The Flute Keeper's Promise (The Flute Keeper Saga)
Page 36
“Ah, I’ve missed that,” Valory said, taking a deep whiff of the air. “It beats the smell of mud.”
“How can you tell over your own stink?” Katriel asked.
Valory’s eyebrows drew together. There was a flash of vehemence in her face. I tapped her on the arm and shook my head.
With a huff Valory rustled her wings and kept moving. Katriel smirked.
Onward in silence, we passed through an area where the stream narrowed and became shallow. There were no fish, but I spotted a bed of mussels among the rocks. Valory deemed them edible, so she and I pried some off and dropped them into one of the baskets. Katriel leaned against a tree trunk, watching us with disdain.
“This is Pixie food,” she said. “Show me a bear or a highland deer. I’d take it down with my bare hands. That’s a meal worth taking pride in!”
Unable to restrain herself, Valory shook off her wet hands and said, “What do you know about pride? All I’ve seen you do is lick your king’s boots!”
Katriel was upon her in an instant. “Watch your mouth you filthy country vistkern.”
Valory shoved Katriel in the chest. “What’d you call me?”
I watched helplessly. Jumping between the two of them was not a good idea. I conjured a pulse of energy and held it at the ready just in case things got out of hand.
“Stop bickering,” Hugo said from a branch above.
All three of us looked up. He was barely visible among the dark green foliage.
Katriel brushed off the front of her leather top where Valory had touched her. “What news, Your Highness?”
Valory mocked her behind her back. I stifled a laugh.
“There is a bend up ahead where the stream widens,” Hugo said. “There are deep pools that smell of fish and there are also nests of wading birds. We should be able to harvest some eggs.”
“I dunno, sounds like Pixie food to me,” Valory said, nudging me with her elbow.
Katriel turned and scowled at as. I could tell that she had a nasty comment waiting on the tip of her tongue, but she withheld it because Hugo was still within earshot.
As soon as he flew away Katriel said, “You should be more respectful.”
“Why?” Valory asked.
It was a perfectly innocent question coming from Valory. I could see that, but to Katriel it was an insult.
“Why? You have not seen the things we have. You cannot conceive of the things he’s gone through!”
“I have a pretty good idea,” I mumbled.
Katriel ignored me. “You see our numbers, how few we are. We fight. It is what we know. We fight for you and even the coddled Fay and their servants! We fight and he leads us so that we might know greatness again one day like our ancestors. Have you done anything so honorable?”
I held my tongue. Valory listened, bemused in her innocence.
“You mock us now,” Katriel said, “but one day when we rise again, all of Faylinn will know that we are noble creatures. You—” she pointed a finger at Valory “—you sicken me with your carelessness. You claim to be our queen, but anyone who ever saw Hagan Winterwing knows he would not have fathered a backwards, lowly worm like you. It insults me that we are the same race.”
Valory looked so hurt that I had to speak up. “Just hold on a minute. You’ve done nothing but find fault with Valory, but it’s only because she’s different from you. In my estimate that’s a good thing. It means she isn’t shallow-minded.”
“That’s right,” Valory said. “I can’t help it I wasn’t raised like regular Slaugh, but that doesn’t make me any less of one! And as for my parents…” she looked in the direction that Hugo had flown. “Don’t you think he’d have killed me by now if he knew I was wrong? I figure that deep down, he knows I’m his half-sister.”
Katriel shook her head furiously as though the thought pained her. “Kekist nin! You are the mother of all liars and I would eat my own wings the day any Slaugh bowed before you. You our queen? Ivern!”
She spat on the ground and stalked ahead through a patch of reeds. Valory looked wounded. She dragged her feet as she followed after Katriel.
“Don’t listen to her,” I whispered. “You’re ten times the Slaugh she is!”
We found the deep pools Hugo had spotted. Valory seemed driven to prove her worth by catching every moving creature under the water. Before long, we had a basket of fish, turtles, crayfish and one very confused newt.
