Kings of the North - Elizabeth Moon [164]
For a moment, the room was silent, everyone motionless, Kieri’s light paling the firelight and lamps. Hafdan squinted against it. “He’s still a traitor,” the king said. He jerked his head at the other lords. “Bind him like a thief.” They came forward, one pulling a leather thong from his pocket. The king loosened his grip of Hafdan’s throat, but still straddled him.
Hafdan’s throat worked. “I thought—Einar was—right. You had—gone soft.”
“Do you try to save your life?” the king asked.
“I only say—you are not soft.”
“I am not, and Einar will find that soon enough.” The king started to rise as the Pargunese lords leaned over Hafdan to grab his arms and bind them.
In that instant, Hafdan twisted, jerked out his dagger, and stabbed the king in the side, saying, “Not soft—but steel is harder.” Before Kieri could do anything, one of the Pargunese had run a blade into Hafdan’s throat.
The king put a hand to his side. “It will kill me,” he said calmly. “But the traitor is dead.” Then, with a groan, he slid off Hafdan’s body and lay unmoving on the floor. “Tell Elis and Iolin …” But his voice trailed away.
Kieri had been stabbed so, by a poisoned blade … and Paks had healed him. But there was no paladin here, and he did not yet have the full royal magery … but what other chance was there? And the light had come, no longer flickering and uncertain, but still filling the room. Maybe …
He stepped over the traitor. “Knight-Commander,” he said. “Come and help me.”
“What you do?” asked one of the Pargunese lords in Common.
“Try to save him,” Kieri said. The king’s eyes were almost closed, but focusing on Kieri. “Breathe,” Kieri said, as he would have to one of his soldiers. “Don’t stop.” He slit the king’s doublet, the winter shirt, the undershirt, and cursed himself for not insisting the king wear mail. The wound in his side was clearly poisoned, already discolored; dark blood flowed out.
“Cannot. Is death wound,” the Pargunese lord said.
“Be quiet and breathe,” Kieri said, to the king. The Knight-Commander knelt at the king’s head; he and Kieri locked eyes. “Knight-Commander, I ask Falk’s aid for this brave man, a king, who has fought for honor—”
“Yes. I will pray—do whatever you plan—”
“I hope the gods will give me healing for him.”
Kieri put his hand on the wound, as Paks had done for him. He had no idea what she had done or how; they had never talked about it. He had thought it beyond anything he would ever do or need to understand. He felt nothing at first but the hot blood, and the heart beating somewhere inside. Then, slowly, something nudged, pushed, urged him to—to what? He tried to understand, but it was not words or thoughts he could follow, just a feeling that this hand had to move, had to—He stared at the elven dagger he now held, his grandmother’s coronation gift.
“No!” One of the Pargunese lords lunged at him, but two King’s Squires stopped the man.
Kieri concentrated … lay the dagger so … let his desire flow down his arm into it … Let him live. Let him live. A shaft of white light shot up from the dagger’s jeweled hilt, then reversed, glowing for an instant in the wound itself. The king cried out, jerked, and something dark flew out of the wound and landed clinking on the floor: the blade’s tip. Bright blood flowed around the elven dagger, then stopped … and Kieri had a sickening view of the wound closing, the gaping flesh pulling together, layer by layer, the blood flow slowing … stopping … and the skin closing over it.
Kieri felt a great exhaustion settle on him, almost like that he had felt at Aliam’s, and yet different. His vision darkened; he did not realize at first that his light had failed at last.
He looked around,