Reckless (Free Preview) (20 page)

Valiant's eyes
followed the coin until it disappeared in the ferryman's grimy pocket.

"Did the
Dwarf tell you about the Dragons?
 
They're as red as the fire they spit.
 
Whenever they fly over the mountains, you can see the fires they leave
behind on the slopes for days."

"I did
hear about that."
 
Valiant gave
Jacob a knowing look.
 
"Don't you
also tell your children that there are Giants on this side of the river?
 
Superstitious
twaddle."
 
The Dwarf lowered
his voice.
 
"But should I tell you
where there really are Dragons?"

The ferryman
reflexively leaned down closer to the Dwarf.

"Saw it
with my own eyes!
"
Valiant shouted into his deaf
ear.
 
"Sitting on
its nest of bones, just two miles upriver from here.
 
But it was a green one, and it had a leg as
scrawny as yours dangling from its ugly mouth.
 
And I said to myself, ‘By the Devil and all his golden hairs,’ I said,
‘I wouldn't like to be in Blenheim the day that beast decides to fly
downstream.’"

The ferryman's
eyes grew as big as one of Jacob's gold sovereigns.
 
"Two miles?"
 
He cast a worried glance up the river.

"Yep,
maybe even a little less."
 
Valiant
dropped the grimy earplugs into his hands.
 
"Good luck on the return journey!"

"Not a
bad story!
"
Jacob whispered as the Dwarf swung
himself onto his donkey.
 
"But what
would you say if I told you that I really did see a Dragon once?"

"I'd say
that you're a liar," the Dwarf replied under his breath.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

Behind them
the Lorelei were still screaming, and Jacob noticed some claw marks on Clara's
arm as he helped her onto her horse.
 
But
he saw nothing in her eyes to suggest that she blamed him for forcing the
crossing.

"What do
you smell, Fox?" he asked.

"Goyl,"
she replied, "nothing but Goyl.
 
As if the air is made of them."

33

So Tired

Will
wanted
to sleep.
 
Just
sleep and forget the blood, all that blood on Jacob's chest.
 
He'd lost all sense of time, just as he could
no longer feel his own skin or his own heart.
 
His dead brother.
 
That was the only image that found its way
into his dreams.
 
And the
voices.
 
One was rough.
 
The other like water.
 
Cool, dark water.

"Open
your eyes," she said.
 
But he
couldn't.

He just wanted
to sleep.

Even if it meant seeing all that blood.

A hand stroked
his face.
 
Not stone.
 
Soft and cool.

"Wake up,
Will."

But he wanted
only to wake up when he was back in his world, where the blood on Jacob's chest
would be nothing but a dream, as would the jade skin and the stranger stirring
inside him.

"He was
with your red sister."

The voice of the murderer.
 
Will wanted to dig his new claws into the jasper skin, wanted to see him
lying there, motionless like Jacob.
 
But
sleep held him prisoner, restraining his limbs more effectively than any
fetters.

"When?"
 
Rage.
 
Will felt it
like ice through every word.
 
"Why
did you not stop him?"

"How?
 
You never
told us how to get past the Unicorns."
 
Hatred.
 
Like ice meeting fire.
 
"You are more powerful than she is.
 
Just reverse whatever she did to him."

"This is
a thorn spell.
 
Nobody can reverse
it.
 
I saw he had a girl with him.
 
Where is she?"

"I had no
orders to bring her here."

The girl.
 
What had
she looked like?
 
Will no longer
knew
.
 
The blood had
washed away her face.

"Bring
her to me.
 
Your King's life depends on
it."

Will felt the fingers on his skin again.
 
So soft and cool.

"A shield of jade.
 
Made from the flesh of his enemies."
 
Her voice stroked his face.
 
"My dreams never lie."

34

Lark's Water

For a while,
Valiant led them quite resolutely through the night.
 
However, as the slopes around them became
more rugged and the road they'd followed from the river petered out into scrub
and rubble, he brought his donkey to a halt and looked around, obviously
perplexed.

"What?"
 
Jacob rode to his side.
 
"Don't tell me you're already
lost!"

"The last
time I was here was in broad daylight!" the Dwarf retorted testily.
 
"How am I supposed to
find a hidden entrance when it's darker here than up a Giant's backside?
 
It's got to be right here somewhere."

Jacob
dismounted and handed the Dwarf his flashlight.
 
"Take this!" he said.
 
"Find the entrance.
 
And
sometime tonight would be good."

The Dwarf
swept the darkness with the beam of the light.
 
"What's this?" he asked incredulously.
 
"Fairy magic?"

"Something
like that," replied Jacob.

Valiant shone
the flashlight down the shrubby slope.
 
"I'd bet my hat its' down there somewhere."
 
Fox eyed the Dwarf suspiciously as he stomped
off down the hill.

"Better
go with him," Jacob said.
 
"He
might get lost."

She wasn't too
keen on the idea, but she quickly scampered after Valiant.

Clara dismounted
and tied her horse to a nearby tree.
 
The
golden threads in her skirt shimmered even more brightly in the moonlight.
 
Jacob plucked a few leaves from an oak tree
and handed them to her.

