The Curse (The Windore Series Book 2)

by Valya Boutenko

  The Wolf Baron smiled darkly. He stood only a few feet away from the girl. “You don’t stand a chance against me,” he growled at Amelliea, flexing the muscles in his jaw.

  Amelliea could not think of what to reply, and she was unsure how to beat this dangerous new opponent. Her heart beat fiercely in her chest and she admitted to herself that for the first time in the entire competition, she truly felt afraid. Amelliea glanced around, taking note of the obstacles that stood nearby. There was the damaged pinwheel, and a tall wooden box-like structure with several spread-out hand grips off to one side. Amelliea studied the Wolf Baron. He wore black leggings and a grey, dirty-looking tunic that was unbuttoned and messy at the neck. Several of the buttons looked as though they had been torn off the front, and the rest dangled loosely by a few weak threads revealing the skin of his chest, as though he had ripped the shirt open in an angry burst of frustration. His shoulders were protected by a few pieces of worn metal armor. The scratched up plates had at some point been painted black, and they traveled further down on his right arm than they did his left. A rusty jagged blade was holstered at his waist. Amelliea had never seeing such a weapon. The bottom cutting edge of the blade was a series of flat, irregular spikes that were broken in several places, and all the sharper for it. The rusty neglected state of the sword seemed to indicate both to a lack of honor and to the tendency of slaying his opponents without cleaning his weapon or minding the messiness of flesh and blood.

  The main judge gave the dreaded command to fight, and the Wolf Baron drew his jagged blade from its wide leather holster. He advanced on Amelliea. “You are afraid,” sneered the Wolf Baron, “I can smell it!” He took a swing at her, swiping his sword through the air with a whoosh. Amelliea leapt back and out of the way. “Come on, give me a good fight!” said the Baron, through gritted teeth.

  Something took a hold of Amelliea then, as she realized no one had beaten him, and that possibly no one would if she didn’t manage to do it herself. Amelliea was stunned by the awareness that she was at present, the most qualified person to fight the Wolf Baron, and for that reason the most likely to defeat him. Casting caution to the wind, she sprang forward, and her sword met with that of the Wolf Baron. He was a good deal stronger than her, and Amelliea worked hard to keep his heavy strikes away from her neck and chest. They clashed in fierce combat, the Wolf Baron sustaining an outpour of maximum energy. Amelliea found herself gradually being backed up toward the wooden box structure. Never in her life had she fought an opponent who so clearly wanted to kill her. Even Gabriellen, for all her hatred, had not gauged her each and every strike to the sole purpose of ending Amelliea’s life. The Wolf Baron brought his blade up over his head yet again and cut down and across, using gravity to his aid. Amelliea deflected the swing, but not before one of the spikes of the Wolf Baron’s sword cut a slash in her forearm. The wound was not deep, but it bled profusely. The sight of blood seemed only to excite the Baron, and he came at Amelliea even faster, his blade scraping against her shield. Amelliea knew she had to do something to divert his attack, for she did not know how much more she could take. In a desperate attempt to disarm him, she jammed her sword into the jagged edge of his blade and tried to wrench his weapon from his hands. Instead, it was her own sword that slipped from her hand and flew through the air, landing in the dust several yards away. The Wolf Baron roared in pleasure at this event, and cast his own weapon aside, stepping forward entirely unarmed. He held his hands at his sides, giving Amelliea a small window of opportunity, knowing all the while that the girl would not make the move to kill him.

  “Don’t come any closer!” she said.

  He advanced, looking down his nose at her. Suddenly, the Wolf Baron arched his back, wreathing from an unknown source of pain. Amelliea used the moment to run to the box structure. Thin wisps of dark smoke drew out from the Wolf Baron’s body, briefly enveloping him as he transformed into the form of a giant, shaggy wolf.

  Out in the audience, Bloom rose from his seat and stared in horror at the creature, recognizing it at once.

