Golden Apple, The

by Diener, Michelle

  From the smell of it, someplace stagnant and deep.

  Rane rose, knife held out, thumb just off the dragon. Every step he took was careful.

  Something loomed in the mist, and he went down on his haunches, edging forward slowly.

  It was a well.

  A sound, the slither and scrape of claws on stone, came from the right. He stayed very still, eyes straining in the swirling white. For just one moment, the fog parted and he saw a second grindylow crouched beside another well. Its focus was ahead, and it moved off, quiet and lethal.

  There was a change in the light in front of him, and Rane caught a brief glimpse of blue sky between the two wells.

  They were the pillars of a gateway.

  His heart beat faster as the realization came to him.

  Eric was almost in his reach.

  * * *

  Sooty waited for them, tail flicking impatiently. She’d run after a hare, its scream short and sharp, and now it lay discarded, a bloody mess beside her on the path. She was panting in the heat.

  Kayla watched her with heavy, burning eyes, and tried to infuse her own step with a little of the bounding joy of her cat.

  Soren trudged behind her, silent and withdrawn. He still didn’t trust her and he hated the wild magic that followed them.

  He’d taken to counting it, muttering the number under his breath, as if each new sphere was another mark against her, but he’d tired of the game. Or there were no new spheres to count. Perhaps they had all the spheres in the forest with them.

  Kayla looked around and thought it might be possible. There were certainly a hundred or more. An army of them.

  She knew he thought he was dealing with the enemy. That he was consorting with the one thing he and Rane had fought against, betraying both himself and his brother.

  She reached Sooty, found herself unable to resist sitting down. She leant against a tree and watched Soren as he walked towards her.

  He said nothing, but sank down against a tree of his own.

  “We both need sleep. We can’t go on without rest.” She’d known it. Soren had known it. And still, they had not stopped to rest since they left the clearing, walking through the night, and as the dawn broke, and as the morning sun began to heat the air.

  They had followed the trail Rane had made, the way easy to see because he’d had to fight his way along the overgrown path, and there were signs of his passage everywhere.

  Kayla wondered where he was going. To Eric’s castle? Eric would not have waited in Gaynor for their return. He would want to be on his own territory, behind his own walls. He’d want no one to know about or understand his advantage, would want privacy when they brought him the gem.

  It seemed to her, though, that they must be much slower than Rane, compelled by the enchantment and fit as he was. And she was desperate to get to him before he approached Eric.

  Time was running out.

  She slid down to the soft forest floor, curled up, and heard Sooty shuffle until she was pressed up against Kayla’s back.

  Kayla opened an eye, saw Soren leaning against his tree, eyes closed.

  They were right on the path, dangerously exposed, but they had Sooty to watch them, and they could go no further.

  She lay, half-awake, half dreaming, and sunk slowly into the blissful black of sleep.

  She would have sworn she was only under for a few minutes at most, but when the shout woke her, the first thing she noticed was the long afternoon shadows. Her mouth was dry, and a headache pounded her skull.

  Sooty had not left her side, and she sat, alert, ears pointed forward.

  The shout came again, and with a start, Kayla realized it was Soren.

  As she stood, he started screaming.

  She ran towards the sound, Sooty beside her. Something moved, quick and sly, to the side of her, and heart pounding, Kayla turned her head to look.

  It was a sphere of wild magic.

  Her fear eased, and she ignored it, concentrating on running without tripping as she kept pace with Sooty along the narrow track. It was off the main path, and Kayla wondered why Soren had come down here.

  His screams cut off abruptly and she was at last able to hear the hiss of a river. Her throat convulsed at the thought of cool, fresh water, and she understood why he had taken this path.

  She burst out of the trees onto the bank of a wide stream, and stopped just short of a mud-slicked battleground. The smell of fresh clay and water hung in the air.

  A tall, lithe woman was sitting straddled over Soren’s chest. Her body was covered in scratches and mud, her thin white dress torn, exposing a perfect breast.

  Soren hadn’t been easily subdued.