Meanwhile, I raided the nests of long-legged wading birds for eggs. The eggs were also a delicacy of the local water sprites. I kept getting into scuffles with them that ended with tiny teeth marks on my knuckles.
Katriel took to the trees to find other small game. I knew that Hugo was around somewhere but I seldom saw his shadow flitting nearby. I scanned the treetops in the distance and saw a glint of red.
Hugo was standing on a branch just downstream from me. His dark shape stood out from the drooping lines of the moss-covered tree limbs. The afternoon sun pierced his outline and again I saw the red shimmer of the dagger he’d taken from me.
He tilted his head—looking at me? I couldn’t tell. The sun was so bright and he was so dark.
There came a triumphant cry from Valory as she nabbed a huge fish. Katriel snorted to make it known that she wasn’t impressed.
“That ought to do it!” Valory exclaimed as she clasped the lid on her last basket.
I sighed as I looked at the heavy load. “Good job, Valory. We’d better get it back before it spoils.”
With a shadow and a flutter, Katriel landed beside me and picked up two of the baskets. “I suppose I can carry these. I will fly ahead. No need to dawdle with you two.”
“Too bad you can’t fly,” Valory said to me, hoisting as much of the catch as she could carry. “These will get a bit smelly before we make it home.”
I shouldered my basket of eggs. ‘It’s okay. Go ahead. I’ll walk as fast as I can.”
Valory’s wings stretched in anticipation. “Are you sure? I won’t leave you alone on the ground if you don’t want. I can walk.”
I knew better. Valory loved flying. “I’ll be fine.”
Another shadow passed overhead. I looked up and saw Hugo circling above. He made a few passes and then glided back through the forest. I took it to mean that he’d bring up the rear.
Reassured, Valory took off, leaving me to rough it on foot. It was quiet without a companion to talk to. My basket was heavy and the late afternoon sun cast long shadows among the trees. It made me feel uneasy. I recalled Mr. Tully’s warning about the trolls and sasquatch. With the others flying high above, I felt terribly alone.
The shadows stretched longer. My feet grew sore and my knuckles bled from my war wounds with the sprites. At least our mission for food was a success. Anouk would be able to stock the pantry for a while.
More creatures emerged in the gathering dusk. The rhythmic hum of insects filled the air. Somewhere an owl hooted. The stream was filled with the splashing and croaking of frogs.
I stopped to stretch and switched my basket to the other arm. I scanned the sky above for Valory, but the darkness was gathered too tightly among the trees. Up above everything faded from greenish gray to black. Hugo was up there somewhere. I could feel him watching.
At least he had enough sense not to leave me alone in the forest. Despite his attempts to remain distant, he was still my shadow.
Try as I might, I couldn’t stir up the same feelings of rage as before. The line between Lev and King Hugo was starting to blur and no matter how hard I denied it, the boy I’d loved and the king I loathed were the same person. Those were the same wings that had so often carried me, the same arms that had held me tight, and the same scarred skin, like a map that only I could read.
Memories of our night in the torn page made me stumble in the dark. One of the eggs flew out of the basket.
It never hit the ground. Hugo landed and caught it. “You should be more careful,” he said in that aloof way of his.
He looked away. “I’ll do no such thing. You’ve had seventeen years to learn to walk properly. If you can’t do it by now, that’s not my problem.”
It was such a condescending thing to say that I just shook my head. “Bravo. Good to see that you’re still perfecting the art of being a humongous jerk.”
His wings fluttered half open in agitation. “Hakana nin zu ne mekinvit,” he growled.
I understood every word. “Yes, I know I’m one to talk. I’ll tell you what: let’s settle this once and for all.” I placed the basket on the ground, rolled up my sleeves and raised my fists. “Go ahead. It was going to come to this eventually. Might as well get it over with.”
Hugo balked. “Are you insane? I’d kill you.”
