Golden Apple, The

by Diener, Michelle

  When she reached the trees, she hesitated, trying to remember the direction the sound had come from. A voice, just a snatch of a word, drifted to her from the right, and she started towards it.

  The first two steps she took sounded like the footsteps of a giant to her. Twigs and dead leaves snapped and crunched beneath her boots, and she stilled. How had De’Villier moved so quietly?

  She tried again, going on tip toes, grateful when a small breeze blew up, stirring the debris of the forest floor and masking her steps with a skitter and rustle of sound.

  “Where is it?”

  The question was so clear, so close, Kayla threw herself against a tree trunk and raised the stick, her gaze swinging wildly from side to side.

  “I’m not going to ask again.” It was coming from right in front of her.

  There was a thump, and she stepped very cautiously forward, aligning herself with another tree, hiding deep within its shadow, adjusting and re-adjusting her grip on the stick.

  There was a small clearing before her, illuminated by a man holding a torch in one hand, and Rane De’Villier’s neck with the other. A second man stood to one side, the reason why Rane had not escaped. He held a double-sided axe loosely in both hands. The two men had their backs to her, but she could see De’Villier’s face in the torchlight. It betrayed no hint of fear, although a thin trickle of blood ran from a cut on Rane’s cheek down the side of his face.

  “I don’t have it yet. Djan, why would I lie?” Rane spoke levelly, calmly. Kayla blinked. It sounded as if he knew the man holding him.

  “Don’t know. Why would you lie?”

  De’Villier sighed, exasperated. “I wouldn’t. We’re dealing with Eric the Bold. Of course he’s trying to worm out of giving me the apple. I won’t own it free and clear until I get him what he wants.” He lifted his hands in appeal. “Haven’t we all heard from Nuen countless times what a twisted bastard Eric is? Why would this be simple, with him involved?”

  The man he’d called Djan grunted, and Kayla thought his fingers relaxed their hold a little. She took a step back, to draw deeper into the shadows, and stepped on a dead branch. It rolled under her foot, and she screamed as she fell backwards. The stick she’d held in her hand flew through the air and landed against a tree trunk, with a crack of wood on wood.

  There was silence. It rippled out, tense and wary. Kayla lay on the ground, not daring to breathe.

  Djan turned towards her, lifting the torch up, his hand falling away from Rane. His face was stone hard and just as cold. He took a step forward. At any moment, the light from the torch would give her away.

  Rane gave a shout and Djan spun back to him.

  Rane was thrashing against the bush as if attacked by an invisible enemy, and at last Kayla understood. She took the time he was gifting her and rolled towards the nearest tree. Came up in a crouch against it. She looked back at Rane, and as she watched, he vanished into thin air.

  “What?” Djan roared, and his companion swung his axe at the bush, scything it like a stand of wheat.

  Kayla inched around the tree to the side facing away from the clearing, and began to move away, step by careful step. She reached the next tree, and pressed up against its trunk, listening to see which way Djan and his friend were moving.

  Faster than a snake strike, a hand came from behind her and clamped her mouth. She felt her heart stutter, stop, and then race off. Her cry of fear was muffled as the hand clenched tighter.

  “It’s me.”

  She realized it was Rane the same instant he spoke. His scent enveloped her, surrounding her as surely as his body did. She went limp, leaning into him, her legs still shaking with shock.

  “We need to go back to camp and get our bags. Djan will head there as soon as they go round in circles a time or two.” He spoke quietly, directly into her ear.

  She nodded into his hand, her lips brushing against his palm, and he released her as if they burned his skin. He stepped around her, and after a moment of hesitation his hand came back to grab hers.

  She let him lead the way. She had lost her bearings, her body flinching at every noise from the bush, her mind whirling with questions.

  Their camp-fire glowed just ahead, closer than she’d thought, but Rane made them stand still and watch for a long minute before he let them approach.

  “We’ll have to leave the horses. We can’t take them into the forest anyway. Your father can get them back from Jasper when this is over.”

