It surprised her when she woke. She blinked her eyes. Above her she saw a beamed ceiling, the knotty wood interspersed with strips of whitewashed plaster. The grooved white was streaked with gray from woodsmoke. Somewhere close she heard the unintelligible murmur of voices and other noises. She tried to turn her head to look, but she couldn’t. Then she became aware that she couldn’t feel anything below her neck.
Horror swept her. She squeezed her eyes shut, fighting the clawing panic that rose up inside her. She could be healed. Keros could do it. Or Ellyn. If they were alive. She swallowed hard and opened her eyes. Her head throbbed like someone was pounding on it. Her mouth was dry as sawdust. “Is there anyone there?”
She heard sudden movement. “Margaret?”
It was Nicholas. His fingers brushed her brow and he leaned over into her line of sight. Both of his eyes were black and swollen nearly shut. His nose was pulpy and crooked. It was broken in at least two spots.
“You look like your horse kicked you in the face. What happened to you?”
His mouth twitched in a poor effort at a smile. “I stabbed the hound and the lance shaft caught me in the face.”
“Improved your looks by far. Makes you almost handsome.” She paused. She didn’t want to ask what had happened to her. “Where are we?”
“The Gold Anchor Inn. Half of it was destroyed, but there are a few rooms left and the kitchen and dining room still stand.” He pushed his hand along the side of her head. She winced and he pulled away. “Sorry.”
“No. It just feels like the horse that kicked you is now stomping around in my head.” She started to cough and panic swept her again when she couldn’t feel anything below her throat. She started to breathe fast and tears leaked down the sides of her face as she struggled to move, to twitch even her little toe.
“Shh . . . shhh,” Nicholas said, bending close and pressing her face between his hands. “It’s going to be all right. The delats sent some of their own to watch for Ellyn and Keros. As soon as they get here, they’ll help you. You’ll be all right. You’ll be all right. Just calm down now. Breathe slow. Easy now. It’s going to be all right.”
He bent close so that their breath mingled. For a moment Margaret remembered their kiss in the rain. It had felt so—
She squeezed her eyes shut again, pushing the memory away. It wouldn’t go. She remembered his arms wrapping hard around her, his mouth hungry on hers. The feeling was so real that her eyes popped open. She stared up at him, just inches away.
She couldn’t help herself. “Why? What do you want?”
He knew instantly what she was asking. “You. I want you.”
She couldn’t look away. “Weverton and Rampling? That’s fire and oil.”
“So we’ll burn up. We’ll do it together.” He gently pressed his thumbs over her lips. “Don’t say no.”
She bit the tip of her tongue, wanting nothing more than to jump up and run away. Or pull his mouth down to hers and wrap herself around him. She could do neither. Even if her body would let her, there were secrets between them, and too much history. “Forcan?” she asked, switching the subject to safer waters.
“Gone. You drove your lance clear up into its brain-pan. It made a godsawful noise and tossed you aside like an empty flour sack. When you landed—”
He broke off, his jaw clenching, his mouth rimmed with white. “There was a bright flash—like the sun— then the hound vanished. I don’t know if it’s dead or if it just ran back to where it came from. But it’s gone for now.”
“The wizard priests had to summon it. If it’s gone back to its own realm, then it will probably take another summoning to bring it back.” Something itched at the back of her mind. Something about . . . She tried to focus on it and it slipped away. She reached after it and . . . nothing. She frowned.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know.” If she could have, she would have tossed her hands in frustration. She licked her lips, remembering how dry her mouth was. “Can I have something to drink?”
Nicholas hesitated. “You’d better not. Not until you’ve been healed.”
Or else she might choke herself to death. He didn’t say it, but it echoed in the silence all the same.
“Here, try this.” He disappeared from sight and then reappeared a moment later. He pressed a damp handkerchief to her lips, moistening them. She licked the cloth. He repeated the action several times more until her mouth was no longer so parched.
“Thank you.”
