I hear a faint sound behind me and whirl around. A creature streaks towards me, its mouth open to reveal wickedly sharp teeth, its head large and flat, legs hardly more than a blur. For one surreal moment I watch it coming and then I flee, sprinting through the maze of rocks. Its roar echoes through the valley, bouncing off the cliffs as it chases me. Desperately, I scan the valley, the cliffs—surely there must be a way out? My side cramps with pain as I weave between rocks. I can hear the beast behind me, closing the distance. I cannot outrun it. How can I possibly out think it? I must hide! I follow the turn of a larger rock formation, doubling back, then race towards a great, slab of boulder rising at an angle from the earth. I scrabble to the top, throwing myself down against its top, hoping against hope.
The beast passes below me, hurtling around the boulder to follow my path. Does it hunt by sight or smell? Can it tell it has lost my trail? I push myself to my knees, my breath sobbing in my lungs, scanning the land below for the beast. I do not see it. I sit back, raising my gaze, and see Kestrin instead.
He stands at the mouth of a cave, and as I look at him he meets my gaze. Of course. He must have witnessed the whole chase, seen the creature come after me. Watched.
“Kestrin,” I whisper, staring at him.
Something scrapes against stone. I know with a knowing that turns me cold but I turn anyway to see the beast hurling itself up the boulder, its claws cutting into the stone. And then it is upon me. I throw my hands out, pushing at it and ducking to the side. Its teeth snap shut by my ear, and I smell its breath, the stench of rot and death. My fingers close on its shaggy coat and I push, trying to overbalance it, send it off the end of the boulder, but its claws dig into the soft stone and it twists, lunging for me again. My hands find its neck, and I am able to keep its teeth from me, but now it is above me and it claws my arm, snarling.
Desperately, I twist away and fall, bouncing off the boulder to land on the ground. Above me, the beast roars again. I push myself forward, my hands searching for something—anything. My fingers close around a rock and I turn as the beast leaps down. It snarls again, facing me, and I know this time I cannot escape. I hold the rock tightly, as if it might protect me, but it is round and dull, composed of a soft, crumbling stone. The creature leaps forward, an impossibly long jump, so that even as I stumble back its paws slam into my chest, claws piercing my flesh. I fall backwards, flailing at the creature with my rock, my hand.
Something hisses. The beast is ripped off of me, thrown back against the boulder. It roars, struggling up, eyes still intent on me. Again, I hear a faint hiss and watch as the beast is lifted up and tossed back, its legs pinwheeling through the air. This time when it rises, it flees.
I let out my breath in a soft, whimpering sigh, and lie still, hoping that the world will fade around me, that the Lady will take me back. I think perhaps she does, for the light now is too bright, and I am cold.
“Get up,” a voice says from behind me. I squeeze my eyes shut but I know he will not leave. “Get up, sorceress.”
I push myself up with my good hand, only it is no longer quite good. There is blood on it, and when I look down at my chest I see splotches of red through the cloth, the stain spreading as I watch. But Kestrin is behind me, waiting, and so I stagger to my feet, turning to face him.
His eyes widen slightly, his jaw snapping shut on the words he meant to speak. After a breath, he turns and starts back towards his cave.
“Kestrin,” I say, knowing now that I cannot let him go. There is too much blood. “Don’t leave me.” He stops. I take a step towards him, then another. Pain lances through my arm, my chest.
“I should have let it kill you,” he says. He turns as I reach him, his eyes hard and flat in his face.
“Why didn’t you?”
“Why didn’t you scream?” he counters. “You knew I was there.”
“I needed my breath,” I say. It is hard for me to keep my chin up, but when I let it sag I see the red on my dress.
“Now you have it.” He begins to walk again, his pace too fast for me to match.
“Kestrin.” A dry breeze whispers through the canyon. I feel myself swaying with it.
He swings around to glare at me. “You brought this on yourself, sorceress. You made this wasteland. Do not ask me for pity now.”
