Balthasar

Balthasar Hearne woke to the tolling of the sunset bell and the feel of a wooden floor underneath him. He was confused. He thought he had gone home from the college, and even if he had not, the last time he had fallen asleep in the library he was an overworked student, and then he had dozed off with his head on a desk, not the floor.

There was a woman sleeping beside him: He could feel her warmth and smell her perfume. He smiled slightly, deciding that this was one of those revealing dreams where one found oneself doing something indecent in a highly improper place—something that one school of his profession argued indicated repressed desires. He was no doubt about to discover three or four of his most feared and respected preceptors arrayed in armchairs around him. Very likely, he thought hazily, one of the occupants of the armchairs would prove to be his father-in-law.

But when he managed to raise his head, he sonned only one figure, a broad-shouldered, scarred stranger, sitting in Bal’s own familiar armchair beside the paper wall in his study. Bal started to raise himself, and was stopped by an eruption of internal agony. He gave a choked cry, and the strange man dropped quickly to one knee beside him, bare hand spread over his abdomen in a disconcertingly familiar manner. The pain eased appreciably.

“Take it from someone who has collected th’odd beating himself,” the man said in a dry rumble, “the less you move, the less you will hurt.”

“Beating . . . ?”

“Aye, Dr. Hearne. Those two bravos in here last night. Cursed near beat you to death, if you’ll excuse my Lightborn. Took one of the most powerful magical spicules I’ve ever handled to pull you back from the edge. You’ve a debt to your Lightborn friends you’ll be some time repaying. So just you lie still. When we get some reinforcements we’ll be moving you t’somewhere more comfortable, and then we can deal with the rest of it.”

If the pain was reality, then the woman . . . “Telmaine . . .” He strained to lift his head without using his trunk muscles, and this time the stranger eased his hand under his shoulders and supported him so that he could sonn Telmaine’s crumpled shape and the much smaller form of Amerdale. He tried to pull himself up further, and groaned, and the stranger eased him back onto the floor. “Florilinde . . .” he protested. “Where’s Flori?”

“Aye, she said you had too much wit for your own good,” the stranger murmured. “Best you go back to sleep now.” Bal felt a callused hand brush his temple. He recognized the touch of a healer mage as the stranger pressed him down into sleep.