A Poison Dark and Drowning (Kingdom on Fire, Book Two)

by Jessica Cluess

  “Strangest doctor I’ve ever seen,” he murmured, eyeing the red-haired girl. She poured water over some crude-looking utensils to clean them and looked at Magnus pointedly. “And by far the most skilled,” he added.

  “Best not forget that.” But she grinned, slipped her instruments into a satchel, and hoisted it over her shoulder. “Bit close in here. Need some air.” Without another word, she swept past us and out the door.

  “I’ll thank her.” Blackwood left. I’d the feeling he also wanted to get a better sense of our mysterious savior.

  Even with the burning candles, it was growing horribly dim in the cavern. Night was coming on fast; the glimpse of sky in the crack above had darkened to a deep violet. I fashioned a flame into a burning orb and suspended it overhead.

  “Howel?” Magnus murmured.

  I forced him not to move. “You need rest.”

  “Then stay with me. Laugh at my jokes and tell me I’m wonderful.” He winced with pain.

  “I’m not sure how much help I’ll be,” I said, a rush of relief flooding me. It didn’t sound as though he were at death’s door.

  “I need to tell you.” Magnus swallowed, then continued, “I’m sorry about how I was on the ship.”

  I didn’t know what to say. To busy myself, I took one of our waterskins and poured a cup.

  “I only wanted things to be normal between us.” He shifted, wincing, and this time I helped him slowly sit up. His body was warm against me. “The last time we saw each other, I…said things I shouldn’t have. I miss you, Howel.” He smiled wearily. “It’s such hell not being able to joke with you.” I’d missed joking with him, too. “Friends?” he asked.

  I did not speak as I gave him the water and he drank. Finally, I said, “I want to be. But…” I bit my lip and forged ahead. “I want nothing more than friendship. Truly.” I meant it: there was Rook, after all, and even without him any desire I’d felt for Magnus was still tainted by what had happened. He nodded solemnly.

  “On my word, I’ll never speak to you of anything more ever again. We’ll have a real fresh start this time.”

  He was all openness and sincerity, and damn it, I’d missed that.

  I sighed in relief. “Well, I suppose it would be wrong to say no to the person who shoved me out of harm’s way.”

  His face lit up.

  “Indeed. Rather heroic of me, wouldn’t you say? And I’ve received such a flattering wound.” He groaned as he moved his bandaged arm. “I appear to have got my shirt off at some point. That poor girl must have been on the verge of swooning.”

  Speaking of, Blackwood’s and the girl’s voices rose and fell above us. I made Magnus take another sip of water.

  “Well, I shouldn’t have been so cold to you at the dock. I was shocked to see you,” I said quietly. “Then you were the same Magnus as before.”

  “The same,” he repeated. His mouth lifted in a weak attempt at a smile. “I know you see me as the laughing fool.” He winced. “I’m more than some fellow who flirts with every pretty girl, you know.” I’d never seen him so serious.

  Who knew what he’d seen in the two months since we parted?

  “I know,” I said. Magnus stretched out on the floor, gingerly putting a hand behind his head.

  “Rocks make an excellent pillow,” he said. I laughed harder than I meant to.

  Blackwood stepped into the cavern and unceremoniously dropped a satchel beside Magnus.

  “Supper,” Blackwood said, giving what could charitably be called a scowl.

  Magnus cracked open one eye and patted the earth beside us. “Come nurse me, Blacky. I require your healing touch.”

  Blackwood squared his jaw. Apparently he wasn’t nearly as sentimental about Magnus’s brush with death as I. “We can’t light a fire, but there’s some dried meat.” He handed me a strip of it. “Everything all right?” He looked grim, as if something desperate and scandalous might have been going on. Honestly.

  “I think I might get some air. You can play nursemaid,” I said. With that, I went for the entrance while he crouched next to Magnus.