  “Those were Jasper’s men?” She stopped, her mouth falling open with shock.

  Rane threw her pack at her, and she caught it absently, and almost toppled as the weight of it jerked her down.

  Rane hefted the saddlebags and swung them over his shoulder. “Who did you think I was getting the apple for? Myself?”

  “I didn’t know—”

  “There’s plenty you don’t know. But now’s not the time to discuss it.”

  He was loaded down, with his own bag and the saddlebags from both horses, and she stepped forward and tugged his bag from his hand.

  He let it go. “Don’t lose that or let it get into Djan’s hands.”

  “Why not?” She watched him kick dirt on the fire.

  “Because the apple’s in there.”

  “Why does this apple mean so much to you?” She stood, legs braced, shoulders balanced by the weight of the two packs, and tried to see his face as the firelight spluttered and was extinguished with a final kick of sand.

  His eyes locked with hers a second before they were plunged into darkness. “It’s the only thing standing between my brother and a painful death.”

  Chapter Seven

  They were as good as goats tied to the stake.

  Rane didn’t know much about this part of the forest, but if it was anything like the western side where he came from, something was watching them right now.

  A cry sounded behind them to their right, and he pulled Kayla to him, waited a beat—Djan, he decided with relief.

  But they needed to stop. It would be unwise to go deeper, and they couldn’t go back.

  “We’ll wait out the night here,” he told her, quiet as the whisper of leaves above them.

  He felt her sag with relief in his arms, like the soft surrender of a lover. There was a muffled thud as she dropped their bags on the ground.

  They settled back against a trunk, Kayla rubbing aching shoulders, hunching to ease her back after carrying the heavy packs. Rane sat tense, his every sense alert.

  When he’d seen Djan, he’d made himself visible, approached him, thinking Jasper had sent him to talk. He hadn’t realized Holt was there too, that talking was the last thing on either of their minds.

  He touched the empty knife sheath at his belt with regret and looked around for a makeshift weapon. When Djan and Holt had jumped him he’d thrown it behind him. He’d seen Holt use that axe before, and he accepted defeat—but if he’d held onto his knife they would have taken it, no matter that it would look worthless to them, and chances were he’d never have gotten it back. With it lying on the forest floor there was a chance he would.

  It was a very special knife. One he’d risked his life to obtain. At first light he’d try to find it. If he was still breathing.

  “Don’t disappear on me again.” Kayla’s lips almost brushed his ear.

  He flinched. “Why do you say that?”

  “You look like you did at the fire. The first time you disappeared. As if you’re waiting for danger.”

  He decided not to deny it. “I might have to.”

  She shivered. “I’d rather come with you. I don’t like waiting and not knowing…”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Please.”

  “I won’t leave you alone. I promise.”

  She nodded. He felt the up-down brush of her hair against his shoulder. Breathed the fragrant heat of her. Tensed a little more.

  There was a crash and a shout, alarmingly close, and Kayla clutched his arm. The who
le day she’d matched his pace, matched his coolness, matched him at every level. He knew it must cost her to show fear now.

  Djan could shout and blunder through the forest all he liked, Rane would not hand over the apple unless he was standing next to Soren when he did it. He would not render his betrayal, all he’d done to get the apple, meaningless.

  Rane smiled, a bitter twist of his lips. With the history between Jasper and Soren, there was no way Jasper would give up his brother unless he had no choice. As it was, he must feel an acid burn in his gut at having to release him. If he could get the apple without letting him go, he would.

  “Jasper really wants that apple.” Kayla’s whisper was so close to what he was thinking, he started.

  “Yes.”

  “What will they do when they don’t find us?”

  “Wait until morning. Try to track us in the light.” The tension within him coiled tighter as the hunt moved closer. As Holt’s axe swung at bushes and undergrowth, he thought of the whistle and snick of the blade as it brushed his coat earlier when he’d disappeared and Holt had struck out. He fought back a shiver.