  Glancing back just in time to glimpse the final phase of the transformation, Amelliea discovered a narrow gap in the wood of the structure before her, and she squeezed herself through it, slipping inside the box just as the wolf charged after her and clawed viciously at the opening, missing her by a mere instant. The Wolf Baron dug at the ground, and snarled at Amelliea through the opening but could not fit through it. In the dark space of the wooden structure, Amelliea discovered a rope ladder leading up to a square opening above her head. She began to climb the ladder and a moment thereafter, Amelliea came out onto the roof of the box to find the wolf racing around at the bottom. He growled when he saw her, baring his terrible fangs.

  “Fight me like a man!” yelled Amelliea, jumping off the structure in a sideways flip. She landed right beside her sword, and as she tumbled to absorb the shock of her jump, she grabbed the handle of her weapon. The Wolf Baron slammed into her the moment she came to standing, and they rolled together in the dirt. Amelliea kicked and slashed at him. When she cut the Wolf Barron with her sword, the wound would instantly heal, leaving only a pink scar where the cut had been only moments before. He chomped his teeth near her face, so close that his drool dripped down onto her neck. She protected herself the best she could. Using both feet, Amelliea shoved the creature away and rolled backwards up to standing. The next instant the Wolf Barron was upon her once more. Amelliea let him fall onto her blade, his own body weight driving the sword further into his chest. He fell limply across her. And just like that, it was over, and the fight was won! Amelliea slid out from under him, and pulled her bloodied blade from the Wolf Baron’s chest. The beast lay lifeless in a dusty heap at her feet, his wicked eyes glazed over. Amelliea breathed hard, barely understanding what had happened. She unclipped her shield, letting it fall to the ground. The audience remained quiet. With a wavering voice, the main judge pronounced Amelliea the victor and the spectators broke into a conservative applause, upset to see their local hero defeated. Her head reeling, Amelliea moved away from the horrible scene. Finding her father in the audience, she stumbled in his direction. Bloom was being held on either side by two guards at the edge of the ring. He wrestled free of them and rushed to meet his daughter in the arena. Sensing something coming, Amelliea stopped and looked over her shoulder at the Wolf Baron. He lay still. Bloom rushed to her from across the way. Amelliea tilted her head to one side, feeling a nasty bite on her neck. Furrowing her brow, she stepped closer to the wolf and bent down to look at his horrible face. The Wolf Baron blinked.

  The next moment, three different events happened simultaneously, unfolding as though they occurred in slow motion. Amelliea fell backwards upon the ground in surprise, and instinctively released her weapon to break her fall with her only good hand. The Wolf Baron roared back to life, and with a ferocious snarl, jumped through the air at the now unarmed lady warrior that had defeated him. Bloom’s palms began to glow as he raced to his daughter’s aid. “No!” whispered Bloom, unable to yell for lack of breath. He projected both of his hands forward. The wolf was in mid leap, about to come down upon the defenseless Amelliea. The girl shielded her face with her bare arm. Bloom uttered an incantation and suddenly, the Wolf Baron spun viciously around in the air, hovering above Amelliea in a blurry mass of rapid activity and then landed with a crash above her head in the form of a painting. The scuffed-up wooden frame clamored to the ground, hitting one corner and then the next, before toppling down and laying flat in the dirt. The tight canvas reverberated with the last bit of inertia as the rapid motion ended. Amelliea pressed up onto her knees, and crawled forward to look upon the painting. The wolf imprinted on the canvas was exactly as he had been in real life, his action pose immortalized in the flawless accuracy of thousands of brush strokes.

  Bloom came up beside Amelliea. “Are you alright?” he asked.

  “It’s so realistic,” said Amelliea, unable to tear her eyes from the painting, and not
sure how to answer her father’s question.

  “Why do you think the paintings of old are so life-like?” asked Bloom.

  “Surely not…” said Amelliea, shakily rising.

  Bloom noticed the bite on her neck. “A good many of them were made in just this way. Of course, its difficult to tell the real paintings from the fakes, though there is a simple test…” he went on, trying to distract Amelliea in order to keep her calm. The girl seemed unstable on her feet. Her legs and shoulders were heavily scratched up, and she fainted in Bloom’s outstretched arms just as the Queen and her guards approached them from behind.

  Chapter 45

  Cruel Accusations

  “He is a magic wielder, and that girl is—a cheat!” said one of the guards.

