The Archer (The Blood Realm Series Book 3)

by Jennifer Blackstream

  “But you aren’t putting it up for sale. You’re offering it as a prize in an archery contest.”

  Mac put the quill down. In front of his desk, Glen clenched and unclenched his hand at his side, his other still on the hilt of his sword. He stared at the fresh parchment, letting Glen squirm while he tightened his hold on his temper. The past few days had been stressful, and the last thing he needed was to be questioned at every turn—especially when he was well within the boundaries of his power as sheriff. When he finally looked up at Glen, the guard snapped to attention, his eyes staring straight ahead. Mac guessed that was likely more out of an effort to avoid looking into his eyes than any sign of respect, but he let it go.

  “Do you recall our conversation of a few days ago, Glen?”

  Glen met his eyes for a brief second, then firmly locked them on the opposite wall. “Yes, sir.”

  “Then you no doubt recall our conversation about the thief and the…special circumstances of this particular case?”

  The guard glanced around the room, taking note of the few civilians milling about the courthouse. “Yes, I do.”

  “Then you should understand me when I say Lady Marian has joined his band.”

  The guard forgot himself for a moment, body going lax as he gaped at the sheriff. “Sir?”

  Mac returned his attention to the parchment, resuming the task of writing out the notice that would alert the general population to the upcoming archery contest and its grand prize. “Yes. It would seem Lady Marian is not what she first appeared. I trust that addresses your concerns?”

  “I… I suppose so.”

  The quill scratched across the parchment, ink flowing behind it in smooth black lines. As the details of the contest decorated the page, the tension banding around Mac’s chest eased.

  This will draw them out. Both of them. Wherever they’re hiding. If only those worthless dogs had—

  A geyser of frustration shot up inside him, threatening to spill past his lips in a growl. He swallowed it back, fighting to keep the images of the wolves from his mind. The quill creaked in his grasp and he loosened his fingers quickly to avoid crushing it.

  The miserable beasts had failed him. They’d not only lost Marian—without discovering Robin’s hiding place—but they’d gotten themselves lamed on top of it all. Shot with arrows of all things. The sight of them limping home, forelegs shedding a bloody trail, roared into his consciousness and he had to put the quill down before it shared the fate of its predecessor.

  Worthless creatures. Protected from glamour and taken down with mere arrows. What good is having sharp senses if you can’t smell an enemy close enough to shoot you through a myriad of trees? He must have been right on top of them. And that trail of blood they left, ready to lead whatever manner of otherworldly miscreants to my very doorstep.

  The buzzing in his ears grew louder and he pressed his fingers to his temples as if he could somehow smother the sound. The iron grew heavier around his neck, the piece of metal seeming to grow in size until his head drooped, weighted down by the medallion on its leather string. He wrapped his fingers around it, ready to remove it, but he stopped himself. No. No, he wouldn’t be caught without it again. Not when the stakes were so much higher now.

  He smoothed his hands down his black vest, checking the laces were straight, patting the small pocket for the few coins he carried on him. Glen was still fidgeting in front of his desk, his hesitation, his doubt, a bitter tang on the air. Mac stood from his chair, abandoning the announcement for now. There was no sense trying to draft a public notice when he was this distracted by Glen’s naïve questions. He would finish it later, in private. Right now, he was in precisely the right mood to deal with the other monster.

  “Stay here.” He threw the order over his shoulder as he left, not bothering to look at Glen. An hour ago, he’d considered bringing the guard with him on his errand, but the man’s squeamishness over a matter as simple as foreclosing on property left him with significant doubts that he would be able to stomach what was coming next.

  Pity. With the dogs next to useless, I could have used him.

  He thrust open the heavy door of the courthouse with enough force to startle the men and women standing outside. They scattered as he swept down the few shallow steps, one or two nearly falling over themselves to get out of his way. He drummed his fingers against his thigh as he eyed the nervous citizens and made his way to the nearby stable where his horse was kept.