I shoved him with a magic barrier. “You can try. Use what you’ve got. I’m not gonna hold back.”
He stood there, scowling in what was obviously disbelief, but I was dead serious. I flicked my shortsword out of its scabbard and threw it at him. He caught it between two fingers and threw it back. I used the move as a distraction. In the split second it took him to aim, I hit him with another blast of my barrier magic. He fell to the ground and I retrieved my sword.
Cursing in Slaugh, he sprang to his feet and bounded towards me. I jumped over him, rolled, and came up behind him with fists at the ready. He wasn’t where I expected him to be. His leg slammed me in the knees and I fell. I cast a barrier to keep him from attacking me while I was down but I needn’t have bothered. He’d fallen back on the tried and true Slaugh tactic of hiding in the shadows.
I caught my breath and readied myself for an attack from any direction. I turned in a slow circle, searching the trees around me.
He came at me from overhead. I didn’t get off a barrier in time and fell flat on my back. He lifted me by the front of my collar.
“Okay, okay, okay,” I said, out of breath. “You win.”
He let go of my collar and stood back. Now that his guard was down, I had the perfect chance to strike.
I drew up both my knees, resting all my weight on my upper back, and then sprang up, kicking him in the chest. He fell to the ground. I stood triumphantly above him. “I never said I wouldn’t fight dirty.”
“Neither did I.”
He locked his feet around my ankles and jerked them hard, forcing me to fall. I tried to reach for my shortsword on the way down but his right elbow came out of nowhere and busted me in the mouth.
I felt a metallic smear of warmth spreading near my upper lip. I touched it and my finger came away red. I groaned. “You just had to go for the face, didn’t you?”
He was sitting up next to me, frowning. “I didn’t mean to. If I’d know you were going to go that way…geez, Em. Never lean into your opponent’s dominant side. It’s one of the first things I taught you.”
I touched my lip again. “Ow. Guess you win that round for real.”
“I never win. Not with you.”
I looked up at him in surprise. He was no longer frowning. Instead he wore a look of resignation. “You get the best of me,” he said. “No matter how far away I go or how many times I fight, I cannot beat you, even at your worst.”
It took a moment for his words to sink in. When they did, I realized I could say the same about him. He had me and I had him and fighting was pointless because we were just trying to defeat ourselves.
He reached out and wiped some of the blood away with his thumb. I caught his hand and held it, letting my lips brush against his battered knuckles. I closed my eyes, dreading the moment when he’d pull away.
He didn’t.
“I know I kept the truth from you about many things,” he said, “but I am Lev, much more so than King Hugo. That’s a formal name, handed down through generations. Hartwig was my mother’s maiden name and Lev was her pet name for me. Even now I hear it in her voice. Do you know what it means?”
That one hadn’t been covered in any of my lessons. I shook my head.
“It means lion,” he said. “A mythical beast famed for ferocity and courage. I thought that’s why she called me that, but lately I’ve come to realize there was another reason.”
One of the quirks of having lived in two separate worlds was learning that some of the common beasts of one were but legends in the other. Linaeve had named her son after a creature that didn’t exist in Faylinn anymore. “In my world, the lion is said to be the king of beasts, but a single male lion is only as strong as the females in his pride.”
“Exactly,” he said with the ghost of a smile. “She must have seen it coming. My life has been shaped by strong women—Mother and you and Chloe and Othella and Florrie Finbarr. I used to resent it. I am the king. I’m the one who should be changing the world, but it’s not my place. Rae the Gnome told me so.”
I sat up in surprise. “You went to see Rae?”
“A frivolous trip, as far as my people are concerned, but she told me some things I needed to hear.”
“What else did she say?” I asked.
His smile vanished. “She confirmed a theory I had about Seraph’s Tear. There is a cure.”
Dispelling the curse around Seraph’s Tear didn’t strike me as a high priority with everything else that was going. “That’s…good. So, what is it?”
