Forgotten - Kingdom Gone Book 3, page 6
“What will happen to the child?”
“Miriam will see that she is taken care of.”
Miriam and Hadja would. Farine knew enough of her maid to believe that. No child would suffer on Hadja’s watch and, for the straggly girl, she was grateful. For herself, she felt only a hollow in her stomach, an ache that would take more than friendship to ease. For alongside the understanding that her world had been painted for her benefit, Farine felt the gnawing hunger blossom. She wanted to know what was real…and what wasn’t.
She needed to hear the truth, and there was only one person in her short life who’d given her that. He was a stranger, a User who, no doubt, had his own motives. He scared her more than a little, and like all things magical, sent a little shiver of excitement up her spine as well. Farine smiled for Hadja, but her head was full of the bi-colored eyes of a man she’d only spoken to once, a man she now prayed was still somewhere in the castle she thought of as home.
Chapter Seven
Voices woke her. Payne stirred slowly, foggily, and inhaled the strong must of old straw and stale sacking cloth. She might be in a barn, but the wind riffling her hair suggested open spaces. She’d been abducted, darted and somehow moved. Had Malcolm touched her? If he had, he’d managed to survive it, because his voice reached her ears even though he spoke in a hushed tone. He was close by, and someone had put her in a cart.
She opened her eyes without shifting position. Still, she could see the rough board wall, only two planks high, and the dark shadows of a landscape beyond it. A foreign landscape and a wash of stars overhead. At least those were familiar. The straw prickled, and she tried to move naturally, adjust her position to hear better and yet not give away her waking status.
The voices clarified once her ear rolled out of the cart’s prickly padding.
“Can you help her, father?” Malcolm, the rat bastard. Had he taken her to his home, then? How far could they have come? She supposed the strength of the drug they’d given her would determine that. The stars looked the same, but the trees arching over the cart were twisted and scrubby—nothing like the brush topping her temple peak, nothing like the short pines curling over the seaward end of the Shadow Ridge.
“Magic is a foul enemy, Malcolm. To use it for one’s own ends is a cry against nature.”
“We know all about your philosophy, father.” A woman entered the argument, and Payne remembered that hostile tone, the snap to her words and the prick of the dart that had pierced her shoulder.
“I see.”
“Can you help her or not?” Malcolm’s voice was softer, urgent but with undercurrents far more polite than his partner’s. He likely had experience smoothing over her rough edges. She, however, sounded far closer to the cart than he did, and Payne guessed if she made a move, it was the blonde bitch she’d have to deal with first. Damn. She could run fast enough, but to where? Also, if they bartered for the help she suspected, could she risk fleeing from the chance to see if it worked?
“I will do my best. It is for this very service we have positioned ourselves, to remove magic’s vile taint upon our Kingdoms.”
“I got news for you,” the blonde snarled, closer even than before. “There isn’t much left of the Kingdoms anymore.”
“And magic is to blame for that, surely. Once it has been fully ejected, our people might rebuild to even greater glory.”
“And I suppose you’ll be—”
Malcolm interrupted her. “We’d be in your debt, father. If you could help. And I believe removing a curse would serve your purposes as well?”
“We are called to destroy all magic, but also to educate about its evils.”
“Great.” The woman took Malcolm’s hint and played nice, until she poked her head over the wagon side and saw Payne staring back. Then, her expression darkened and her eyes flashed malice. “She’s awake, Malcolm.”
Her face fell into shadow as she leaned over the side, and behind her Payne could see the building, a glowing white affair topped by one enormous spire reaching toward the stars. Light came from the ground, from a fire or torches, and it made the building glow, threw the shadows deeper and longer than the moon might. The latter wasn’t visible, but the glowing building, the weird structure of the spire gave her a stab of fear, brought home just how far away the temple and the life she knew might be. She sat up, meant to bolt for the wagon’s end, but the blonde woman reached right out and shoved her back to the straw.
She didn’t die, either. She didn’t blacken and turn to dust, didn’t waft out of existence at all. Her nasty grin deepened at Payne’s horror. She nodded, exposing white teeth.
“You touched me.”
“How do you think we got you into the cart, dullard?”
“How?”
“I’m not a man, am I?”
Payne’s chest constricted. Had a woman touched her before? She couldn’t remember, but the place on her chest where the woman’s hand had landed still seemed heavy, as if the pressure remained. She glared back at the blonde but, inside, her resolve thinned and faded. Malcolm and his partner didn’t just know about her curse. They knew more about it than she did.
“Where are we?”
“A chapel.” Her assailant’s eyes narrowed. She hadn’t expected compliance, and Payne thought perhaps she was disappointed that they hadn’t had more of a struggle. “The zealots have a way with breaking magic.”
“All right.” Payne turned her head slowly. She sat at the head of the cart. A box seat rose above the bed, which had been stuffed with the loose straw that still clung to her hair and to her woolen skirts. On the far side she could see the shadows of lumpy hills and more of the scrub trees. To the other side, the vile woman jumped down from the wagon, still grinning, assured that she had the upper hand. The building had been built at the base of another hill, and its dark curve lifted almost to the spire’s tip. She couldn’t see much, couldn’t get her bearings or find the Shadow Mountains from here.
