by Jocelyn Fox
He passed the long hours of lonely travel by reviewing all that he had studied for the gauntlet. He recited the history of the Unseelie Court and the Seelie Court, named all the main cities of each Queen’s kingdom and the location of all the Lesser Gates into the mortal world, and stretched his memory as he tried to remember the correct order of the Bearers.
“There’s been over a dozen of them, you know,” he said conversationally to Midnight as they cantered through the forest. A squirrel fled to a higher branch in panic as they thundered past its tree; a few birds took flight as the faehal disturbed a bush. Ramel made a face as a few of the whippy branches snapped against his leg. “Almost a thousand of their mortal years, if the books are right, that we’ve had a mortal Bearer. I wonder why they’ve all been women,” he said musingly. “Maybe that’s a sign that Knight Finnead is right. Perhaps the Queen should allow women to try for swords if they wish.” The subject made him think of Rye, and his throat closed abruptly. He swallowed and forced himself to turn his thoughts toward something else.
“Runes to counter blinding spells,” he pronounced into the silence of the forest. As he traced the third counter-rune in the air, his eyes slightly unfocused, the charger halted abruptly, standing stock-still save for the flicking of its ears. Ramel wrapped one hand in the faehal’s dark mane and drew his sword with the other hand, swallowing down the suddenly rapid thud of his heart in the back of his throat. His steed turned his head toward a sound that Ramel couldn’t hear. He wished, not for the first time, that his faehal could speak. Then he heard the thin thread of sound: a high and terrified scream, the sound almost swallowed by the immense forest. The pounding of his heart suddenly changed in pace.
“Find them!” he commanded Midnight, and the war charger plunged forward before Ramel could even touch his heels to his sides. Asking any other mount to crash through the forest into mortal danger would have been difficult, but Knight Finnead’s war charger responded with a new energy. Ramel gritted his teeth as the headlong pace jolted his aching body, but he grimly kept his seat astride the charger and gripped his short sword with furious strength. They thundered through the forest, weaving around trees, Midnight’s ears swiveling as another scream rent the air, sounding startlingly loud. A handful of birds fled through the branches, the flapping of their wings passing overhead.
They burst into a clear space, and Ramel almost lost his seat as Midnight changed course abruptly. The faehal snorted in delight at their discovery of the path, increasing his speed until they hurtled headlong between the trees, the wind whipping tears into Ramel’s eyes. He squinted in determination, trying to make out anything on the path ahead of them. They rounded a bend and then suddenly there was a garrelnost in front of them, and a faehal with its throat torn out, blood still steaming. Midnight let out a shrill whinny of challenge and anger. The garrelnost slunk toward something, some other prey beyond the downed faehal. An arrow bristled from the beast’s misshapen shoulder.
As they closed in on the garrelnost, Ramel saw its intended prey: Lady Guinna, her traveling dress torn in several places and bloodied, but standing straight and holding a bow as she loosed another arrow toward the garrelnost. Midnight leapt over the fallen faehal, and the garrelnost whirled, snarling. The war charger reared and lashed out at the creature with his front hooves, landing several blows that stunned the garrelnost. His body suddenly abuzz with battle fervor, Ramel leapt down from Midnight’s back and plunged his sword into the soft spot between the beast’s massive head and its deformed shoulder.
It convulsed, jerking him off balance and pulling him toward the dying monster. The fetid stench of carrion rolled over Ramel as he twisted and avoided a snap of its jaws, an incoherent yell of defiance escaping him as he stared into its malevolent red eye. He felt its jaws close on his arm and he thought with a strange, numbing certainty that he’d lose the limb, but then the beast shuddered and fell limp. Ramel desperately matched its motion, falling to his knees to avoid its teeth raking down his arm. He couldn’t feel if its fangs had in fact pierced his flesh, and icy dread welled up in his gut as he tried to free his arm from the dead creature’s jaws.
Then Lady Guinna was beside him, using a bloody dagger as leverage to pry the garrelnost’s stiffening maw open. With their combined efforts, the yellow, gore-stained teeth of the creature slowly separated. Ramel fell backward when his arm came free, shutting his eyes for a moment as he tried not to faint. He felt quick hands on his arm.