  Bloom turned around to face the Queen and her guards with his unconscious daughter in his arms. He had just used a healing spell on Amelliea, and her wounds pulled together, leaving no trace that they were ever there. Only the bite on her neck remained as a pink, oval-shaped scar where the werewolf’s teeth had punctured her fare skin.

  “What sorcery is this?” demanded the Queen. She stared at Bloom with cold green eyes. She was a beautiful woman in her forties, who wore her age well. “What is that in your hand?” she demanded.

  “Nothing,” said Bloom, unable to slip his stone into his pocket due to the fact that his arms were occupied. He held the crolackrolite firmly in his fist.

  The Queen tilted her chin towards one of her men without taking her eyes off of Bloom. Immediately picking up on the silent command, the guard stepped forward and pulled the stone from Bloom’s hand, instantly draining the wizard of his power. Bloom fell to his knees, holding Amelliea with the last of his strength. The girl softly fell to the ground and began to come around. The first thing she saw was her father rapidly aging before her.

  “Father!” cried Amelliea, reaching out to him. She looked at the Queen who held the crolackrolite stone in her pale fingers. “Give it back!” Amelliea demanded.

  “Your highness, his pockets are filled with them,” said the guard.

  “Interesting…” muttered the Queen, holding the black stone up to the sun. The crolackrolite shone dark green at the center, its density no longer masking its true color. “Why do you keep them, are they valuable?” she asked the wizard.

  Bloom wreathed in pain before her, looking about a hundred years older than before. He could scarcely lift his trembling head off the ground, and his breath came in gasps, as though he were enduring a tremendous amount of pain.

  “Stop!” cried Amelliea. “You’ll kill him!”

  “Take him to the prison,” said the Queen to her men, “and make sure he remains alive. I dare say he may prove useful to us.” She handed the stone over to one of the guards, making Bloom sharply arch his back in pain.

  Amelliea’s eyes brimmed with tears. Her father’s hair had turned white as snow. “Father,” whispered Amelliea, through trembling lips. She feebly tried to intercept the guards, but she was hardly well enough to stand, and she only fell back down into the dirt. “No,” she whispered, as they took him away. “Don’t do this!” Her heart rate began to abruptly climb.

  Bloom was carried away through a pair of doors on the far side of the arena.

  “As for you, you little cheat!” said the Queen.

  Amelliea backed away, scampering in the dirt.

  “Shall we schedule her execution?” offered one of the guards.

  “No you fool!” snapped the Queen. “We must extract the truth from her first! We must find out why she has come, and what she knows!”

  “What she knows about what?” asked the man.

  “If you question me one more time, it is your own execution you will be scheduling!” said the Queen.

  Amelliea felt a sudden surge of energy rush through her veins and the Queen’s conversation with the guard was drowned out by the rhythmic thumping of her own heart. The spike in energy was like nothing she had ever felt before, and Amelliea jumped to her feet and tore from the arena at a speed she had never previously been capable of. Though she was chased by several guards, she maneuvered and leapt over obstacles in a fashion that could only be described as beast-like and quickly left her pursuers behind. Amelliea felt hot, as she ran through the city. She panted for air. Coming upon the inn, she charged up the stairs and kicked open the door of her room. Amelliea rushed to stuff her father’s and her own belongings into their packs. Her whole body shook as she raced around the two tiny bedrooms. It was difficult to buckle the straps of Blooms rucksack with the trembling fingers of her only hand, but she managed to leave the inn and skirt around to the back of the building just as the loud marching of the royal guard’s boots sounded in the street behind her.

  Amelliea did not know where to go, or how to escape the guards. She had to find a way to rescue Bloom! Abruptly, she felt her strength leave her limbs once more. Unable to hold on to the straps of the heavy packs, she dropped them on the ground and leaned against the stone building for support. Cold sweat beaded on her forehead and she struggled to remain conscious, as daylight seemed to dim and then brighten in her eyes. Amelliea understood that she needed to seek shelter for the coming night, but she knew not where to look. She was a wanted criminal now, and it would not be long before word of her escape spread across the city. The alley she was in was mostly deserted, but even still, she was beginning to draw attention to herself. Amelliea forced herself up to standing, only to fall painfully forward onto her knees.

