“He touched a magical gem and disappeared. My information is the gem may have been one of the more powerful sorcerers’ shortcuts to a safe place, like a home or a stronghold. I’ll be checking Nuen of Harness, Gerald of Halakan and Eric the Bold, as well, but I came to Andrei first, and found he had left before my brother disappeared. Soren could have ended up inside the house and can’t get out because of the wards.”
“Well, I’m happy to say I can help you there.” Vik put out his hand, and Rane took it. Let himself be lifted to his feet.
“You can?” He brushed dried grass from his hair and his shirt.
“Andrei’s wards are linked to a device of his making in my castle. When someone tries to breach them, they chime. And you are the first to disturb them in more years than I can count.”
“That’s how you knew I was here.” Rane took stock of who he was up against.
Vik was older than himself by about eight years. He was well-built and had a blond beard, cut close to his face. There was something friendly and open about him, as if he would be an affable companion over dinner, but there was more than a hint of steel in his eyes. He would be ruthless if he had to be.
He was accompanied by ten soldiers, not in metal armor but in thick leather breastplates for faster maneuverability, all well-armed with bows on their backs and a sword on their belt.
None of them had drawn their weapons. Yet.
“I’m interested in that list of sorcerers you just reeled out. There are many sorcerers around, why those, in particular?” Vik studied him, his tone cordial, but Rane was more than aware of the soldiers all around him.
Vik smiled at him, acknowledging the silent intimidation with what looked like good humor.
What did it matter, anyway? Surely Ylana wasn’t the only one who knew who the most powerful sorcerers were? He was grateful enough to know Soren wasn’t here, that he could move on from Phon to Halakan without delay.
“Those four are the most powerful sorcerers in Middleland. The four who are building their power to take each other on.”
Vik raised his eyebrows. “That is very interesting. I should like to talk to you about this a little more.”
Rane shook his head. “Much as I’d like to accommodate you, your majesty, I need to find my brother. If he isn’t here, he may be with Gerald of Halakan, and that’s where I need to head next.”
Vik tilted his head. “Why Halakan first? Nuen of Harness is closer, surely? Even Eric the Bold would be closer than Halakan.”
Rane gave a nod, decided on the truth. “But I have information that makes it more unlikely he’s with Nuen or Eric, so Halakan is the best alternative.”
“You seem to have a lot of information.” Vik flashed a look over Rane’s shoulder, then focused back on him. “While you’ve obviously worked out who I am, you have me at a disadvantage. Who are you?”
Rane hesitated. He wasn’t just Rane De’Villier any more. He was also betrothed to Princess Kayla of Gaynor. On her father’s death, he’d be the king of Gaynor, and one day, this man’s equal.
He gave a bow. “Rane De’Villier, your majesty. At your service.”
“I’m afraid, De’Villier, that you may regret those words.” Vik’s bright blue eyes were slightly regretful.
Rane frowned, and then turned to look behind him.
Five men had drawn their bows, and their arrows were pointed straight at him.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
SOREN AND MIRABELLE
The crying cut out, and Miri breathed a sigh of relief.
The door was pushed wide open, and eventually, Soren shimmered back into sight, standing just inside the doorway.
There was a gentle tone to the conversation he was having, and she thought she heard the sound of a child.
She relaxed a little, the tension that had grown as the crying had increased seeping away.
She took a step back onto the path to join him, and noticed the gargoyles at each corner of the house for the first time.
The one facing her, from the corner of the house Soren was in, was a strange creature, long, with scales carved into its body, and a mouth full of teeth open in a scream.
The mouth seemed to widen into a sick smile as she watched, and she blinked. The gargoyle blinked back.
She was drawing sky magic to her before she even knew it, pulling it down, shaping it in her hands, when the world exploded into pain.
She fell forward, realizing in some dim, badly-lit corner of her brain that she’d been hit on the back of the head.
She tried to put her hands out to break her fall, but she couldn’t manage it, and found herself face-first in the dirt and pine needles on the forest floor.