“Not too bad,” Guinna said reassuringly. Her light touch moved to pull one side of his vest gently aside. “But you’ve torn whatever wound you have on your chest.”
Ramel swallowed hard and opened his eyes. If the lady could calmly assess the situation, so could he. He had to try twice to speak. “Are you all right?”
“I’m not wounded,” said Guinna, her pale face dirt-smeared and grim, “but I’m far from all right.”
“Not wounded is a start,” managed Ramel. He peeled apart his torn shirtsleeve. The garrelnost’s teeth had punctured his skin just below the elbow.
“Do you have a healing kit? I only had a few supplies, I’d been in the middle of unpacking when it all happened.” Lady Guinna stabbed her dagger vengefully into the dirt to clean it of the creature’s blood.
“I can take care of it later,” Ramel said. The wounds weren’t bleeding much, and he didn’t feel any of the pain yet, though he was sure that would come quickly once the haze of battle faded.
Lady Guinna glanced at the creature’s still-open jaws. “I think it would be best to clean it now.”
Ramel nodded and stood. He retrieved his sword and cleaned it as best he could. Guinna pulled her arrows from the beast’s flesh and after a brief inspection added them back into the quiver that she wore at her hip.
“I’m sorry I didn’t find you earlier,” Ramel told her honestly. He hated the idea of a lady spending the night in the dangerous forest alone, much less after a harrowing flight from the terrible battle in the clearing.
“You didn’t know I’d escaped,” Guinna replied. She sounded very matter-of-fact, more serious than Ramel remembered. She glanced at him with unreadable eyes as he pulled out the healing kit from his pack. “Guard Elias and I…he fought our way free, but then he saw the Princess was surrounded…” Her words trailed into silence. Then she shook herself slightly and reached for the healing kit. “Here. Let me help.”
Guinna quickly cleaned and wrapped the wounds on his arm, and she insisted on checking the claw marks across his chest. Her face darkened as she gently peeled back the bandages. “These might be starting to fester.”
“It doesn’t surprise me,” said Ramel. He winced as she applied a fresh concoction of herbs to the tender, painful cuts. “You’re very good with a healing kit. And a bow,” he added.
Guinna smiled humorlessly. “Little did I know that Princess Andraste’s interests in useful skills would stand me in such good stead.”
“I can manage the bandages,” Ramel said hastily. Even with his body bruised and aching, even after their flight through the forest and the battle – or perhaps because of it – he suddenly became very aware of Guinna’s closeness. He stepped back, guilt knifing into him as Rye’s face flashed into his mind. He didn’t understand his strange response to Guinna; he’d never found himself particularly attracted to her, though he found her pretty enough. Perhaps it was just an aftereffect of his body realizing that he was still alive, he thought. Guinna said nothing, packing up the healing kit without a word and handing it to him to put back in the pack.
“We should keep moving,” he said quietly, glancing up through the canopy of branches toward the sun, glimpsing only a few shards of brilliant gold through the dense canopy.
“Let me take a few things from my pack,” said Guinna. She stepped around the hulking corpse of the garrelnost and knelt by the dead faehal. Ramel watched the forest around them tensely. Midnight stood regally and listened, flicking his ears toward each new sound, his liquid eyes re
turning every so often to Ramel. Guinna returned wearing a gray cloak, the strap of a satchel across her chest and her bow over her shoulder. She nodded to him.
Ramel settled into the saddle and Guinna pulled herself up behind him. They both looked down for a moment at the dead garrelnost.
“You would have killed it,” Ramel said.
“Perhaps,” replied Guinna flatly.
Midnight flicked an ear back and Ramel let the charger have his head. They turned back toward Darkhill, bruised and bloodied but still alive as shadows crept into the afternoon forest.