She would likely run in the wrong direction.
“Can you hear me?” Malcolm hollered to the wagon but didn’t come any closer than the far side of the fire. Beside him, Payne could make out the wiry form of a shorter man, dressed in a robe that glowed as whitely as his pointy home.
“Of course.” Payne kept her eyes on the new man, this “father” who looked nothing like his son. Zealot, the blonde had called him. He looked small to her, thin and less powerful than the black-robed man who’d tried so many times to break the silver curse around her arm. Tried and failed, and now, her captors placed their faith in this little man that neither of them liked in the least. “They can probably hear you for miles, Malcolm. You’ve managed to abduct me easily enough. Did you plan on keeping me with only this skinny girl for a guard?”
His brow lowered, but even across the distance, she could see his smile. It lifted the mustache at one corner. His partner didn’t smile at all, however. She growled softly, and Payne showed her teeth in return.
“Is she possessed?” The father didn’t sound confident either. He sounded like he’d prefer to run back into his odd house and lock the door.
“No.” Malcolm answered for her. “But she’s under someone’s influence.” He leaned down and whispered in the man’s ear.
Payne couldn’t hear what he said, but his accusation already had her prickling. Someone’s influence. She stood up, and the blonde woman only laughed and let her climb out of the cart. She stayed close at hand, however, standing far nearer than Payne was used to or liked in the least.
“Come on, then,” the woman whistled to her like you’d call a dog, grinning a demon’s expression in the firelight. “Show the man your pretty jewelry so we can leave his infernal presence.”
She flipped her gold hair over her shoulder and walked away. The fire crackled and smoked. Malcolm and “father” stood waiting on the opposite side. The girl became a retreating back, long hair swinging free to her waist, leather pants showing under a tunic that only reached the middle of her thighs. In clothing that indecent, the girl could catch her easily if she ran. Her long skirts would keep her as captive as the drug had. Payne might spring back to the wagon, pray the sagging draft horse in the traces would obey her, but she hadn’t a clue how to drive or what magic might encourage the beast to flee.
And always that whisper of hope teased her. What if this man could free her from the armband? What if this weakened, white-robed hater of magic had more power than it seemed?
“Sariah,” Malcolm warned. He shifted as if he might move but thought better of it and stayed put.
“She’s not running, Mal.” The blonde didn’t bother to look back. “Trust me.”
He wasn’t convinced enough to stop fidgeting but, unlike his partner, Malcolm had a healthy respect for her curse. He wasn’t coming any closer, and the man beside him looked even more nervous. Payne fixed her attention on that one. The other two meant nothing. She’d escape them the first chance she had, after their father worked his un-magic magic.
“You can help me?” She took a step closer to them, followed the nasty woman, keeping her eyes only on the father’s face. “You think you can break my curse?”
“I do.” He straightened a little, and the answer had some force to it, some whisper of conviction. “I am happy to try.”
“You don’t look happy.”
“I am called to serve.”
“Serve what?”
“The eradication of all magic in the Kingdoms.” He waved his arm to the house, the white-spired building that was smaller by far than the tiny keep she’d come from. One room only if she had to guess, unless you could get up into that spire somehow.
“I don’t like the sound of that.” She stepped forward again, and the woman, Sariah, put out her arm.
She stood beside the fire now, on Payne’s side and facing Malcolm. Whatever look she gave him had his eyebrows lifting. No smile, and eyes like flint staring back. “That’s far enough. If the father can help you, it will have to be at a distance.”
“He means to rid the world of magic.” Payne spoke to Malcolm, even though she had to peer over his partner’s arm to meet his gaze. “All magic? What happens to those who use it?”
The father spat on the ground.
Payne imagined the temple, the man in dark robes who lived in pursuit of anything with a trace of magic to it. Had he searched farther and farther, been gone longer and longer, because men like this father had destroyed what he sought? “What about the Gentry? The magical creatures?”
“We will drive them into their pockets where they belong.” On that point, the man had no hesitation. “Most of them hide there already.”
“But why?” She heard the growl in her own words, and read the warning on Malcolm’s face. He wanted her to play nicely too, to woo the father even though she’d have bet he hated the man’s ideals as much as his partner did. Eradicate magic? They’d have to destroy the Gentry to do that.
“Magic destroyed our world,” the father said.
Payne looked around pointedly. A broken world Malcolm had said, and yet here was his lovely white house. The hills still stood. The trees still grew. “It seems to be doing all right.”
“Perhaps we should tend to the curse first,” Malcolm said. This time, she heeded his warning and bit her tongue. “Show the father your band.”
His smile returned, easing her initial spike of rebellion at taking orders from him, the reminder that she’d been abducted. She shoved forward, right to the edge of the fire beside Sariah and thrust out her left arm, peeling back the length of her shift’s sleeve with her right hand.
The silver flashed in the dancing flames. Sariah side-stepped away, despite her immunity to the curse. On the far side of the fire, Malcolm fought the urge to move back, as if she might leap across and put hands to him. He held position, but Payne guessed the sheen of sweat at the edges of his polished expression had little to do with the fire’s heat.