  As Kayla watched, the woman pressed a long, sharpened stick into the joint between his arm and shoulder. A thin, weak sound came from his throat and Soren pushed at her with ineffectual hands.

  The woman pulled back and Kayla noticed webbing between her fingers. Her feet had splayed, webbed toes.

  “Stop!”

  The woman jerked, turned an astonishingly beautiful face to Kayla.

  Beside Kayla, Sooty hissed, arching her back.

  The woman rose to her feet, quick and graceful as a bird, her eyes on Sooty. She stepped over Soren, closer to the water. Soren rolled away from her, towards Kayla.

  “He is yours?” The woman’s voice was not a voice, but the sound of water gurgling and bubbling, strung together to make words.

  Kayla shook her head. “He is the brother of the one who is mine.”

  “Then give him back to me.”

  Kayla shook his head again. “You were hurting him.”

  The woman laughed, a twisted, babbling brook of a laugh. “Yes. I was hurting him.” She lunged, suddenly, at Soren, her long, slender arms reaching for him, and Kayla’s hands flashed.

  The woman leapt back, crying out, her right hand cradled in her left.

  Kayla was unsure what she had done. Burnt her? Stung her? She did not even know how she had managed to react so quickly.

  Something touched Kayla from behind, and she risked a quick look. Saw the wild magic sphere that had followed her was right behind her, nudging her. It rose up, just behind and a little above her head.

  When she turned back, the woman was gone.

  “Can you walk?” Kayla crouched beside Soren. He’d dragged himself to her, and she wondered what was wrong with his legs.

  “Can’t feel my legs.” He was gasping for air, as if his ribs were broken, and his lips didn’t move as he spoke. “Can’t feel anywhere she touched. It’s all cold.” His body shook.

  Kayla cursed for the hundredth time that they did not have the apple. She put a hand on his leg. Pictured the cold seeping out of it. Her hand glowed.

  Soren raised his gaze to hers. “That worked.”

  She did the other leg, his chest, his arms. “Where else?”

  He touched his face, and she placed a hand flat against each cheek. She could not look at him, it seemed…too intimate, so she closed her eyes as she wished him warm again.

  He drew his first deep, normal, breath, and she opened her eyes again. Was caught in a gaze so like Rane’s her heart thundered.

  “Thank you.” He pushed away from her, and stood.

  She stood with him and they both looked towards the stream.

  “She’s still there. I can feel her.” Soren’s fists clenched.

  “What is she?”

  He looked at her strangely. “She’s an asrai. A water spirit.”

  Kayla blinked. He spoke as if it were common knowledge. Well, not in the royal household of Gaynor. “I’ve never heard of them.”

  “If I walk towards the edge, she’ll leap out to get me. When she does, will you do something to her? So she cannot get anyone else?”

  Kayla did not look at him, keeping her eyes on the water. “You like giving yourself up for sacrifice, don’t you? Burning Nuen’s tower, wanting to go back for the apple. Now this.”

  He shrugged.
“Will you?”

  She didn’t know if she could, but her fingers tingled, and she felt the charge in the air above her head from the wild magic. “Yes.”

  Sooty’s gaze had not wavered from the asrai since they’d first seen her, and Kayla looked down, saw she was looking to the left. “She’s over there.” She pointed.

  Without another word, without a single hesitation or break in his stride, Soren walked towards the part of the bank she’d indicated.

  The asrai sprang, water streaming off her white blonde hair, pressing the translucent fabric of her dress to her body. Her mouth was drawn back in a snarl, and she screamed as she leapt forward.

  Kayla felt a surge of power. Shock at the explosiveness of the asrai’s attack, fear for Soren, fizzed through her, and the force of wild magic she drew threw her hands out in front of her. A flash of purple blinded her and the asrai’s scream turned into the cry of a bird. When she blinked away the spots in front of her eyes, Soren was jumping back as a heron stabbed at him with its long, sharp beak.

  Sooty crouched down, growling low, and the heron stopped its attack. It leapt clumsily, wings flapping, into the air.