Chapter 32
Today was a good day, because Finn remembered his own name as soon as he opened his eyes. He had been lost so often in a haze of pain and confusion that it was difficult to hold onto even that sometimes. He always returned to himself, always reminded himself with a fierce desperation that he was a Knight of Queen Mab’s Court, but their captors’ torture produced such exquisite pain that all else washed away in the blinding agony.
He and Rye had learned that their captor was as intelligent as he was cruel. There was only one of them that really mattered, the cloaked one. The others were brutal and efficient in carrying out his orders. Finn and Rye could find no pattern or reason to their torture, other than the fact that sometimes he made the Princess watch. That was almost worse than the torment itself, though after a while one day blended into the next, time marked only by whether they were lying on the floor of the cave or suspended from their wrists on the rack. At first, it hurt to see the pain in Andraste’s eyes. She was never harmed and remained untouched, a bit pale but otherwise undimmed by their capture. Then Finn began to wonder. His doubt seeped into the cracks opened by the pain. He began to wonder if Andraste cared for them at all, whether he still saw a spark of anger in her eyes at their brutal treatment or if the blank expression on her face truly meant she cared nothing for them.
Their captor’s methods spiraled down into darkness as time dragged on until Finn found himself incapable of feeling shame at the degradation and brutality. When they flayed him, they left his face and chest untouched. Through the rasping of his labored breath, he heard the cloaked sorcerer say to Andraste, “Even now, I cannot bear to deface such beauty as his. Don’t you agree, my dear?”
Andraste stared fixedly ahead and remained silent. At a nod from the sorcerer, one of the enslaved Northmen clamped a huge hand around Finn’s neck. The world wavered around him as he struggled to breathe.
“Yes,” he heard Andraste say as if from a distance. “Yes, I agree.”
“You agree to….?” The sorcerer’s voice slithered like a snake through the air. Finn tried to listen, tried to hear past the roaring in his ears and the blaze of pain on his back.
“I agree that he is beautiful,” Andraste said quietly.
“Beautiful but doomed,” said the sorcerer. “Doomed to an eternity of suffering…unless you release him.”
Andraste remained silent. Finn slid into welcome blackness, pulled back all too soon by the expert ministrations of the sorcerer’s slaves. They were skilled at recalling him from unconsciousness, keeping him aware for longer than he should have been able, to bear their brutality.
Finn and Rye cared for each other as best they could. They no longer bound them hand and foot, merely shackled them at the wrist with manacles of iron that bit into their flesh and hung heavily from their arms. The sorcerer didn’t want them to die yet, so he provided them with bread and water, and occasionally basic healing supplies. Sometimes Finn thought it would have been better to give up, but he didn’t even trust in his own ability to die. He and Rye grimly resolved to stay alive for each other…and the Princess, though their love for her was hard to recall when they lay broken and bleeding in a cave, while she remained pristinely untouched by any rough hand. Finn knew he should have felt grateful that she was safe, but as time passed, he only felt a dull anger, burning low like banked embers in his chest.
Rye marked the days by collecting small rocks and placing them in a pattern near the back wall of the cave. When he counted the days, Finn always felt a mixture of disbelief, both at the length of their captivity and the shortness of it. The length surprised him because he had hoped for discovery and rescue, in his heart of hearts. The Queen would certainly not let the kidnapping of her younger sister go unanswered. But as time went on, he began to doubt that Ramel had delivered the message to the Court, just as that strange doubt about his love for Andraste dogged him. And the shortness of their captivity surprised him because each day felt like an eternity, especially in the searing white-hot moments of pain.
“Why is he keeping both of us alive?” Finn asked Rye quietly on the eve of their seventeenth day.
“He’s trying to use us against her,” Rye replied, her split and swollen lip making speech challenging. The sorcerer didn’t spare Rye’s face, but neither did he mutilate her. Finn didn’t understand the fixation with his own face, but he was too exhausted to question any of the sorcerer’s self-imposed limitations.
“How? Why not just threaten to kill us?” Finn gingerly tested his latest set of stripes across his back, feeling to see if they were clotted. He sat shirtless in the center of the cave, watching the last rays of the sun fade from the wall of the passageway.
