“Take it easy,” Jake said. “Breathe now, cry later.” When Aaro finally regained control, he handed him a canteen. “We need to get out of here. Ormand thinks you’re dead. He’d try to finish the job if he knew otherwise. We’ll find someplace to hole up till you can travel, then go to Heymish together.”
Aaro shook his head. “No.” He took another sip from the canteen. The rain was coming down harder now, washing the smoke and soot from his face, soaking through his shirt and cooling the burn on his arm. The fire had spread through the grass nearly to the creek on the other side. Now it smoked and started to die down.
Jake sat down in the wet grass and tilted his hat back on his head, creating a miniature waterfall off the brim. “No?”
“He killed my wife,” Aaro whispered, making Jake lean forward to hear him over the rain and the roar of the fire. He waved a hand around at the destroyed ranch. “What happened to our people?”
Jake didn’t respond, but his face did.
“Mitchell? Emrella?”
Jake shook his head.
“Heymish’s got nothing to do with this,” Aaro said, still at a whisper. After another sip of water, he went on. “This is between me and Ormand now. I’m going to destroy him.”
“Revenge is a fool’s mission.”
“You don’t have to help me.”
Jake sighed. He mopped water off his face with a wet handkerchief, smearing the soot and dust into streaks. “What you going to need?”
“A mask.”
Chapter 7
Rowan rode in silence, sandwiched between two guards in Ormand’s carriage. She hadn’t bothered to struggle against the ropes around her wrists and ankles. Nor had she bothered to speak, cry, or beg. Ormand had tried baiting her into a conversation. “I didn’t think you were the kind of woman to pout,” he’d said of her continued silence. She merely looked at him.
When they had met Aaro’s foreman riding out from town, and Ormand told him she was dead, one of the soldiers held a knife to her ribs. She didn’t speak then, either.
She watched the king, matching his stare, studying the faint lines around his eyes, the day’s stubble on his face. She compared him to his twin brother Heymish, and found him better looking, though nowhere near as gorgeous as Aaro.
Aaro again. Again, she ruthlessly forced her thoughts away. If she thought of him, she would see him curled on the floor, unconscious, his body jerking as Ormand’s guard kicked him. The same guard who now sat to her right in the carriage. Then she would think about the others. Emrella, and the young cowboy who’d tried to defend them, with bullets through their heads.
If she thought about Aaro, she would hear the gunfire and the clash of swords as the guards dragged her to the carriage, and Ormand’s quiet command to fire the buildings. Then would come the worst part. The imagining. Imagining the bodies charring in the flames. And Aaro. It would come back around to Aaro, and she would picture him with fire roaring around him, limp, as the house collapsed, and the lookout tower fell and buried him there.
Then she would remember him from before. How perfect he had been in every way. How completely she’d fallen for him. How…
She ripped her thoughts away as her eyes stung and her head pounded with the effort of holding everything back.
She returned her stare to the king, forcing the calm and the ice to return.
Ormand leaned back in his seat facing her and the guards, watching, as he’d been through their journey. “I admire you, Lady D’Araines,” he said finally.
Rowan started a little at the use of her married name. In truth, she hadn’t even tried the name on. Rowan D’Araines. She rolled it around silently. She could have grown to like it.
“You would have made a fine queen,” Ormand went on. “Even now you won’t acknowledge that I’ve won. You refuse to give me any kind of satisfaction, I suppose.” He leaned against the door, looking out the window at the prairie passing by. “It would have been satisfying, perhaps, to watch you weep. But not necessary.” He turned away from the window and met her eyes. His gaze traveled down to her neck, where the copper wolf pendant still rested in the hollow of her throat. “The truth is, I have won. Whether you acknowledge it or not.” He leaned forward and fingered the pendant, bringing his face close.
Rowan didn’t flinch, though her skin crawled as his fingers brushed her throat. One finger strayed from the copper, stroking her skin, soft as a breath.
“So beautiful,” he whispered. “I can only imagine what last night must have been like for my cousin.”
