Azure bonds - Kate Novak [103]
"Dragonbait! What's wrong?" Alias gasped, kneeling again beside him. Then she saw it-a bright, blue light, pouring out between the weave of the lizard's shirt, escaping even through the flesh of his hands held over his chest.
"Gods! "the warrior whispered. "No. It can't be." She shook the lizard by the shoulders, dropping the finder's stone to the floor. "What's on your chest?" she demanded.
Dragonbait took a deep breath and held his head up. He untied the fastenings that held his shirt closed.
Alias gasped. The same sigils. In a different shape, but the same sigils. The same blue, gemlike, writhing, azure-lit brands. The scales over the pattern were translucent just as the flesh covering the pattern on Alias's right arm was.
"Why? Why didn't you tell me? Are you one of their pets, too?" she growled angrily.
Dragonbait met her angry eyes with his own, but there was neither shame nor triumph in his look, only sadness. Now he smelled to Alias of roses. It brought to her mind the morning in Shadow Gap when he'd buried the barbarian's sword. The sword he'd used to destroy the kalmari.
"Oh, Dragonbait. I'm sorry," she whispered. Of course he wasn't an enemy or a traitor. He was her friend and probably another victim like her. That had to be the reason she felt such a kinship with him.
"Why didn't you tell me?" she whispered gently, reaching up with her right hand to touch the markings that scarred his body. Energy crackled through her fingertips and over the lizard's chest. Dragonbait drew a deep breath. The lines smoothed from his face, his shoulders straightened, and his eyes widened in surprise.
Alias gasped and drew back her hand, uncertain what she had just experienced. She didn't feel any weaker, so she didn't think Dragonbait had sucked the energy from her. But she couldn't possibly have healed him. She had no training as a cleric. Could the sigils know how to help someone else branded the same way? It didn't seem likely, but Dragonbait's awful condition had been corrected by the mere touch of her hand.
Dragonbait retied his shirt fastenings and stood up easily. Shouldering his sword, he offered her his arm. Alias accepted it with a smile and used it to balance herself as she rose to her feet. The warrior woman shifted her sword to her left hand as she reached down to scoop up the finder's stone.
Alias gasped. Her fingers reached of their own volition, not for the light, but for the wall. She broke out in a sweat in her effort to pull her hand away from the blue bricks. She hadn't actually felt the wall this time: her hand seemed to pass through it as though it were an illusion. The wall reacted in the same extraordinary way it had before.
Again, the bricks seemed to go clear and the passageway was bathed in blue light. The effect lasted a few moments longer this time. The sigils on her arm grew brighter.
Dragonbait knocked her to the ground, away from the blockade, and whatever lay on the other side, beckoning her hand to turn traitor to her body. Dragonbait stood over her, his muscles taut, ready to keep her from reaching out for the wall again. The smell of violets wafted from his body even more strongly now, and Alias wondered if that was the scent of his sweat or his fear.
Out of nowhere came the chant of a magical spell, and a sparkling dart slammed into Dragonbait's body. The lizard was propelled backward into the brick wall.
Alias gasped again. The wall remained solid and unaffected by contact with the lizard's body. She leaped up and spun about, sword raised to defend against the attacker.
"Akabar! Have you taken leave of your senses?"
The mage stood in the passageway, his invisibility negated by the casting of the magic missile he'd used on the lizard. He had had a lot of trouble coming down the staircase in the dark. He had turned the corner into this passage just in time to watch the lizard send Alias sprawling across the floor. "Are you blind, woman?" the mage snapped. "He just attacked you."
"You fool! He was trying