“No, Kestrin,” I say. “I did not make this place. It is of your own making.”
“I would never dream such a place.”
“It is your heart.” My legs feel like stone. When I try to step towards him I find they are too heavy to lift. I fall, but the fall is long and sweet, and I hardly feel the ground come up to meet me.
I wake to darkness, a steady burning in my arm and a pain that slumbers in my chest. I breathe lightly, staring at the stone roof overhead. I cannot quite seem to remember things rightly. Who am I just now? Thorn or Alyrra? I turn my head to the side, my thoughts muddled, to see Kestrin. He sits watching me, his back against the opposite cave wall. I cannot read his expression.
“You really don’t have your magic here, do you?” he says into the quiet. “I thought perhaps you were playing a game—forcing me to do things, making me hate you, hate myself, all the more for not being able to kill you. But these past hours you have lain here defenseless as a child. You would have bled to death out there, if that beast did not return to finish you first.”
“Yes,” I agree, remembering. I move my hand to touch my chest, and realize he has bound my arm with strips of cloth, that more cloth bandages my chest.
“That is all you can say? ‘Yes’? You have no explanation?”
I sigh, my eyes resting on his dark form. “Why did you bring me here and close my wounds? Why not let me die outside?”
“I had no choice,” he snarls.
“Neither did I.”
He leaps to his feet, glaring down at me. “You speak in riddles. Do not toy with me.”
“Riddles are all I have left, prince. I can give you nothing more.”
“Give me my freedom,” he says tightly, and I wonder how much those words cost him, his pride.
“You know I cannot.”
He walks to the mouth of the cave, looking out. “What did you do to Alyrra?” I stare at his back. He turns to glare at me. “What did you do to her?”
“Nothing. I left her there.”
“Then the impostor you put in her place is still there.”
“Alyrra has her position once more. Your father learned the truth of her identity. The impostor will be executed.”
“So she at least is free.”
“Free?” I echo. I would have laughed but for the pain that sears my chest with each breath. Kestrin’s hand goes to the curved dagger at his belt. “There are different types of freedom. She will blame herself for your loss. She was afraid to help you, to take back her position, until it was too late. She will always carry that with her.”
“It is not a heavy burden,” he says. “She hardly knew me. She will forget in time.”
“Perhaps.”
“You say this land is of my making.”
“It is your heart.”
“Then to escape, I must break out of myself.” I watch him mutely. He crosses the ground to kneel beside me. “Tell me how to escape.”
I close my eyes, not wanting to see him. His hands grasp my shoulders and I wait, dread coiling in my stomach, for him to shake me or press on my wounds.
“Tell me,” he repeats.
I look up at him. “I cannot tell you what I do not know.”
“You know. You have come and gone easily enough.” His hands tighten on my shoulders and I gasp, pain lancing through my chest in response. He lets go, sitting back. I push myself up, pressing my palms into the ground, until I am sitting with my back against the cave wall.
“I can’t explain.”
“Try,” he says tersely, his hand tightening on the hilt of his dagger.
“No.”
“Enough.” He slides his dagger free of its s
heathe, moving so fast I have only enough time to jerk back before the cold blade lies flat against my skin. “You killed my mother, you’ve slain my family for generations, and now you are killing me. Do you think I can’t see for myself what will happen to me in this wasteland?”
“That is your choice,” I whisper.
“I have no choice!”
“There is always a choice.”
The blade slides against my skin, and I feel a faint tingle where the skin parts beneath its pressure. “I will kill you for what you’ve done.”
“All I’ve done is offer you a choice, Kestrin.”
His hand closes on the front of my dress, scraping against the wounds there, and he hauls me to my feet, pinning my back to the wall. “Here’s a choice for you then, sorceress. Admit you are a murderess.”