  He was becoming aware of a new trend these past few days. People had always been cautious in his presence. It was part of holding a job that gave him the power to imprison someone. Everyone feared that kind of power and influence, it was just the nature of things. But lately it seemed like more than that. People weren’t just nervous around him—they seemed genuinely afraid.

  “Sheriff, I—I didn’t expect you so soon.”

  Mac abandoned the puzzling train of thought to give the stable boy his full attention. The scrawny young man was all arms and legs, looking more like an insect than a man. His brown hair was almost completely hidden by a floppy blue hat that looked as if it’d been trampled beneath a stampede of hooves, and his face was dusted with enough dirt to blend in with the stable floor. And if the state of his grey woolen shirt and patched brown pants were any indication, his family wasn’t going to make their tax payment this month.

  “My horse,” Mac said shortly.

  The boy bobbed his head, cheeks paling despite the perfectly equitable tone he’d used.

  “Y-yes, sir!”

  There. He’s not just nervous, he’s afraid. But why?

  He turned the matter over in his head as he watched the boy bolt to the stall that housed his horse, slipping on a lump of mud and nearly breaking his neck in the process. He caught himself on the handle of the stall, wrenching his arm to force his body upright and opening the door all in one movement. By the time he managed to get the horse ready and bring it out to Mac, he was panting, his face was beet red, and he was favoring his right arm.

  Mac took the reins, eyeing the strange boy as he offered them without taking his gaze from the ground. The boy seemed to sense his stare and beads of sweat rolled down his temples.

  That kind of fear wasn’t normal.

  It’s the fey, Mac realized. He’s done something to me, put some sort of glamour on me to make me terrifying to others. Fury rapidly turned his blood to molten lava, scalding his veins as he instinctively grasped the iron hanging from its leather band about his neck. He clutched the piece of metal, holding it so tightly his hand shook. The buzzing in his ears grew louder, pain arching out across his temples. He dipped his head, grinding his jaw against the pain, still holding the iron as he looked around him, suddenly certain the fey was here, watching him.

  He grabbed the stable boy by the front of his shirt, jerked him off his feet. “You. What do you see when you look at me?”

  The boy let out a strangled gasp, both of his hands gripping the fist that held him aloft. “I-I-I—”

  “Spit it out!”

  “I-I s-see th-th-the sh-sheriff!”

  Mac curled his lip in disgust and dropped the addle-brained child. He would get no help here. He ignored the chattering of the boy’s teeth and the looks the child was drawing from the other people with his bizarre behavior. He didn’t have time to sort him out now, he had too much to accomplish in too short a time. He planted a foot in the stirrup and his horse, a barrel-chested white mare with just a dusting of black around her nostrils, danced to the side with a nervous lunge. Mac gritted his teeth and tightened his grip on the saddle horn, his body jolting to the side with every nervous step the equine beast took.

  With one final heave, he managed to seat himself, the muscles of his thighs straining to hold the horse beneath him as he tightened the reins, tried to regain control. Face flushed, he turned his ire on the boy. “Calm yourself, you’re upsetting the horse!”

  It was a miracle the boy didn’t faint dead away. His face
lost all color and sweat poured down his temples. An older man stepped out of the stable, his eyes firmly on the ground. He sidled over to the boy, grasped him by the shoulders, and carefully led him back into the stable. Not once did he look at Mac.

  What have you done now, Robin Hood?

  The sidhe had found some way to turn the people against him. Some magic to frighten them. He didn’t know how he’d done it, how it was possible when he hadn’t taken the iron medallion off for more than five minutes in the last forty-eight hours, but somehow the sidhe had managed. Mentally Mac added that to his list of crimes, promised himself that it was just one more offense the sidhe would finally be held accountable for.

  And it was almost time.

  It took the full five miles from the stable to his cabin for him to regain his composure, to feel some measure of the calm he’d had that morning. When he finally arrived at the pit that held the wizard, he was no longer grasping at the iron around his neck, and his skin no longer throbbed in time to his thundering heartbeat. He was clear-headed once again, ready to match wits with the imprisoned magic-user.