Something grabbed the back of her shirt and jacket in a large fist and half-lifted her as it straightened. It dragged her, head lolling, toward the house Soren was in.
The world kept wavering in and out of focus, and she blinked, straining to see Soren, her lips working to try to call out to him.
Whatever held her, the smell of it swamped her senses, a chill, damp mustiness that choked her throat.
Miri thought she saw a shadow move at the corner of the house, and remembered, as she was dragged up the front steps, about the gargoyle. She struggled again, trying to get out of the implacable hold, when something invisible barreled into her captor.
Soren.
The hand holding her let go, and she slammed into the porch floor. She squinted in the afternoon light, and then regretted looking.
It was a nightmare. And it was nothing.
Her eyes couldn’t get a good fix on it, a gloomy black-green haze, as if the shadows in the forest had come to life.
A head turned to her, and for a long, agonizing beat eyes, blank and no different in color to the rest of it, discernible only by the slight indents on its face, looked straight at her, and she felt as if she had been buried alive in the dank soil of the forest.
Soren must have struck it again, because it turned its attention away, and Miri tried to pull sky magic down again.
She’d lost her walking stick on the path when she’d been hit, and she realized she’d already started thinking of it as her staff.
Well, it wasn’t her staff, she didn’t have one, and she would have to do without it.
She managed to get her feet under her and lift up into a crouch. As she put out her hand to steady herself, her palm came painfully down on a piece of wood, and, distracted, she looked at it.
It was her stick.
No time to wonder how it got here. She grabbed it, pulled as much sky magic as she thought she could without leaving herself too exhausted to fight again, and waited for her chance.
“Soren, I need to see you.” She leaned back against the porch railings, and tried to make out what was happening in front of her.
The monster was struggling with Soren, grunting, but it had a curious ability to flex its body, to contract as it received what she guessed was a blow.
Soren made a grunt in response as the thing swung its massive arm in a semi-circle and struck him with the sickening sound of rotten bark hitting flesh.
She could feel the sky magic she’d pulled straining against her hold, dissipating as she tried to contain it. She needed to use it now, or it would be wasted.
“Jump back,” she shouted. “Now!”
She hoped he’d listened to her, but right then the thing swung round with a guttural grunt, heaving something off the porch.
She guessed it was Soren, that he was out of range, and released the sky magic in a flare of blue light. She hadn’t had time to think of something clever, and with no idea what it really was she fought, all she channeled into it was brute strength, knocking it off its feet.
It smashed through the wooden balustrade and off the porch, and Miri dragged herself up, pulling more power to her as she stumbled after it.
But when she got to the jagged edges of the balustrade and peered over, there was nothing there except the ball of wild magic left ov
er from her spell, and that drifted away from her, and disappeared among the trees.
* * *
Soren felt the moonstone slip from his fingers as he lay, trying to suck air into his lungs, on the rocky, barren clearing in front of the house.
The area looked more desolate now than it had before.
It had been a lure.
He wondered if the wood imp in the house had been part of the game, or simply caught up in the net unwittingly.
He patted the ground, closed his fingers around the moonstone again, and swallowed back a scream of pain. At least a few of them were broken.
He forced himself to stand.
When he got to his feet he was swaying.
He felt as if he had been hit by thick branches in a high wind, then pummeled by heavy logs rolling over the top of him.
It hurt to breathe.
Mirabelle was on her feet now, peering over the edge of the porch, and he dropped the moonstone back in his pocket, so she could see him.
She turned, let out a gasp and ignored the stairs, jumping down onto the ground and running toward him.
She left a faint trail of blue light behind her, and he guessed she had drawn power to herself for a second blow to the forest bogey. She reached him, and lifted her hands to his face.
“It hurt you.” She touched his cheek, and he became aware that the skin was raw, that his lip was split, and that his left eye was swelling shut.