“Is this your justice?” I catch hold of his wrist with my hands, but I cannot break his grip on the dagger. Instead, he draws his lips back from his teeth, and brings the butt of the dagger down, slamming the metal hilt into my chest. Somewhere behind me, a child cries out, keening softly, but it is not me—my teeth are clenched against the pain. My legs give out beneath me, darkness eating at the edges of my vision, but I cannot fall because he holds me up, holds me tight against the wall, with nowhere to run.
“Admit you are a murderess and I’ll give you an easy death.” The words float down around me like autumn leaves, or the first thistledown snowflakes of winter. I can no longer think past the pain in my chest, the keening of the child. I stare at the dark, stained cloth of Kestrin’s tunic. Two men hang from a gibbet, turning in slow circles, ropes creaking. The woman tears her hands free of the daggers, pressing their ragged remains against the pain in her belly, the emptiness. Valka smirks as the soldiers catch hold of the serving girl, searching her for a brooch she never stole.
Kestrin’s hand finds my braid and jerks my head back, forcing me to meet his gaze. “Say it.”
“If you will say it with me.” The words are thick and slow on my tongue, but they are not what Kestrin expects. His hand tightens on my braid, yanking my head back further, white pain streaking across my vision.
“Damn you.” I feel him shift his grip on the dagger, feel it cutting into the skin of my neck. I know I cannot break his hold on it, and so I reach up to touch his cheek, the dark stubble there. He jerks his head away, my fingers leaving a dark trail across his skin. He steps back and pivots, throwing me to the ground. My head bounces against the stone floor, my vision blurring. I hear a dull thud, and then another. Kestrin kicks the wall again, then turns towards me, his rage shimmering in the air around him. But he will not kill me by magic; the death he will give me will be that of cold iron, a slow and brutal death. The dagger he holds is dark with blood, dripping as it did when it pinned my mother to the tree. My mother’s blood … three scarlet drops on a white napkin. This alliance hinges on you.
I raise my eyes from the dark blade to his face. I am the Lady who has lost her soul. I uncurl myself, letting the pain run through me as a tide does, flowing and ebbing. I am the princess who has lost her self. I am the goose girl who has lost her way. I press my hands against the ground, push myself to my feet. I am the child who can scream no more.
“Put away the dagger, Kestrin.” He braces his feet, as if expecting me to attack. “Put it away.” He holds the dagger in a death-grip. When I step towards him, he brings it up, warding me off. I reach out and cover his hand with mine, curling my fingers around the hilt with his. When he tries to pull away, I tighten my grip, matching his step back.
“Decide,” I tell him. “Either kill me without attempting to torture a confession out of me, without this farce of justice, or put away your dagger.”
“Justice is not a farce.” He steps back again, twisting his hand out of mine.
“It is in your land, princeling. Ask the people. They go to thieves for protection and justice while your guards sit by and your courts condemn the innocent. Do not pretend to justice here, where you have neither evidence nor judge.”
“I do not need more evidence. You killed my mother.” I hold still, watching him. I wonder what it was that the Lady did to his mother, how she died. “You can’t deny that she is dead,” Kestrin says, as if my silence had questioned him. “I know what you are.”
I laugh, a sweet trip of sound that leaves Kestrin stunned, staring. “You cannot guess what I am, Kestrin. You do not know the least of my story, just as you could not imagine me as a child with a mother, could not imagine me without my magic.”
He raises the dagger, the tip wavering over my heart. “You twist meanings with your words. You killed my mother. That is all I need to know.” He steps forward, the dagger touching my breast, and there he stops.
“Just as I have killed you,” I agree quietly. I can feel him trembling through to the tip of the dagger, his breath ragged and unsteady. “If you want to kill me, Kestrin, if you want to watch me die by your blade, this is your chance. I am unarmed, I have no magical defense, and I am weak. But do not pretend to justice. What you do now will only and ever be murder.”
The dagger falls to the ground with a dull clatter. I wait, swaying slightly, watching Kestrin. Is it over? He raises his hand to his face, passes it over his eyes.