  The grey wolf lay in a heap at the foot of one of the wider trees that surrounded the pit like arboreal sentinels. A salt circle surrounded it, protection just in case Casan got it in his wizened old head to spell the beast into his service. Not that he was really capable of much magic without his book or his staff, but desperation was the mother of invention, and Mac didn’t take reckless chances.

  The wolf rolled its eyes in Mac’s direction as he dismounted, but didn’t lift its head. Its wounded leg lay useless in the dirt, the bandage dark red with old blood. Mac swore under his breath. He’d have to change the dressing soon. Menial labor he didn’t have time for, and shouldn’t be making time for. And if the grey wolf’s dressing needed changed, the copper beast’s wound was likely in the same state. She was back at the cabin, close enough to hear her companion’s howl if the wizard tried to escape, but far enough that checking in on her would cost him precious time.

  “Worthless dog.”

  The grey wolf curled its lip, baring its teeth in a snarl. The sound seemed almost too much for it, its eyelids drooping, sliding closed even as Mac watched.

  “Not even a guard dog.”

  The plank of wood over the pit was still damp from that morning’s mist, and it left Mac’s palm cold and clammy. He wrinkled his nose as he cast it to the side, sending a beam of sunlight slicing into the darkness to strike the wizard across his eyes. Blue eyes narrowed at him and the wrinkled face contorted into a familiar scowl as Casan raised a hand to shield his eyes from the sudden light.

  Mac rubbed his palms against the rough material of his pants, trying to rid himself of the chill the wood had laid over them. A fly sailed by his ear, buzzing with an intensity that drilled through Mac’s skull. He swatted at the fly without taking his eyes off Casan. “Is it done?”

  The wizard’s face hardened, his chin rising slightly. It was a look Mac knew well, a defiant mask to cover fault. A common sight in his line of work, and one he did not want to see now. “What’s wrong?”

  The wizard held up the clay pot Mac had given him the night before. It was small, a simple bowl of red clay that had seen better days. The wizard had etched some sort of symbols into its sides and it now held whatever potion Mac had watched him brew the previous evening. The wizard had said the potion just needed to set, time for the magic to coalesce and provide the vision demanded of it. Mac saw no such vision when he looked into the murky water.

  Casan looked into Mac’s eyes and slowly lowered the pot. “The spell failed.”

  The wizard’s tone was matter of fact, but Mac didn’t miss the tiny thread of fear that thinned his voice. He crossed his arms, looking down with the same sympathy he usually gave to those with the poor fortune to cross him. “You mean you failed.”

  “No. I mean the spell failed.” Casan knelt and put the pot on the ground with enough force to send some of the potion sloshing over the sides.

  A bitter scent drifted up from the spilled liquid, tickling Mac’s nose until he sneezed. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, heading off a second sneeze. “The spell—”

  “There was nothing wrong with the spell!” Casan marched back and forth in the limited diameter of the pit, smoothing the lines of his robe as if it wasn’t torn and covered in grime. “It failed because your little woman has some sort of protection laid over her. A cloaking or hesitation spell of some sort—very powerful.” He paused his pacing then, and when he glanced up at Mac, a spark of curiosity had stolen some of the anger from his eyes. “Someone has gone to great lengths to make certain no one knows what she is—and no one can find out.”

  The fly circled back, sending another string of skin-itching vibrations down Mac’s spine by way of his ear drum. He swiped at it again. “Why would anyone do that?”

  The wizard arched an eyebrow at Mac, eyes twitching as he followed his hand swatting at the fly. “There could be many reasons. She could be a criminal hiding from her punishment. She could be a high-born of whatever court she belongs to, hiding from an obligation she doesn’t wish to fulfill.” The arrogant defiance returned to his face in the thrust of his chin, the petulance in his voice. “Whatever the reason, it is done. I cannot tell you what she is.”

  The urge to take up the rotting plank of wood and beat the useless wizard to death with it seized Mac’s muscles, made him clench and unclench his hands at his sides. He ached with a sudden rush of adrenaline and the breeze cooled the sweat glistening on his forehead. “Then you are of no further use to me.”

