The Queen of Stone_ Thorn of Breland - Keith Baker [81]
“I … don’t know. I was angry, in pain. Then I felt a rush of energy flooding through me, and the pain stopped.”
It appears that you stripped away his life force and used it to heal yourself.
“But how is that possible?” Thorn said. “Could it happen again?” She looked at her hands. Was she in danger of killing anyone she touched?
We don’t have enough information, Steel said. Perhaps it was a curse placed on Toli, and not on you.
“And about Toli …”
We don’t have time to discuss this now, Steel said. If we can’t heal Sheshka, you’d best kill her and leave before someone arrives.
“Kill her?”
Suddenly, the pieces fell into place. Sheshka saw Toli, a Brelish soldier. If the medusa lived, she could blame the attack on Breland. If Thorn took his body, the blame would fall on Valenar and Darguun. Trouble surely—but they couldn’t allow this to be set against Boranel.
Thorn shook her head. “No, there has to be another way”
We have no time to debate. Kill her. You can dispose of Toli’s body in the sewers and we’ll reevaluate the situation.
Thorn considered her hands again. Moments ago, she’d stolen Toli’s strength to heal herself. If only she could reverse that, to give Sheshka some of her own life force. But she had no idea what she’d done. As Steel had said, perhaps the power wasn’t in her at all.
Then she saw the answer.
What are you doing?
Thorn knelt beside the burned medusa. “Carrying out my mission. Which means saving her life.”
How—
Thorn sheathed the dagger. She found a patch of unburned scales on Sheshka’s back, pulled off one of her gloves, and set her palm against the medusa’s skin. Then she concentrated, trying to remember the instructions of the provender at the Citadel.
“You can move it if you need to,” he’d said. “You just have to want it.”
She felt as if her flesh was actually crawling. The tingling, creeping sensation moved up her leg, shifted across her stomach, and flowed down her arm. Finally, the energy appeared on her hand. Were it holding still, it would appear as a tattoo, an abstract pattern of colored lines. Instead, the energy danced around on the skin of her palm. It was a healing tattoo—the mirror of the one that had saved her at the foot of the Korlaak gorge. When she’d been given the assignment, the provender had placed two designs on her skin, and she’d seen the symbols crawl from his flesh to hers. Now she needed to force the tattoo onto Sheshka.
The symbol didn’t want to leave her; it responded to conscious thought, and Sheshka wasn’t welcoming it. But Thorn made a wall with her mind, imagining the space on her hand shrinking. The lines of the tattoo compressed as it tried to fit into the ever-smaller space. Then it burst away, spilling onto the scales of the medusa.
Well, that’s the easy part, Thorn thought. She knew little about the force that empowered living symbols, and she’d had trouble activating the tattoo when it was on her own skin. But this time her mind wasn’t fogged with pain … and the success of her mission rested on healing Sheshka. With her palm pressed upon the symbol, she considered the scorched body of the medusa queen.
You have to want it.
Thorn thought about the imperious woman she’d seen earlier that day, the proud voice she’d bargained with mere minutes ago. She had fire in her, will to live. Thorn had to draw it out. She shoved Sheshka, pushing down on the sigil.
“Do you want to die?” she said. “Are you going to let go so easily?”
She pushed Sheshka again, trying to channel her own growing anger into the symbol.
“I survived this. A puny softskin. You’re going to fall to a fire that didn’t even touch me? You’re going to let these murderers get away with this? Damn you, they killed Szaj!” She pushed down on the tattoo.
Was it growing warmer?
“Get up!” she shouted. “Live, you coward!”
Sheshka’s back arched beneath Thorn’s hand, and the medusa queen gasped for air. The tattoo dissolved into a shimmering light, spreading