Shadow's Curse (35 page)

A second man followed him in, bundled in greatcoat and muffler, his hat dusted with flakes. He carried his saddlebags over his shoulder, but it was the scabbard at his side that drew Callista’s eye before she lifted her gaze to his face. He returned her stare, his lipless mouth curling into a cold, dead smile. “I almost rode past without stopping. How fortunate I didn’t.”

*  *  *

The snow blanketed the uplands, glittering like crystal under a high, cold sun or shining soft and blue beneath the goddess moon, frosting the bent and broken trees, shriveling and blackening their spring leaves with cold. It drifted thick and treacherous over ditches and ponds and swirled in the cutting crystalline wind. Tracks dotted the fields and forests; hare, fox, stag, and stoat. Once or twice he scented the trail of a lynx or caught a glimpse of the cat sliding gray and brown against the monochromatic landscape. He opened his mind and lifted his head in lonely song, but there was no mental touch of minds, no brush of a signum he recognized. These were not the lynx of the Sorothos, these cats wore only one shape. They would not assist him, but they would not name him
emnil
and offer him a rogue’s death, either.

He padded silently beneath the bowed trees and slithered through the snow-weighted bracken. Caught a squirrel and ate it, the flesh hot and steaming as he pulled it from the bones. Drank in a stream so cold the water torched his throat and sat in his stomach like a rock. The day melted into night and the moon rode high through long streamers of cloud, the snow glowing blue and white as the dark curse’s flames.

He’d glimpsed no sign of Victor Corey or his men since the snow began and the roads ended. But that didn’t mean his enemies weren’t out there. Only that the wolf proved more elusive. But he could not be the wolf forever. The draught’s potency faded as the sickness increased. First it was the cramping of his muscles and a fever’s burning heat. Then it was the jaw-clamping tremors that racked him hour after endless hour, until he curled tail to nose in the shelter of
a rocky outcropping and dreamt of evil words spilling like snakes from a dying Fey-blood’s mouth, waking only when dawn kissed the snow pink.

It was then that he rejoined the road, standing on a high ridge and looking down upon the muddy snow-crusted trail as it wound its way around the edge of the loch, the water an oily pewter beneath the gray sky. Behind him, three blue-veined stones stood sentinel over the valley below. The potent magic within their borders raised a ridge of fur down his back and buzzed against his brain. A chill breeze tasted of game and the sharp aromas of pine and elder and hard fern. Nothing moved below him, either east or west, but a horse’s prints left a wide, plowed trail ending in a churned muddy patch where a man had dismounted and walked into the wood to relieve himself.

A shadow passed over the snow. He looked up to see a bird high against the clouds, an eagle by the size of it. It circled and headed west. A small flock of chittering black wheeled and rippled and wheeled again, then dove for the loch.

The wind changed direction even as a horse’s soft whicker twitched the wolf’s ears. There, half hidden by a fold in the earth and a trick of the drifting snow, was a stand of four or five trees. Enough to conceal a horse and rider, a figure wrapped in a heavy woolen cloak though it was drenched from hood to hem, snow-draggled and caked with ice.

He froze as the stranger scanned the ridgeline where he hid, her scent twisting in his chest until the pain was an agony of desire and fear, relief and danger. He dare not path to her. He dare not even move, for he
scented another—faint but present, like a swirl of ice across the snow.

She lifted her face to him, the hood falling from her hair. Her features were bone-white, her mouth open on a scream of warning: “Behind you!”

David leapt to the side, his paws breaking through the crust of heavy snow, his breath steaming the air. A sword, silver and glittering as ice, swept down where his head had been an instant before.

He danced away from a second strike and a third, his mind aflame with past horrors and paralyzing fear.

“Your blood is as black and tainted as your heart, St. Leger. Did the pretty little Fey-blood whore spread her legs for you? Did you take her as man or beast . . . or both? Perhaps I’ll do the same before I drive a dagger through her heart.”

David drove the past from his mind, refused its power and its pain. He would not bow to Beskin’s slimy threats. No fetters held him fast. No hostile crowds eyed him with loathing. He would not cringe and cower. He would bury his shame and his memories in the same grave as the enforcer’s body.

St. Leger sprang for the throat. Beskin parried with a slam of his sword. The snow muffled the sounds of battle while blood spattered scarlet across the white ground.

*  *  *

Tied hand and foot to the horse, Callista struggled with her bonds, the ropes digging into her wrists, blood leaking down over her fingers. Luckily, her extremities had gone numb hours ago. There was no pain, only a sense of impending doom with every
growl and curse blowing down off the ridge, bringing with it showers of blood-speckled snow.