"Rub
these between your hands and then brush them over the embroidery."

Clara obeyed,
and the threads dissolved under her fingers as if she'd wiped the gold off the
fabric.

"Elven
thread," Jacob said.
 
"Very
pretty, but any Goyl would spot you miles off."

Clara ran her
fingers through her conspicuously fair hair as if trying to dull its color,
like the dress.

"You're
planning on going into the fortress alone, aren't you?"

"Yes.
 
I am."

"If you'd
been alone on the river, you'd be dead now.
 
Let me come with you.
 
Please."

But Jacob
shook his head.
 
"It's too
dangerous.
 
And Will would be lost if
something happened to you.
 
He'll soon
need you a lot more than he'll need me."

"Why?"
 
It was so cold her breath hung in the air in
white wisps.

"You'll
have to wake him."

"Wake
him?"

It took her a
few minutes to understand.

"The rose!"

And the prince bent over her
and woke her with a kiss.

Above them,
the crescents of the two moons looked like they had been starved by the night.

"What
makes you think I can wake him?
 
Your
brother doesn't love me anymore!"
 
She tried hard to hide the pain in her voice.

Jacob took off
the coat that made him look like a merchant.
 
The only humans in the fortress were slaves, and they definitely didn't
wear fur-lined collars.

"But you
love him," he said.
 
"It'll
have to do."

Clara was just
standing there.

"What if
not?" she said eventually.

"What if
it's not enough?"

Jacob didn't
have to answer.
 
They both remembered the
castle and the dad under the leaves.

"How long
did it take Will to pluck up the courage to ask you out?"
 
He slipped back into his old coat.

The memory
wiped the fear off Clara's face.
 
"Two weeks.
 
I thought he
never would.
 
Although
we ran into each other every day in the hospital, when he was visiting your
mother."

"Two
weeks?
 
That was quick for
Will!"
 
Something rustled in the bushes.
 
Jacob reached for his gun, but it was just a
badger weaving its way through the brush.
 
"Where did he take you?"

"To the hospital cafeteria.
 
Not the most romantic of places."
 
Clara smiled.
 
"He told me about this stray dog he'd found.
 
He brought it to our next date."
 
Jacob caught himself envying Will the
expression on her face.

"Let's
look for some water," he said.

They soon
found a small pond.
 
Next to it stood an
abandoned farmer's cart.
 
The wheels had
sunk into the muddy bank, and a heron had built its nest on the rotting wooden
bed.
 
The horses greedily lapped at the
clear water, and Valiant's donkey waded in to its knees.
 
But when Clara knelt down to drink, Jacob pulled
her back.

"Watermen,"
he said.
 
"The cart probably
belonged to some farm girl.
 
They love to
catch themselves human brides.
 
And
around here, they've probably been waiting a long time for their next
victim."

Clara backed
away from the pond, and Jacob through he could hear a Waterman's sigh.
 
They were vile creatures, but at least they
didn't eat their victims, as the Lorelei did.
 
Watermen dragged the girls into a cave, fed them, and brought
them
presents.
 
Shells, pearls, jewelry from people who had drowned...
 
For a while, Jacob had worked for the
desperate parents of such abductees.
 
He'd brought three girls back to the surface — poor deranged creatures
who'd never quite returned from the dark caves where, surrounded by fish bones
and pearls, they'd had to endure the slimy kisses of an infatuated
Waterman.
 
In one case, the parents had
refused to pay him, because they no longer recognized their daughter.

Jacob left the
horses to drink and went to search for the brook that fed the pond.
 
He soon found it, a thin trickle that emerged
from a crack in the nearby rocks.
 
Jacob
fished some dead leaves off the surface, and Clara filled her cupped hand with
ice-cold water.
 
It tasted earthy and
fresh.
 
Jacob only saw the birds after
both he and Clara had taken their fist sips.
 
Two dead larks, pressed against each other among the wet pebbles.
 
He spat out the water and yanked Clara to her
feet.

"What's
the matter?" she asked, alarmed.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

Her skin
smelled of autumn and the wind.
 
Don't, Jacob
.
 
But it was too late.
 
Clara didn't flinch as he pulled her
close.
 
He grabbed her hair, kissed her
mouth, and he felt her heart beating as fast as his own.
 
The tiny hearts of the larks had burst from
the madness.
 
Hence the name:
 
Larks' Water.
 
Innocent, cool, and clear, but just one sip and you were lost.
 
Let her
go, Jacob
.
 
But he kissed her again,
and it was his name she whispered, not Will's.

"Jacob!"

Woman and
vixen — for one moment Fox was both.
 
But
it was the vixen
who
bit him so hard that he finally
let go of Clara, though every fiber of his being wanted to hold her.

Clara stumbled
back and wiped her mouth as though she could wipe away his kisses.

"Will you
look at that!
"
Valiant pointed the flashlight at
them and gave Jacob a lecherous smile.
 
"Does this mean we can forget about saving your brother?"

Fox looked at
him as if he'd kicked her.

Human and animal.
 
Vixen and woman.
 
She
still seemed both at the same time.
 
But
she was all fox as she approached the stream and looked at the dead birds.