  Soren said nothing as he watched it fly over the trees and disappear. He stood, cool and calm as ever. “Are you ready to continue on?”

  Kayla let her gaze drift from the point where the bird disappeared, and drew in a deep breath. She had just turned an asrai into a bird. She’d thought when she’d seen it stabbing a stick at Soren how like a heron it had looked. Somehow, the wild magic had taken that thought, made it real. Or was it her? Her doing entirely?

  She took another deep breath. “I’m ready, but I think we are wasting too much time. Time we don’t have. I said the last time I saw Eric, he was in Gaynor, but I’ve just remembered, that isn’t true…” Kayla let her words trail off. Turned to the sphere behind her. It was directly at eye level.

  “I think…” Her voice trembled. “I think I have just remembered a short cut.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  He burst through the mist, and suddenly he could see the massive keep that dominated the landscape, standing on the slope at the far end of the valley.

  Behind him, the fog had gone, and so had the wells. So had his bags. Like his approach on the other side of it, if he moved his head he caught the opening from the corner of his eye.

  From thin air, he heard a keening sound and shivered. The second grindylow had just found its fallen companion.

  Time to go.

  As he approached the massive wooden double-door of the keep, he wondered how Eric thought to get the gem. Had he instructed the grindylows to kill everyone who came through the mist, and bring him the bodies to search?

  Eric had never intended to lift the enchantment. Never intended to let them live. Or never intended to let him live. He had no idea how the grindylows would have dealt with Kayla.

  He thought Eric’s interest in Kayla too intense for him to want her dead. Then he remembered the strange encounter Kayla had with Eric in the forest. Rane did not know what had been said between them. Perhaps Eric had decided Kayla would never be compliant enough.

  He reached the stairs, climbed them to the double doors and lifted his hand. Before he grasped the knocker, shaped like a lightning bolt, he paused. Tried to strip his soul of any softness. Any pity.

  The only way to come out of this free of enchantment—to come out of this alive—was to be as hard as the gem strapped to the small of his back.

  * * *

  “It is here, somewhere.” Kayla looked at the sea of spheres hovering in front of her. She had called them to her, like she called Sooty, and they had come.

  That they had come, that she had that power, was too big for her to think about. Instead, she concentrated on finding the sphere that had given her access to Eric’s dungeon.

  “What do you mean, it’s here?” Soren leant against a tree, arms crossed over his chest, and Kayla felt a slow, deep-burning anger at him. How many times must she save him before he trusted her?

  “I mean,” she spoke each word carefully, as flat as she could, “that one of these wild magic spheres was created when Eric cast a spell in his dungeon. Somehow, it is still connected to its place of creation. It gave me a window to step through before, right into Eric’s castle.”

  Soren stood straight, forehead creased. “You think you can call forward the right one?”

  Kayla lifted a hand. “I don’t know. But even if I have to touch every single one, it will be quicker than wasting time we don’t have following Rane’s trail.”

  She closed her eyes. Thought back to the night she’d found herself in Eric’s lair. She’d run down the path, away from the woman in the clearing, and wild magic had blocked her path, stretched into a flat oval.

  Had it been offering her an escape?

  She shook her head, opened her eyes. One sphere moved, darting between the others towards her.

  She held her breath, and as it stopped in front of her, it flattened, stretched, into a window. She leant forward, and saw the stairs, heard the faint drip of water off the walls.

  “Kayla?”

  She breathed out at last. Turned to him. “Run back to the main path and get our bags. We have a way in.”

  Soren looked at the glimmering oval. “You want me to go through there?” His mouth set in a hard line.

  She was at the end of her patience. “Do what you like. It obviously means nothing to you that your brother is through there because he’s trying to save your life. Leave him to his fate, stay here and count spheres of wild magic. Throw yourself at every dangerous creature you can find. Offer yourself up to Jasper for more torture. Whatever makes you happy.”

  His head snapped in her direction, his mouth open.

  She turned and stalked away, back to the main path.

  “Wait!” There was a note of panic in his voice. “Where are you going?”

