Surreptitiously, she slid one down into her palm and lifted it to her mouth, tucking it in her cheek. He had pulled off her boots and was now tugging off her trousers. She forced herself not to flinch away. Lastly he removed her small clothes with a sharp tug. Cloth ripped and he dropped the tatters of cotton on the ground. He looked her up down.
“The gods will be pleased,” he said, like he was evaluating a painting or a piece of jewelry.
He untied her and pushed her into the spring. The water was frigid and numbed her raw feet almost instantly. From a pouch on the bank Saradapul pulled a handful of red crystals. He dampened them, then began to wash her from head to toe. The crystals abraded her skin, rubbing her raw. Blood seeped through the wounds and turned her scarlet. Combined with the spell, she almost fainted, holding on to consciousness by sheer stubbornness. He reached for her hand and began sliding off the poisoned rings. She clenched her other hand, her body swaying from the deluge of pain. It was now or never. She was out of time. She’d have to hope she could surprise Atreya.
She clumsily pushed a catch and a needle sprang free. She turned it to her palm. Slowly, quietly, with no fuss at all, she put her hand on his shoulder and pressed, scratching the needle across his skin and raising a thin thread of blood. He looked up at her. His mouth opened and then he stiffened. His body spasmed and he splashed into the pool at her feet. She eyed him blearily. Something inside her prodded her to run. Where? She staggered up onto the bank and turned in a confused circle. Fire burned her skin where the red crystals had scraped her and her head spun like she was drugged. Her teeth clamped on the gold ring in her mouth.
She took a step and her leg turned to pudding. She fell to the ground. All around her the earth moved in undulating waves. The crystals must have drugged her too. Her stomach lurched and she vomited. There was little in her stomach but bile. The ring fell to the ground as she vomited again. She drew a breath and the air seared her lungs. She coughed and knives stabbed through her chest.
Blossoms of black agony bloomed around her throat as she was hoisted to her feet. Atreya held her rope. His yellow eyes gleamed at her from a face that softened and ran like wax. She struggled against his hold, trying to get away. But she found herself falling to the ground. The world whirled in a storm of colors and shapes. The earth swelled and diminished like it was breathing. Ants boiled inside her body. Snakes wriggled through her bones. She shuddered and convulsed. Pain exploded and exploded again, swallowing her in a tornado of fire.
A hard claw clamped her arm and pulled her upright. Atreya’s voice rumbled through her like a stony avalanche. “Saradapul was one of Uniat’s favorites. You will suffer long between his teeth before he swallows you.”
He dragged her back to the pool and finished methodically bathing her with the red crystals. Margaret was lost in a melting world of sensation. Fear pulsed hard inside her, but she was helpless beneath Atreya’s impersonal ministrations.
When Atreya had finished, he dragged her back to the middle of the summit meadow. Margaret had little sense of what was happening to her now. She was a ball of pain. All her senses slid away from her. She was the center of a writhing, melting world. Nothing made sense anymore.
Her last thought as her mind melted into the cauldron of pain and chaos was that she’d failed. She should have killed Atreya when she had the chance.
Chapter 19
Keros swore loudly in the mountain silence, then clamped his teeth shut as the sound echoed up the ravine. He was on foot. His mare had come up lame a day ago and he’d been forced to turn her loose. On foot, his progress was too slow. The Jutras hardly seemed to rest. Keros was muddy and exhausted. His legs ached and his feet were wet and blistered. Still he did not stop. He’d been within a few hours of his prey when he’d abandoned the mare and had been falling behind ever since. His link to Margaret told him that a few hours before the Jutras had halted, and he was determined to use the time to overtake them.
He hoped he was not too late.
He was panting by the time he reached the top of the ridge. The ground dropped away and rose again. Ahead was a collision of three peaks. The middle one was lower with a dull, flat top. He frowned. A dull red mist swathed the top of it. Gauzy crimson folds swirled as if on a patiently building storm. All around it, the light patterns darkened and slowed like dying embers in a fire. A stillness fell over the mountains and even the wind quieted. The air tasted of blood.