  He pressed his hands against the ground, as if he could somehow feel the vibrations of Djan and Holt’s footsteps, but instead felt a tingle at the back of his neck. The shivery feel of magic, skittering like a spider down his spine.

  He froze—rigid—sensed the purple-green energy testing the air, like a thousand dark tongues. He shook off his paralysis, rose in a crouch and pressed an urgent finger against Kayla’s mouth, pushed her behind him. She did not question him, doing as he wanted without a sound. He felt the quick, frightened rise and fall of her chest against his back.

  There was no noise other than the crash and shout of Djan and Holt looking for them, the forest had gone dead still. Like him it seemed to know the nature of the beast.

  Wild magic.

  * * *

  Something was making her ill. A creeping sense of nausea rose in her throat, and Kayla closed her eyes. Her skin turned cold and clammy and there was a roar in her ears.

  She lifted a suddenly trembling hand to her upper lip and wiped away a line of perspiration.

  She wanted to speak, to ask Rane what it was they hid from, but she had seen the flash in his eyes as he’d lifted his finger to her lips, and it kept her mouth closed.

  He’d been afraid. The first time she’d ever seen that look in his eyes. Climbing the sheer castle wall to her bedroom, racing a charger up a glass mountain to her, even facing down Eric the Bold had not done this to his composure.

  She opened her eyes. His back was rigid, as if he were facing off against some invisible monster, his arms clenched so hard she could see the muscles through his shirt and coat, could see the tendons of his neck as they strained in some unseen fight.

  She knew she was shivering, but was past caring, past worrying whether he thought her tough and cool. She was too close to vomiting.

  She felt a sudden, strange sense of weightlessness, had to close her eyes against the dizziness. She lowered herself down, but instead of the prickle of pine needles and soft sponginess of the forest floor, she felt as if she was floating on air.

  Bile rose in her throat and she gasped and curled in on herself, squeezed her eyes closed.

  When she was a child, she had gone often to the lake with her mother and thrown herself off the bank into the deep water, somersaulting as she leapt. She felt that same sensation now, but slower, more deliberate, and thought with an uneasy jolt that she must have a fever.

  Then the ground was beneath her, as if a soft cloud had been pulled from under her, the pine needles sticking to her palms, digging into them with tiny, sharp pricks.

  She’d had no sense of Rane at all for the last few minutes, but she felt him now, turning towards her in the darkness. His wonderfully warm hands were on her, slipping something beneath her cheek so her face was not on the dark, damp soil of the forest floor, his voice crooning to her, as if she were a sick child or injured animal.

  These small considerations touched her, made her want to cry, but instead she curled up tighter still. Breathed deep.

  The dizzy feeling was abating. She looked up, saw him hovering over her, and struggled to sit up.

  “What happened?”

  His face was difficult to make out in the dark, but she sensed his hesitation.

  “Tell me. I felt so sick.”

  He brushed a pine needle from her hair. “That was what some call the Evil of the Forest.”

  “It was here? That’s what made me ill?” She sat up straighter, leaned against the tree. “How are we still alive?”

  “It’s not like that. It can kill, but usually it…plays. Twists things from what they were. It’s capricious, but not always cruel.”

  “You’ve seen it before? What does it look like?” She wondered why she hadn’t seen it. She felt the cold brush of fear at what might have been done to her by the bogey man of the woods. The reason no one with a sound mind ever entered the Great Forest.

  “Have you ever seen a fireball?” He did not sit, but remained crouched, ready, and she realized the danger had not past.

  She nodded. “During bad thunderstorms. When lightning strikes and the earth does not absorb it. Balls of fire, racing across the ground.”

  “What people call the Evil of the Forest is like that, but not created from lightning. We can thank bastards like Eric the Bold for it.” He stilled, listening, then turned to her again. “When sorcerers unleash too much power, they cannot channel it all. They create pockets of wild magic, like fireballs, racing away, absorbing, feeling, affecting the world.”

