“One of the entrances to our headquarters,” he said.
Snyde was watching through his monocle, the one eye looking absurdly magnified in it. “I can’t believe my own eyes!”
“You mean ‘eye,’ ” Willow muttered. “Perhaps if you got rid of that ridiculous monocle, you’d see better.”
Snyde looked annoyed but said nothing.
“You we expected to fool,” Don-Lan said. “You’re human, and see with human vision. But we weren’t expecting to fool her.”
Willow felt her face grow warm. But how could she have learned elven magic? She had been so young …
“Let’s go,” she grumbled, and descended into the darkness.
Chapter 50
The elves who had remained behind gathered to greet Willow and the return of her diminutive army. She could see on their faces that they were appalled at the losses she had sustained. Or rather, the losses others had sustained on her behalf. She was a complete failure as a leader.
“Just lovely,” Tee-Ri said, dripping with sarcasm. “All the comforts of home. If I were a snake, that is.”
“You mean you aren’t?” Willow muttered.
Tee-Ri turned to Tamlevar. “Are you going to let her talk to me that way?”
Sil-Then came forward, his hands raised in a benediction, his face all smiles. “I’m glad you were successful in your mission. But where is Pre-Var-Us?”
Before she could answer, Snyde insinuated himself next to her and whispered into her ear, “Might I have a word with you in private?”
She arched an eyebrow. “What about?”
He blushed. “Something private. That’s why I asked to speak to you in private.”
She sighed. Sil-Then was looking at her quizzically. She knew she was only postponing the inevitable, but she leapt at the opportunity to defer that awkward discussion. Perhaps someone else might even inform him of Pree-Var-Us’s death while she was away.
“Very well.” She bowed briefly before Sil-Then. “Lord Sil-Then, I must have a word with my lieutenant. Is there somewhere he and I can talk privately?”
Sil-Then beamed at her. “Of course, Your Highness. Don-Lan, please show our guest to a private location.”
Willow noted Tee-Ri whispering something in Tamlevar’s ear. More poison, no doubt. After a moment he glared at her, confirming her diagnosis.
Willow would have to deal with that bitch soon. This was getting out of hand.
Don-Lan showed them to a chamber off the main tunnel that, he said, had been the original meeting place before their resistance had grown. Willow grunted acknowledgement, and Don-Lan departed, leaving her alone with Snyde.
“Well, Snyde?”
He exhaled, exasperated. “Would it really hurt you to call me Eric?”
A sharp retort rose to her lips, but the indignant look on his face caused a slight smile to take its place.
“All right … Eric. What do you want?”
“Thank you. Now what I want is what I wanted before. I really think you should go back to the ship, and do so immediately.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“Why? Can’t you feel it? Everybody hates you. You’re not an asset; you’ve become a liability.”
That stung.
“I never asked them to come with me,” she said. “None of them. My intent has always been to rescue the Prince on my own. That is still my mission. If they want to follow along and get killed, that’s their own fault.”
Snyde looked around, clearly agitated. “So what are you going to do? March to the castle and demand to the Warlord that he give you back the Prince?”
She sneered. “Something like that.”
“Well, it’s foolish! You’ve got to get out of here, Willow.”
Alarm bells went off in her head and it seemed like the temperature plummeted. She stared at Snyde.
“What’s going on, Snyde? There’s something you’re not telling me.”
She thought back to the canyon where she had rescued Snyde and his men. There had been something odd about that situation, something …
“Ok, I’ll come out and say it,” he said. “I love you.”
She gaped at him a moment and then laughed. Snyde put his hands on his hips, his expression rife with indignation.
“Look, I know you don’t love me, but you at least like me, don’t you?” His eyes bored into hers. “Don’t you?”
She didn’t say anything.
“Then why have you … you know? Why did you do that with me?”
She shook her head. “Damned if I know. I would have stopped myself if I could.”
That seemed to restore some of his confidence. He smiled broadly, showing those perfect teeth of his. “I feel the same way about you … which is why I need you to leave and return to the ship.”
“Why?”
Snyde opened his mouth to speak, but he was cut off by the sounds of shouting off in the tunnels.
“Oh no,” he said. “They’re here. Already.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, the pitch of her voice rising in alarm. Her head whipped around to stare down the tunnels. Her hand grasped the hilt of her rapier.
Willow turned back to face Snyde. “Snyde … Eric, what do you mean ‘they’re here already’?”
“I’m sorry,” Snyde said, and punched her in the stomach.
The blow drove the wind from her. She doubled over and clutched at her belly. Her eyes goggled as she fought to get air into her lungs.
Her arm was already weakening, but still her rapier flashed from its sheath. Too late, though. Snyde already had his drawn, and he used it to pin her blade to the ground. He plucked her weapon from her feeble grasp as easily as a parent taking a toy from a toddler.
She fell to her knees, one hand clutched to her belly. She fought to regain her breath.
Snyde flashed a rueful smile. “I tried to warn you.”
“Eric!” came Tee-Ri’s voice from down one of the tunnels. “Eric! They’re here! Eric!”
Snyde glanced down the tunnel, then back at Willow and blushed. “I really did care for you, you know. It wasn’t just an act.”