In that moment, a jolt shook Keros to the heels of his feet. He jabbed the walking stick he’d made into the ground for balance. Grasping his illidre, he searched for the link to Margaret. He found only Carston. His mouth went dry and without thinking, he began running down the slope in jagged leaps and bounds.
Near the bottom he fell and rolled into a grassy gully. A moment later he was up again. He fought his way out of his pack and dropped it, snatching up his walking stick and beginning the steep climb to the summit. He wound back and forth, skidding and slipping on the wet grass and mud, bracing himself with his stick. He found a vein of rock and followed its snaking path back upward. His ribs bellowed as he fought for breath. Dawn was breaking. The sun would rise in less than a half a glass.
At the top he slowed. The circling curtain of mist blocked his path. He could see through its billows and what he saw stopped his heart.
Two slender poles rose from a brilliantly lit spell pattern. They were narrow at the bottom, widening slightly midway up before tapering to sharp points at the top. Both were a dark red. Stretched between them was Margaret. Her hands had been impaled on the points and her body hung limp. She was naked, her skin coated in a film of blood. Faintly Keros could see the pattern of her lights—leaf green, velvet blue with specks of brilliant orange, pink, yellow, and scarlet. She was alive. But barely.
Movement caught his eye. A Jutras priest was dancing widdershins around the edge of the spell circle. He wore a breechclout. A red sword was clutched in his hand, the tip of it turned in a wicked hook. His steps were intricate as he stamped out the dance. His body swayed and shimmied up and down and side to side as he twisted and turned his arms in a brutal, beautiful cadence. His lights were brilliant gold. They swarmed like a horde of bees and were heartbreakingly beautiful. As the wizard priest danced, he chanted. Majick built in the air. Keros had to suppress the urge to duck down and hide. Something heavy and terrifyingly large swept searchingly through the night. The priest was calling it.
Inside himself, Keros felt the stir of the presence waking. Or rather, it no longer felt separate. In the last days it had melded with him somehow. It felt like an extra limb, or a new sense. It stretched and he felt more somehow. Everything was cast into sharper relief. It felt entirely natural—a gift of the gods rather than an invader. He drew a breath and let it out slowly. He hoped it was a gift. But there was nothing he could do about it now. He turned his attention back to the scene before him.
Cracks of light gleamed from the two poles. They traced the rivulets of Margaret’s blood as it trickled from her hands. The Jutras sped his dance and now he began to spiral through the spell. The edges rose up as he passed. When he reached the middle, he’d complete the sacrifice. Keros was certain of it. He was out of time.
He reached for his majick. It was thick and syrupy and did not want to answer him. He hauled with all his might. There was no time for finesse. He needed to smash the Jutras and his spell with brute strength. Caught in the middle of the shattered spell, the priest would not be able to defend himself.
Taking a breath, Keros stepped into the red mist.
It closed around him like a swarm of stinging wasps. He shuddered from the sudden sweep of poison pain and pushed forward. The air was dense and fibrous, resisting him. He swung his arms and shoved into it like it was a hard wind. Step by step he closed the distance.
The sound of the Jutras priest’s chanting grew louder. It vibrated through Keros’s bones. He shook his head. The words felt familiar somehow. They glided over him like petting hands, t
railing a biting mixture of venom and pleasure. The sensation spread, sinking down through his skin to his muscles and bones. He trembled, caught between ecstasy and anguish. He closed his eyes, swallowing hard.
When he opened them, he found himself inside a dancing ethereal world of shining stars. They spun around him, each pulsing and twinkling with rainbow colors. Entranced, he reached out a hand and caught one. It flared inside his fist and when he opened his hand, he found that it had sunk into his palm. His hand glowed red. A moment later yellow light veined through the red. It flowed over his hand like a net of roots, then spread up his arm. He felt it sinking inside him, digging deep into places he hadn’t known existed. It didn’t hurt. Quite the opposite. It burned with a pleasure so intense that it nearly dropped him to his knees. He felt a welcoming inside him as if two halves of a whole came together, even as something else inside him clawed back with painful fury. A fullness swelled inside him, then drew into a tight hard ball. He gasped and struggled for breath, unable to move, every part of himself pulling taut until he thought he would snap apart. Grains drifted past. His heart ached and blood thundered in his ears.