“Forcan wanted you. Just you. Why?”
“I don’t know.” Her response was instantaneous and without thought. But she considered it. Why her? Perhaps because it had already tasted her and knew she shouldn’t still be alive? Maybe it was revenge for the deaths of Atreya and Saradapul. But neither of those answers felt quite right. She was missing something, something crucial.
She closed her eyes. Instantly Nicholas bent over her, his breath warm on her face. “Margaret! Don’t sleep! You mustn’t go to sleep!” His hand gripped her chin hard.
She opened her eyes again. His misshapen nose was nearly touching hers. His brow was deeply furrowed and he looked like he wanted to shake her hard. Not that I’d feel it. She pushed the thought away purposefully. Whether she walked again wasn’t important right now. She had to figure out why Forcan had chosen her.
She started to speak but his grip held her jaw immobile.
Realizing her predicament, he yanked his hand away and flushed. “Sorry.”
“If my brothers were here, they would be gleeful to find it so easy to quiet me. I’m sure that there were several times in the last two sennights that you would have done just about anything to shut up me up,” she said lightly. “If I were in your position, I’d be making the most of the opportunity as long as it lasts.”
Her humor fell flat. His gaze went flat with fury. “Do you think me such a vile worm that I would take advantage of you in this situation? I—” His lips snapped shut.
Margaret wondered what he would have said. She didn’t ask. This thing between them—it was real. She felt something for him and she didn’t dare think about it. When she even skimmed the surface of those feelings, she discovered a want so deep and so vast that she didn’t know how she held it all inside herself. The want was for him, for his touch, for his single- minded loyalty to the people he loved and for his gentleness. But most of all, it was for this man who seemed to understand better than anyone else what she was, and still he wanted her.
Perhaps even loved her.
She fled from the thought. It wasn’t possible. And even if it was, it didn’t matter. They had bigger things to deal with.
“I need to think,” she said and was startled to find that her tongue felt too large in her mouth and her words were thick and slurred. “That’s why I closed my eyes. I’m not going to sleep.”
“What is it?”
She scowled. “I can’t think if you don’t stop bothering me,” she said, making an effort to articulate the words better. But she still sounded like she was deep in her cups. And now there was a buzzing in her ears. She swallowed and the throbbing in her head turned into a sharp pain, like someone driving an ice pick through the center of her forehead.
She made a whimpering sound and her vision clouded with pearly mist. The world spun and though she heard Nicholas speaking, she didn’t understand the words. Blackness swirled like ribbons through her mind, tangling her reason. Thoughts snapped apart and the pieces floated away untethered. Tenaciously she fought to hold her ground, to keep the tatters of her mind from whirling away. But the mist ate away the edges of her being.
Her last single moment of clarity, before her eyes rolled up into her head and she sank down into the quicksand of nothingness, was that she knew why Forcan had come for her. But her epiphany came far too late. The hound had won the day after all, for she was dying and she could warn no one.
Chapter 25
Keros and Ellyn made their way down the mountains to S
ylmont on legs that trembled. Each step was a victory over exhaustion. They slipped and slid over the rain-soaked ground, cursing with every misstep and fall.
At one point Keros eyed Ellyn and felt himself smile despite himself.
She caught his look. “What?” she snapped. Her draggled hair clung to her face and mud plastered her legs and the hem of her cloak. She’d wrapped the cut on her hand and the one on her forearm with a relatively clean strip of cloth torn from the bottom of her tunic.
“Would you ever have imagined that we’d both be majicars fighting the Jutras? I always thought I’d grow up and marry you and the Gerent would give us a holding.”
The flat line of her lips softened. “I thought so too.” Silence fell. A few minutes later, “I hate what he did—the Gerent. I forgave him because I had to, or I’d have gone mad.”
He looked at her sharply, but her gaze was pinned to the ground in front her. “Why didn’t you leave?”