The father held his ground better than any of them. Probably because he had no idea what he was dealing with. The pale shadow of hope she’d been nursing in the wake of Malcolm’s conviction teetered now on the look the father gave her band. His brow furrowed. He sniffed once and showed not even an inkling of the fear that he should have.
“Well there,” he said. “Oh yes. I see.”
Except he didn’t. He couldn’t see what even her barely trained and inept eye could. The father couldn’t see magic, and the aura of darkness that clung to her silver prison completely evaded him.
“I know exactly what to do with that.” He lied, and if Malcolm and Sariah realized it too, they made no comment. “I’ll just have to fetch my things.”
He walked to his house and vanished into the interior. Beyond it, a low shed made a black square against the hillside. A tall shape shifted beside this, and Payne remembered Malcolm’s words. We have horses and supplies. Horses, he’d said. And only one pale nag was hitched to their cart.
“This is the best you can do, Malcolm.” She shifted her gaze from the second horse quickly and hoped it had only looked as if she pondered the father’s front door. “This man who knows less than a turd about magic?”
“He isn’t the answer,” Malcolm said. “Only a possibility. We passed this way looking for you, and he claims he can break any spell.”
“He can’t even see one.”
“Give him a chance.”
“And then what? On to the next charlatan? And maybe along the way, you have an enemy or two that I can deal with for you, a little justice I can deal out in exchange for your help?”
“I liked her better when she was asleep.” Sariah shared a look with Malcolm, one Payne couldn’t interpret beyond the fact that the wench was not pleased with her.
“Sariah.”
“Can’t I just dart her again?”
Payne opened her mouth to answer, but she clamped it shut just as quickly. The woman, Sariah, flashed a glance to the cart, just enough of a look to give herself away, and try as she might to cover it up with a snort and a toss of her irritating head, Payne read its meaning clearly enough. Her darts were in the wagon. Her belt was bare but for a small wallet and a soft pouch that couldn’t hold much of a weapon. Malcolm had a sword on his, sheathed at the moment and on the opposite side of the fire, but then, he didn’t want her injured, could hardly bring himself to get close enough to use the thing if he did.
Payne smiled casually, shrugged and turned back to the father’s door before she let her triumph show on her face. A horse waiting, and she could sprint fast enough in these skirts provided Sariah was the least bit distracted. How to manage that, however, she wouldn’t have time to contemplate. The door to the white building opened, spilling candlelight into the yard. The horse snorted and stamped, and Malcolm cleared his throat.
Before he could ask, the father spoke. “I am ready now. I have everything I need.”
Chapter Eight
Farine went looking for her User and found an elf instead. It was hard not to in her father’s house, hard to move about without tripping over the stately men wearing wispy clothing over pale skin with even paler tattoos tracing mystical lines all over it. This particular encounter, however, served Farine’s purpose. Mastral Weredewell would know if the man she sought were in the castle. He would know where, too. His observations of the comings and goings in her father’s court were complete.
“Good afternoon, Princess.” His slender form dipped into a stilted bow. His head fell forward enough for his long hair to swing with it, silver-tipped black that hid his face for only a second before he tossed it back again.
“Hello, First Mage.”
“Mastral is acceptable, child.” His nostrils flared slightly, reminding her of the unicorn. She looked away from his face. Her eyes traced the line of a vine tattoo that curled down his neck and over his right shoulder before vanishing under his silky garment.
“Thank you.” She couldn’t bring herself to use the man’s name, no matter how many times he offered. She couldn’t like him, either, though her father had all but ordered it. Nor could she decide if it was the way he still called her “child,” the way his bows felt like he was play acting, or the way her father kept him far closer than he did his daughter that bothered her the most. “I wonder if you might assist me today?”
“Her highness has need of me?” One sliver eyebrow lifted, and the amusement in the elf’s words rang against the stones. She’d met him in the stairwell that led to his workroom, had assumed if her father was hiring Users that he would also house them in Mastral’s tower.
“My father has been interviewing Users today.”
“He has.” The elf straightened and narrowed his eyes. They ranged from storm gray to pure blue depending on his mood, and now they settled somewhere between, cloudy, but still hinting of azure. “I’m certain it’s nothing to concern yourself about. Leopold tells me you were disappointed by the Tinker’s unicorns.”
Farine bit her lip. It looked pouty, but she’d learned it gave her a moment to think. What would Mastral do if he knew she no longer saw his Rosy Glass? He’d tell her father, for one thing. Would they cast another spell, put her back into the influence of illusion? “It scared me.”
“Did it?”
“Yes.” She’d chosen the correct response. His eyes softened again and he looked over her head, back down the stairs toward whatever business he felt was more important than catering to her whishes. “They’re larger than I expected, and the beast was wild and poorly trained.”
“I’m sure the princess made the correct decision then.”
“About the Users.”
“What’s that?” He snapped his attention back to her— narrow eyes, dark gray. “It’s nothing to worry about.”
“I’m not worried.” Farine laughed, soft and girlish because that was what he expected. “I only wanted to know if father hired a particular one and where I might find him.”