The touch of her fingers left a tingling sensation, and then something rushed over him in a cold, prickly wave, and he took his first deep breath without pain.
He looked down at his hands, but the bleeding knuckles were completely healed.
Mirabelle seemed strangely unable to hold his gaze and he noticed a small ball of wild magic just beyond her shoulder, which bobbed away, like a child’s balloon, and was lost in the woods. She had just cast another spell.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I couldn’t hold it anymore, and I didn’t have time to ask you.”
He lifted her chin with a now unbroken finger. “Thank you.”
She gave a shaky nod. “When I pull it down like that, if I don’t use it, it dissipates, and it still takes a toll on me anyway.”
She was white, and he realized the first time she was shaking with exhaustion, not nerves or fear.
He pulled out a honey sandwich from the satchel and she took it with both hands while he carefully kept watch.
If she didn’t eat, he could see she would fall over.
As the sandwich disappeared, he saw her return a little to herself, and her eyes suddenly widened. She grabbed hold of his forearm, and slowly, she looked over her shoulder.
“What is it?” He followed her gaze.
“I forgot about the gargoyles.”
He looked up at them, but they were the same as they had been before. Or . . . the one closest to him seemed to smirk as he looked at it.
He frowned.
“That one moved, just before that thing hit me and dragged me to the house.”
He knew she must have been hurt by the forest bogey, but not exactly what happened. He stepped to the side of her, checked her head. There was blood matted into her hair at the back.
“Were you able to heal yourself?” He gently touched her.
She flinched. “Sorcerers don’t heal themselves. They can try, but applying your own magic to yourself . . .” She tilted her head away. “It doesn’t always end well. Most sorcerers would never try it, unless the alternative was death.”
That explained why Nuen had needed the golden apple so desperately after he was burned in the fire Soren had started.
Only the healing power of Eric the Bold’s stolen golden apple could save him.
Soren grasped her head in both hands. “Shh. Stay still.” He tried to brush her hair aside to see how bad it was, but she hissed in a breath.
“When we get to a stream, I’ll wash it. But Soren, where is that thing? What is in the house? What about the gargoyles?”
She was right. They had little protection here, but the forest bogey could be anywhere, could follow them easily enough.
He looked back up at the house, but Mirabelle shook her head.
“I’m not going in there. Not with the gargoyles.” She hunched over, hugging herself.
“The friend won’t come in?” The imp from inside the house peeped out from behind the door, and Mirabelle drew in a breath of surprise.
“She’s concerned about the gargoyles.” Soren waved his hand at them, and the imp scuttled out, and peered upward. The gargoyle bent a little and opened its mouth wider.
The imp shrieked, and scrambled back. “Nasty things. What are they doing on my house?” Its tone was a mixture of outrage and fear, made all the more bizarre by the flower-patterned dress that billowed as it danced about.
“They’re part of the gutters, to channel rain off the roof, but I’ll admit it’s a little strange to find them in a tiny village in the middle of the forest.” Soren wondered who could have done the work. Perhaps a workman from Therston or Phon, used to working on townhouses, who’d made a new life in the forest and applied his skills to the woodcutters cottages.
Mirabelle crouched down, curling a hand around his leg to steady herself. He could feel her fingers tighten against his calf muscle and resisted an urge to slide his own hand onto her shoulder.
“I had a friend once, who looked like you,” she said to the imp, now at eye-level to it.
It went still. “Name?”
“Kvisti.”
It ran long, twiggy fingers over its skirts. “Never heard of him.”
Mirabelle shrugged. “It’s a big forest.”
“So it is.” The imp’s eyes narrowed, and Soren saw a slyness flash within them. “What happened to the nasty things?”
“There was more than one of them?” There was no safe place within miles with a forest bogey around, but Soren decided standing in the middle of the clearing, where he could see anything coming and have a little warning, was probably not the worst choice.
“Two,” the imp said, with spite.
“That’s bad for you as well as us, surely?” Mirabelle asked it, softly.
