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“Drink more,” Mzatal prompted. Numbly, I lifted the glass and drank. “There is more work to be done on your shoulders,” he said as soon as I finished, “then that aspect will be complete.” He took the empty glass and set it on the side table, helped me lie back.
I looked away as he began to work, shame continuing to knot my gut. There’d been a million things I could have done differently. Yet I’d stumbled blindly on and right into Rhyzkahl’s trap.
Mzatal leaned over me, laying one hand on each shoulder. Warmth flowed into me, chasing the pain away. He remained silent while he worked, either because of his own obvious fatigue, or perhaps because he knew that a bunch of talk wasn’t what I needed right now. I turned my head to the right and watched clouds drift in the pale grey of the early morning sky. Fresh air from the open glass doors carried the scent of rain and flowers, and the incessant low roar of the waterfall offered a soothing backdrop of sound.
Eventually, he withdrew his hands. “You have much to consider and process, Kara.”
I scowled. “Ya think?”
He remained unruffled by my snark. “Yes, I do. Helori will take you away from here for a time, to regain yourself.”
A frown tugged at my mouth. “What do you mean, away? And who’s Helori?”
“Helori is a demahnk syraza,” he told me. “Away from here. You need time and space to recover.”
I looked away from him, watched as an ilius coiled its way across the floor to settle in a corner of the room. “Guess I’m not much good to you all busted up inside and out, huh?”
He didn’t argue the point. “Nor are you serving yourself in any way.” He reached and ran his hands three times from my neck down over the points of my shoulders, then straightened and clasped his hands behind his back.
I sat up. Nothing hurt anymore, and that felt strange. “Thank you,” I said. “Where are you sending me?”
He inclined his head to me. “I trust Helori to take you to places appropriate for you to regain something of yourself.”
My eyes drifted to the grove beyond the southern window wall. Home. I could be myself at home, I thought, wishing the grove could take me there. I wish I’d never become a summoner. I sure as hell didn’t want to ever summon again.
“Give it time, Kara,” Mzatal said in a curiously gentle voice. “You have much potential and will remember that when you come to yourself again.”
I stiffened. “Stop reading my mind,” I snarled. “I fucking hate that shit.”
“I cannot,” he replied, moving out to the doorway of the balcony. “As I have noted before, it is as invisibly natural as the beating of my heart.”
“Well, try.” My hands shook, and I clenched them in the sheet. Rhyzkahl read my fears and weaknesses, used them against me ruthlessly. “It’s like a mental assault.”
He exhaled. “As I said, I cannot. Though I give you my word that I will not use it to your detriment.”
His word. Right. I didn’t have a whole lot of trust for lords going on at the moment. Shivering, I pulled the sheet up. My hands brushed my torso, and I froze, felt the blood drain from my face. “There are scars.” My voice shook badly. “They scarred.” None of my other wounds he’d healed had scarred. Why these?
“I did all that could be done,” he said, regret coloring his voice. “The nature of their creation—the taint of rakkuhr—prevented more.”
I flinched. “I have to live with them forever?” I struggled to process the knowledge that I would have a constant reminder of what happened to me.
“Unless a means beyond my understanding comes forward, yes.”
He doesn’t care, I thought, mood suddenly bleak. Why should he? He wanted me as his summoner. Didn’t matter to him whether I was all scarred up. I pulled the sheet back up, shivers going through me in waves. I couldn’t seem to hold a thought in my head for more than a few seconds. I knew I was in deep shock and suffering from all sorts of post-trauma stress, but knowing it and being able to do something about it were two completely different things. I felt utterly fractured, and I didn’t have the faintest idea of how to even begin putting myself back together.
Mzatal turned back to me, brow furrowed, looking as though he was about to say something, then he shifted his attention to the door. “Helori is here to take you.”
I followed his gaze to see a syraza crouched silently by the door. Larger than Ilana and apparently male, he also had the ridges on head and torso that marked him as an Elder. I hadn’t heard him come in. For all I knew he’d been there since before I woke up. How was I supposed to prepare for a trip with him? Was I supposed to pack or something?
Helori rose fluidly and moved to the side of the bed, crouched again. “I am Helori,” he said with a teeth-baring smile. “And I would be honored if you would accompany me on a journey.”
I dragged up an unsteady smile from somewhere. “Okay.” I didn’t know what else to say after that.
Apparently it was enough. Helori lifted his eyes to Mzatal. “I have her now.”
Mzatal gave the syraza a nod, eyes traveling over me before he turned and departed.
“Do I…?” I frowned, tried again. “Should I pack something?”
