Yawning, he made his way around the barn to the dirt road that curved out of sight in either direction.
Which way to go? he asked himself. To his left, the road ran deeper into the countryside. There would be lots of good places to hide but fewer places for him to find some work. He looked to his right. That way lay the city, with more opportunities to earn a few coppers, but more potential for trouble, too.
He stood conflicted for a moment, then stooped and picked up a likely-looking pebble from the roadside at his feet. It was smooth and rounded at one end, jagged and pointed at the other.
He cupped it in his hand for a moment, shaking it as if it were a pair of dice he was about to roll for the big win, and then he tossed it as hard and as high as he could over his head.
He watched the little black rock carefully as it reached the apex of its trajectory and then began its tumble, end over end, back to earth.
It hit the ground a few feet in front of him, bounced, skidded another foot or two, then came to rest in the dust. He walked out to it, crouching to get a good look. There was no question; the pointed end was definitely indicating the stretch of empty road to his right. Good enough, then.
Tom stood, stretched again, and turned to head toward town, contented with the decision. One way was as good as another, he knew. Every day was an adventure, full of new experiences, sometimes wondrous, usually miserable, but in the end, each ended the same as the last. He expected they would continue that way, stretching out to some unimaginably distant future where he’d ripened from a rosy-cheeked young man to a rosy-cheeked old one, sitting serenely atop some stranger’s barn, munching an apple he nicked from some place or another.
As he walked, he began to whistle. It was a haunting, beautiful melody of his own devising, but it seemed entirely out of keeping with the bright, late summer’s morning. Birds fell still as he approached, seemingly transfixed by his song. Above, the sun rose higher, promising a monstrously hot afternoon. The air was full of late-summer smells—hay, grass, rosemary, sage, manure, and a thousand others. It was his favorite time of year. Soon, he knew, autumn would come, and the struggle to keep warm through the long, cold nights would begin once again.
But for now, he was content to walk this bit of road, breathe the clean, warm air, and whistle his song.
In time, he crossed into the outskirts of town and checked his whistling. There was no one about yet this far out, but already he could sense the bustle and roar of the city rousing itself from slumber. He could hear the rumble of traffic, the muffled shouts of pedestrians, and the low groan of old machinery.
As he passed the first row of tiny shops, still dark and shuttered on the deserted street, he caught sight of a pair of garbage bins that had been overturned between two buildings across from him.
Dogs, he thought, had probably gotten into them during the night, which meant there had been, in all likelihood, something tasty in there somewhere. He wondered if there was any left. There was food in his pockets, but only enough to get him through to noonday. He should at least go look and see if there was anything left.
He crossed the street and squeezed past the upended bins, afraid that if he tried to move them, someone would hear and come to chase him off.
The contents of the bins were strewn helter-skelter along the length of the narrow alley. It looked as though the strays had been trying to see just how big a mess they could possibly make in the confined space.
Slowly, Tom picked his way through the mess, searching for anything worth taking. Hunks of bread, black with mold, and decaying fruit caked with ants or flies were too repulsive, even for him, and he’d known plenty of hungry nights in his life. Most of the rubbish consisted of old newspapers, colorful wrappers, and broken glass.
He reached the end of the alley and turned to his right, intending to follow the trail of refuse.
Tom froze midstep and nearly fell.
Propped against the back wall of the shop was a mostly naked woman. Her head lay drunkenly on one bare shoulder, and her eyes stared sightlessly up at him, the sunlight reflecting weirdly in the whites beneath half-closed and purpling lids.
She was half sitting, half lying in a pool of her own blood. A perfectly symmetrical X had been carved in the flesh of her belly, and most of her insides lay coiled in a congealed red heap on the ground beside her left hip.
Above her head, drawn sloppily on the wall, as if by a child’s clumsy fingers, was the image of a dragon. Her blood had been used as paint, and long scarlet lines of it had run into her hair where her head rested against the bricks.
Without realizing what he was doing, Tom closed his eyes, took two wild steps backward, and tumbled back over a fallen bin lid.
Before his ass had even hit the ground, screams filled his ears. He never realized, before the blackness swallowed him, that they were his own.
Emily
CHAPTER ONE
Emily stared past the place where Michael—the long-ago king—sat to her left. The wizard was draped, as ever, in the heavy folds of his cloak and the shadows of the cave. The morning sunlight, creeping bright and unbroken from the cave’s wide mouth, only reached the toes of his leather boots. He was speaking to Michael, and though she could not see his face, lost as it was in the dark depths of his hood, she could feel his eyes on her, matching her stare.
“You cannot deny that a larger, stronger force will be needed, sire,” he said, gesturing at the others who comprised the circle. She heard the creak of leather as Garrett shifted his weight, but if anyone else reacted to the wizard’s words, Emily did not see it.
“It would be wise to rejoin the Dragon’s Brood quickly,” the wizard went on. “Gather your resources and begin organizing.”
“Organize for what, exactly?” Michael asked, a sharpness to his tone that Emily had not yet heard.
There was a long pause while the wizard seemed to consider his answer. He turned his head to look at his king, and Emily could almost feel his gaze slip from her.