  “Will you lovingly feed me from your own hand?” Magnus sighed. Blackwood muttered something as I crawled out of the cavern, barking a curse as my head struck the ceiling. My eyes watered from the pain as I made it outside, and I looked down in dismay. The front of my dress was filthy, and my hands were cracked with dried blood. I should have brought that waterskin with me. Dusting my skirt the best I could, I spied the trousered girl and walked over to her. She sat atop one of the stones, looking out at the horizon. The mist had burned almost completely away by now, and the brilliant orange and violet of the sunset was glorious. I paused, unsure what I could say to this girl. Thank you, obviously, but what else? She’d a look of intense concentration on her face.

  “Come along.” She gestured me over. I smoothed my skirt and sat down on a rock beside her, shuffling to get comfortable. She noticed, and grinned in amusement. “Best eat that.” She nodded to the food in my hand. “Never know when you’ll need your strength.”

  My stomach growled in agreement. I tore into the dried meat, wincing at the salty taste. A few days ago I’d been eating gingerbread in a parlor. My, how things change. I didn’t want to become some pampered idiot, so I made an approving noise. “It’s good,” I said.

  The girl laughed, picked up her ax, and started cleaning it with a cloth. She regarded her weapon with a loving expression. Her eyes were a soft brown—unusual color for such bright red hair. There was something in her gaze that felt familiar, though I couldn’t place it.

  “I’m Henrietta Howel,” I said, pounding my chest to make the food go down. “We’re—”

  “Sorcerers. You’ve the magic sticks.” She held up her ax and studied it. “Maria Templeton.” She offered her hand to shake, and I took it. Her grip was firm, her skin rough.

  “Miss Templeton,” I said, which made her laugh heartily. She shook her head, sending her beautiful curls tumbling.

  “Wouldn’t feel right answering to that. Far too grand. Maria will do. Now then,” she said, “the moody one said you’re lookin’ for a house.”

  “Yes.” I didn’t want to give too much of our plan away. “Something like that.”

  Maria snorted. “No one lives in these parts anymore. Come across a few villages, but they’re empty. Homes for the dead.”

  I shuddered. “You don’t travel with anyone?”

  “What’s the point? I’m more than enough.” She blew a red curl from her eyes. “You sorcerers forget that magic can’t solve everything.” She patted the handle of her ax. “Good blade does wonders.”

  Here was a girl about my own age, living in the ruins of a castle, wearing trousers, killing monsters. I felt as though the ability to set oneself on fire paled in comparison.

  “Thank you for helping us. Magnus would be dead without you; most likely all three of us would be.”

  Maria nodded. She gazed out at the sea again, the cool wind blowing her hair back. The ax that rested on her knee gleamed in the low light. She was handy with it, no question. The look in her eyes was confident and competent.

  “Would you like to come with us?” I blurted out. Maria raised her eyebrows in surprise. “I only thought that we could help each other.”

  “You could use another blade, then?” she asked.

  “Certainly. And a healer. If we happen upon an Ancient, you could use us. I don’t think an ax would do so much in that situation.”

  Maria considered this. “You’re on a quest, are you? The brooding lord in there doesn’t seem like the type to camp for sport.” She regarded me shrewdly. “What are you searching for?”

  “Something magical,” I said. That much was true. Maria grinned.

  “Don’t trust me yet. No, I don’t blame you,” she said, holding up a hand to stop my reply. “Shows you’ve some sense. All right.” She stood, brushing off her trousers. “Sounds like a bargain.” Her grin died as she winced and clutched at h
er stomach. Oh no.

  “Are you well? Is it the poison?” I stood up quickly.

  “I’ll be fine.” She stretched and looked up at the pale moon, which had just appeared in the sky. “We’ll take turns keeping a lookout for Familiars.” She hefted the ax over her shoulder. “I’ll take first watch.”

  —

  I AWOKE IN THE NIGHT TO the sound of someone muttering outside. Heart hammering, I bolted upright and looked around. Magnus and Blackwood were huddled on opposite sides of the cave, dead asleep. Even with his injury, Magnus had sprawled himself out, claiming space. Blackwood’s arms were protectively tucked against his body. Unconscious, they still revealed themselves perfectly.

  The voice outside continued to speak. Maria. From the sound of it, she was pacing away from the cave. Slowly getting to my feet, I crept to the door and opened it gently so as not to make noise.

