Forgotten - Kingdom Gone Book 3, page 17
“Malcolm has gone as well.”
“Malcolm? Where…”
“To battle, Fari. They’ve all gone.”
All gone. Malcolm had marched to war alongside an elf who also claimed her. An elf, a stranger, and her father approved. Mastral Weredewll had a hand in this. He’d practically told her, hadn’t he? When he held Kerrigan’s soul hostage. He’d forced her to agree to anything. He’d ordered her to obey. She growled at the box. It would bite her, whatever the elf had left on her bed. It would, and now Hadja was leaving as well.
“You’re leaving me too. You’re angry.”
“I’m only going to pray, Farine. For all of us. Maybe the Powers can sort this out, can help…”
“Powers! Not that, Hadja, not now. You think they can save us? Well, you’ve prayed to the Powers your entire life, Hadj. What have they ever given you?”
“I like to think they’ve given me wisdom.”
Farine snorted. “Is it wisdom to choose life under the Rosy Glass, Hadj? Is it wisdom to love my father?”
“No. But it is my choice.”
“Even now?” Her father was a liar and Hadja had to know it. He’d promised her to Malcolm, had promised her to Yedan too. Who knew what his intentions really were? He’d held her mother captive with magic, and now, he had men building a monumental trap in the bowels of the castle. That thing’s purpose could not be for any good.
“Even before the mirrors.”
That explained a little. Why should Hadja bother to break the spell, if she’d loved the man already? She’d still allowed others to be ensorcelled, Farine’s mother for one. But Farine couldn’t help think of how it must have hurt to love the king and give him away, to help force him on a woman who didn’t want him and then call that woman friend.
“What am I supposed to do?” It was reflex, turning to Hadja as she’d always done. At that moment, Farine was more frightened than she’d ever been. No lightning storm or imagined monster could have spooked her like the box on the bed and all that it represented. She longed to crawl into the maid’s lap and weep, but Hadja had a pilgrimage to make and, though she might love Farine, she’d always love her Powers more.
“Come back to us.” The maid whispered, but it was the wrong answer and it landed with the weight of a stone. “Stay away from that User, Farine. He means to use you somehow, to turn you against your friends and your family.”
“And when Yedan returns to carry me away, you’ll all smile and give your blessings.”
“Perhaps I can reason with the king.”
“No.” Farine lifted her chin and walked to the bed, directly to the black box. She lifted the lid and read the note inside. It lay across Yedan’s gift, but it was Mastral Weredewell’s writing, an echo of his earlier warning. Your father asks that you wear this, and I know you will obey him. “Yedan’s elves already fight beside my father. He keeps his end of the bargain as we speak, Hadja. My father must honor his promise.”
I know you will obey him.
Farine threw the note onto her coverlet and examined the silver armband. A simple, elegant wire coiled around a velvet interior. It was elvin made, exquisitely crafted and had a single line of sigils etched inside. Would they know that she could read it? Mastral might, but he would also know his threat would still resonate in her memory. She’d wear the thing or Kerrigan would pay the price.
“Help me, Hadj? Before you go?”
“Of course.” Hadja hurried to the bed. She kept her voice soft, but Farine heard the emotions brewing behind her words. “It will work out in the end, Fari. I promise.”
Farine lifted the armband and handed it over. She reached her arm out and let Hadja slide the ring over her hand and past her wrist and elbow. “Do you know what it says?”
“No. I only need to know one symbol, Farine.”
“Well, maybe someday you’ll want to know more.” The ring settled around her arm, hugging her bicep as if it were made for her specifically. The sigils were invisible when it was on, but she felt them just the same. No Man Shall.
Hadja stepped back and smiled faintly. She patted Farine’s shoulder and agreed without meaning it. “Maybe someday.”
When she turned and picked up her pack, Farine saw exactly how tired she was, how her love for a man who didn’t deserve it had worn her down like a smooth flagstone. She saw why Hadja defended him, even when he was very much in the wrong.
