“It wouldn’t hurt to try,” Dray murmured, wondering if he was right. The world was starting to lighten around them. “Should we return?”
“He will be safe.”
“Will we?”
Eilke looked him over seriously. “We are of the forest. There is nothing in the forest we do not know of.”
What should have taken hours or days of walking took only minutes, and Dray wondered just what magic the Near Folk had that they could bend the forest to their will. Or did they manage to manipulate something else? The way Ed had talked of leaving the clearing and not hearing or seeing the girls within it… Maybe it was more of a gateway than he had understood. They appeared to simply walk between the trees, Eilke never overly hurried as he walked ahead of him. Now they looked out upon more fields, the mountain gone and therefore it could only be the southern border of the forest.
“He might not be a man,” Dray said, looking beyond the fields and distant cottages. The road was far from here, but if Ende was determined to travel he wouldn’t find his way slowly; he would disappear above them. He might already be in the capital. If that was his wish.
“He was never a man,” Eilke said as though it had been a question. “Where do you think he has gone?”
Dray shook his head slowly and turned back into the trees. “He does as he does.”
Eilke looked at him.
“Would it matter?” Dray asked him, trying to read his steady features. “Why do you need to know where he has gone?”
“He has purpose. The chief worries that it may conflict with our purpose.”
“And what is your purpose?” Dray asked.
“To survive,” Eilke said, turning and walking into the trees. Within minutes, Dray felt the strange tingle across his skin, and he was standing beside the small hut again. Ed stood in the doorway, looking warily over the world before him.
“Did you find him?” he asked.
Dray shook his head.
“Do you think he is more worried for Ana? That he fears she has become the danger he sensed?”
“I don’t know,” Dray said. “We may not know, for he wasn’t willing to share.”
The king ran his fingers through his hair. “What do we do now?”
“That is up to you.”
“Have you made your decision?” Eilke asked, his tone neutral.
Ed glanced towards the neighbouring building.
“You wait for the decision of others to influence you?” Eilke asked.
When the king opened his mouth, Eilke held up a hand to silence him. “We can wait,” he said. “Others may not.” He stalked away.
Dray watched him go, wondering what they would get from this, why they were concerned for Ende. Or was it that they worried where he might be and whom he might be talking with?
Dray could only hope that he returned.
Chapter 12
The mage looked over the shelves and regretted, again, bringing the girl from the mountains. The effort had used the last of his options, and with the girl herself now gone, he would have to find more. The maid slipped a cup of tea silently onto his desk, and he turned towards her as she walked towards the door. There was something to her. It may be enough, although he doubted it. She had longed to be more—he had sensed it in her—and she was loyal.
“Child,” he called, and she stopped.
She turned slowly and bowed her head. “How can I be of assistance?” she asked.
“Will you review the cell for me?”
“Review it?” she asked, with a slight wobble of uncertainty.
“Look over where the girl was held. See what might be different in that cell that would have allowed her to escape. Then tell me what you find.”
She bowed her head again and disappeared between the shelves. He squatted before a stack of books, which rose from the floor to create part of a makeshift wall. He ran a finger down the spines and wondered when he had aged as he had. A quiet groan paused his movement before he tugged at the book, which slid easily from the pile. Once he held the book in his hand, those above it dropped down with a thud.
He closed his eyes and pulled the book to his chest before returning to his desk. He pushed everything else to the floor, including the fresh cup, and with his eyes still closed he dropped the book. When he opened his eyes, the book had opened to a page with strange markings. Not letters or even the script he used. They were more like what an animal might make scratching across a surface. He laid his fingers over several marks and then pulled his hand back at the sharp pain that raced up his arm.
He leaned over the page and whispered, “I would only offer you one who was worthy.” Although he regretted the loss, the marks glowed a little darker, more a deep red than the brown black they had been before. They had been written in blood, whose he didn’t know. It didn’t matter.
It was some time before the girl reappeared, and he wasn’t sure if she had been avoiding returning or if she had found something. There was a nervousness to her that he hadn’t seen since she was a small girl standing before his desk.
“What is it?” he asked, wondering if there had been a mistake and Ana was in fact inside the cell trying to talk her way out.
The girl chewed on her lower lip. “There is no sign of a door,” she said quickly.
“There never is,” he answered.
“Sometimes I can sense where you have opened the cell.”
He stared at her, wondering why he had not fully appreciated her before.
She swallowed loudly and cleared her throat. “Something has moved the bars.”
“Something?”
She shook her head. “I tried, but I can’t tell what it is or was. But it was hot. The ice has melted and then refrozen. It looks different. It feels different.”
He squinted at her then. He should have gone himself. But he needed to know just what this girl was, although he was already wondering if this was the best use of her. He wouldn’t be able to replace her so easily.
“What do you see here?” he asked, pointing at the page.