  The moonlight overhead was strong, casting the world around us in harsh silvery light and beautifully outlining the ruins of the castle. The clouds had swept away, and the sky was a dense tapestry of stars. Shivering, I stopped in the doorway. Ahead, I caught a glimpse of Maria’s white figure.

  Her arms were over her head, and her mouth hung open as though she were silently screaming. Even from here, I could see how pale she looked. She brought her arms down to hug herself. Kneeling to the ground, she waved her hands over a flowering shrub next to the castle.

  “Blessed be the earth beneath, mother of mercy, mother of life.” She kissed the ground. Something in my blood responded to her call. Maria stretched back to the sky.

  She was ill. She must have taken too much of the venom. I wanted to go to her, but something inside me whispered to stay out of sight and watch.

  She put her hands to the shrub again and spoke. Some of her words were lost, but I heard, “May this sacrifice honor you and heal my wounds.” She bowed her head again, placing her palms on the earth.

  The shrub withered and died before my eyes, the leaves shriveling and turning brown and the small flowers rotting and falling to the earth. Maria arched her back, hair billowing in the wind. Her skin glowed alabaster beneath the moon. I could feel the poison burning out of her body. The power she had awoken in the ground still pulsed through me, as sure as my own heartbeat.

  It was different from sorcerer magic, which I felt as a cool rain on my skin, or magician magic, which hummed in my blood and my brain. This was magic of the earth’s foundation echoing in my bones. I crawled back inside, shut the door as quietly as possible, and lay down again. I couldn’t stop the thought that was exploding through my mind. What I had seen…There was no denying it.

  Maria was a witch.

  As we tromped through the mist the next morning, I kept stealing glances at Maria. How ordinary she appeared in the daylight—that is, apart from her habit of wearing trousers and carrying weapons. Hard to believe that she’d stood beneath the moon mere hours before and healed herself through forbidden magic. Harder still to believe how calm, even cheerful, she was. While she looked about, on the alert for another Familiar attack, she hummed a carefree tune.

  What if she knew that I knew? What would she say? I had never seen a witch before. When the war started, witches had been hunted down and burned in record numbers. Punishment for Mary Willoughby, the witch who’d helped open a gateway and let the Ancients through. I’d been too young to see the burnings, but living in Yorkshire had put me close to many of them. I could recall waking up to the morning air smelling cooked.

  Maria would have been a small girl when it happened. Had she lost anyone? Friends? Family? The very thought made me sick.

  We went up one hill and down another, and my boots sank into the mud. I conjured a spell from the air to dry them, and the bottom of my skirt as well. While I tended to my clothes, Maria motioned to me with an air of bewilderment.

  “Who goes into battle wearing ladies’ things?” she said.

  “There’s nothing wrong with being a lady,” I said, blushing. Granted, she had a point, but the Order would have had collective heart palpitations to see me dressed like a boy.

  Or associating with a witch, but they didn’t need to know everything.

  “Why do you wear trousers?” Blackwood asked. Maria shrugged.

  “Ever tried to climb a tree in a dress?” she asked.

  “No.” Blackwood rolled his eyes.

  “Once.” Magnus grinned. “It was for a wager. I won.”

  God, what an image. Maria laughed and slowed down to walk side by side with Magnus. They seemed to get along well, and not in the usual, flirtatious way Magnus got on with young ladies. As they walked, she showed him how to handle her ax. It didn’t take long before he was throwing it in an expert arc through the air and straight into a tree, even with only one good arm. Blackwood trudged beside me, shifting his pack from one shoulder to the other.

  “How can we be certain she’s not a spy?” he murmured, continuing an argument we’d started that morning. When Maria had officially volunteered herself as our new companion, Magnus had been delighted and Blackwood withdrawn.

  “We need to be cautious with whom we accept,” he’d told her when she’d noticed his less than enthusiastic reaction.

  “What was the better introduction? The saving your life bit,” Maria said pointedly, “or the saving his life bit.” She’d nodded at Magnus.

  “My life. Without question.” Magnus had shaken hands with her. “Welcome to the party.”