“Who is the girl in our garden cottage, Hadja?”
The wide back stiffened. Hadja continued to the doorway, and she didn’t answer until she’d reached it. Farine feared she wouldn’t say anything at all. The answer she did give, as she left, was a dodge. It didn’t matter. It told Farine what she needed to know. It told her everything.
“You’ve a clever girl, Fari. You figure it out.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
“That’s it? Westwood?” Payne blinked at the town ahead. They’d stopped on a slight rise, and the road sank down and wiggled due west to the town they sought. “There’s nothing there.”
“The village used to sit farther north,” Neeta stood beside her. “After the war they rebuilt it closer to the ruins.”
“Ruins?”
“You can’t see much of it from here.”
“The trees,” Slipstone squeaked from the roadside. “They grew right over most of it.”
The trees did grow thickly behind the town of Westwood. Tall and dense, they crowded together in a clump just south of the crossroads where a tiny town sprouted. The other direction, every other direction, boasted ordinary sized and sparsely populated forest.
A few buildings stood between the short stone lines. Old foundations and a row of humble fields stretched to the south east. The white spire at the far end of town iced her pulse for a moment. She pointed at it. “They have a father in Westwood?”
“I believe a woman runs the church here.” Neeta answered. “She’s just as bad, though, and no friend to our kind.”
“It’ll be fine,” Slipstone said. “We don’t need to go all the way into town.”
“Don’t we?” Payne had thought exactly that. Now she scanned the grid of roadway and alley and tried not to imagine just waltzing in and laying hands on a few of the locals.
“There is smoke coming from the cottage.” Neeta fluttered and shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “The woman is home.”
They shared a look, and the imp grunted and gave a nod. They’d walked all day and though dusk didn’t threaten yet, it would by the time they reached the hill’s bottom. By the time they strode the flatland toward the edge of town, daylight would be waning. Payne looked hard at the cottage. It sat away from town in an overgrown patch of weeds and brambles. The chimney did, in fact, release a thin tendril of smoke. The woman was home. She hoped whoever it was had answers to go along with the smoke.
They started down and the trees played peek-a-boo with the town. Payne felt each step in her hips, and she stumbled over a rut more than once. Pacing her circle inside the columns hadn’t ached like days on the road did. Her bones missed the smoother path of her nervous circuit. Her companions, it seemed, were no more used to the travel. They limped and stumbled as well, and they slowed without any verbal agreement. Either the weariness or the proximity of the town pushed against their forward progress.
For her part, Payne felt Westwood approach on her shoulders and spine. She stooped by the time they reached the bottom of the hill and her steps dragged. Even the rumble of hooves on the road behind them didn’t break her trance. When the fiend shot upward and the imp scampered for the bushes, she only turned and stared at the oncoming riders.
Malcolm Fairbright hauled on the reins of his faithful mount, skidding to a halt in the road’s center while his partner trotted behind atop their draft nag, furiously kicking the poor rounded belly in an effort to catch up.
Despite his vow to retrieve her whatever the cost, their last parting at the pocket and her obvious health despite the arrow she’d taken, Malcolm paid her little attention at all. He twisted in the saddle while his horse snorted its protest. Malcolm snarled and let the reins go slack, let the beast dance a little while he faced Payne’s long-term, black-robed companion.
“Kerrigan Slate!”
“Fairbright.” The man whose name she hadn’t known showed no sign of surprise. He jerked his head toward the town and stepped farther into the road, closer to Payne. Closer than he’d stood in years. “What a surprise.”
“I should think you’d have expected me, User.”
“I did.” He took another dangerous step.
“He’s no friend of yours.” Malcolm spoke to her now, but his eyes stayed on him, on the man he called Kerrigan. “You can come the rest of the way with us.”
“Are you her friend, then, Malcolm? Really? Or was it you that dragged her into the world, that let her slip away and kill a man on the port road? Who was it that let her take an arrow and then lost her in the pockets and who was it that protected her for the last fifteen years?”