“And go where? I still have family in Azaire. And I’ve seen for myself what the Jutras do—in Relsea. I went there after it fell.” She shook her head. “After that I didn’t hate him anymore. Who knows? In his place, I might have done the same.”
Keros’s lip curled and he spat. But before he could argue, she stopped and looked at him, her arms crossed tightly over her chest.
“Crosspointe has never shared the secrets of its majick. If Azaire had more master majicars—if we knew more of what we could do—maybe he wouldn’t have done it. Maybe if the Jutras weren’t nibbling at our borders, it could have been different. But the Gerent was willing to sacrifice a few for the many, and he chose the people of his favorite and most powerful thane first to demonstrate that he was willing to forfeit those he cared about most—that he, too, was giving up a great deal.”
Keros laughed harshly. “What did he give up? He had nothing in Etelvayn. And my father still serves at his right hand.”
“But he risked losing your father, whom he loves and needs more than you know. Your father was—is—enormously powerful and could easily have stirred up a rebellion and overthrown the Gerent. He risked losing his entire people.”
“A quick knife in my father’s back or a bit of poison in his morning tea would have ended any possibility of that.”
“But the Gerent didn’t kill him; he didn’t even try. Don’t you see? He gave your father the opportunity to create that rebellion. But in the end, your father agreed that Azaire needed majicars, and not just any made from prisoners or gutter scum. Azaire needed men and women who were upright and dutiful. They needed us.”
Keros shook his head and turned away, his jaw clenching tight. “It’s a pretty campfire tale, but it means nothing. None of it’s true.”
“It is.”
He whirled. A moment ago he’d felt entirely depleted. Now rage lent him energy. “How can you possibly believe that?”
She shrugged. “It is just as easy to spy on Azaire as anybody else.”
That took the air from his sails. He stared for a long moment. “Perhaps you only discovered what they meant you to discover,” he said hoarsely.
“Do I look stupid to you, then? Naive perhaps? An idiot?” Her lip curled. “What do you think I’ve been doing the last fourteen seasons? I have studied majick all that I can—that is true. But I have also learned to fight, to kill, to mix with nobles, to disguise myself anywhere, to get into hidden places, open locks that can’t be opened, hunt whatever I’m sent after—in short, I am a spy, and I am very good. I did not take the easy explanations that perhaps were intended for me. I searched far deeper than that and I am satisfied. I know your father has continued to serve, and I know he has never forgiven the loss of his family. If he knew you were alive it would give him joy beyond anything, and it would also stab him through the heart.”
“I don’t believe you.” Except that he did. Or maybe it was only that he wanted to. “He married again.”
“He had to have sons to inherit. And he was lonely.”
Keros swung away again. Lonely. His father didn’t know the meaning of the word. He couldn’t. The bastard had replaced his lost family and continued to serve the man who destroyed them. The pain of the memories made the thistle inside him twitch and open. Pleasure blended with pain and an involuntary shudder ran through his body as his prick hardened. Majick crackled through the tracery of golden veins that ran across his skin and bound his flesh. Ellyn’s hand on his arm made him flinch.
“We are what we are. You may believe me as you will or not. I have chosen to set aside my anger and hatred because I love Azaire, and because I understand why the Gerent did it, even if I don’t like his methods. In many ways, I am useful in a way I could never have been as that stupid young girl from Etelvayn. I am proud of what I’ve done for Azaire and there is a great deal I would not give up, even if I could.”
“You were never stupid.”
“I lay with you, didn’t I?” she said with a sharp grin. “That was surely the act of an unhinged mind.”
He found his lips turning in an answering smile. “I don’t remember any complaints.” And for a moment, the piercing pain of thinking about that day was nearly too much for him to bear. He put the memory away deliberately, as if packing away a piece of blown glass. It was a souvenir of another life that didn’t belong to him anymore. He couldn’t forget, but he could choose not to think about it.
Then something she’d said finally wriggled inside his brain: There is a great deal I would not give up, even if I could. The notion shook him and he started to walk again, his mind spinning. What of his life now would he give up to have the life he’d been intended to have? But no, the gods had intended him to have this life or the Gerent could never have succeeded in his efforts.