A cry rang out through the forest.
Startled, I froze. Lev did the same. We stared at each other in bewilderment.
It came again. It was a pitiful wail—the cry of a child. It’s heartbreaking tremor echoed like the call of a ghost through the night.
Lev sprang up and shot silently into the tree-tops. I got to my feet slowly, listening again for the sound.
There came a thud behind me and Lev whispered, “There are strangers coming this way.”
I turned where I could see him. “Enemies?”
His narrowed eyes were slits in the darkness. “Maybe. They are near. You can see them from the treetops. It looks like they’ve been following the creek upstream.”
“What do we do?” I asked.
“We must warn the resistance,” he said, spreading his wings.
The cry came again. In any other place the sad sound would have aroused pity, but in the darkening forest it stirred fear of the unknown.
Lev drew a sharp breath. “Hold out your arms.”
I did as he said. He hooked his arms under my elbows and flew up into the canopy of tree branches. We were just beyond the border where the tidal wave had leveled the forest, so we still had plenty of cover.
He stopped and hovered midway up a tree. The toes of my shoes found a solid branch so I settled my weight on it.
“There,” Lev said. He pointed to a trail on the other side of the stream.
I had to strain to look. My nighttime vision was nowhere near as sharp as his.
“There are four people,” he said. “I see a Brownie woman, a man and a couple of children.”
I made out the hunched figures toiling down the path. “If there are children they can’t be enemies!”
“So you’d think,” he said. He didn’t sound convinced.
I could finally make out the faces of the bedraggled travelers. The man in front was small with a coat of furs and a hat. Behind him came a Brownie woman with two children. One of them limped along at her side, sobbing.
“That’s Trapper Toussant!” I said in excitement. “And that’s Natty and…only two of her kids, it looks like. I know those people! They’re from Feegman’s Boot!”
“Shhhhh!” Lev hissed.
Behind me I felt his body go tense. His wings drew up tightly. His breath came in rapid puffs on the back of my neck.
“What is it?” I whispered.
“They’re not alone,” he said. “Look. Further downstream, in the brush.”
My stomach turned and I almost threw up. Cape-clad figures flitted through the shadows, trailing the wretched party from F
eegman’s Boot.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Chloe’s breathing grew uneven despite her attempts to stay calm. A search had taken them from one dark, empty room to another. Now they found themselves in a hall where the air was sour and the floor crackled beneath their feet like dry bones. In the deepest reaches of her soul Chloe felt that something wrong had happened here—a crime against nature, a blasphemy against all that was good or right.
Othella sparked her source crystal into creating a halo of light for them to see by. There was not much to see: bits of broken glass, blackened walls, abandoned tables, nothing more.
“What is this place?” Tobin asked.
Othella did not answer him immediately. She wheeled herself further down the hall. Since she carried the only light, the others followed close behind her.
“Ah,” she said as the crystal’s glow illuminated an opening with warped bars in the front. It was a cell. The core of the bars was made of sylph-forged metal that stood firm, but the outer layer of iron had blistered or melted so that all the bars had the look of half-used candles. Othella cast her light through the bars to look inside.
Violet and Chloe both screamed. At the back of the cell sat a charred skeleton, still in shackles chained to the wall.
He wasn’t alone. They saw that there were cells all up and down the hallway. Each one held the remains of prisoners. The chained corpses were all charred as the first, though some had bits of hair or melted skin hanging off their bones.
Chloe thought she’d be sick. Violet buried her face on Othella’s shoulder and sobbed. Tobin covered his mouth with one hand and looked away from the ghastly corpse.
“I know where we are,” Othella said in a strained whisper. “This is Helm Bogvogny.”
Chloe looked back at the skeleton chained to the wall. She tried not to gag. “What happened? Fire couldn’t have done that!”
Othella shook her head. Her lips were a thin white line. “Not fire. Alchemy.”
Tobin gasped. Violet lifted her head in surprise.