She leaned forward and then sucked in a frightened breath, but as she stepped back, he caught her hand and pushed it down onto the page. She screamed out.
“You wanted power,” he murmured. “Now you have it.”
Something growled within her, something that was not the child he knew, and he released his hold as she smacked the other hand down onto the page. She closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath. And then she smiled.
“What would you have me do?” she asked as she slowly lifted her hands from the page. The markings were gone.
He held out the image of the queen that the boy had sketched, one Ana had used to try and reach him. The maid leaned forward and licked the image, then closed her eyes. She rolled her shoulders, and her body shifted. She, whatever she had become, was no longer the child he knew. She licked her dark lips with a tongue now as black as the ink the image had been created with. She slowly blinked large ink-black eyes, which shimmered red around their edges.
“Kill him and anyone who stands in the way.”
The strange girl bowed, reminding him of the maid he had lost, and then winked out of existence. He placed the picture into the now-blank pages and closed the book. Then he rested his hand on the worn leather cover and patted it gently. It was a small price he had paid, he thought, rubbing at his still-sore fingers that had brushed over the page. Now he needed to see the cell for himself and discover how she had managed to free herself.
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She had heard him talking to the regent of the mountains, but she stood in the shadows behind the stables, and she wasn’t alone. Nor was she what she had been. She closed her eyes, remembering the mage’s grey eyes. Sorrow filled his face as he gave her what she had always wanted. And yet he didn’t. She pulled back further into the shadows as a stable boy walked past in the early morning light.
The mage had given her something of power. Her body was no longer her own. She looked down ove
r long dark fingers, thick claws extending them further. They were the hands of the creature that had created the marks on the page. She wondered if she would give that power back to the mage at some future point. She clenched the hand. For now. she was free.
She wanted to return to the cells, taste the scent of the girl and find her out. She knew the ice would have dulled any senses and skills she might have had. But the taste of the king pushed her, and whatever she had become, forward. She closed her eyes and breathed in the world around her.
The boy had been here, standing in the shadows, his heart pounding too fast. She wondered if he was scared of what he might find, or of leaving. She could taste the answer on the air. The fear of staying drove him forward.
She would do as they were bid and find the king. Kill the king. And then they could find the girl. They wanted the girl more.
Chapter 13
Ana felt an uneasiness she couldn’t explain cross her skin. It was different from the shivering she continued to have, and it was not reassuring.
“Ana?” the cleric asked, as though he’d noticed the movement. She turned from the window to take in his concern. “What is it?”
She shook her head.
“It was as though you called out, but didn’t,” he said slowly, his brow creasing as he tried to determine what he had heard.
“I felt something, but I couldn’t tell you what. Just a feeling.”
“Your mother had feelings.”
Ana smiled, missing the woman she hadn’t known all the more. “You said she had visions.”
“Not often, more that her dreams were clear. I understand you have clear dreams too.”
“And ones I am no better at understanding. What are we to do?” she asked, still looking out over the dark world beyond the cold glass. The sun had started to rise, but the sky was deep blue and there was no warmth in the golden glow that tinted the horizon.
“What do you ask?”
She allowed the heavy curtain to slip from her fingers and turned her full attention to the cleric. “I can’t stay in this room forever.”
“No,” he agreed, leaning forward and patting the other seat by the fire. “But until you are what you were, I think we should cosset you away for a time.”
“And if I am never as I was?”
“Your dreams are getting stronger.”
“Did I call out again?”
“Yes, although it is almost as though you know you must hide yourself. I can see the stress on your face, the fear, the worry and sometimes wonder, but your lips move without sound.”
Ana sat back in the chair, clasped her hands in her lap and closed her eyes. She felt as though she had screamed all night, although she couldn’t clearly remember what she had dreamt of. It wasn’t as clear as it had been when she’d seen Dray on the battlefield. At the thought of him, she saw him again, standing amongst the mud, splattered with blood, his face sliced and bleeding. He looked towards her, but she had no idea if he saw her. If he knew she was there.
“What if I’m not able to get to him?”
“There is much to happen in the world before you should fear for your soldier on the battlefield,” the cleric said as though they’d had the conversation before. He had described him as her soldier. Although she knew the words to be true, Ana couldn’t accept that he put himself in danger solely for her. Whether to save her or to fight on her behalf.
She sighed and looked towards the door. Master Forest had taken his daughter and disappeared. Whether it was because of what he had discovered or because he feared what else the child might learn from her, she couldn’t tell. But she missed the girl’s warmth. She could feel something, she realised, her focus still on the door. But she wasn’t sure it was close.
“You have made that noise again,” the cleric said, and she looked to him with confusion.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“No, and yet it was as though you spoke.” He looked more confused by his words than she was.