“How are you going to kill me?” Rowan said, breaking her silence. She didn’t have a bullet through her head yet, so she imagined he must plan on making her punishment more public.
Ormand sat back abruptly, and the skin at her throat tingled.
“I’m not. I have something much more interesting in mind for you. You’ll wish yourself dead. And death won’t be far off. But it won’t be by my hand.”
Rowan held his stare.
He chuckled. “It must be killing you. All of this.” He waved a hand around the interior of the carriage, encompassing the memories and images that rode invisibly with them. He shook his head. “Yet you remain regal. How I wish you could have been my queen.”
An hour or more later the carriage creaked to a stop, and Rowan raised her head and opened her eyes. She’d wearied of Ormand. His face, his voice, his words. So she had closed her eyes and shut him out. She wouldn’t allow the thoughts of Aaro either though. Not yet. She thought of Dustan, and Annalie, and wondered what they were doing. She wondered if Annalie had heard of her marriage, or if Dustan and the others were worried about her.
The carriage door opened, and Ormand stepped out, pausing to smooth his vest, then strode away. One of the guards got out. He leaned back into the carriage and dragged Rowan across the seat, putting her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
“Please!” Ormand called, turning from the doors of the palace to glance back at them. “Untie her feet and let her walk. Such indignity is embarrassing. I just rode in a carriage with that woman.”
The guard set her down and kept an iron grip on her arm while his partner cut the rope around her ankles, then grabbed her other arm. She walked between them, head held high.
Ormand disappeared through the massive, ornate oak doors, but the guards led Rowan a different way, along the ancient stone building and around the corner, where a shoulder height wall formed an alleyway between the palace wall and the drive leading back to the carriage house. A locked iron gate let them into the alley, and another led them down a narrow stone stairwell that seemed never to end. Their feet slapping against the stone echoed back at them in the tight space, until it dumped them out into the dungeon proper.
An involuntary shudder ran through her. For the first time since they’d taken her, she jerked against the guards. They both tightened their grips. The door behind her was locked. Her hands were tied. And she didn’t have any of her knives. She stopped struggling. If she got out of this, it wouldn’t be by kicking and screaming. So she kept her mouth shut and marched with the guards, even though waves of panic kept crashing through her till she thought she might drop dead from her heart giving out.
They passed a row of cells and a room with a heavy door standing ajar, where she glimpsed instruments of torture. She expected to turn aside, either into one of the cells, or even the torture chamber, but they kept walking. Silent. Only their footsteps echoed through the stone hallways, making her think the dungeon must be empty. Apparently Ormand didn’t keep his prisoners around long.
They left the dungeons behind, following a narrow corridor lit by candles mounted intermittently on the wall. After a time, Rowan realized it must be a tunnel, not a corridor, for they had walked far beyond the width of the palace, their feet smacking on damp flagstones. The walls were a haphazard mix of brick and stone, and they, too, glistened with moisture in the dim light. No doors or passages branched off, and the floor remained level
.
It must have been a mile that they walked before the tunnel ended against a single barred door. One of the guards lifted the bar and leaned it against the wall. The other escorted her inside, where he let go her arm, taking up position in front of the door.
“Well this is something new,” someone said behind her. She turned, her gaze skipping over the bookshelves, desk, and panels of mirrors that lined the walls till it reached the room’s occupant, a wiry little man with dark bronze skin and short white hair. He peered at her over top of wire-rimmed spectacles, reminding her instantly and achingly of Uncle Lance.
“I can’t say Ormand has ever sent me a young lady before.” His face creased into a thousand wrinkles as he smiled. This time he reminded her of the merchant woman she and Aaro had met at the market in New Town. The Shonnowan woman.
She hadn’t steeled herself, and the unbidden thought of Aaro choked her, blotting out her panic for a moment. She gasped, hunching over with the force of the tears demanding to be let loose. Her face twisted, and she drew deep, shuddering breaths. She mustn’t cry. Not yet. It wouldn’t be put off much longer, but for now, she had to keep herself together.