“Let me see while there’s still some light,” Rye murmured. She moved behind him, her cool hands gentle and sure as she examined the gruesome patchwork of his wounds. “They’re closed enough for tonight.” She sat back on her heels. “He’s not threatening to kill us because our existence here is a fate worse than a quick death.”
Finn finished pulling on his shirt and turned to face Rye. She smiled at him, her pale eyes ringed by dark shadows.
“Think about it,” she said. “We are the two that he captured whom Andraste loves the best.”
“Does she?” said Finn, almost reflexively.
“As far as he can tell,” replied Rye. She swallowed and winced, shifting her weight until she found a more comfortable position. “If he’s truly a bone sorcerer…he might be using us to coax Andraste into giving her consent for a spell of some sort.”
“If a spell requires consent,” Finn said, “wouldn’t using such a method invalidate that consent?”
Rye chuckled but her amusement turned into a cough and then a grimace. “That would be a question for the Scholars, not me.”
“You’re the closest thing I have to a Scholar,” replied Finn teasingly.
“Stars help you then.” Rye smiled as much as her swollen lip would allow.
“So, then, this is our lot,” said Finn quietly, “until the Princess agrees.”
“He is probably offering a quick death for us as reward for her cooperation,” Rye said.
Finn swallowed. “I know we have spoken of this before…but…”
“If we tried to kill ourselves,” said Rye softly, “I think he would bring us back.”
“Truly no escape,” said Finn. He felt an abyss of despair open within his chest.
“That’s not what I said,” said Rye. “I don’t think it’s fitting for a Knight of the Court to give up so easily.”
Finn chuckled despite himself. “Our first escape attempt didn’t end very well.”
“That’s because we tried brute force,” replied Rye. They’d both been captured again before they’d even made it into the forest, beaten into oblivion, only to awaken and be beaten again. They hadn’t spared Finn’s face during that punishment and his eyes had been nearly swollen shut for four days. But their bodies were damnably strong and resilient. The sorcerer remarked upon it occasionally, the Sidhe excellence at healing.
“If we are planning escape,” said Finn, “we must also plan rescue.”
Rye nodded. “I know. We won’t leave her.”
“Even though she has left us,” replied Finn.
“What other choice does she have?” said Rye. “She is not a warrior as we are, Finn.”
“But she fancied herself one.”
Rye s
ighed. “It is done. We are here in this cave and there is no going back. There is only looking forward.”
“You’re right,” said Finn wearily. Rye was always the voice of reason bringing him back from the brink of utter hopelessness and fury. She had also mastered the ability to yell at the sorcerer’s slaves when they deposited Finn after his sessions, badgering them into giving them simple things like more bread, a few threadbare blankets and more healing supplies. With just the right mix of groveling and threatening that both she and Finn would die without the requested items, she usually succeeded, though she hadn’t tested the limits with any extravagant requests.
“I’m not going to tell you the plan,” Rye said quietly, “just in case you forget yourself during a bad day.”
“What does it say about me that I don’t take offense at that?” Finn’s eyes traveled again to the last bars of sunlight tracing the contours of the passageway. They didn’t have candles or torches, so when night fell it left them in darkness. They didn’t waste energy on even the tiniest of taebramh lights.
“It says that you are reasonable,” said Rye.
“I don’t know how much longer that will last,” said Finn, fetching their blankets from where they kept them stored on a little natural shelf. He spread two of the blankets on the ground in a little hollow that they had discovered.
“For as long as it needs to,” replied Rye.
“How long do you need before we use your plan?” said Finn.
“I don’t know,” she said. They lay down in the little hollow, Rye in front of Finn, and pulled the other blankets over them. It grew cold in the cave in the middle of the night, and they’d begun sleeping curled against each other both as a matter of practicality as well as the comfort of another living being’s touch after the brutality of the day. Occasionally the sorcerer’s slaves would awake them roughly in the dark, a torch belching smoke overhead as they pulled one of them away for a special night session. But Finn found that he’d stopped trying to guess when the next session would occur, and he slept the dreamless sleep demanded by his battered body.