“I have known you too long, my king, under far too many circumstances, for you to play the fool with me now.”
Michael’s face flushed, but his voice remained calm. “If you suspect I’m playing the fool, perhaps you do not know me so well as you believe, old friend.” He waited, and when the wizard did not respond, he went on. “Must it be war? Is there no other way?”
“You have seen what Marianne is capable of; you have felt the strength of her power; you have suffered at her hand…”
“I have,” Michael interrupted, his voice rising. “But that is not an answer to the question at hand.”
“It is not up to me to answer your questions. It is my place to advise. I don’t know if war is the only answer, sire, but I do know that Marianne is unlikely to sit idle while we debate the merits of diplomacy.”
Silence fell for a moment as the young king and the old mage looked at one another. Emily let her gaze wander, gauging the reactions of those around her.
Haake, seated almost directly across from her, wore a sullen expression. It wasn’t difficult to guess why. He’d chosen to leave Paige and the Brood, accompanying Emily and the others to the lake to find help for Michael, whose mind had been broken by Marianne’s sorcery. The prospect of traveling to Coalhaven, where Paige and the other Broodsmen of Hellsgate had retreated, was not sitting well with Haake. Something had happened to the strange, twitchy man there that had made him swear never to return. She didn’t know what that had been, but she couldn’t imagine him agreeing to follow Michael back there now.
Garrett and Mona were having some kind of silent exchange. Mona, cradling Miraculum in her arms, looked angry, but as usual, Garrett’s expression was a mystery to Emily. How long had it taken Mona to learn to see, let alone understand, the emotions that showed in his strange reptilian features, she wondered.
Corbbmacc sat beside Garrett, his hands at either side of his face, his head bowed, staring at the rough floor of the cave in apparent thought. A line had
appeared between his brows, and though his eyes were open, Emily got the distinct impression that he wasn’t seeing anything—nothing of the here and now, anyway.
Finally, her gaze came to rest on Celine, who sat as pale and silent as a ghost between Emily and Corbbmacc. It was still painful to look at the girl with whom she’d shared so much over the the last few weeks. She seemed insubstantial and frail, her once golden hair now white, framing a face etched with the deep lines of age. Only her eyes were still young—bright, blue, and at the moment, beginning to flash.
“And what about Em, eh? What about what she’s got to do?” The sudden volume of Celine’s outburst sent Rascal bolting from her lap and into the air. He circled overhead for a moment before settling back down beside his mistress again, glaring at her reproachfully. Celine reached out to him and stroked the fur between his bat-like wings, and the kitsper lay down beside her, resting his head on his paws, and began to purr.
“She will do as her king commands her,” the wizard said, a bite of impatience in his voice.
“Oh, will I?” Emily snapped, her gaze returning to the faceless shadows beneath his hood. She could feel her heart beat faster, the heat of anger beginning to burn in her face. “You don’t get to decide what happens to me anymore. You don’t get to tell me what to do.”
Silence fell again as they stared at one another.
“War was not the answer last time,” Michael continued quietly, apparently trying to defuse the tension. “We lost…I lost…isn’t that what you said?”
“Those were different times,” the wizard said dismissively, and his gaze returned to Michael.
With an effort, Emily loosened the fists she hadn’t even realized she’d clenched and tried to rein in her temper.
Self-consciously, she looked down at her hands. Red crescents dimpled the flesh where her nails, broken and jagged from her ordeal in the mines, had dug into her palms. A tiny trickle of blood ran from one, and she wiped it away on her jerkin with a shudder as the image, unbidden, of white roses filled her mind. The blood left an untidy smear on the leather, a brighter red beside the maroon stain there. Had it really only been three days ago that she’d been slumped high up on the stone mountainside, watching her life’s blood run out in a scarlet torrent?
Don’t think about it, she told herself. Just don’t think about it. She focused on her breathing, trying to force herself to be calm.
“It is your responsibility to unite the worlds,” the wizard continued. “Unite them under a single banner.” He leaned forward, but before he could go on, Michael cut across him.
“Then perhaps you should start listening to what I have to say.”
“It’s my duty to advise you, sire. It is you who should listen to me.”
“Funny,” Celine said dryly, “I’d think, like the rest of us, it’d be yer duty to do as yer king commands yeh.”
The silence this time was protracted. Again, Emily let her gaze wander around the circle. Corbbmacc and Garrett seemed to be trying to hold back mirth. Good for them. It was hard for Emily to find anything funny just now.
At last, she broke the silence herself.
“Whatever the rest of you choose to do, I have to go find Daniel. I promised him I would. None of us would be here right now…” she turned to Michael, “…and you, you wouldn’t even be able to string three words together, if it wasn’t for Daniel. I have to go back for him.”
“Enough, Lance,” the wizard said, and it was the name, more than the condescending tone, that served as the spark that ignited her fury.
She rose, the meager sunlight casting the flickering shadow of a much larger figure behind her on the rock wall. She felt her fists clench again at her sides, and she let them remain that way as she faced the wizard directly.