Willow tried to say, “What have you done?” but the words wouldn’t come. Her breath was taking an unusually long time to return. He looked down at her belly and moved her hand.
It was bloody.
She glanced up, and only then noticed the stiletto in Snyde’s left hand. As she stared at it, a single drop of blood fell to the ground. Her blood.
“…” She moved her mouth, but could get no words out. “How?” she managed to croak. She could hear shouts and the clanging of metal now. Screams and death cries.
Snyde smiled, and started to reach into his belt pouch as Tee-Ri ran into the chamber.
“They’re here!” she screamed. “We’ve got to get out of here. You know what they’re like when they berserk!”
“Just a moment, dear,” Snyde said, and showed Willow the monocle. “It’s magical, you know. I found it among Fyrelord’s old possessions in Suel’s tower. Apparently, Fyrelord had been in contact with the Kards long before his murder.”
“Eric,” Tee-Ri whined, barely sparing her wounded daughter a glance. “We have to get out of here …”
Suddenly, Eric turned on Tee-Ri and slammed her against the chamber wall. His lips pressed against hers, and the hand holding the monocle pressed between her legs. She moaned and tilted her hips into his hand.
Willow began to see spots. She wouldn’t remain conscious much longer. Might as well make those moments last.
Keeping her movements small, she eased her knife from her boot. It wasn’t balanced for throwing, but she had practiced with it for many years and had a pretty good idea of its characteristics. She’d only get one throw, so she had to make it count.
But whom to kill?
She half-smiled, recognizing that she was getting light-headed. She couldn’t decide whether to kill the man who had most-likely fatally stabbed her, or her own mother.
“Terrific,” she croaked.
Tee-Ri looked up, startled at Willow’s voice. She began to struggle against Snyde.
Willow raised the knife.
“Eric!” shrieked Tee-Ri.
Snyde spun around, saw the knife, and started to raise his hands to guard himself.
Willow drew back her arm to throw. Her balance left her then, and she started to collapse.
“Wait!” Snyde cried. “Don’t!”
Willow threw the knife as she fell. Then everything went black.
There, in the darkness, she heard Captain Call-Me-Eric Snyde of the King’s Guard scream as though all the devils in all the hells had descended on him at once with all their tortures.
“You bitch! You fucking bitch!”
Snyde’s boot slammed into her head. The world exploded, and she saw stars. Then another blow came, and this time, the stars weren’t as bright.
If Snyde kicked her again, she couldn’t tell. She had drifted off.
To death, or someplace very much like it.
Chapter 51
Willow wove in and out of consciousness. When she finally opened her eyes, she caught a skewed glimpse of reality that made no sense to her. The world had upended: a brown and green sky bounced above a sunny blue ground. Trees suspended tenaciously from this brown sky, and when she looked about, she saw that she alone was upright in an army of upside down Kards.
Crazy world. A crazy, crazy world.
She closed her eyes again, not wanting any part of this insanity. Much better to return to her dreams, which were pleasant, though she couldn’t remember what they were. Still, better than an upside down world. Much better.
Seconds or centuries later, she heard voices.
“… and I’m talking about an enormous ass, here. The kind that could please two men at once, if you know what I’m saying. The girl just has a really big ass; nothing wrong with that.”
“Heh. I wouldn’t mind a piece of that myself.”
“You try it, and I’ll chop your nuts off.”
Coarse laughter filled the air, which wasn’t unusual. But it also shook her, as though the blue ground were quaking, which it wasn’t: it was the brown sky that kept jumping around.
Willow opened her eyes. She saw an inverted Kard looking in her general direction. She looked down and saw below her, that another Kard was holding her. She looked up, saw his feet on the brown sky … no, it was the ground.
She looked up again. Ah, that explained it! She was upside down, not the world. What a relief that was.
She smiled.
“Hey,” the Kard who wasn’t carrying her said. “Look at her. She’s awake.”
The Kard who carried her glanced down at her, saw her grin and said, “What in the name of Jabar’s beard are you smiling at?”
She beamed up at him. “I remembered how to speak Kardic!”
“Isn’t that nice?” her carrier said. He raised a gloved fist and slammed it into her face. The world burst into bright white for a few moments, then spiraled into dark oblivion.
Which was fine with Willow. She was happier there.
* * *
“Willow, can you hear me?”
Snyde’s voice, penetrating the haze that surrounded her. She clung to the void, fighting to remain blissfully unaware. She knew that whatever she wasn’t remembering was extremely unpleasant. Best to avoid it altogether.
“Willow, wake up.” A hand, cool on her cheek and then on her forehead. “Wake up.”
She tried to open her eyes, but only one of them obeyed her. The other felt puffy and swollen, though not painful. She tried to reach up and touch the swollen eye, but her hands would not move.
“Don’t struggle. You’re tied up pretty well. You’ll only hurt yourself.”
The blurriness around her slowly resolved itself into the face of Captain Eric Snyde.
“Snyde,” she croaked, and the name came out funny because the entire right side of her face was numb. A small stream of saliva dripped onto her chin, which meant that she must be sitting right-side up. Her mind clung to that, to anything, really, that would help her understand and control the situation.
