Brightly Burning by Mercedes Lackey Page A

you don’t want me to, I won’t.”
    That must have been the right thing to say. “You must be sick,” she said reluctantly. “All right; I’ll have your meals brought up on a tray, and we’ll keep you home for a while. “There’s no point in spreading whatever you’ve caught to the rest of the family.” She pursed her lips as Lan looked up at her. “I’ll send to the herbalist for something better than willow tea for your head. Meanwhile, you lie back down.” He obeyed, meekly, and she felt his forehead with a surprisingly gentle expression on her face. “Lavan, you’ve been driving me to distraction since we moved to Haven, but I still love you. It’s not been easy for the rest of us here in Haven either.”
    A pang of conscience penetrated the pain in his head. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, feeling ashamed.
    â€œJust keep on with this school as you have been, and you won’t have a reason to feel sorry anymore,” she said, spoiling his moment of contrition, as she put the hot-bag back on his forehead.
    Just keep on with the school—if the Tyrant will let me! he thought in despair, and the headache returned with a vengeance.
    As aromas that should have been savory and only made him feel sick floated up from the kitchen, he fought down nausea and his pain.
    When footsteps came up the stairs again, he thought it was the servant with the promised tray, and took off the hot-bag to send her away. But it wasn’t; it was the maidservant all right, a vaguely pretty girl with a round face and red cheeks, but she had a bottle and spoon in one hand, and another hot-bag wrapped in a new towel dangling from the other.
    â€œThis is from the herbalist for you,” the maid said, with a sympathetic smile, holding out the bottle and spoon. “Just take a spoonful; he says it’s mortal strong.” Lan was surprised and touched by the sympathy. Evidently, now that it was clear he wasn’t making his illness up, the servants were less inclined to be critical of him.
    She left the hot-bag beside him as he took the medicine from her, leaving him alone in the darkening room. After a moment of thought, he lit his candles at his fireplace, although bending over nearly made him pass out.
    Strange. I don’t remember anyone coming in to light the fire. It hadn’t been lit when he came home, had it?
    I—I must have forgotten, my head hurt so much. When the room was full of light, he stripped and got into his nightclothes and got properly into bed, just in case the medicine was as strong as it was supposed to be. He didn’t have a great deal of faith in the promises of herbalists, but it might very well be powerful.
    His skin felt tender again, that slightly-sunburned feeling. As he stretched out under the bedclothes with the new hot-bag on his head, he was glad he’d gotten out of his clothing. The wool trews had been itchy; the soft linen felt much better. Downstairs, people were starting to arrive home, and the house hummed with conversation and activity. No one else came near him, though; he experienced the odd sensation of eavesdropping on his own family.
    As if I were a ghost.
    It was . . . interesting. The maid had left his door open, so he heard most of what was going on fairly clearly. No one seemed to notice his absence until dinner, when his mother’s brief explanation brought an expression of detached sympathy from Sam, and an exclamation of “Don’t let him get near me! ” from his sister.
    But it was just about then that the herbalist’s remedy started to take effect, and Lan couldn’t have cared if they had all voted to wrap him in a plague banner and chase him out of town.
    It began with a dulling of the pain, followed by the oddest sensation of floating. The more the pain left, the more the euphoria took over. At some point, about midway through dinner downstairs, an