“I am not what I was, not that I was anything for very long. But I felt something else, something like the certainty I felt within my heart when I unlocked the power within me. Although it is frozen solid now, or gone. Could it have escaped and is wandering on its own?”
“You think your gift an entity?”
“It was as though I had to find a way to unlock the barrier between us. It had always been there. Could there be another like me?”
“I don’t know,” he said slowly, inching forward on his seat and leaning towards her to study her face. “Was this what your mother had?”
“You knew her, not me,” she said quickly. Although she didn’t want to sound as though she were accusing him of anything, it certainly sounded to her own ears that this was what she meant.
“She never told me,” he said. “I wonder if she told your father.”
“That too is a mystery. He didn’t even tell me what I was, let alone what she was. I only learnt of her when I was in the mountains. In a castle magicked—it showed me things.”
“What did it show you?” he asked kindly, leaning back again.
“My parents, her fear for me, his sadness at her leaving.” Ana sucked in a breath. She hadn’t known how true what she had seen was until she had arrived at the mage’s workshop. The cleric watched her expectantly. “I also saw the mage’s rooms,” she said. “The magic he used to bring me here.”
“Why?” he asked.
She looked at him. That was a question that opened up so many more questions; why had he brought her here? Why had she seen what she had? Why did he want her dead, again? Why had he helped her find what she was?
“We may never know,” she murmured, standing again and looking at the bed. She should be doing more, being more help than sleeping and shivering and hiding.
“You must get better before you can find what you are,” the cleric said.
She slipped back into the bed, the orange glow of the sunrise rimming the curtains in the dimly lit room. She rubbed a hand over her forehead to find it still sticky with sweat. She climbed back into the bed, slipping into the cool space between the sheets, and pulled the covers up. The cleric surprised her by appearing at her shoulder and pulling the heavy blankets up higher.
“Sleep, child.”
She closed her eyes as he bid, although she didn’t think she wanted to sleep again. For she would dream, and the dreams only scared her more.
Ana stood amidst the fighting again, her heart pounding the same panic she had felt before. It pushed at her chest, the hard lump in her throat making it hard to breathe and swallow. Then a strong hand closed around her shoulder, and calm washed over her as she turned. She was standing in a dark forest with Dray.
He grinned at her and pulled her tight into his arms, her face against his chest. She wondered at the sensation, for he lived in his armour. The strangeness of it returned the panic. She pushed out of his arms and stood back, looking him over. His face was as perfect as it had been when she had last seen him in the flesh, and her fingers brushed across his warm cheek.
The smile he wore turned to worry, and he pressed her hand to his skin. “You are so cold,” he murmured, wrapping the other arm around her.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“I’m coming.”
The same fear filled her again. She wanted him near, needed him near, and yet she feared what she might do to him or bring upon him.
“Stay away,” she whispered. “Stay with the king.”
He sighed, his strong hold loosening, and she missed his embrace. “He does not know what he wants without you.”
She looked up into his dark eyes, the stars twinkling strangely above him. “He knows what he is,” she said. “I’m not sure I have the strength to help him. He must help himself. Be the man I know he is.”
Dray pulled her close again, wrapping both arms around her. She did the same, surprised that she could reach so much further around him with the armour gone. He felt less intimi
dating, and yet more so in that moment. As she pulled herself into his chest, taking in the scent of him, his warm lips pressed into her hair.
Ana blinked into the light and sat up with a sigh.
“Another dream?” the cleric asked.
“Different,” she murmured. “My mind playing some strange trick. It is daytime, I can’t have…” She looked towards the window, the glow around the curtains gone. She looked back at the cleric, who stood and lifted a bowl from the table by his chair. “It is night again. Your body clearly needs the rest.”
Ana sighed again, took the bowl he held out to her and wondered if she would ever reach them again.
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Dray sat slowly and threw his legs over the side of the narrow bed. He ran his fingers through his hair and blew out a soft breath.
“I thought you slept with it on.” The sound of the king’s voice made him look up.
He looked from the king to the armour at the end of the bed. “Usually,” he muttered.
“You look more like a man without it,” the king said.
Dray raised his eyebrows. “What do I look like with it?”
“It is hard to say.”
“Try,” Dray suggested, attempting to keep his voice level. He wasn’t sure why the words offended him, but he was still staggering from the strange dream. He could still feel the pressure against his skin where Ana had been pressed against his body, her arms wrapped tight and clinging to him as though she would never get the chance to see him again.
“What happened?” the king asked instead.
Dray refocused on the worried face of the king. And without thought, he rubbed his hand over his cheek where she so often indicated the scar had been, and where it might be again. He could still feel her icy fingers against his face, and as his fingers worked over it now, he was somehow disappointed that he could feel the stubbly growth of their travels.
“Are you worried about Ana?” the king asked.
“She was so cold,” Dray murmured, then leant back as the king sprang to his feet.
The Lost Endeavour Page 8