Then suddenly, there was a give. Slowly the hard knot released. No. It blossomed. He felt the spears of it unfurling like a thistle flower. He sobbed as majick flooded him. Except—it wasn’t majick. Not like he knew it. This was different. It felt hot and raw. It hurt.
It gouged at him, demanding release. Tears rolled down his face and he clenched his arms around himself as agony shredded him. He groaned, the sound torn from him. Not knowing what else to do, he reached for the strange majick to thrust it from him.
It surged. He blindly flung it away. A dozen paces away it exploded. Fire roared upward into the night. The relief was temporary. Instantly he was filled again. Keros clenched his hands, holding it, his gaze fastening on the Jutras priest. Whatever this power was, he could use it.
He took a step. There was no more resistance. He strode forward through the firefly stars and red mist, stopping outside the spell circle. It floated, enclosing Margaret and the Jutras priest in a rising sphere, the top drawing closed like a mouth as it rose in the air. When he reached the center and Margaret, the Jutras would cut her open and close that mouth, completing the spell. Keros only had moments if he wanted to save her. Still, he hesitated. He’d kill her if he just blasted the priest and the spell. Even if he managed to keep his strike from hitting her, the backlash from the disrupted majick would roast her for certain.
An idea struck him. He grasped his illidre and reached for the web spell inside it. As soon as he did, he was caught up in maelstrom of power. It crashed against him like a churn of Chance-driven waves. He staggered beneath the battering pressure. Instantly the majick thistle inside him thrust thorny spines through him. Where the two powers touched, red lightning crackled and snapped. It sizzled through him. His body convulsed, his arms twitched, and his legs quaked.
Suddenly he understood. Somehow—he had no idea how—he had become the battleground between two powers: Jutras blood majick and Crosspointe’s sylveth majick. He was trapped between horror that Jutras majick could take root in him and the gut-deep primitive urge to survive.
He drew back hard on the spines of the thistle, trying to pull it back inside himself. It didn’t move. Blood majick. He bit down hard on his lip and blood spread across his tongue. Majick flared like the sun and, with it, a physical pleasure. He grappled with it, driving it back to the center thistle. He hammered at it until it gave and compressed down into the pulsing flower.
But the waves of sylveth majick continued to pummel him. He clenched his hand around his illidre, straining at the wild majick. As soon as he turned his attention from the thistle, it opened again. He pushed at it and from the corner of his eye he saw the Jutras priest make his final circuit around the spiral. He stood in front of Margaret, his legs splayed, his arms outstretched, his head thrown back to the sky.
Keros didn’t think. He shoved to his feet and snatched at all the majick in reach—blood and sylveth. He forced them together, forging a long lance of power. It rippled and bubbled, resisting. He brutally smashed down on it with all his need, demanding obedience. To his shock, the majicks answered, bending to his will. He didn’t wait. He whipped it through the Jutras priest’s spell, aiming to hamstring the man.
The strands of the spell cut apart like a spiderweb. The sphere collapsed with a burst of sickly orange light. Wind roared. A cyclone spun up out of the broken spell. Pebbles, twigs, and dirt whirled on the spiraling wind. It shrieked with elemental fury. More than that, Keros realized, feeling a brush of fear and pain as the winds expanded and picked at his clothing. The spell was fed by Margaret’s suffering as well as her blood. Suddenly she flung her head back, her spine arching. The tendons in her neck corded as she screamed. Orange majick played over her, winding around her in a tight funnel at the core of the cyclone.
Fury blazed in Keros. He drove the lance at the priest. The Jutras leaped aside, chopping his sword down. The lance shattered. Thunder exploded and the ground heaved. The broken majick lashed back on Keros. Pain spiked through his skull and he clutched his hands to head. The thistle of power opened and its spikes thrust outward. Sylveth majick seized him in a meaty fist and squeezed. He sucked in a raw breath as he fought to bring the two majicks under control again.