A muffled sob escaped, and she covered her mouth with her hands, still bound together with cord. She struggled for a moment, finally forcing herself upright, clearing the escaped tears from her face with her bound hands. Her throat still ached, but she pushed the thoughts of Aaro away relentlessly, raising her head and blinking at the little Shonnowan man, whose eyes were level with her chin. He peered up at her, his thousand wrinkles slanting into a frown.
“Fallen amuck of Ormand have you? If he has a weakness for anything, it’s usually for a beautiful woman. He doted on Embur, until she found fault with him in front of his advisors. What can you have done that he would bring you to me?” He pushed his glasses up again and scratched the tip of his nose, his frown deepening. “Worse, what is he going to demand I do to you?”
The little man sighed and glanced at the guard. He took Rowan’s elbow and led her gently toward the other side of the room, beneath a domed ceiling with a pyramid shaped skylight at its apex that let in weak daylight. Raindrops spattered the glass.
“Don’t talk much, do you? Hmm. You can’t bottle it up forever. But I do hope you hold out till… I just hope you don’t give him the satisfaction of breaking down.”
Rowan smiled faintly. “I’ve made it this far.”
He nodded, pulling her over to a bookcase at the far side of the room. Mirrors separated the bookcases, angled so they augmented the natural light. The little man reached up to put his hands on her shoulders, whispering, “Before the king comes, you should know that magic is never permanent. There’s always a way to undo it. I don’t know what your curse will be yet, so I can’t tell you how to break it, but there is always a way.”
“Curse?” A chill swept through her, beginning in the pit of her stomach, and so much worse now than the shiver she’d gotten from Dustan’s mention of magic two days ago.
The Shonnowan man pushed his glasses up and glanced at the guard. “Usually the breaking is directly opposed to the purpose of the curse. Whatever way in which it disables you, if you can overcome it, you can break the curse. I wish I had time to explain more. It’s a vastly complex system, with infinite variables, but whatever happens, don’t give up hope.”
Rowan reared her head back, staring at him, her lips parted.
“Oh, and another thing about curses. They’re never complete. You’ll see what I mean. The best craftsman in the world can’t render a curse without flaws, and I am nothing like the best.”
“What…?”
“Oh, be assured. If Ormand has you here, he’s got something unpleasant planned for you. I hope for your sake it’s not too unpleasant. But…I doubt it.”
She felt like the world was dropping out from under her. Magic? Curses? She’d only ever heard stories and gossip about such things before today. How could she deal with that?
The door opened, and the little Shonnowan man looked sheepish as Ormand strode in. His eyes went from one to the other of them, and the corner of his mouth lifted in a smile. “Rigall, at what point will you give up trying to help these people? You can’t win any more than they can.”
Rigall, the Shonnowan magician, peered at the king over his glasses, then pushed them up and looked through them. “I’ve stomped on every belief I ever held for you, King. If I cannot keep my faith, I must keep my humanity.”
Ormand flicked a hand in dismissal. “You realize, of course, that your efforts accomplish nothing but to ease your own, weak conscience. And that your folly doesn’t worry me in the least.”
Rigall glared at him, retreating behind his desk. “And my son?”
“Still ambling about the countryside wearing the body of a bear, so far as I know. You’ll be free to seek him and his cure the moment our project is complete, as promised. I am a man true to my word. I also have many things to attend to today, and petting your needy emotions is not one of them.” He grabbed Rowan’s arm and pulled her into the center of the room, beneath the skylight, glaring at the guard. “Do I have to do everything?”
The guard hustled from his post and dragged a stool over to Rowan, pushing her down onto it. He glanced at Ormand questioningly before he returned to his spot by the door.
Rowan felt goosebumps prickle along her arms. She had been working at trying to free her arms, but her wrists had been bound with strong cord, wrapped several times around and between, and tied much more securely than a thicker rope could have. She could barely even move her arms, let alone wiggle them free.
“And in the meantime, as ever, I am at your disposal,” Rigall said to the king, sitting down with a huff and flipping open a giant book. He perused its pages. “What is it going to be today? A tongue binding? Blindness? I hope not the foul odor curse. It took me a week to get the stench out of here when you demanded that one.”
