Wings Over Talera - Charles Allen Gramlich [53]
To one side of the table, embedded in the wall, a rock basin received a steady trickle of clear water from a mossy knothole above it and lost the same amount in overflow through a second knothole beneath. Animal-thirsty, I strode over, bent and drank. The water tasted sweet and cool.
Next to the water basin, hidden behind a fall of silver and black honeywhisper, I discovered an exit. It was a vertical slit in the tree trunk barely tall enough and wide enough for a man of my size to pass through—if he ducked and turned sideways. On a rattan chair by the door lay my rapier and clothes, or at least my jeans. Sword and pants had both been cleaned of blood, and the jagged tears in the left leg of the pants had been sewn up.
Sight of the jeans brought back my dream and its triggering reality in a hissing flash: fighting the red-eyed beasts, climbing to the rope bridge, the moths. My wounds! My right arm had been savaged; my left leg had been a bloody mess. I should barely be able to move, but I felt little pain.
Almost fearfully, I glanced down. My wounds were bound with cloth and whoever or whatever had brought me here had applied poultices. With my awareness shifting, I felt for the first time a pleasant tingle beneath the bandages, and smelled a dozen bright, clean odors of growth and life.
I held up my right hand, clenched and relaxed a fist. It hurt, but the fingers flexed normally. And my left foot and leg supported my weight with barely a twinge. I couldn’t understand it. My injuries had been serious. How could they have healed this much in less than a day?
A chill struck me then. What if it hadn’t been a day? It was late afternoon now, but how many such afternoons might have passed while I slept here? What might have happened in that time—to Diken Graye, to Bryce, to the world I knew?
Quickly, I grabbed up the jeans and yanked them on, then buckled the sword about my waist. I had to get out of here, had to find my way to Diken Graye, find out if he was still alive, then pick up the trail to Bryce and Vohanna. I was bending to look under the chair in hopes of finding my boots when a voice from behind stopped me.
“How soon they flee my hospitality,” the voice said. “And without even a thank you.”
I spun, still in a crouch, hand dropping to my sword’s hilt as I expected to see some red-eyed thing with a demonic smile. A woman stood there, clad in a simple kirtle of oat-brown. Her eyes were jade. Beautiful. Her hair was a copper-fire mane that hung tousled to the small of her back. She was barely five feet tall, slender waisted with hips flaring sweetly below. Her mouth was generous in a face of sharp cheekbones and large, almost hollowed eyes. Her chin was strong, her nose delicate. She wore her sadness so well that it almost seemed she wore none at all.
I straightened slowly from my crouch, blushing as her words registered.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was raised better. I do owe you my gratitude. Thank you.”
The woman’s lips curled in what could have been either a smile or a smirk. She let go of the rope ladder that she’d unfurled from above to use in climbing down the hollow inside of the tree, and walked to the table carrying a bird nest in which several somethings chirruped. She placed the nest into an old, battered war-helmet and dropped in a handful of bread crumbs.
“A harsupex got their mother last eve,” she murmured, not looking at me, not even seeming as if her words were meant for me.
I knew what a harsupex was—a kind of ferret-cat with the smarts and habits of a racoon—but I wasn’t sure how to respond to her comment.
“And left them alone,” is all I said.
She looked at me, studied me for a moment, then looked away. “I will accept your apology,” she said.
She leaned down and tugged a small chest from under the table. Opening it, she drew out a long sleeved shirt of ivory linen and tossed it to me. Next, she came up with a