  Someone cleared his throat behind her. It was a beggar. He was a short fellow, dressed in rags. “Spare some change, miss?” he asked, extending a dirty hand.

  Her own state no less desperate, Amelliea reached into her bag and fished out three silver rounds. “Take these,” she said. “It’s likely that I won’t be needing them after tonight.” She weakly turned away.

  “Wait,” said the beggar, pulling back his hood. Amelliea looked back at the man. It was the innkeeper. “I knew you hadn’t cheated in the competition,” he smiled. “You are a good and honest person!” He gave her back the coins. Amelliea held onto the wall for stability. “They are still looking for you, miss,” whispered the innkeeper. “Come this way!” he waved her to the back door of the inn.

  Once they went inside, the man helped Amelliea stash her things under some floorboards, and poured her a ladle of soup. They sat together at the back of the kitchen where the servants had their meals. Amelliea ate gratefully. “They have my father,” she said. “He is suffering terribly.” She set down her spoon, “I must find a way to save him!”

  “Eat first,” reminded the innkeeper gently.

  Amelliea emptied her bowl, and the man poured her another portion.

  The girl snapped her fingers. “I’ve got it!” she said remembering the gift the King of thieves had given her on her first day in the Gator region. “The whishing stone!”

  “Have you a wishing stone in your possession?” asked the innkeeper breathlessly.

  “Yes!” cried Amelliea, rising so abruptly that some of the soup slopped from her bowl onto the wooden table. She tore up the floorboards and raked through her pack, her usually graceful movements now rough and erratic. “Here it is!” she said, trembling as she fished it out and sat back on her heels. She replaced the boards and came to sit in her seat beside the innkeeper, holding the glowing green stone in her cupped hand. “This is a whishing stone, good for a single wish. If ever there was a moment to use it, that moment is now!” She hit her fist against the table, “If only I remembered the incantation!”

  “I’m afraid the words would not do you much good, since it looks like your wish has been used up long ago,” said the innkeeper.

  “It has?” asked Amelliea in despair. She looked down at the stone. “I should have known…” she sighed hopelessly. “How do you know it’s been used?”

  “I’m sort of an expert on wishes,” admitted the man. “You see the light glowing inside it?” he asked, indicating to the
green rays faintly radiating from the heart of the stone. Amelliea nodded. “That light shines only when the wish is successfully granted. By the look of it, it was not even a very good wish, for the light rays are rather small and puny.” They peered at the stone together. “An un-used wishing stone yields no light at all, and is always perfectly round, and chalky white in color.” He looked at the girl with a solemn expression. “Though the origins of a wishing stone are most unfortunate, it is still curious that in life, something good can result from something terrible.” Amelliea was not exactly sure what he meant by that. “My dear girl,” he went on, “I dare say that finding an un-used wishing stone these days would be a rare find indeed. But I think you are luckier than most, since you have met me,” he winked. “Just in case you should happen upon a wishing stone in the future, I will leave you a permanent imprint of the incantation so that you never forget it again, alright?” Before Amelliea could agree or protest, the man firmly grasped her wrist with both of his hands and brought her arm close to his lips. “Soon-du-cassa tattoo-ranna, dis-list-iem, teran wist-ierium!” he whispered, before blowing on her arm and releasing her hand. “There you go my dear,” said the man. “Now you’ll never forget it! You need only think of it, and it will appear!”

  Her skin stung painfully where he had touched it. Amelliea pulled her hand away and to her utmost horror saw an imprint of black lettering on the underside of her forearm. Dis-list-iem, teran wist-ierium, read the foreign words in ancient cursive letters. “But—you didn’t say—I didn’t want—is it permanent?” she stammered.

  “In deed it is!” said the man gleefully.

  Amelliea was about to protest when she noticed with surprise that the lettering was already growing on her. The inscription began to rapidly fade and only a moment later her arm looked as though the letters had never been there at all. Amelliea thought of the wishing stone, and the inscription instantly reappeared once more.