An Enjoyable Partnership: When Genders Collide
Part Five
Nalian paced up and down in the keep’s drawing room. He was unable to sit still or relax. He’d just cast a sleep spell on Edwina, while she had been unconscious and unable to resist, and then ordered the servants to take her to bed. Hopefully, a good night’s sleep would help her. Nalian gnawed his lip.
Nalian had to admit he was worried about Edwina. It was Edwina’s fault he was male, and she was irritating, she constantly argued with him, she never, ever knocked when entering a room, and yet, in a perverse way, she was good company. She didn’t make Nalian guffaw with laughter, but she regularly made him smile. She was someone, Nalian felt, with whom he could be himself. Well, current circumstances excepting, of course.
Strange though it was, Edwina was becoming a friend, a good friend. Nalian was beginning to wonder if the find familiar spell he’d cast had actually got it right in choosing Edwina as his familiar, rather than, as he had assumed before, either slightly wrong, or even totally and utterly wrong.
Nalian shook his head. He’d never been good at judging other people’s emotions. It wasn’t a skill taught to noble-born girls. They were taught to keep accounts, give orders, ride horses, play a musical instrument and embroider, the skills needed to be the wife of an influential man. Now, he felt like he was drowning.
What should he do? He could take Edwina’s amulet. It didn’t seem to be having a healthy influence on her, but would taking it away make her worse? What did that amulet do, and how had it got Edwina into so much trouble anyway? No, best to leave the amulet, for now. Nalian wasn’t sure he really wanted to mention it to Edwina any time soon, anyway. The amulet would have to wait.
No good. Answers would have to wait for morning. Nalian strode out of the drawing room, and headed for the stairs to the upper floor, and his bedroom. As he got to the foot of the stairs, he paused, suddenly realising he’d forgotten to tell Edwina that he’d managed to lie to Feredain and that she had, no doubt, given up on the de’Arnise keep as a target. They either had time to come up with a defense, or had got rid of her altogether.
He growled tiredly to himself, and continued up the stairs. Oaths and swearwords that Nalia would never have used echoed down after him, some of them Thayvian.
***
Degardan timidly knocked on the door of Feredain’s room. They had agreed to rise at dawn this morning, but that had been two hours ago now, and Feredain had not appeared. Feredain is never late, he mused. The room was silent. He couldn’t hear her moving around in there. Surely she was not still asleep?
Degardan frowned in indecision. He couldn’t just stride in there, what if she was getting dressed? If he caught her partially dressed…partially dressed? Images of red fabric sliding across dark skin filled his mind’s eye. He opened the door, and then yelped in dismay and ran over to Feredain’s bedside.
Feredain was lying in bed, gasping for every single breath. As he came in, she turned her head to look at him, and then closed her shining eyes in resignation. He realised that she was shaking, shivering with fever.
“Feredain, wh…what happened?” He cried.
She feebly tried to haul herself upright, but failed. Degardan hovered uncertainly, not knowing whether to help or leave her to her struggles. Feebly, she pulled her right arm out of the covers to reveal a forearm swollen and swathed with damp bandages. She held it out, trembling with the effort.
“A bite. On the de’Arnise estate. Questions. The Odesseiron is not there. There was a pack of dogs. Retaliation would…have created problems. Infection.” The arm dropped to the bed, and she panted with the effort of having held it high.
“You have got to see a healer! This is serious.” Degardan desperately wanted to hold her hand, to tell her it would be alright, that he would look after everything, make it better…
Feredain looked thoughtful. “Yes.” She suddenly went tense and closed her eyes. Her breathing stopped. Degardan froze with sudden worry, and then she wrenched herself upright, the bitten arm hanging uselessly. She held her head high.
“Leave me while I dress. Then, we shall proceed to the temple of Ilmater.”
A short while later, Degardan and Feredain left the Mithrest, and headed the short distance to the tiny Ilmater temple, located just a few doors along from the inn. Degardan watched Feredain anxiously the whole way there. In the bright sun, her dark skin was tinged with grey, and she gasped for breath with every step. At one point, she stopped, head bowed, took a deep rasping breath, then continued. After what seemed like an eternity to Degardan, they reached the temple. As soon as he opened the door for her, the priests swarmed over them, and dragged her rapidly inside. She looked back briefly at Degardan.
“Leave us.” She ordered.
Degardan felt briefly hurt, then sat down on a bench outside the temple, to wait, and to worry.
***
Edwina was trying not to wake up. If she woke up, she would have to face…whatever it was she had chosen to forget right now.
She lay half asleep, warm, comfortable, resolutely determined not to remember. But, of course, a little section of her mind was trying desperately to remember what it was she was trying to forget; just to make sure it was worth forgetting, like she thought.
Feredain. Amulet. Nalian.