  She looked over her shoulder. “To get my bags.”

  He shook his head. Pushed past her, his body stiff with frustration.

  “Stay here. I’ll get the cursed bags.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Rane let the knocker fall. After his deliberate silence, its crack made him wince.

  There was no response.

  He slammed it against the door again.

  Footsteps sounded, quick and strong.

  The door swung back and Eric stood before him. His face was emotionless, but Rane noticed a tick in the corner of his left eye, and felt a surge of satisfaction.

  “Where is the princess?” Eric looked beyond him.

  Rane felt something dark and ugly crawl over his skin at the eager look in Eric’s eyes. “Why would I bring her to you?”

  Eric shoved him aside, stepped outside and looked around. “Where is she? She must be here. The enchantment won’t allow for anything else.”

  “She isn’t here. And if she had come with me, what would those grindylows have done to her? What they tried to do to me?”

  Eric turned slowly, his eyes moving over the fields, as if unable to let go of the certainty Kayla was here. “No. Their instructions have always been to kill only men. All women are to be brought to me.”

  “I never realized grindylows were so easily commanded.”

  Eric sneered. “They are not normal grindylows. They are creatures of my…tinkering.”

  Rane fought down his distaste. He thought he heard another howl of grief from the empty field.

  “She must be dead.” Eric spoke slowly, then cocked his head to one side, as if he heard the howl, too. “That is the only way it makes sense. Kayla is dead.”

  Rane raised his hands as if in surrender. “Yes.”

  Eric gave a cry of rage, and leapt, staff swinging back. Not for a spell. He wanted to strike a physical blow.

  Rane leapt out of Eric’s way, ducking into the hallway of the castle, hand reaching for his knife.

  Before he could, he was grabbed from behind, his arms pinned to
his sides, and as he struggled to get free, Eric lunged again, his staff connecting with Rane’s shoulder.

  Rane roared with pain. He twisted and bucked against the arms holding him, hitting the massive body behind with elbows and head. The hold tightened, crushing his chest, and Rane saw the green-grey arms of a stone giant. He stilled in shock, letting his body go limp.

  “You thought I was alone?” Eric slammed his staff into Rane’s abdomen, and Rane gritted his teeth to stop calling out.

  He had hoped Eric would be alone, but he’d never counted on it. A stone giant, though…Despair clawed at him, weighed him down. They were fast, incredibly strong. Almost impossible to beat. He could smell the hot energy of it, the stink of iron, enveloping him as he stood trapped in its arms.

  “Where’s the gem?” Eric brought his face right up to Rane’s, his dark eyes blazing on the edge of control.

  Rane took as deep a breath as he could with the tight hold the stone giant had on his chest. Braced himself in advance for the retaliation. “Let me go, first.”

  Eric struck, hitting him in the midriff again with his staff. “You have no power to bargain. Where is it?”

  Rane closed his eyes, as if in defeat. “In my bags. I left them in the mists with the grindylows.”

  Eric stepped back. “Find them,” he said to the stone giant. He lifted his staff, and as Rane was released, blue light flashed.

  He was paralyzed again, just as he had been on the jousting field of Gaynor Castle. The stone giant stepped around him and down the stairs. It was double his size, stocky, every inch rippling with muscle. It wore nothing but a leather flap from its waist, and Rane saw its back was scarred with burns.

  “Come with me.” Eric stepped into the hallway, and Rane’s body followed him, jerkily, like a badly-played marionette.

  To be so out of control…Rane tried to clear a calm space in his mind, to get over the rage that was a conflagration within. He needed a cool head. To conserve his energy, not fight a battle he couldn’t win.

  “This drives you mad, doesn’t it?” Eric waited for him, his face twisted in a mixture of rage and gloating. “Every step I make you take barely shaves the edge off my fury. I know you must have had her, and the thought of your filthy woodsman’s hands on her…” Eric clenched his fists, swallowed convulsively. “She was mine. I saw what she was and I forced an agreement from her father. And then you…” He lifted his staff, and Rane had time only to understand Eric had finally lost control.