Soren grunted, started unstrapping the bedrolls from his back. “Well, if the bogeys are going to follow us, we might as well camp right here. Where I can see them coming.”
Mirabelle looked up at him, and then deferred to him with a nod. “The imp won’t like it.”
“As it happens, I don’t give a damn what it does or doesn’t like.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
MIRABELLE GUESSED the village would have a good water source, and they found a stream, running clear and clean, a little way beyond the path they had nearly taken earlier.
Soren stood watch over her as she knelt beside it, dipped her head, and let the water’s icy fingers tug at her unbound hair.
She was shivering by the time she was done, but the hair at the back of her head was no longer matted with blood, and her scalp was blessedly numb, although the headache caused by the blow still thumped on, in time with her heartbeat.
She knelt a moment longer on the river bank and squeezed the water from her hair, watching Soren from behind the thick curtain of it that fell across her face.
He’d seemed big and dangerous when she’d met him, his gaunt face and haunted eyes frightening on such a broad, strong frame. He’d been handsome, even beautiful, but in a harsh, forbidding way.
If she’d met him under normal circumstances, she would have been afraid to approach him. And she would have been the poorer for it.
He had saved her life; risked his own life without hesitation to protect her.
He was someone anyone would be proud to call friend.
And she knew now, far more than she had when she’d woken in William’s cell, how much it would have cost him to stay behind in that dungeon with her.
And yet, he had.
She wanted to ask him to stop risking himself for her, although she knew enough about him to realize it would be better to never say it.
He’d thrown himself so fearlessly at the forest bogey and she didn’t think he knew how badly injured he’d been.
She’d heard knights often didn’t realize the extent of their injuries straight after the battle. Soren had stood, swaying like a drunk, battered almost beyond recognition.
His right arm had been broken—she shivered as she recalled the strange angle of it. His ribs had been broken and she was sure they’d pierced his lung, the way he’d struggled for breath.
She knew he was bleeding inside, too, had felt it as her sky magic washed over him and healed him.
She used sky magic like an earth magic witch.
Her father had hated that in the beginning, then came to embrace it, exalt in her difference, because using sky magic to heal people usually did more harm than good.
She hadn’t told Soren when he’d asked her if she’d healed herself, but the truth was, when she used sky magic on herself, that was the only time it acted like true sky magic, the rest of the time, when it was for others, she was able to give it an earth magic twist.
The consequence of her father’s meddling.
She was grateful for that meddling, now. Soren would be near dead if she hadn’t healed him.
She didn’t plan to tell him, though.
He didn’t need more reason to take risks on her behalf, or think himself more indebted to her.
The debt had been wiped clean many times over today.
“You ready?” Soren stepped closer, the worry clear in his voice, and she twisted her hair into a rope and tossed it over her shoulder, held out her hand and let him pull her to her feet.
They stood very close, neither moving, breathing each other in, her hand still tucked into his.
Then a shiver of cold wracked her body, and he stepped back, pulling a blanket from the pack on his back and draping it over her shoulders.
He wouldn’t meet her gaze, as if doing so would be dangerous.
She shivered again. This time, it wasn’t with cold.
“Let’s get a fire going in the clearing. The bogeys won’t come near one of those.” His voice was lower than usual, and Mirabelle nodded, head down.
He hefted the small pot they’d brought with from the tree-house, now full of water, and balanced some firewood under his other arm.
As they walked, Mirabelle collected sticks for the fire as well, almost giddy with relief that she had something to do with her hands. They both had almost more than they could carry by the time they reached the clearing in front of the cottages.
There would be a conflagration tonight.
They had left the bedrolls where they intended to set up camp.
As Mirabelle set her wood down, she saw one of the bedrolls was missing and the other looked as if someone had tried to cut it with a blunt knife or scissors.
Soren dropped his wood with a clatter and then turned slowly to face the house the imp had taken for its own.
“Enough is enough.”
He set the pot down with a thump and strode across the clearing, leaped up the front steps and was through the door before Mirabelle could react.
She crouched down to check the damage on the bedroll, and as she knelt, the stick she’d begun to think of as her staff was suddenly under her knee, digging into her kneecap.
She winced and then from within the house she heard Soren’s voice, low but unmistakably menacing, and the thin whine of the forest imp.
She looked up at the gargoyles, and the one closest to her gave an evil wink.
Her fingers curled around the staff, and as she got a good grip the cottage door suddenly slammed shut and from within the house, the imp let out a high-pitched cry.
“Soren?”
The same sinister silence that had fallen just before the first time Soren had stepped into the house settled over the clearing, and Mirabelle rose to her feet, staff raised in front of her, and slowly swung round, sure she would find a forest bogey right behind her.
There did seem to be something lurking in the shadows at the edge of the clearing, and for the first time, she wondered why the bogey who grabbed her earlier had hauled her toward the imp’s cottage.
Wouldn’t it have dragged her deeper into the woods?