She moaned slightly, and grasped the crisp linen sheets in her hands. How could she have been such a fool? She would never be able to face Nalian again, after that outburst, and no doubt he’d soon tell all Amn about it. No, it was time to leave, to move on, to forget about this familiar nonsense and find somewhere new. She had to keep one step ahead of the Red Wizards. Damn the Nether scroll research, she’d rather be alive and female than defeated by Feredain!
“I know you’re awake, Edwina. How are you feeling?” Nalian’s voice. Edwina closed her eyes tightly. Nalian continued, sounding slightly annoyed, with an edge to his voice that Edwina couldn’t quite identify. “Open your eyes, you stupid idiot! Or do I have to pinch myself again?”
Edwina opened her eyes slowly. “No.” She said, in a flat, tired voice.
Nalian was sat in a chair by her bed. He looked concernedly at the Red Wizard. “Are you alright?”
“Perfectly!” Edwina snapped. She paused, thinking, and then continued, more slowly. “My… outburst…last night was, was, a result of this Nether transformation. I am, ah, not used to handling these female emotions.”
“Oh!” Nalian looked surprised and relieved, though still a little suspicious. “That makes sense, I guess. Um, look, you might want to take a look in the left-hand drawer in my dressing room, second down from the top. You may find the supplies in there useful.”
“Why, what’s in there?” Edwina said, in sudden interest, hauling herself into a sitting position. “Scrolls? Potions? Spell wands?”
“Not exactly, that’s where I keep my…”
“How did I get into this bed?” Edwina asked, interrupting him. “I seem to remember reading in the drawing room, the, ah, argument, then…I don’t know what happened after that.”
“You passed out. I had the servants bring you up here.” Nalian shifted uncomfortably. “I realised I forgot to tell you something.”
Edwina suddenly went very still. “What?” Not more bad news. Please not more bad news…
“Oh, it’s nothing bad. I didn’t tell you that I managed to get rid of Feredain. She asked if I knew you, and I told her there was no man called Edwin on the estate. Which is true.” He added smugly.
“You mean to say,” Edwina said exasperatedly, “that you told me that a Red Wizard is trying to kill me, but forgot to mention that she doesn’t actually know where I am? Have you ever thought of a career as a doomsayer? I think you missed your vocation.”
“Look, I’m sorry! I was scared stiff by that woman, and then you were, um, ill, and I never had a chance to say!” Nalian’s lips suddenly quirked upwards in a slight smile. “Forgive me?”
“No.” Edwina smiled faintly in return.
“Thanks.”
***
A grey-clad priest was pouring the last dregs of a healing potion on Feredain’s arm, healing up the final traces of the bite marks the dogs had inflicted. Feredain watched the man guardedly. He was, it seemed, totally at ease in her presence, not even slightly intimidated, confident that the love of his God would protect him. Feredain didn’t like that one bit. It was against the correct order of things.
“Well, that seems to be sorted, then. I’ve never treated an aasimar before. It’s been a fascinating experience.”
Feredain remained silent. The priest started to gather up his supplies from around her-empty potion bottles, soggy bandages, and a bottle of weak salt water he had used to wash out the wound.
“Do all aasimars have a weakness for infection, or is it variable?”
Feredain felt a flare of anger, although she was careful not to let it show on her emotionless face. “I do not believe I have a weakness.”
“Oh, possibly not. It was a badly infected wound, but who knows what the dog had been eating before it bit you?” He picked up an unused bandage, and started to coil it absently around his fingers. “You mages, though, ha! Always getting yourselves into trouble.”
“Indeed.”
The priest chuckled to himself. “Take Nalia de’Arnise and her friend, for instance!”
“Nalia de’Arnise?” Feredain’s eyes widened in interest.
The priest stopped rolling the bandages and frowned in annoyance. “Oh, I let my mouth get away from me far too often. I can’t discuss other patients.”
Feredain thought quickly. “Nalia is a…friend of mine. If she has been ill, I would like to send her a gift.”
“Well, not ill as such…” The priest snorted. “Please understand me, I have nothing against little Nalia, she’s given this temple many generous donations, but…seeing her walk in that time with that Red Wizard, oh I could have died!”
“Red Wizard?”
“Yes, being a Red Wizard yourself, do you know him? Edwin Odsron, or something similar. Well, it seems they had accidentally linked themselves together in a magical experiment, Ilmater knows what they were trying to do, but that was what happened. That’s not the end of it, though. You’d think they’d have learnt after that, right? Apparently not. When they walked through the door, they had changed sexes!” The priest guffawed heartily. “Oh, I wish you could have seen their expressions!”
“I agree. I wish I had.” Feredain stood up. “Thank you for your treatment. Here is your gold.” She dropped twice the fee into his palm, and stalked out of the temple’s tiny infirmary.
Lord Nalian had said to her ‘There is no man called Edwin Odesseiron here.” Feredain had known he had been telling the truth. It was as obvious to her as the clouds in the sky.
She had spoken to Nalia de’Arnise, without even realising it.
There is no man called Edwin Odesseiron here.
It was obvious what her next move was.