“Stop calling me that,” she hissed between her teeth. “I told you not to call me that. I’m Emily. Whoever I was—whoever I might be—it doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter,” the wizard said. “It makes all the difference.”
Emily felt it but did not immediately identify the low whine that filled her ears or the low vibration that surged through her body. Her fury was all-consuming. The desire to strike out at the wizard was strong, and here was the knowing to guide her hand.
She took another deep breath, willing herself to stay in control.
“Do what you want,” she said stiffly to the room at large. “I’m going after Daniel. Go with Michael, or come with me if you want, but my decision is made. And no one, not even the great Merlin, is going to tell me what to do.” She infused the name with all the venom and disdain she could manage, wanting to hurt him the way he’d hurt her and knowing she never could. He’d never asked anyone to call him by any name, let alone the one that she’d learned once she was old enough to crave the stories of kings, fair maidens, and knights in shining armor.
Slowly, she turned and walked from the cave, trying to concentrate on nothing but the beating of her heart. She would not allow her anger to control her. She wouldn’t. If she did, she’d simply be exchanging one master for another, and both were cruel.
“No, let her go,” she heard Michael say behind her, his voice reverberating from the mouth of the cave. She didn’t look back. She needed some time to herself; she’d needed a lot of that lately.
She reached the high tide mark on the sand and began walking along it, looking out over the water and trying to find peace in the gentle, ceaseless motion of the enormous lake. Sunlight glinted off the water, painting rainbow slivers in the foam that crowned the cresting waves.
The ring of rocky spires that surrounded the lake sheltered them from the worst of the winds, but she could still hear their howl as they tore between the jagged peaks far above. Their voices rose, merged, held, then separated again and again—a ghostly pack of wolves who had spotted easy prey.
She passed beneath the cliff where, only three days ago, she’d nearly died. Looking up at its harsh, unforgiving face now, she could feel nothing but a profound sense of loss. She’d risked so much—gambled so much—all because she’d thought the wizard had known what was best. She couldn’t help feeling betrayed, though in her heart of hearts, she knew she’d do it all again—for Michael.
Michael had been nothing but kind to her since regaining his faculties. They’d spoken, tentatively at first, of their lives leading up to the crucial moment when their paths had crossed. She could feel the bond reforming between them that, by all accounts, had existed for thousands of years, but how could she be sure that was real and not just a product of her own overwrought and exhausted mind?
She walked on, lost in her own bitter thoughts.
In time, the cliff gave way to a wooded slope. Bushes laden with the bright red-orange berries Corbbmacc had introduced her to a few days ago seemed to cover every square inch. Their skins glistened with dew, beckoning her into their midst.
She left the sand and climbed the steep embankment, following a path her feet had learned well in the last few days and fighting her way through the thorns, until she came to a fallen tree amidst the berry bushes.
With a sigh, she lowered herself onto the tree’s broad trunk and stared out across the lake. Far in the distance, she could see the eternal mists that swirled, a shimmering white, around the island at its center.
She’d been coming to this spot a lot over the last few days, when the conversation and excitement of the others became too much for her to bear. She should have been excited too, she supposed. What better adventure could there be than to find herself alongside the reincarnation of the legendary King Arthur and to discover that she—Emily Haven of Minneapolis—was one of his knights? She should have been awestruck; she should have been elated by her success in restoring Michael to himself…
But she wasn’t.
Her mind kept drifting inexorably back, like the tip of a tongue exploring the empty space left by a recently vacated tooth, to the revelation that had tainted everything.
“I had a
whole world to save, Lance…a whole world…” The wizard’s words echoed inside her head.
Yes, he’d had a world to save, and with the loss of Derek, the wizard had pulled her from her own life—her own time—to replace Derek in the unimaginable, far distant future. Now she, Emily of the Haven, who had once been Lancelot du Lac, was replacing her own future self. It was enough to drive her crazy just thinking about it. And through that tangled web of lives, was Derek even still destined to be her future self?
But the wizard had done more than just tear her from her own place and time, miserable though it may have been. He’d manipulated her life, stripping away anything beautiful that might’ve been hers, so that when the time had come to bring her here, she would have nothing worth going back to.
It was unforgivable, and she felt the rage begin to rise inside her again as his words played over and over in her memory.
Control it, Em, she told herself. Control it.
Distractedly, she reached out and tugged a berry from the bush beside her and slipped it between her lips. It didn’t taste like any sort of fruit from her old life. Its flavor was almost spicy. It put her in mind of Christmastime, but more, it reminded her of Corbbmacc, since he’d been the first to give her one of the strange, sweet berries.
She heard the crunch of footsteps on the gritty sand and looked back down the beach. Corbbmacc—speak of the devil—was coming toward her, supporting a stooped and frail Celine beside him. He looked like the quintessential good samaritan, helping the nice old lady cross the street—except for the kitsper that perched on her shoulder, his wings spread, one paw entwined in her wispy white hair and his tail, complete with its long, bony stinger, wrapped companionably around her slender neck.
They came ever closer, Corbbmacc careful to match his stride to Celine’s smaller, slower steps. The sight made her heart hurt a little.
Haven Divided (The Dragon's Brood Cycle Book 2) Page 3
