The Exile's Curse

by M. J. Scott

  Neither of the first two groups had returned by the time a third boar stumbled onto the path about one hundred feet ahead of them. It turned on its heels and bolted. The riders around him surged forward. He didn't check the reins fast enough, and the gray got away from him, pounding after the others.

  Thunder cracked above his head, loud enough to be clear this time, and he fought his horse back under control, trying to turn and loop back around, unwilling to leave Chloe alone in a storm. As he struggled with the horse, spooking now at the storm, and looked for a safe way back through the denser undergrowth off the path, Chloe passed him, leaning low over her horse's neck, smiling as she galloped with the others.

  Fuck. She was caught up in the hunt. He'd thought she'd have the sense to stay back.

  He urged his gray back onto the path but ended up with several horses between him and Chloe. Heedless, he threw his magic toward her, setting the illusion of a tiny star on the brass buckle at the rear of her saddle. The forest had been dark to begin with, and with a storm gathering, the light was fading quickly. The horses were running faster than was sensible. He could sense the strain in the gray, the nerves twitching beneath his skin. The horse tossed his head as the thunder crashed right above them, the noise like the sky roaring fury.

  Lightning arced down through the trees, striking one just ahead of Chloe. For a minute, chaos reigned as horses reared and twisted and bolted in several directions. The flaring light dazzled him, turning the tree—which thankfully didn't fall or burst into flames—into pinwheels of light, and it took time to blink the spots away while wrestling the gray so it didn't bolt, too. When his eyes cleared, there was no sign of Chloe amongst the riders still in sight. His stomach coiled with fear. Where was she?

  He cast his sense wider, seeking his illusion.

  There. Off to the right. A tiny pulse of familiar magic.

  He pushed harder and saw a flare of what he thought was his flame between the trees.

  Chloe. Disappearing rapidly deeper into the forest. She must have lost control of her horse.

  He kicked the gray into motion, aiming it in the direction she'd taken, just as the heavens opened and rain poured down as though someone had turned the sky into a waterfall. Madness to keep riding, but he wasn't going to let Chloe vanish into the forest and the storm, never to be seen again.

  He cast another illusion, this time over every piece of tack the gray wore, lighting it up, to give himself a chance of seeing where they were headed as he tried to keep his senses tuned to the illusion on Chloe’s saddle. It didn't help much. The rain blinded him, and the thunder, deafening now, made it impossible to hear anything else.

  His horse ran like there was an army of rogue sanctii at its heels. Lucien had no idea how it managed to keep its feet and not throw him tumbling to the ground as they pelted after Chloe. At some point, a branch whipped his cheek with enough force to make him rock back in the saddle, but his face was too cold to really register the pain. He just crouched lower and held on, all the focus he could spare on his magic.

  He had no idea how long the nightmare ride lasted, but eventually they broke through the trees and back onto a plateau. Though not, he thought, the one they'd entered from.

  The rain was worse in the open, and lightning split the sky, making him too aware that out there, away from the trees, he was probably the tallest thing around. But the light let him catch a glimpse of Chloe and what he thought were mountains rising up ahead. Which brought to mind the map he'd studied before the hunt and the horrifying remembrance that, if he was right and they’d come out at the far end of the forest, the plateau ended in a cliff a hundred feet or so high. But he couldn't see to know if he was right, and all he could do was spur his horse on. The gray was beginning to flag, but he was bigger and stronger than Chloe's horse, so they had a chance to catch her.

  He had to catch her. The thought of her plunging over a cliff....

  No. He wouldn't lose her.

  He sent his power ahead, reaching desperately. The tiny light of his illusion flared. Then, to his horror, he saw it arc upward before plummeting down and winking out of sight.

  The cliff.

  Fuck.

  He dragged his own horse to a halt that was more skid than stop and threw himself off, running forward, uttering every prayer he could think of. The lightning came again, and he saw a lump of black on the ground.

  Please, goddess, let it be her.

  His boots squelched and slipped over mud, but he reached her before his heart stopped entirely from the fear.