The Jutras priest had fallen to the ground. Blood trickled from his mouth as he turned onto his stomach and tried to push himself up. The backlash held him pinned. With a mighty thrust, the priest found his feet. He staggered, buffeted by the majick winds. Cuts and welts rose on his skin as debris slashed across him. He still clutched the hilt of his broken sword. Now he sliced the jagged end down his forearms. Blood ribboned down his skin. His yellow eyes glowed as he pulled in power.
Keros gritted his teeth. He couldn’t let the Jutras gather back the power of the spell or he’d be unstoppable. Without thinking, he flung himself into the maelstrom.
Instantly he was assaulted by pain, horror, and terror—Margaret’s. Tears ran down his cheeks and he sobbed for her, with her. But there was no time. A bolt of raw majick struck him in the chest. He staggered back as fire seared him. Instinctively he grabbed for sylveth majick and felt its cooling waves smother the heat. The priest struck him again, this time harder. Keros held his sylveth shield, but knew it couldn’t last. He wasn’t strong enough and sylveth majick didn’t answer him the way it used to.
He didn’t let himself think about what he was doing. He opened himself up to the whirling majick of the broken spell. For a moment he was lost. He felt Margaret’s pain. It was unbearable. It roared through him and he screamed. His body went limp and he felt himself falling. No! She’d suffered, but he could still save her. If he was strong enough.
He pulled himself back up, but nothing could stop the shudders that quaked through his body. He pulled Margaret’s pain close. The thistle inside opened wide and glowed brilliant white as it fed. Now Keros reached into the chaos of the winds, siphoning away the majick. Another bolt of majick hit him. His sylveth shields held. He felt the balance between the two majicks as they settled into an uneasy peace inside him. All around him, the wind died into preternatural quiet.
Once again he fashioned a lance of the two powers, holding it firm in his hands. The priest saw the weapon and blanched, stepping back and bumping against Margaret. He turned, then turned the hilt of his broken sword in his hand. He raised his arm to slash open her throat. Keros didn’t wait any longer. He swept the lance down, slamming it into the crease between the priest’s neck and shoulder. It severed flesh, bone, and sinew and drove him to the ground. Blood fountained. The blood majick in the lance absorbed it and fed it down into Keros. The sylveth majick fluttered and recoiled, but Keros ruthlessly welded it back to the blood majick.
He lifted the lance and whipped it down again, chopping through the priest’s neck, severing his head.
Silence fell, broken only by Keros’s harsh breathing and Margaret’s fa
int moans. He dismantled the lance and absorbed back the majick before stumbling to her side. Her head dangled limply backward. Her throat was circled with a solid ring of black bruises. Her entire body from head to toe was scraped bloody. His stomach lurched and bile flooded his mouth as he examined her impaled hands. Majick still lit the poles where her blood ran. He felt the pulse of it.
He put his arms around her and lifted, reaching up to remove her hand from the pole. She made a high whining sound. Her eyelids flickered and stilled. He tried again, but his strength was quickly draining away. He swore.
“Can we help?”
He started and jerked around. Ellyn and Weverton stood behind him. Both were white- faced and grim beneath a layer of grime. Weverton shoved passed him to Margaret’s side, his expression turning cold and vicious.
“Hurry,” he said.
He lifted her, and Ellyn and Keros released her hands. Weverton carried her away from the poles and the dead priest, laying her on the grass. He struggled out of his coat and wrapped her in it as Keros crumpled to the ground, unable to stand anymore. His head sagged to his chest and black shadows smothered the edges of his vision. His head spun.
“Can you heal her?” Weverton asked.
Groggily Keros looked up. But it was Ellyn who answered. “I will try.”
He sat dazed as she began her work. He shut his eyes. The ground felt like it was rising and falling like the waves of the sea. Off to the side he could feel the steady pulse of the poles. What were they? Nothing good. He had to take them down—destroy them. He smiled mordantly at himself. He could barely sit up, much less stand. How was he going to tackle the poles? But Ellyn was here now. Together they would manage it.
He felt the surge of her majick and the thistle inside him twisted and opened. He pressed it closed again, feeling the prickle of it piercing him deep inside.
The Hollow Crown: A Novel of Crosspointe Page 25