  Casan’s bravado faded, melting away like the façade of an ice sculpture and leaving behind the pale face of a frightened old man. “No. No, I can still help you.”

  Mac smoothed his hands down his shirt, his right dropping to touch the hilt of his sword. Already he could smell blood, could see the wizard’s empty, unseeing eyes in his head as it fell from his shoulders, rolled around the dirt floor of the pit. His breathing came faster, his heart pounding a steady, thundering beat. “I do not believe that is true. You cannot tell me what she is. You cannot tell me who has cast this spell on her. Without that information, it will be all the more difficult for me to plan my attack, and I do not appreciate this failure on your part.”

  “I can help you find her!”

  Mac drew his sword, admiring the play of the sunlight over the blade. “I do not require your help for that—doubtful as it is that you could provide such help. Marian will come to me shortly.”

  The wizard fell to his knees in the dirt as if his legs would no longer hold him, the lump in his throat bobbing as he swallowed. Mac lowered his free hand to a small pouch tied to his belt, deftly unfastening the string that held it closed. He dipped his fingers inside and withdrew a handful of salt, trailing white dust as he began making a circle around the pit. No sense taking the risk that facing his imminent death would inspire the wizard to new magical heights that might help him avoid his coming fate.

  “She escapes you every time, just as Robin Hood does. What makes you think this time will be any different?” Casan’s voice was higher with rising panic. He was searching the pit, scouring the bare dirt walls for something he might use as a weapon to defend himself. “You need me, you need my help. Or she will run and you will never find her.”

  Mac finished the circle of salt, but paused, standing with his sword still lowered at his side. The wizard could be right. Yes, he was confident that his archery contest—particularly the prize—would draw Marian out of hiding. But what was to prevent her from escaping him? She was with Robin Hood now, ostensibly with all his glamours and tricks and fiendish companions to aid her. There was a chance that she would flee, a chance that when faced with impending imprisonment she would abandon the land his sources assured him meant the world to her. Tricking her into the open again might prove difficult. If not impossible.

  Frustration pulled his nerves taut. He’d been counting on knowing what she was, on bei
ng able to prepare for her, prevent her escape. But now…

  He looked down into the pit, held the wizard’s gaze. “You were supposed to tell me what she is, help me to prepare for her, to prevent her from escaping by targeting her weaknesses. But you failed. Why should I believe your help preventing her escape will fare any better?”

  The wizard’s eyes darted from side to side, a pathetically obvious sign that he was fighting to think of some way to put off the fate that awaited him. He’d spoken before thinking of what he would say—what he could say. Mac lifted his blade, sending another arc of gold light into the pit.

  Casan’s eyes widened. “What you need is a hunter. Someone who could track even a fey. You still have some of her hair left. I know someone who could find her.”

  Mac rolled his eyes. “My wolves are excellent hunters—a trait evolved to near-perfection by the species that holds them prisoner for another four years. What makes you think your human hunter could do better?”

  The wizard’s eyes glittered now, confidence returning to straighten his spine. He rose up on one knee. “I never said ‘human’ hunter.”

  “You’re speaking of another magic user?”

  Casan got to his feet and shook out his tattered robe with shaking hands. “A fey. A fey whose hunting skills are as unrivaled as Robin’s glamour. He can find anyone.”

  “And why would he help me?” Mac shook his head even as temptation tried to wrap seductive arms around him. “No. I will not bargain with the likes of a fey.”

  “This fey will require no payment!” Casan’s confidence slipped, his eyes falling to Mac’s sword before shooting back up to his face. “I am not suggesting you hire him. No, this fey, not unlike Robin, craves a challenge. Tell him of your woman, of her spell of protection, her fey heritage that remains a mystery despite my spells. Tell him she hides as no other, with the help of the infamous Robin Hood who uses his powerful glamour to shield her.” He paused. “Though, if you do drop Robin’s name, you would do best calling him the name by which the other fey know him.”