  "Chloe!" He called her name as thunder boomed again, but she didn't stir. He dropped to his knees, feeling frantically for a pulse. If he hadn’t already been on his knees, the relief he felt when he found it would have driven him there.

  Focus. He could react later.

  Right now, he had to worry about her. He knew basic first aid from his army training, and he cautiously felt his way along her limbs, searching for injuries. He found no immediate signs of broken bones, and she was breathing steadily. Trying to slow his own racing heart, he rolled her gently to one side. Mud splattered over half her face, and a long length of pale skin showed through a tear in her jacket sleeve. He summoned illusion again to give him more light and realized she'd cut her arm badly, either in the fall or in her madcap ride through the forest. Blood welled in the wound, enough of it to remain despite the pouring rain. He pulled his cravat free and bound up the wound, hoping like hell the downpour had kept it free of too much mud. He was no bloody healer to keep an infection at bay.

  The rain eased somewhat as he finished checking Chloe over, but there was no sign of the storm abating, and black clouds still blocked the sun. Night fell early in Andalyssia. Chloe showed no sign of waking yet, and he didn't want to move her until he had a plan. He piled his own cloak on top of hers and looked around for his horse. It was cantering back the way they'd come, almost invisible in the dim light.

  Fuck.

  He gritted his teeth against the urge to roar with frustration. He needed to stay calm. He couldn't catch a horse on foot. It was gone, and with it any chance of finding the rest of the hunt quickly. So he needed another plan.

  First, get his bearings. He stood, summoning another light to his hand. It didn't take much to see that Chloe lay maybe twenty feet from the edge of the cliff. His stomach swooped greasily when he realized how close she'd come to going over. He made himself walk to the edge, moving slowly and finally kneeling to peer over.

  He could just make out a dark mass far below. Choe's horse.

  Nothing he could do for it. There was no way it could have survived the fall.

  He edged backward, then jogged back to Chloe. Just in time to see her eyes open.

  "Don't move," he said, putting a hand on her shoulder.

  She blinked up at him, looking bewildered. "Ow. Lucien? What?"

  "Your horse bolted in the storm," he said. "You fell. Which is just as well, as it kept going, and there's a cliff about twenty feet that way." Not the most tactful way to tell her, perhaps, but he needed something to shock her into functioning.

  His memory of the map was that the forest was several miles wide, and if they'd come out the other side—the wrong side—then they could be miles from any of the others. With the storm still active, night closing in, and the temperature falling fast, he wasn't counting on anyone coming to find them. The Andalyssians would prioritize getting the king and queen back to safety, and even if Honore protested—which she would—they would probably overrule her. The colonel lacked the knowledge of the terrain to search on her own. Theisse might send his sanctii to look for them, but again, the terrain played against them. Sanctii could find their own mage at any distance, but there was a limit to their ability to find others they were familiar with. He didn't know how far it stretched in strange territory.

  He turned his attention back to Chloe as she made another pained sound. "What hurts?"

  Chloe frowned. "Everything?"

&nbs
p; That was probably true. "All right, what hurts most?"

  "My arm." She winced and twisted her head to look at it. "And my side."

  "Not your head?" She must have hit it to be knocked out after the fall. Or maybe she'd fainted.

  "Not much," she said. "Not as much as my arm."

  "You have a nasty cut," he said. "I've bandaged it. Right now, we need to figure some way to get out of the rain. The cold is a bigger risk than anything else. Do you think you can stand?" She was an earth witch. She'd have had training in healing. Which meant she was in a better place to judge her condition than he was.

  "I think so," she said, grimacing. "Do you have your horse?"

  "No. He ran off when I dismounted. Clearly Andalyssians don't train their horses to stay if they lose their riders."

  "We need some of Jean Paul's warhorses. Those will stand through anything," she said, her voice shaky.

  Goddess damn it, he needed to get her somewhere safe.