He growled the last. Fifteen. She hadn’t counted that many, but it felt like more, like a century he’d watched over her at the Temple. She knew it now, protected her, kept her from the hell of death and dust and snakes in her belly. And he knew about the port road, about the father. Had he been following her the entire time? Still protecting her?
“Bastard.” Malcolm’s hand went to his hip.
His sword sung free and his horse squealed at the same time the draft animal lumbered up beside it. The mounts danced around one another. Payne heard the fiend’s wings in the air above them. She watched Fairbright move. His arm lifted and his horse answered his nudge. It sprang toward Kerrigan.
“No!” She meant to place herself between them. She meant to warn him away, to chase him back. He’d always cringed from her, had always kept her a room away. Now he dove in to protect her. His arms spread and she saw his eyes, dark and wide. She saw him realize what they’d done. In defending one another, they’d risked his life. He stumbled, teetered at the edge of touching her. Payne tried to reverse her charge. She rolled to the side and felt his robes whisper against her cloak. “NO!”
Her scream echoed in a different voice. In many voices. She hit the road in the instance a light flashed, blinding, burning in a white fury backed by shouting. They all yelled now, now that they saw her evil exposed. She dug her fists against the road, scraping her knuckles and still grinding, grinding. The blood made snakes in the ruts, flowed and spread toward Westwood.
“He’s gone,” Neeta landed beside her, spoke so softly it woke her.
She looked up. Her hands were fire and death. The fiend watched her with a halo of sun-tipped trees outlining her silhouette. Her wings lifted and fell slowly. He’s gone. The others stood like gargoyles along the road. Like statues in her garden, vile and twisted. Malcolm and Sariah holding their horses and staring at their toes. The imp, holding his own knees and sniveling at the road’s edge.
Payne looked for the dust, for the pile of clothing and ashy death that meant her soul was beyond redemption. She wanted to run her fingers through him, to cake his life essence in her pores and use the power it gave her to put them all to sleep. There was nothing. Nothing remained of Kerrigan Slate.
“Kill me.”
Payne saw the fiend flinch from the idea. She shook her head fiercely, but there was a spark of understanding in her eyes. She might consider it, given time. Payne might be able to convince the woman.
“You didn’t do this,” Neeta said. “Not this one.”
The snakes coiled and hissed venom. Payne sat back on her heels and lifted her bloody hands, pressing them to her temples. She shook her head and tried to speak away the sound of her own guilt. “Then who?”
“I did.” The answer came from the roadside, from someone new. It came from the fat, old woman waddling out of the bushes. Her wrinkles moved like serpents. A shard of light flashed around her neck. Her voice cracked like the dry ground, and she smiled the devil’s smile. “I did it.”
Ý
Farine expected to meet the First Mage on the stairs, to find him waiting at the top or lurking behind a corner. She reached the hall unmolested, however, and found it empty. She paused outside the workroom door, reached her fingers to the armband and pulled it down and off. It dangled from her fingers, slick and shiny and somehow completely inappropriate.
If she wasn’t wearing it and Mastral paid them a visit…Damn. She spun it once on her wrist, let it flash and then pushed the thing back up and into place on her arm only to drag it back off again. She could squeeze it on under her sleeve. The fabric was loose enough, and if Mastral cornered her she would not be in defiance of his instructions at all.
The metal was cold against her skin, and she had to untie the wrist of her sleeve to slip the band inside. It was harder to work it up her arm. The fabric had made smoother going underneath. Now every hair fought against the thing. She managed to get it back on, tucked her sleeve back together at the wrist and pulled the drawstrings tight, though she couldn’t retie them with one hand.
Satisfied the armband was hidden, she opened the workroom door and entered Kerrigan’s domain. She didn’t take three steps however, before his head snapped up from the crystal he dusted. His brow lowered and his lip tightened.
“What are you wearing?”
Her feet stopped. She shouldn’t have bothered trying to hide the thing. “You can sense it from there?”
