“Oh, you fools!” she screamed up at him. “I can save him!”
“You have not seen him,” he said more gently.
“Because you won’t let me!”
“Woman—Tedra … he has bones crushed. He has a mortal wound in his chest. Nothing can be done, no matter that you wish it otherwise.”
“It can—it can!” she cried. “I tell you I can save him, if my communicator can be found before he … Tamiron, please, you have to believe me. Challen has a small box of mine. Where would he put it—hide it? Where would he hide something?”
“This you will not be told.”
She couldn’t believe her ears. “Don’t … be … an … idiot!” she screeched at him. “I have to have that box. It has to be found,now!Or do you want him to die?”
“Do not be foolish—”
“Damn you, why won’t you believe me? With that box, I can save your friend. If you have any feeling for him at all, how can you take the chance that I’m not telling the truth?”
“How can the box save him?”
Thank the blessed Stars, he was finally listening to her. “It will—”
“No.”
Tedra gasped to hear that voice, sounding so weak, but still commanding. She craned her neck around to see him, but couldn’t.
“Challen, you don’t understand! You have to tell me where—”
“No,” he repeated, but he wasn’t speaking to her. “She is not … to have it, Tam. She will … leave and not … return.”
“I won’t!” Tedra cried, struggling again with Tamiron to let her up. “Challen, I won’t leave you. I’ll take you where you can be healed, and I’ll return with you. I’ll even give you back the communicator, I swear!”
“He heard you not,” Tamiron told her. “He has lost wakefulness again.”
Tedra groaned, and then growled, “Get off me, warrior. I’ll return to town myself and find my unit. But I swear if he dies, when you could have given me a clue to shorten the search, I’m going to kill you.”
“You heard him, Tedra. You may not have the box. His orders are to be obeyed, despite—”
“He didn’t know what he was saying! He doesn’t know he’s dying—or that I can save him. If he knew it, it wouldn’t matter to him if I left or not, would it? But I’ll tell you what does matter. I caused that tunnel to collapse. If he dies, then I killed him. Are you going to let a helpless woman live with that on her conscience?” When he started to smile at that, she growled, “That was supposed to get through to your barbarian mentality, not make you laugh. And if you don’t get off me right now, I’m going to hurt you.”
“What could this box of yours do for him?”
Was he finally thinking for himself? “It will Transfer us to—where I come from. It will Transfer Challen directly into a meditech unit that will make him whole again.” She couldn’t blame Tamiron for his skeptical look, but for once she couldn’t afford to be doubted. “Damn it, I swear I’m telling you the truth. If you don’t trust me, you can come along, too, but don’t waste any more time, Tamiron. Return to the castle and find that box for me before it’s too late.”
“This will not be necessary. I have it.”
“What?”
“Challen gave it to me with the warning that it was to be kept from you. Knowing your penchant for going where you do not belong, I felt the safest place for it was on myself. Serren,” Tamiron called to the nearest warrior not nursing some hurt she’d given in her earlier loss of control. “Bring to me the sack on myhataar.”
He let Tedra up finally while they waited, but tried stopping her again from going to Challen. “You still should not seehim—”
“Don’t get foolish again on me,” she snapped. “It doesn’t matter how he looks now, because he’ll be whole again before the day ends, without even a tiny scar to show for it.”
“That would be a miracle,” he said with total disbelief.
“Yeah, well, we have a lot of things where I come from that will seem like miracles to you.”
“Are you truly, then, from another world?”