  “So it’s not conscious? Not a living being?”

  “It’s a being.” He lowered his voice. “It dissipates very slowly, leaving traces of itself behind. Strange things that shouldn’t be. And I can sense it thinking, moving with purpose.”

  “And why do these balls of wild magic only exist in the Great Forest?”

  “It took me a long time to find out.” The look on his face was of stone. “The sorcerers send them here, instantly banish them as they are formed. They are dangerous. As dangerous to those who made them as to everyone else. The Great Forest has become the refuse ditch of the sorcerers of the Middleland.”

  She was silent as she absorbed what he’d said, readjusted years of thinking on the nature of the Evil of the Great Forest. She’d always imagined it a sorcerer. A monster of some kind.

  Rane rubbed a hand over his face. “The wild magic that just paid us a visit is newly formed. Vital and strong. I think we can thank Eric for it. No doubt it was formed when he created that cursed glass mountain.”

  “Thank the heavens it passed us by, then.” Kayla shivered.

  As she spoke, someone started screaming. High pitched, desperate screams that flayed her nerves.

  Rane ignored them, did not even turn towards the sound. He watched her, a strange look on his face. “What makes you think it passed us by?”

  Chapter Eight

  “Djan or Holt just ran into it.” Rane stood, braced and ready for action, although there was nothing he could do. Nothing he could ever do when faced with wild magic.

  He still did not know why it left him unchanged. How he could feel it, find its treasures.

  It seemed drawn to him, like a cat finding the one person who doesn’t like them to rub against. He and Soren had always been able to sense wild magic, and somehow endure its interest unscathed.

  He’d felt it touching Kayla, arm-thick bands of power, curious and ruthless, that had slipped past his protection like a long-limbed sea monster, even as he willed it away. Willed his body broader.

  She seemed unharmed. Unaffected. But it had lifted her up, turned her this way and that as if viewing a strange toy from every angle.

  He’d seen an old woman turned young and beautiful, and mad with it. A tree grow legs and skulk off into the dark forest, confused with its new life.

  Strange creatures that should not, could not
, be.

  He did not want to think what was happening to Djan or Holt. They knew the dangers of the forest as well as he did. Had heard his and Soren’s tales. Knew what had happened to their father—

  The screaming cut short, as sudden as running into a door.

  “If it didn’t pass us, if it knows we were here, why aren’t we screaming, too?” Kayla pushed herself up to stand next to him.

  “I don’t know.”

  She shuddered, her whole body involved, and bent to pick up her pack. “Let’s move away. In case it decides to come back for us.”

  And in case whatever Djan or Holt had become was even worse than two thugs out to steal from them. He should really see what had become of them. There were hours yet until daylight, and he didn’t want any nasty surprises.

  “Let’s go.” He picked up the saddlebags.

  “Where?” She whispered, slinging both their packs over her shoulder.

  “I want to see what happened to Djan and Holt. We can go back to the camp, depending…”

  “Depending on what?”

  “Depending on whether they’re still a threat.”

  She said no more, and he started forward, bending to scoop up a short, thick stick.

  A sound, a horrendous, gut-clenching sound, suddenly rose up from just ahead. A gibbering, like a strange animal or person gone insane.

  Rane turned, saw Kayla frozen in place. Even in the darkness he made out her wide eyes.

  “Stay.” He mouthed the word, not wanting to risk even a whisper. With infinite care, he lifted the saddlebags off his shoulders and gently set them down. He breathed in deep. Slipped the moonstone out of his pouch and clenched it in his hand. Only knowing he was now invisible helped him take a step forward. Then another.

  When the sound was just a bush away, he crouched, moving slowly and carefully around to the right.

  Djan’s torch lay on the ground, still burning.

  Illuminating a nightmare.

  * * *

  Kayla sank down, remembering in time to set their packs gently on the ground. Rane had moved faster than she’d expected. She could no longer see him.