  Blackwood said nothing further, but now here we were, still softly arguing about it. He was the stubbornest young man alive.

  “We could use a physician. Besides, would you have felt comfortable leaving a girl underground all alone?” I whispered, lifting my skirt and leaping over a muddy patch.

  Blackwood made his mouth a thin line but finally shut up about it. We walked, on alert for more Familiars as we passed one abandoned village and then another. The sight of them made us all uneasy. There was no scorching, no destruction to signify why the people had all left. It was as if they’d simply got up and vanished.

  At midday we stopped for a small rest, and to allow Blackwood to form a scrying glass. He summoned water from the muddy ground and projected Strangewayes’s house’s location. It took a couple of tries, but with the help of the map, we soon saw it: a veritable wall of mist around what looked to be a small house.

  “It’s close now,” he said, letting the water rain back to the ground. He pointed ahead. “That copse of trees looks familiar.” Indeed, we were on the border of an ancient-looking wood.

  The second we entered the trees, the mist enveloped us, so thick I started to cough. Magnus cursed, and I lit my hand on fire to give us some light. It did little to help, only allowing us enough visability to move a foot or two at a time. It felt as though the mist were trying to drive us out.

  Then we saw the house.

  An old wooden fence gated a land grown wild with weeds. The fence was splintered and sagging on its posts, the barn beyond it in a dilapidated state. The wood was swollen with water and bleached from the sun. To the right, a moss-covered gray stone cottage had sunk into the ground. In short, it looked like any other abandoned farmstead to be found in Cornwall.

  But the magic.

  It simmered in the air, coating the inside of my throat like honey. Blackwood closed his eyes tight. He felt it, too.

  “There’s glamour upon it.” Putting out his hand, he touched only mist and air. “The enchantment is powerful.”

  “Magician enchantment?” Magnus walked forward, leaping over the fence. He turned around, and then came back wearing a puzzled expression. “It feels off, doesn’t it? Not quite human.”

  Agrippa had schooled me in only the most rudimentary form of enchantments, but the boys had learned more. An enchantment went deeper than a mere illusion—it permeated the reality of an area, soaking it in deception. If I went inside that stone cottage right now, it would look like any other ordinary, abandoned house. Whatever Strangewayes was
hiding would remain cloaked from the naked eye.

  Enchantments, to put it mildly, were tricky.

  “It might be Fae in nature.” Blackwood sounded confused. “But they don’t usually bother with areas this close to the sea.”

  Indeed, the Fae were a woodland folk. Great amounts of salt water repelled them.

  “Cut the air,” Magnus said, readying his stave. A simple warded blade could sever weaker enchantments.

  I slashed Porridge twice but got nowhere. Blast and damn. Magnus followed with his own attempt, though he was a bit clumsy with his arm bandaged up. Blowing out my cheeks, I paced in front of the fence. Maria chuckled.

  “Sorry. But you all look so cross.” She shrugged her pack off and set it on the ground. Her little fingers played along the top of her ax; she seemed to rely upon it for support, the way I relied upon Porridge. “Have you no other powers to use?”

  Have you? I wanted to ask. Who knew what talents witches had for breaking enchantments? Then again, perhaps they’d never had much experience with them. Magicians, after all, were the race known for dealing in these kinds of deceptions. Right now, Mickelmas would have likely been a great deal of help.

  That gave me a thought. Grabbing my reticule, I rummaged through it for…Yes! I unfolded one of Mickelmas’s trunk spells. Maria studied it, wearing a puzzled expression.

  “It’s magician work, isn’t it?” Blackwood sounded dismayed.

  Magnus only peered over my shoulder to read.

  BRING TRUTH FROM A LIE

  A blade, obviously

  Thread, if you’ve got it (if you haven’t, I don’t know how to help you. Are you not wearing clothes?)

  Soak thread in blood—MUST BE MAGICIAN’S OWN BLOOD.

  Cut straight through.

  What is false becomes true; what is hidden may be revealed.

  Pig Latin works especially well. Or ancient Sumerian. Whichever comes more naturally.