“I should have taken your head for that one,” Ormand replied. “The results were disappointing, at best. And the other crippling curses never work out well either. People tend to find ways around them. The viper you made me the other day was also a disappointment.”
“Serves you right. The Shonnowa well know the danger of abusing the Gift. Only a fool would do what you’re doing. And just because you give a garden snake a viper’s skin, doesn’t mean it will act like a viper.”
“You’re a liar,” Ormand answered, ignoring Rigall’s retort about the viper. He strolled over and leaned against one of the bookshelves. “Your people have been using the Nawassa to their own ends for generations.”
“The Shonno-mara? They are fools as well.”
Ormand waived a hand in Rowan’s direction. “Shall we get on with it?”
Rigall sighed. “What do you want done to her?”
“Have you seen the pendant she wears? A gift from my late cousin, if I’m correct, and perfectly fitting. Turn her into a wolf.
Rowan squeaked involuntarily. A wolf! Was that even possible? She looked at the magician to see his response. He just looked weary, and sad. A new round of panic exploded through her chest, making her vision dance, and tingling through her numb fingers. She jerked against the ropes again, and only managed to wrench her arms. Thankfully Ormand wasn’t watching her. Somehow, it was important not to let him see fear. Defiance was all she had left. After a final look at the guard and the bolted door, then at the skylight a full story above her head, she sagged on the stool.
“I don’t want her going back to her old life,” Ormand was saying. “I offered her power, and love, and she defied me.”
Defiance. She could have laughed to herself, if her heart wasn’t beating loud enough to drown her own voice. She drew a long breath, and met Ormand’s eyes, and suddenly her fear broke. Her panic washed away like a candle in a flood. Whatever was coming, she couldn’t stop it. So she let her fear and her hope slip away together. My life is in Your hands, Almighty One, as it always has been.
“What you offered was neither power nor love,” she said, holding Ormand’s gaze and feeling only a fierce joy now in speaking the truth. “You bend the truth. You manipulate and you intimidate. Rigall is right. You are a fool, and someday you will know it.”
Ormand merely regarded her with one eyebrow raised. “Trying to comfort yourself?”
“No. I have no illusions right now. But you, for all your arrogance and condescension, you are the one falling for your own lies. You’ve become absorbed in creating your own reality, and you believe it’s true, and force everyone to play along. That’s why you hated Aaro. He wouldn’t play. You keep saying you’ve won, and you have. For now. But there will always be someone else—another Aaro—who won’t live in your false world. You’ll always have someone you have to destroy, and eventually the cost will be too great. You will have to face the truth for what it is, not what you make it. Then all that you’ve built, and all that you are, will be undone.”
“Well said,” Rigall muttered.
“Truly, it was spoken like a dying prophecy.” Ormand smirked. But the smirk slowly melted as they stared at one another for a long moment. He snapped his fingers at his magician. “Get to it.”
The little man shuffled out from behind his desk carrying a vial of green liquid which he shook before he uncorked it. He put his finger over the opening and upended the vial quickly, then dabbed his wet finger over Rowan’s pendant. He repeated the process and touched her forehead.
“My own blend,” he explained. “It helps to focus the energy I draw out of the air. It would be better if it wasn’t raining today. The more sunshine the better. Or moonlight. Depending on what you want the end result to be.” He glanced at Ormand. “It could make for a stronger outcome, but our dear king is always in a rush, and doesn’t seem to care when a job only gets three-quarters of the way done. For that matter, with this type of curse, moonlight would be better suited. But who am I to argue?”
He returned to his desk to consult his big book, glancing up at her. “This next part involves drawing the Gift out of the air, and sound is one of the things I’ll be using. You may think it’s a good idea to make some noise of your own to disrupt things… I beg of you, though, for your own sake, don’t do it. Being turned into a wolf is bad enough. Who knows what distortions would manifest if the process is interrupted. You wouldn’t want to be a wolf with seaweed for fur.”
Quench the Day (Red Wolf Trilogy Book 1) Page 8