“Doesn’t want me. Wants you.” It smiled. “Maybe takes you, leaves me alone.”
“Maybe.” Mirabelle agreed. Her serenity obviously threw the imp off its stride, and Soren hooked the satchel over his shoulder and held out his hand to Mirabelle.
“Let’s try to get as far as we can from here before nightfall.” The sun would set in an hour and a half. He’d have considered staying in the village, of barricading themselves in one of the houses, but Mirabelle was right, the gargoyles were a worry, and the imp was treacherous and untrustworthy.
They’d have to take their chances on the path.
“Will you be safe?” Mirabelle took his hand and slowly rose from her crouch.
Flustered, the imp fiddled with its dress, plucking at the uneven, raw hem. “Got a house, now, I have.”
With a curt nod to it, Soren started toward the path at the far side of the clearing, Mirabelle’s hand firmly clasped in his.
“Wait.”
He turned, and saw the imp standing forlornly, hands clasped in front of it, head bowed. “Don’t you want to know where the nasties are?”
“Where are they?” Soren felt Mirabelle’s hand tighten in his.
The imp hesitated, scanning the clearing as if expecting to find someone spying on them. It looked up at the gargoyles and then away with fright. “What’ll you give me? Eh?”
Soren opened his mouth, anger sweeping over him in a hot, quick rush, but Mirabelle squeezed his hand and stepped hard on his foot.
“What do you want?” she called to it.
“Don’t know. Don’t know.” It skipped up to them, glee in every movement. “What you got?”
“I wish I had a ribbon for you, but I left all my ribbons at home,” Mirabelle said.
“Ribbon would be nice. What else?
What else?” It bounced eagerly on the balls of its delicate, thin feet.
Mirabelle opened the satchel on Soren’s shoulder and put her hand inside. “A honey sandwich?”
She held up half a sandwich, and Soren saw the imp’s eyes fasten on it with an unwavering stare that was almost hard to watch.
“What’s a honey sandwich?” It took a step closer.
“Sweet. Delicious.” Mirabelle held it out. “Acceptable?”
The imp drew back suddenly, narrowing its huge eyes again, as if trying to see any traps or tricks. “What for the honey sandwich?”
“The place the forest bogeys are hiding.” Soren forced the impatience from his voice.
The imp looked up at him from under spiky lashes. “Don’t like you. Only like pretty one.” It fluttered a look at Mirabelle and she smiled sweetly back at it.
It gave a slow nod. “I tell you.” It held out its hand and Mirabelle gave it the sandwich.
It hopped a little way away, and took a small nibble of the sandwich and shivered, head to toe.
“Nasties are in forest.”
“Where in the forest?” Soren couldn’t keep the bite from his voice.
It gave another hop away. Smiled slyly and pointed toward the houses.
Soren clenched his fists when it didn’t say anything else. “That’s all you have to say?”
Mirabelle put a hand against his lips. The feel of it seemed to wipe his brain completely clear and he struggled to focus.
“Where exactly?”
The imp grinned and took another nibble. “Where the people are.”
Soren frowned. “What does that mean?”
“I think it means wherever we are, that’s where we’ll find the bogeys.”
The imp gave a sly grin. “They like people. They liked all the people here. So go away,” it suddenly hissed. “You brung them back. Go.” It shooed them. “I don’t want to be where you are.” It waved the sandwich at them, and scurried back into the house. Soren could hear its sounds of rapture over the food as the door slammed shut.
“The little bastard—”
Mirabelle laughed and he stared at her.
“I know. I know they’re absolutely awful. Kvisti was like that, too. Hard to get anything out of him, always on the take. Absolutely self-centered. But still . . .” She sighed. “That one was obviously starving, and that dress.” She shook her head. “Kvisti used to wear an old set of winter underwear I’d outgrown. There is something under all the bravado I can’t help feeling sorry for.”
The Silver Pear (The Dark Forest Book 2) Page 11