  "Yes, well, perhaps we should suggest it to King Mikvel when we get back." If they got back. Not that he'd say that to Chloe. And it would bloody well be “when” if he had anything to do with it. "I think our best bet is heading back toward the mountain." The left side of the plateau ended in steeply rising ground. "The edge of the trees is too far for you to walk. But if we climb a little, there should be some shelter. Rocks. Or a cave, maybe."

  "If only one of us had earth sense," she muttered. "Let me up."

  "Earth sense? Like the miners?" There'd been discussions of how the miners were planning on opening new shafts during some of the treaty discussions. The Andalyssians had mentioned earth sense, but he hadn't really paid attention to how it worked.

  "Yes. Irina has it."

  "Earth magic?"

  "I think so." She pushed herself into a sitting position. "Ow. Ow. Ow. And bloody ow. You’re going to have to help me stand." Her uninjured arm reached for him.

  He took her good arm and pulled her gently to her feet, tucking her in against him. His cloak threatened to fall off her shoulders. He caught it, pulling it around both of them. They were both comprehensively soaked, but wet wool was still some protection against the elements. Chloe leaned into him for a moment, then straightened.

  "Maybe I could try to find a cave," she said. "I mean, I understand the theory. They use the magic to follow the shape of what's beneath the earth. I should be able to tell solid rock from a gap, at least. How hard can it be?"

  "Given it seems to be an unusual talent, perhaps harder than you think." And magic took energy. Energy she didn't have to spare.

  "Yes, but they don't train people in earth the way we do. If those with earth sense are stronger in earth than usual—and men strong in earth are rarer anyway—then maybe what's difficult for them wouldn't be for me."

  He couldn't think of a counterargument. Chloe was a strong witch. Granted, she'd spent ten years in exile not using much magic, but that didn't mean the power wasn't there.

  "Let's get closer, and then you can try. No use wearing yourself out." He didn't want her to carry her or, worse, have to leave her while he looked for shelter. The wild pigs weren't the only creatures in the forest, and while he hoped most of them would be sheltering from the storm, he didn't want to leave her alone.

  "All right." Lightning flashed above them. "Can you do your sparkly light thing, at least? It's getting dark fast."

  "Yes, I can do my sparkly light thing," he said, then did just that, conjuring the illusion to give them some light.

  They moved slowly. He didn't want to hurry her despite his better instincts, but his memory of the map proved correct and they only walked what he judged to be a few hundred feet before the grass started to slope upward and peter out into stone. There was a boulder about ten feet past that point, and he led them around to the sheltered side. Out of the wind, it was slightly less cold. But not warm. They needed proper shelter or they would both freeze to death.

  "This is probably as good a place as any to try," he said to Chloe, who was breathing hard despite the short distance.

  She nodded and closed her eyes. He saw the gleam of magic surround her, but he had no idea what she was doing. So he shut up and let her do it.

  She stood there for a long time, and he was beginning to think it wasn't going to work when her eyes snapped open and she grinned triumphantly at him. She lifted her uninjured arm and pointed farther up the slope.

  "Up there. There's a gap in the rock. A hole. A cave, unless I'm doing this completely wrong."

  "I'm sure you're not," he said with more confidence than he felt. Her breathing was fast again, and she slumped against the stone, as though the magic had taken more out of her than she'd expected. "So we should get going."

  She winced at the suggestion but just nodded and took his arm again.

  It wasn’t far, though the journey up the sloping rocks, trying his best to support Chloe, seemed to take forever before they found the small entrance in the stone. The cave wasn't very big, stank like several large animals had met their untimely ends there, and was cold as hell. But it was empty, and mostly dry, and that was all that mattered. Chloe stood shivering beneath his arm and not entirely steady on her feet as he surveyed it. Finding the cave had clearly drained her. And with the bloodstain on the cravat he'd wrapped around her arm still spreading, she didn't have energy to spare.

  Goddess damn it.

  They needed warmth or they still might freeze to death, cave or no cave.