“I wish that you were dead,” he says, his voice hoarse and grating. “There is nothing here to allow for justice: this is a dead land.”
“It is not quite dead.”
He laughs harshly. “I had not considered the beast.” His eyes are dark, but it is no longer anger that burns in his face; instead, despair loosens his skin, leaves his eyes red-rimmed and empty. He turns and makes his way to the mouth of the cave, one hand on the cave wall for support.
“Do not seek me out again, sorceress.” His words fall like small stones into a pond, disappearing even as they are heard. As he passes from my sight, the cave closes in on me twisting around to spit me out into the gardens.
Chapter 33
Night has fallen, the moon filling the garden square with silvery light. The Lady stands before me. “Come,” she says. I push myself to my feet, staggering upright because I must, the garden whirling around me again, though this is no magic. Dust falls in sheets from my shift, from my shoulders and hair. I follow her to the room, keeping my eyes on the white of her dress so that I will not falter. My shift clings to me, growing wet and heavy as I walk.
I pitch forward onto the bed, unable to lower myself, and have to bite my lip to keep from crying aloud. And then the Lady’s hand helps me onto my back. I close my eyes, waiting for her to leave, but she does not. Instead, I feel her push up my sleeve and wipe my arm with a damp cloth. Then she opens my shift, cleaning the wounds on my chest. Her touch is firm, neither gentle nor hurtful. I suck in my breath, staring at the ceiling as she presses the cuts, wipes the blood from the shallow cut on my neck.
When she moves away, I turn my head to inspect my wounds. A long gouge runs down my right arm, still seeping blood. Had Kestrin not bound it, I likely would have bled to death. The cuts on my chest are less deep, showing the print of the thing’s claws: two sets of punctures, each an array of four holes, ripped slightly open as the beast landed on me; they cannot be stitched shut, dug as they are into my flesh.
The Lady returns, sitting beside me, a needle and thread in her hand. She holds my arm down and silently begins to stitch the edges of the cut together. I do not mean to complain, but I cannot help the whimpers that lodge in my throat. She winds a bandage around my arm, then bandages my chest.
“Why are you doing this?”
Her hands come to rest on the bed sheet. When she speaks her voice is thoughtful. “You interest me.”
“Interest you?”
The Lady smiles faintly. “Yes.” She stands up, brushing out her skirts in a gesture so common to all women that I am left stunned. But I should not be, I think. She is not just a sorceress following a bloody oath.
“Wait,” I call after her. “I don’t understand.”
She looks to me like and yet unlike my first vision of her, and I find myself speaking dreamily, “When I looked into your eyes for the first time, I thought I saw my death there. Perhaps I did. Now I only see your pain.”
Something flickers in her face, but I cannot say whether it is an emotion winging past or only a weakness of my sight. She turns and leaves, taking the light with her.
***
The Lady returns with the morning, escorting me once more to the square. Despite the rest, I am exhausted. My wounds and burnt wrist ache when I am still and flare with pain at every move.
I sit down facing the stone prince and look up at the Lady. “When you send me this time, will my cuts remain bandaged?”
“Yes.” The Lady glances towards the statue. “If you wish to return to Tarinon, you may. I will not force you to this last test; the first two have weakened you.”
“Would you release the Prince?”
“No.”
“Then why do you ask?”
The Lady purses her lips, watching me. A breeze wanders through the garden, touching a wisp of hair that has escaped her braid. I think she must have been beautiful when she was young: the kind of beauty that warms hearts and brings smiles to faces. “I do not like to send you to your death,” she admits.
“Hasn’t he proved himself yet?” I ask. “He saw his greatest enemy unarmed and let her go. He saw her attacked and defended her. Her saw her wounded and helped her. What more could you want?”
She looks away from me to Kestrin, kneeling before us. “I want him dead,” she confesses.
“Then you are what you accuse him of. Let him go, Lady.”
Thorn Page 29