What would he give up?
Keros thought about all that had happened in those fourteen seasons since he’d swum away from Azaire. There’d been pain and horror. There’d been fear and dread and an army of things he’d prefer not to remember. But he’d faced them all—he’d conquered them all. Even Jutras blood majick. He’d come out of each challenge stronger than before.
What would he give up? Nothing. He was the man he needed to be to stand here in Crosspointe and fight the Jutras. He was the majicar he needed to be. So what sort of fool would continue to hate the man who’d made him into the very thing he needed to be to save Margaret, tear out the hoskarna, and face whatever was coming next?
He stopped and closed his eyes, drawing a slow breath. Could he let it go? It, too, was a piece of him that made him the man he was. But did he need it any longer? For a long time it had made him strong and made the loneliness not matter. But now he had friends and a land he’d come to think of as home. The hate was merely a reminder of where he’d come from. It had no other purpose now.
He let the breath out with a deep sigh. Hate made people stupid. It made them refuse to see possibilities, even ridiculous ones like a Weverton falling in love with a Rampling, or a sylveth majicar embracing the power of blood majick. It made them make mistakes and he couldn’t afford them. Not now with the Jutras on the doorstep.
But letting go was not so easy. His hatred was woven into the fabric of his being. He was going to have to pick it apart and pull each strand out. For now, he simply made the decision not to hold on to it anymore. It wasn’t forgiveness, it was more like cutting a last tie.
Slowly he began walking again. Somehow he felt lighter—inside and out. He was still marveling at himself, when the world exploded.
A wall of majick crashed into him, flinging him into the air. The breath burst from his lungs as his head snapped against the ground. His vision swam and he fought to stay conscious. Majick continued to rush past him and then almost imperceptibly it began to slow. Relief flooded Keros, but turned quickly to fear as he felt the current reverse.
The majick sucked back the way it had come, its speed increasing until it was pulling at Keros’s clothes and dragging him along the ground. He scrabbled for handholds in the d
irt and grass. The majick was relentless and the current was too strong. It swept him along the ground like an autumn leaf caught in a gale. He bashed against rocks and trees, clutching at them wildly to try to stop himself. Fingernails tore away and he felt the thistle inside him responding to his blood and pain.
Finally the sweep of majick slowed again and he found himself slumping to the ground. He lay on his side, his body aching with cuts and bruises. The right side of his ribs hurt almost unbearably and his left knee throbbed. His thistle blossomed and he welcomed the rush of pleasure as it combated the searing pain of his wounds.
He struggled to his feet, staggering from side to side. Blood trickled down his forehead and dribbled into his eyes. He rubbed it away with one hand, clutching his side with the other. He stumbled around in a drunken circle looking for Ellyn. He called her name, but it was little more than a whisper.
He tottered up a slope, then realized he had no idea where he was or where he’d been. Downhill, he thought. They’d been walking downhill. But how far had the majick storm carried him? He braced himself against a tree and reached for his majick.
Closing his eyes, he pressed his senses outward, chanting in his mind—Let me see Ellyn. . . . Let me see Ellyn. It shouldn’t have worked. But he quickly honed in on the bright fire of her majick. He didn’t think it was a good sign. It likely meant she was hurt worse than he was and her thistle was drinking up her pain and blood. He opened his eyes and staggered off toward her.
He’d hardly gone twenty feet when he heard her calling him. Her voice was strong and carrying.
“Here!” he cried out and it was a mere scrape of sound. Even so, the effort cost him. He coughed and agony exploded in his side. His head reeled and he dropped heavily to the ground.
Suddenly Ellyn squatted beside him, rubbing his back soothingly as he continued to cough. Blood spattered his trousers and its coppery taste filled his mouth. Not good. He needed healing.
The Hollow Crown: A Novel of Crosspointe Page 32