“Yes, it’s me, Eric.” His face was a caricature of concern, his eyebrows softly lifted, the corners of his mouth turned down into a gentle frown. “I’m sorry that it had to end this way. I tried to warn you.”
“Tried …?” The words died in her fumbling mouth. It was starting to come back to her, but so slowly …
“Yes, I tried to warn you. I kept asking you to go back to the ship, where you could have been spared all this.”
Her neck was stiff. She could barely turn her head. All she could see was Snyde’s face close to hers, and a little bit of daylight behind him. Around her, she heard the sound of a military camp: lowered voices, chewing, and snores. Rest break?
“Willow? Are you still there?” Snyde leaned in towards her.
She spat in his face and noted with grim amusement that the spittle was bloody. Snyde wiped his face with his sleeve, and looked wounded.
“Please don’t be angry with me,” he said.
“You stabbed me.” The words came out mumbled—yuh sabbed muh—but they were intelligible enough to get the point across.
“I didn’t want to. You forced me to. Why didn’t you just go back to the boat like I asked?”
“Eric?” Tee-Ri’s voice was near. Snyde glanced around, looking like a conspirator, then squatted beside Willow.
“She wanted me to kill you,” he whispered. “But I refused.”
“How noble.” Ha nubble. Leave it to a swollen face to take all the fun out of sarcasm.
Snyde looked pained. “Please don’t be like that. I’m going to talk to the Warlord, see if he’ll let you go.”
“Don’t do me any favors.” Don do me anny feffers.
“Eric?” Tee-Ri’s voice was getting more plaintive.
Snyde winced, and then started to stand. “I’ve got to go now. But I’ll be back later. And I’ll explain why this happened.”
“I don’t want to hear it,” she said. Snyde grimaced, and then left.
I dun wanna hear ih.
But of course, this was a lie. She did want to know the truth, but she’d rather die ignorant than give Snyde the satisfaction of boasting to her one last time.
* * *
Willow had been wondering at how little pain she felt. She had been stabbed, kicked, pummeled, and jounced around on the shoulder of a muscle-bound Kard. It was miraculous that she hadn’t been injured very badly. Or so she thought.
Now, once more suspended upside down, she felt a small tingle in her lower belly. It intrigued her, and she was about to concentrate more on the feeling, when a searing-hot wave of pain exploded from that tingling core. She started to shriek but was cut off by a wave of violent convulsions that wracked her muscles with a rigor of agony.
“Gn!” she said, flopping like a landed trout. The Kard holding her tried to adjust his grip to compensate for her abrupt flailing of torso and limbs but failed. Her stomach turned over in her belly and she fell head first towards the ground.
She would have thought that she couldn’t possibly feel any more pain than she was already experiencing, but when the back of her head slammed against the stony ground and then she flipped onto her back and buttocks, she discovered she was dead wrong about that.
Paralysis struck her immobile. She lay on her back, eyes bulging, tears streaming, unable to utter so much as a single syllable.
“Willow!” It was Tamlevar’s voice.
Good, he’s alive, thought Willow, starting to black out. As headstrong as he was, he really was a nice—
* * *
She’s lying on the ground again, immobile, but oddly enough, her pain is gone. She takes a deep inhalation and releases it, savoring the ease with which her breath comes and goes. Someone’s holding her hand. She looks up, expecting to see Tamlevar, but is surprised to see the face of her father looking down at he
r, his pale gray eyes touched with sadness.
“Ah, Baera-ni,” he says. “You’re having such a difficult time. I’m so sorry.”
“Father,” she says. “You’re alive!”
She reaches up and strokes his silver hair. Yes, he’s real!
She begins to cry. “I’m so glad to—”
* * *
“—see you,” Willow mumbled.
“What?” Snyde said. “I can’t understand you.”
Snyde squeezed Willow’s hand tighter. “We’re almost at the castle. The Warlord’s personal surgeon has been summoned. Just stay alive. You must fight!”
“Fight?” she said, wonderingly. “Why would I—”
* * *
“—want to fight? Why can’t I just die?”
“You can, Baera-ni,” her father says. “You can choose to die, and nobody would think less of you.”
“Not even you, Father?”
“Least of all, me, Waeh-Loh. But you won’t give up. I know your heart too well. Tee-Ri may have given birth to you, but you’re my daughter and not hers. You’ll fight because it’s as much of who you are as your eyes or nose.”
“But father, it’s been so hard. I can’t go on.”
He strokes her hair, his eyes sparkling with moisture.
“I know, dearest, I know.” He grimaces, his face lined with all the saddness he must be feeling. “I know it’s been hard, Baera-ni, but I need you to be strong. It’s going to get harder still.”
“Harder—”
* * *
“—still? But I can’t bear anymore!”
“Just a little longer, Willow,” said Snyde.
“Willow!” cried Tamlevar from somewhere. “Somebody tell me what’s happening!”
Her mother was there, smiling with insufferable satisfaction down at her. “I always knew you’d come to a bad—”
* * *
“—end, that’s all that matters,” her father says.
Prince of Bryanae Page 20