She kept her eye on the hulking thing by the trees and took a backward step toward to the house, toward Soren. She didn’t have the strength yet to fight again with sky magic and panic fluttered and battered against her chest.
Her foot caught on one of the sticks she’d collected for the fire, and she bent to pick it up.
Soren had said fire frightened the forest bogeys.
She didn’t have enough energy to call sky magic like she had before, but she needed hardly any to light a piece of wood.
Blue sparked from her fingers, and the tip of the stick burst into flames.
Then she turned and ran up the stairs, calling Soren’s name.
* * *
The imp hadn’t been pointing beyond the houses when it had told them where the bogeys were, Soren realized with a terrible clarity, it had been pointing at the houses themselves.
It had tried to tell them, in its way. Tried even, he would concede, to get them to leave.
But they hadn’t, and it had been forced back into its role as bait.
It had scuttled to the back of the room, and jumped onto the table in the kitchen area when he’d started shouting, had even taken up a pair of scissors and waved them at him, but now it was quiet and utterly terrified.
It was staring past him into the room beyond, big eyes wide in its pointy little face, and he knew without a doubt a forest bogey was in there.
He should have thought through what had happened earlier more carefully, asked himself why the bogey who’d taken Mirabelle had dragged her back to this cottage.
There were two of them, the imp had said.
So the one was in here, and the other must be outside again, going for Mirabelle.
The thought of her in danger or hurt settled a cloak of cold determination over him.
Not again.
He took the moment the bogey seemed to be giving
him, dug in the pocket of his trousers and pulled out Rane’s fire stick.
He didn’t think he’d get more than a second.
He leaped toward the curtains, touched the stick to them, and launched himself away, just as the bogey slammed into the wall beside him.
The cotton caught alight, and the bogey made a terrible roaring sound as it spun away from the flames.
The imp threw the scissors at him. “Mine! Don’t burn it! Mine!”
Soren dodged the bogey again, this time leaving the wall behind him in flames, so that when it tried to ram him, it had to stop short. It staggered back.
It screamed at him, in rage and fury, and then rammed through the closed front door, smashing through the thick wood as easily as an axe through fire kindling.
Soren ran after it, but the imp got there before him and he tripped over it and fell through the doorway.
The bogey was waiting for him, and his fall saved him from a savage swipe.
From his position on the ground, he saw Mirabelle standing on the porch stairs, holding a stick with a flame burning at its tip, and she touched it to the bogey’s back.
It turned, the look of pitiless violence on its face robbing him of breath. It leaped from the porch toward Mirabelle, and as he pulled himself up, fire stick held out, it smacked both her staff and the stick from her hands, scooped her up in its strange, almost ghostly arms, and ran behind the house.
He launched himself off the porch, but sharp fingers snagged at his shirt, slashing him.
He turned to the imp with a snarl, but it hopped back, hands up. “Stop fire, and me tell you where it goes.”
He hesitated. He had a feeling he’d find nothing behind the house. No more than they had after Mirabelle had blasted the bogey the first time. “If you’re tricking me—”
“No trick.” It leaped from foot to foot. “Save house.”
He heaved himself back up the stairs and ran into the burning front room, through to the bedroom beyond.
Their missing bedroll lay on the bed, along with two ratty-looking blankets. He grabbed one and smothered the flames on the wall, pulled down the burning curtains, threw the blanket over them and stomped the fire out.
“Where are they?” He walked toward the doorway where the imp stood, fire stick in his hand. If Mirabelle was hurt, he would burn this place to the ground.
The imp poked its head into the cottage, made a sound of distress at the destruction.
Soren leaned down, grabbed it by the throat and lifted it to eye-level. “Where?”
It made a meal of it. Gagging and struggling against him. “Don’t like you. Don’t like.”
“Don’t care. Where are they?”
“Will tell! Put down.”
He put it down, but kept his hands loosely around its neck.
“In cellar. Down there.” It pointed to a trap door in the kitchen, the first time Soren had noticed it.
“How are they getting in from outside the house?”
“Tunnel. That’s how they came in beginning. They don’t like the clearing. Don’t like open space.”
“The one who grabbed Mirabelle the first time didn’t have any trouble taking her across the clearing.”
The imp shrugged. “When they have prey, maybe they a bit braver.”
Soren lifted the blanket off the curtains, and grabbed the scissors the imp had thrown at him earlier, cut the unburnt tops of the curtains off, and rolled them into two tight balls.
“Any lamp oil?”
The imp drew back, outraged. “No. Burn. House.”
Soren gave it a steady stare. “My friend is down there, and you know this house isn’t yours while the bogeys are living in your cellar. Either I kill them, or chase them off, or you might as well leave here anyway. I’ll try not to burn down the house, but no promises.”
It scampered to the door, hands over its tiny, pointed ears, stopped at the threshold, and then turned. It lowered its hands slowly and pointed to a cupboard. “Don’t like you. At all.”
Soren opened the cupboard, found an old oil lamp. There didn’t seem to be spare oil, but there was a little left in the lamp itself.
