold on to the lecturing tone either; my voice was starting to rise. "Because by the morning of two days ago - well, you wouldn't have died *screaming* in agony, because you wouldn't have had any fucking lungs left to give you air *to*scream. But you'd definitely have been too fucking dead to be biting me in the ass about how stupid I am and how tough *you* are. So I guess I wish I hadn't bothered!"

"Don't 'Keith' me. I'm the magic-boy crying over the splinter in his finger, remember? Oh, fuck you. I'm outta here!" Ripping my eyes from his face took almost a physical effort. I was beginning to enjoy my own temper tantrum and something in those now not-so-cold eyes was threatening to rob me of it. No way; I bloody deserved to be enraged with him and I was damn well going to be!

I hit the tent flap at nearly a dead run, blind with fury. When the knots of the binding closing it dared to baffle me, I bent a look on them that dissolved them in a spout of flame. At least I had sense enough left to douse it immediately before ripping aside the covering and charging outside like a mad bull.

I was forced to bounce backwards, though, to avoid mowing down the crowd of citizens that was gathered around the tent. Men, women, toddlers, even the camp dogs seemed to be in attendance. All with their eyes, ears - and in some cases, mouths - wide open to fullest capacity.

"Shit!" I yelled in surprise, backpedaling furiously and nearly losing my balance. The gaggle of nosy bastards scattered like frantic chickens, desperately pretending to be engaged in normal activity. Women scurried for cooking pots, men began industriously to polish weapons, engaged in conversation with the air, or merely stood and scratched their asses, looking anywhere but at me. The kids were the only honest ones. They continued to stand and stare at me expectantly - and at something behind me.

"Shit!" I said again, trying to jump forward, but too late; the idiot crowd had delayed me just long enough, and leather-clad arms were around me from behind like a cage of steel.

I cancelled my leap and grew very, very still; no point in struggling uselessly against this damn tank and making an ass of myself in public. "Let me go *now*," I said calmly, as he lowered his head enough to cape me in silvered ebony. "Before I kill you as dead as you ought to be anyway."

Oh, no, Ravenstreet - I'm not playing out any of your emotional scenes in front of a whole crowd of people. And breathing in my ear like that isn't going to help you, either.

"Never in a thousand years," I said in a conversational tone I was certain only he could hear. A peek out from the curtain of his hair assured me that our public was trying even harder than ever to ignore us. For some reason I didn't want to run away anymore, but I *did* want some goddamn privacy for this. If I could just somehow maneuver him back inside the tent - I pushed backward against him, casually.

It was a bad move. He didn't budge an inch, and now I was pressed against the entire length of his body, and of course the bastard tightened his grip to keep it that way. His soft breathing, still tickling my ear - that sword-dancer's body hard against me - My heart slammed against my ribcage as I realized I could feel his growing excitement even through his bloody leathers. "Please," he whispered. "Keith."

"No, I won't forgive you!" I gasped, flaming with embarrassment. "You're a bastard!" It didn't help my state of mind to realize that I had gotten an erection in almost immediate response to his and no damn leathers or jeans - to hide it. Damn if somebody hadn't dressed me in a pair of those brightly-colored loose britches these chumps considered casual wear. The gentleman's perfect choice for summer daywear and to show off his hard-on to full advantage. I didn't dare check the crowd's interest now.

He grew very quiet; even the throb of his lust against my lower back seemed to pause. "You're right," he said in a tone I couldn't fathom. "I *am* a bastard." He released me so suddenly I nearly toppled forward, I suppose from the weight of my own treacherous dick.

He rescued me by catching my arm, and turned me quickly to face him. Just as quickly, he pulled the long knife from the sheath at his side and offered it to me, hilt-first. I automatically took it and then, appalled, tried to hand it back to him, but of course he ignored me. His eyes blazed into mine like lasers. "I have shamed myself and my clan," he announced - and it *was* an announcement, pitched for the crowd. Of course they now gave up every pretense of minding their own business and clustered round unashamedly. Why the hell not, he had fucking invited them! I wondered if I was supposed to kill him with his own damned knife. It was a distinct temptation.

"My brother and friend saved my life, and in return I insulted and ridiculed him." He was still looking straight at me even though the ceremonial nature of this speech was apparent. There was something truly saddened in his eyes, though, that banked my anger if not my acute embarrassment. "Debt must be paid."

"Debt must be paid - " the crowd echoed, not as one but in a flurry of scattered voices. He seemed to listen carefully, as if making sure everyone had responded, and then spoke in a soft but carrying voice. All my frantic what-the-hell gestures, he ignored.

"Wolf-friend, forgive me. Take your payment." And to my absolute, final horror he dropped to his knees before me, lowering his head so all the fancily-worked black hair trailed in the dust around him.

I stood there goggling at him, a knife in my hand than made Paul Hogan's in Crocodile Dundee 2 look like a toothpick. What the fuck? Was I supposed to decapitate him? As the seconds built and I did nothing - what the fuck was I *supposed* to do?! - the people surrounding began to murmur and stir. Then a slim blonde woman near the front of the crowd - a battlemaiden, by her clothes and weaponry - called in a clear and ringing voice, "Stormsinger. Wolf-brother. Forgive us. Take your due, and forgive us." And I'll be goddamned if she didn't gracefully kneel down as well.

Sure enough, like a crowd of lemmings they began falling on their knees, first singly, then in packs of twos and threes until everyone was scattered around me in worship position. Kids who didn't drop fast enough were tugged down by their parents with sharp words. Then they hushed expectantly.

I looked around wildly, ready to run. But somehow the crowd had circled me; I was surrounded by postulants who were expecting something, and I was damned if I knew what -

The tribal witchwoman, S'athal - a.k.a Samantha Smith, a.k.a. Smitty - had risen from her quick, token kneel to stroll over to me with badly needed information, and I thanked God for it.

