Sorceress by Lisa Jackson Read Free Book Online Page A

administered a salve that took away the fire and pressed something to his lips . . . a drink. He sipped the brew she offered, but it tasted so foul that he coughed and spat, then cringed as a pain like no other cut through his chest.
    Was he alive or dead?
    Or in a netherworld somewhere between?
    At times he smelled the scent of sizzling meat, and hunger pangs would attack him. Other times he recognized the acrid odor of urine and thought it might be his own. Often he was aware of the scent of sweat, and as chills would come to him and be burned off by great black waves of heat, he thought that the scents might be his own. Once in a great while there was music, an off-key humming that buzzed through his brain.
    Someone tending to him.
    His thoughts were short and sharp, like shards of broken pottery, and as they passed behind his eyes he caught only glimpses of his life, tiny fragments that made no sense. He knew he was lying on a straw bed of sorts, and as the days passed and some of the darkness subsided, he tried to swim through the mire that was his brain, attempting to open his eyes. But then she would appear upon her white jennet and the pain would ease and he would succumb to the gentle embrace of darkness. . . .
    “See, he lives,” a woman’s voice from somewhere far away whispered through the veiled darkness. “Did I not tell you?”
    “Aye, ’tis healing powers ye have, Vala.” This time the voice was that of a man, a big man by the sound of it. “ ’Tis why I brought him to ye when I found him in the woods.”
    “Ye say he fell from the ridge?”
    “Aye, that he did. But he was lucky, he was. His fall was broken by saplings and brush.”
    “Lucky?” She snorted as a scraping noise began and somewhere nearby a cow lowed. “If bein’ half dead and chased by Lord Deverill’s men is luck, then, aye, this one, he’s got all the luck in the world. Seems as if our lad here has killed himself Deverill’s sheriff.”
    “Then I would think he should be knighted rather than hanged.”
    “Mmm,” the woman said as the scraping continued. “Mayhap. But look at him. His face . . . by the saints, I doubt he will ever look himself. His nose is broke, one cheek shattered. His eye, there. If he can see out of it, ’twill be a miracle. He might’ve been handsome once, but will be no longer.”
    Good, Gavyn thought, for then he would never be recognized. Though the pain scraped down his muscles and bones, he risked raising an eyelid just a fraction, so that he was peering through the brush of his eyelashes. Although the light in the hut was dim, it still hurt his eyes, but he was determined to get a glimpse of his saviors or captors. Vala was right; his vision was blurred, but he could make out shadows and light. Concentrating hard, he took in a woman seated at a table of sorts, her back to him, long dark hair braided so that it snaked to her waist. Vala was a scrawny thing, her plain tunic sagging from her body.
    A man sat across from her, his feet stretched out toward a glowing fire. Chickens scratched across the dirt floor, and from the sounds of heavy breathing, a cow was trapped on the far side of the room, behind him, though he dared not twist his head to see.
    “There is talk that the sheriff’s killer is to be ransomed,” she said, and Gavyn saw from her actions that she was sharpening a blade.
    The man pulled at the graying strands of his beard, scratching his chin. “I like not to do business with Lord Deverill. The less he knows of us, wife, the better.”
    “Money is money, whether it comes from a rich man or a pauper.”
    “Blood money,” the man muttered.
    “Money we need, Dougal, bloody though it may be. Money we need.” Her narrow back stiffened, and though she was but half her husband’s size, ’twas evident she was the one who ruled this home. Gavyn sensed that, if there were money involved, this woman would see him returned to his father.
    “And so that’s it, is it, Vala?”