He carefully poured it out equally onto his two balls of fabric, held them scrunched in one hand, his fire stick in the other. With the hand holding the fire stick, he hooked his fingers into the ring set into the trapdoor, braced himself and hauled as hard as he could.
The door didn’t move.
“Is it locked from below?” He honestly would kill the imp if it was.
It shook its head. “Stiff. That’s all.” It sniffed and rubbed its nose with the back of its hand. “Pull harder.”
Soren bared his teeth at it, and lifted the ring again, twisting it, and it turned in his hand. He could hear the mechanism click open below.
He looked up at the imp, but it stared back, with no sign it knew the trick to opening the door, and he forced himself to be fair and admit that it would never have had the strength to open it, anyway. It may have tried and decided the trapdoor was stiff, not realizing the ring needed to be turned like a handle.
He braced again, put everything into pulling it up, and it came faster than he anticipated, flying back and slamming into the floorboards with a crack.
He touched the fire stick to one of the balls of fabric and jumped down the hole, ignoring the ladder completely.
He landed well, knees braced, and saw, by the light of his fireball, that both bogeys were in the cellar. They cringed back from the firelight, their shadows jumping wildly—so like the stuff they were made of, it was difficult to know where their shadows ended and they began.
Mirabelle was bound against the wall beside him, held in place by roots that came out from the earthen wall itself, crisscrossing and looping around her so that she was completely immobilized. Even her mouth was covered.
He stepped in front of her as the first fireball began to burn his fingers, threw it at the bogeys and lit the second.
He could sense their panic as they realized they couldn’t get to Mirabelle without going through him, and then the fire caught one of them, and as it burned, it twisted and writhed like a leaf in a camp fire.
The stench was incredible.
The second one screamed at him and Soren threw his last fireball straight at its face.
He stepped to the side, and began touching his fire stick to the roots that bound Mirabelle, and they shivered and then retreated, one by one.
As the ones around her chest pulled back, she took a deep, shaky breath, then coughed because of the terrible smell and smoke, and he realized the roots had been crushing her.
The second bogey was burning, now, and it threw itself at a small hole in the far wall, crawling toward the tunnel on hands and knees.
It disappeared inside, but Soren could still see the glow of the flames as it burned, and thought it may have collapsed.
Something blocked the weak light coming from above, and he saw the imp peering down at him.
His first, cynical thought was that if it could, it would slam the trapdoor down on them, and leave them in the dark, but it was rubbing its hands in agitation, and he decided he was being too harsh.
He ignored it for the moment, knelt at Mirabelle’s feet and burned roots as fast as he could, and at last she stumbled forward.
“Come here. Come here.” He lifted his arms and she fell into them. He swung her into his lap, tucking her head under his chin.
She felt right there.
“I thought . . .” She was barely able to whisper, and he saw her neck was covered with thin welts where the roots had gripped her.
He fisted his hands in her shirt, trying to press her closer to him, and wished he could burn the bogeys all over again.
“Can we go?” she whispered into his ear, and he breathed in the scent of her hair, lifted her off his lap and stood. He scooped her up again, holding her against him with one arm as he climbed the ladder with the other.
“They’re gone?” The im
p did a little dance forward and then back.
Soren set Mirabelle gently down, slammed the trapdoor shut to cut off the dreadful smell, and then lifted her again. “They’re gone.”
He strode into the bedroom, scooped up the bedroll and walked out of the house, the imp trailing behind him, wringing its hands.
“You sure?”
He turned to look at it, Mirabelle nestled protectively against him. “I am sure.”
It seemed to sense his meaning. That he wouldn’t be turning his back on anything, wouldn’t be leaving himself vulnerable if Mirabelle wasn’t completely safe, and it relaxed.
“That’s mine,” it said, pointing to the bedroll he’d taken back.
Soren set Mirabelle down on the bedroll already laid out, flicked the one he’d retrieved beside it, and then turned to face the imp, hands slightly away from his sides.
It looked at him, blinked, and then scurried back inside its house.
As it went, Soren could hear it singing under its breath how much it didn’t like him.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
KAYLA AND RANE
K ayla rode a ball of wild magic with Sooty curled around her feet, skimming over the tops of the trees of the Great Forest. She lifted her face against the breeze and wished she could go faster.
She smiled at herself.
Things had changed in her life if traveling with the birds was slow.
The problem was, she had never been to Phon.
When she’d rescued Soren from Jasper’s stronghold, she’d been able to use wild magic to move herself, Sooty and Soren to a clearing she knew of, and she’d been able to use a ball of wild magic created by Eric the Bold in his dungeon as a doorway back into that dungeon.
But to use either of those ways again, she needed to have been to Phon, or she had to find wild magic that had been created by Andrei Wolfsblood. Given the hundreds of balls of wild magic that surrounded Ylana’s cottage now, that task would have taken longer than walking to Phon on foot.
The Silver Pear (The Dark Forest Book 2) Page 12