When I had first been captured by the Riders, she had performed her shamanly duty of shaking duck feet and snake heads to dispel my evil wizardry with grim enthusiasm. However, her discerning eye had immediately identified me as a fellow Earthling. She herself - tall, blonde, and with numerous tattoos and body piercings - had once been a stripper in a Lower East Side club. She had got me to the side to exchange introductions and offer me assistance if at anytime I was baffled by clan rigmarole. She couldn't have chosen a better time to redeem her pledge.

Not that I was thrilled by her advice. In fact I stared at her in horror. "Cut a braid!" I hissed. "C'mon, Smitty, why don't I just cut his throat? It'd be easier!" I was familiar enough by now about the Shadow Rider culture through talks with Fox and her kid to know that every warrior braiding had a holy significance, according to its placement and the charm woven into it. To have a braid severed in battle was an ultimate dishonor. I'd never even heard of somebody *offering* their damned heads to the knife. And Carson was the tribal bigshot, with more hair and more complicated braidings than anybody else.

"Your choice, of course" she grinned. "But the braid is payment for your being dishonored and insulted; if you refuse to take one, then you've spit on his offer of reconciliation and results can be dire."

"Usually ritual suicide, you know how dramatic these Riders are" she whispered back cheerfully. She added, as I goggled at her in horror, "But in this case, since the whole bunch followed their lord's lead - which they aren't required to do, by the way - well, remember Jim Jones and the Kool-Aid thing?" By now she was beaming at me; she loved to reminisce about Earth historical factoids.

"Goddammit, Smitty, help me!" I didn't know you could scream in a whisper, but I managed it; I could tell the crowd was getting tense. "It would be just as bad if I cut the *wrong* braid, wouldn't it?"

She drew himself up, and flared her nostrils till her nose-ring fluttered. "I can't tell you that," she objected, deeply offended. "That would be cheating."

She was damn lucky that Carson, as still as stone up to this moment, choose to stir himself with a faint chiming rustle. The knife was still in my hand, and I was beginning to feel violent.

Automatically I looked down at the movement, just in time to catch a furtive blue glance. One braid of the dozens moved minutely toward the front as he flicked it forward and held it taut for me to sever. "If my brother will accept my choosing," he said quietly. There was a murmur of renewed interest from the impatient audience, then everything was waiting on me again.

"Oh, sure. Actually it's even more of an honor to you, since he has to choose one of the important bindings or be thought niggardly." She grinned again; I was becoming heartily sick of her perpetual good humor. "You better go for it, pal. Believe it or not, you don't have all day."

I glared at her, at the riveted crowd, at Carson. Something was beginning to smell fishy to me, but what the hell could I do? "Okay, then. I just cut it?"

"Oh, naturally," I agreed in my sourest tone. She actually broke into a chuckle as she leaned closer to whisper words in my ear. Well, at least it was a short speech.

I stepped up to him, carefully positioned the whopping big knife so it seemed least likely to take half his face with it along with his hair, and intoned glumly, loud enough for everyone to hear, "My brother is forgiven - " I slashed down carefully and pulled free a long rope of hair, bound in silver wire and clipped with what looked like dragonfly images. "Debt is paid!"

"Debt is paid!!" Smitty roared from behind me, making me jump; I had forgotten that in her shaman role she would also be authorizing the transaction. Sotto voice, she muttered to me, "Offer his knife back to him; when he takes it, hold the damn hair up so the crowd can see what you got."

I stalked to Carson, who had risen lightly from his kneeling position and was watching me gravely. Instead of risking my fingers trying to turn such a

monster pigsticker around to offer the hilt to him, I suddenly flipped it hard in the air. It twirled down end over end in a ten-foot fall, green fires running down the blade, and came to a shuddering halt in the air, point down, just in front of him. Levitation is a wonderful spell, and even Phantasmal Fires had its uses, it seemed.

The assembled clan - still kneeling - were briefly stricken dumb, then hollered and whooped their approval. These bastards would've been putty in the hands of a good stage magician like Doug Henning.

With the faintest of smiles, Carson reached for the hilt; with the best of timing, I laid my hand on top of his and gripped his fingers gently before releasing the knife to him. I'm not sure if it was all just acting; I still wanted to throttle him - but there were other wants, as well.

I spun about and raised the long rope of black and silver dramatically into the air; I was actually beginning to enjoy this. "Does the clan approve the choosing?!" I shouted. "Is debt paid?" Darkness was beginning to fall, so charitably, I threw a small light-spell around the whip of hair in my hand so they could see it more clearly.

There was a rumble, and then a huge bear of a man leaped to his feet, bellowing. I recognized him as Do'nar, perhaps the baddest ass the clan had to offer, after Carson of course. This was the type of guy who chomped on his shield till his lips bled, then slew fifty men and ate their livers. He hated my guts; he had been first among the guard to try and keep my "whining wizard ass" away from Carson's arrow-shot body in the forest. I 'd been in too big a hurry to wait for him to start munching shields, and had blasted him out of my way with a fire-bolt that knocked him on his ass and took off three-quarters of his facial hair to boot.

"Firehawk!" he roared now, clashing his axe and shield together with a horrible racket. "Wolfbrother!" He bellowed a mighty laugh and hurled his axe into the air, but instead of cheating with a levitation spell he actually caught the haft neatly as it came whistling down. "Wizard of the Shadow Riders and consort to the High King - welcome!"

Then the entire group leaped to its feet and pelted toward me, howling their approval. Before they reached me and began tossing me into the air on their shoulders, I had time for a frantic glance at Smitty. "Consort?" I mouthed at her. "What the - "