  "Come away from the entrance," he said gently. "The wind won't reach us farther in." There was another near deafening clap of thunder as he spoke. Chloe flinched and moved deeper into the cave.

  He listened to the storm a moment longer before he followed. The thunder showed no signs of easing, and the rain was still heavy, though not quite the torrent it had been earlier. Bad enough though. No one would be searching for them in this weather, not with night falling.

  So, no rescue until morning, most likely. They only had an hour or so of light left, if he was judging the time correctly. No way to tell if he was.

  "Right. We need to figure out how to stay warm," he said. He eyed her mud-stained sodden cloak. His own wasn't much better. The wool might dry off some with a fire, but they wouldn't be warm enough to help them much if they weren't fully dry.

  "I know a warming ch-charm," Chloe said, teeth chattering. "How about you?"

  He shrugged, trying to seem unconcerned. "You know me, terrible at most magic other than illusions. And an illusion of fire won’t help. It might keep animals out, of course, once it's dark, and it will give us some light, but it's not going to keep us warm." He grimaced. It was the problem with his talent. Too much of it channeled to illusion at the cost of all else. He remembered Charl once drunkenly teasing him that the truth wouldn't keep him warm at night. It seemed he would be proven right. "The question is, can you keep it going? You're hurt."

  "I know," she said sharply. "But we have to do something. Unless you have matches and tinder somewhere handy." She swept her good hand around as she studied the cave. "There's enough leaves and branches here to burn for an hour or so, perhaps, but not longer than that. Anything outside will be too wet."

  He thought fleetingly of his horse. The Andalyssians had made a point of telling them that there were matches and rations in their saddlebags. But that was no use when Chloe's horse was at the bottom of a cliff and his own had hopefully either found shelter or was on its way home to Deephilm. He hadn't remembered in his frantic need to reach Chloe when he'd spotted her lying so still and then the horse had been gone.

  Which was the kind of mistake his squad sergeant in his basic army training would have had his guts for. They'd covered basic survival skills. He just had to remember what they were.

  "All right," he said, coming to a decision. "I can spark a fire, at least, and we'll burn what we can for as long as it lasts. That will warm us up some, and we might be able to dry off the cloaks and our clothes enough to use them for sleeping. How
wet are you?"

  "Wet enough," she said. "Not entirely soaked through, maybe. Though my feet are frozen. I think water got into my boots when I fell."

  "Right. Well, once the fire is going, you can take them off, and we'll see if we can dry your stockings out, too." Frostbite affected extremities first. It might not be actually snowing outside, but the air was frigid, and there'd been snow on some of the rocks they'd passed despite the rain. "You sit by the back wall, rest a while. I can make a fire."

  She didn't argue, which made him think she was hurting more than she was letting on.

  Goddess. Don't let her die.

  It didn’t take long to sort the few leaves and twigs and branches into piles. There weren’t that many of them. The thickest branch was a few inches thick. If it was a slow-burning wood, it might last a few hours. But it snapped easily under his foot, and he suspected it was going to burn fast. He’d have to keep the fire small. Hopefully, the wind would draw some of the smoke out of the entrance, but a roaring blaze would simply fill the cave up with smoke and suffocate them. Not to mention use up their scant supply of wood too fast. So, big enough to keep them alive, small enough not to kill them. He made a pile of leaves and small twigs and sparked a flame to life, guarding it from the wind as he coaxed the fire into something that might survive any stray gusts of wind.

  By the time he'd finished, Chloe had closed her eyes, and he wondered if she'd fallen asleep. The healers would probably tell him to keep her awake if she’d been knocked out. But surely she needed the rest? He rolled a large stone from the back of the cave over to the fire to give her something to rest against and she didn’t stir, but she opened her eyes when he crouched in front of her and touched her knee.

  "Come closer to the fire," he said, offering her a hand.

  She took it, smiling weakly, wincing as her injured arm moved. He put his arm around her waist carefully and helped her back over to the fire, easing her cloak off and draping it on another rock next to his. Maybe, just maybe, there was a little steam rising from it.