“It’s positively nasty.”
“I know.” She worked it down again and pried the thing out of her sleeve. “Look.”
She thrust the band out and stepped forward. Kerrigan took a step back. He held up his hands and shook his head.
“I don’t think I can.”
“What?”
“Put it on the table.” He skittered to one side as she approached. When she placed the armband on the table, he scowled at it from a distance.
“I can’t get near it. What the hell is it?”
“A gift.” Farine heard the pout in her voice. She poked at the ring with her finger. “It says, ‘no man shall.’ Which means?”
“That no man can touch it.” He laughed, but it sounded less like humor than disgust. “And no man can touch you while you wear it. I assume this came from your elf.”
“My elf?”
“Hmm. Hasn’t your father promised you to Yedan?”
“You know about that?”
“Oh, Mastral took great pleasure in making sure I knew it.”
“Why?”
“Can’t you guess?” He moved to the side, not narrowing the distance between the evil jewelry but circling the room instead. “Not even one guess?”
“I’m tired of guessing!” She picked up the arm band and let her anger focus on the jewelry instead of the situation. She hated it, as much as she hated her father, Yedan or Mastral Weredewell. Her wrist flicked out. The arm band hit the shelves and clattered to the workroom floor. “No one will tell me anything directly.”
“Farine.” Kerrigan, freed from the silver’s sigils, moved closer now. He approached her from the side away from the shelves and armband, and he kept coming until he stood beside her, until his breathing made her hair dance. “I will, Farine. Look at me and I will tell you directly.”
His voice had changed. She couldn’t read it and, when she turned to check his face, it was very close. His eyes sparked and her breath left her in a rush. Her heart seemed larger, louder than it should be.
“Guess now.”
“I…”
“The armband is for me, Farine. It’s meant to keep me from touching you.”
“Why?” She whispered it, held perfectly still.
Kerrigan’s mouth curled up at one corner, but only for the second it took him to lean in and kiss her. The workroom tilted and Farine threw her arms around him for support. Her skin warmed and tingled as surely as if she’d been enchanted. Kerrigan’s mouth was soft and hot against hers and his arms held her close while the kiss stole her breath away. Her lips parted. She tasted him for the first time and felt the tension in her middle loosen. The anxiety that had been clamped around her chest released her.
This was why she hated the armband, why she couldn’t answer for her father’s promises, couldn’t go with Yedan or Malcolm or anyone else. She loved Kerrigan. Loved him, and as if he heard her thoughts, he pulled back enough to breathe it into her hair.
“I love you, Farine.” His hand found her chin. He traced her jaw while he whispered in her ear. “I love you. Not for your blood or your body or what your father can offer. It’s you. Just you.”
“I love you too.”
He pulled her in tight and laughed. Farine snuggled into his arms and let her tears fall. The whole Kingdom was against them, and he was laughing in its face. Kerrigan wasn’t afraid of any of them, and if he wasn’t then she knew they’d be all right. He’d find an answer and they’d be fine.
“That’s good,” he said. “For a moment I thought you might actually fancy Yedan.”
“No.” She sniffed and laid her head against his chest. “But what will we do about him?”
“That’s a good question.” He stroked her hair and curled his head against her. “It is. But we’ll think of something. You’re sharp as a tack, my love. Together, we’ll come up with a plan. If we put our heads together, I don’t think anything can stop us.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The cottage stank of herbs and smoke. Payne followed the hag inside, didn’t care that the others remained behind. The space was cramped and full of junk. The rafters hung with drying weeds and every corner had a parcel or crate crammed into it. A miniscule kitchen lay to the left and to the right a hearth shielded a small fire.
The woman went straight, vanishing through a curtain into a second room. Payne moved to the fire and sat on the floor in front of the flames. She was still there, staring into the ashes when the woman emerged again. Her feet pattered against the boards, and she dragged something heavy, scraping it against the floor so that Payne looked despite herself.