A swarm of crows gathered overhead, their raucous squawks and croaks scraping against her brain like nails on a slate. They must have had the same effect on Beskin’s horse. It shifted and backed and tossed its head. She clamped her knees tighter against its sides in an attempt to keep her seat on the slippery saddle. Fettered as she was by a length of cord running ankle to ankle beneath the horse’s belly, a fall would trap her between the nervous gelding’s legs.

She gritted her teeth and struggled once more, in and out, back and forth as the blood slicked hot over her hands and she forced her mind from dwelling on the Duncallans’ fate. Had Beskin killed them before he’d stolen her away in the middle of the night? Had he decided the only good Fey-blood was a dead one? Or had they managed to escape? Were they looking for her? Was help on the way?

A shelf of snow broke free and spilled in a thick cascade off the ridge, bringing with it the tumbling and rolling gray shape of an enormous wolf. The horse lifted its head in a frightened whinny, its hooves pawing at the ground as Callista tried desperately to hang on.

The wolf lay panting, a long, jagged gash upon its shoulder, blood and slaver dripping from its jaws. Beskin’s shadow speared the snow above it, his silver sword flashing against the slate-gray sky.

“David!” she screamed. “Look out!”

Just as the sword descended, the wolf rolled up and away, its jaws clamping on Beskin’s leg, tearing through flesh and muscle, ripping in a frenzy of animal
brutality, though the beast’s eyes shone pale with human hate and human desperation.

The enforcer screamed in agony, the sword falling from his hand as he grappled with the wolf, the snow a churned mess of blood and earth. A dagger aimed for the wolf’s throat was turned aside at the last minute, glancing off bone and rib instead. The animal yelped and sprang free, sides heaving, blood streaming from half a dozen wounds. It took a few shaky steps before sinking lifeless against a tree.

Callista fought the ropes, tears streaming frozen from her eyes as she cursed her helplessness. Just a bit more. A little farther.

A hot wind buffeted her face as the air around the wolf shimmered and blurred like rain streaming down a pane of glass. Raw, unfamiliar magic sizzled along her skin and flip-flopped her empty stomach. She blinked away her tears to see David lying wounded and dazed on the snow. A shimmer of light rippled across his broad shoulders and down his long legs before dispersing to mingle with the rivulets of blood sliding in ribbons and curls down the hill.

“David?” she whispered.

He rolled up and onto his feet. Eyed Beskin with revulsion. The enforcer’s leg below the knee was a mess of pulpy cartilage and bone, his face an ugly mask of horrified agony as he struggled to crawl across the snow toward his abandoned sword, dragging his mangled limb behind him. The crows thickened and wheeled, diving down to pluck at Beskin’s flesh, grabbing up gobbets of blood.

A little more. A little closer. She could feel her right wrist sliding free. The horse shimmied to one
side, agitated at the scent of blood and animal and the growing cloud of crows and ravens drawn by the blood-soaked snow.

David crossed the few yards and plucked up the enforcer’s sword with a smile as cold and cruel as death. He stood over Beskin, his expression grim, his jaw jumping, muscles taut. It was like watching a stranger. The man she knew and loved had vanished behind a brutal and merciless mask of vengeance. She wanted to call out to him, speak words to pull him back from the brink of madness, but her voice caught in her lungs, her breath naught but a frosty cloud. Bending low and awkward across the horse’s shoulder, she turned her efforts to the icy-hard knots at her ankles.

“This is for Kineally and the others you’ve slaughtered.”

“Kill me, more will follow,” Beskin groaned through lips drawn back from long sharpened teeth. “Pryor’s power grows. The Duke’s time is past. The Ossine rule”—his hand whipped out to latch on David’s ankle—“now!”

He dragged David off-balance and hard into the ground, his fist driving up into his jaw with bone-crunching strength. “The curse tainted your blood. The Fey-blood polluted your mind. You’re weak.”

David struggled for the sword, but the hilt had tumbled just out of reach and Beskin’s hold was like iron. His face seemed to warp and lengthen, the shades of man and beast flickering beneath his skin as he sought to shift. As David scrabbled to reach the fallen sword, Beskin reached to his left boot. Drew free a needle-thin blade. Let it sail.

Callista shouted as her right ankle came loose,
while the blade whistled past her ear to land hilt-deep in the horse’s neck. It screamed and reared before falling to the ground in a tangle of churning legs. Callista tried rolling clear of the dying gelding, left, then right, until her head exploded in a burst of red and black, and darkness took her.

*  *  *

David kicked and twisted free of Beskin’s grip and scrambled over the snow to where Callista lay curled at the base of a tree, the snow from its heavy branches half burying her, the dying horse thrashing as it pumped its blood onto the churned ground. He pulled her clear and felt the lump at the back of her skull. She’d survive, but he needed to get her out of the weather. Somewhere warm. Somewhere safe. A shadow speared the air above him. He looked up into the maddened eyes of an enormous bear dragging the grisly ruin of its leg behind it. Small advantage when David still faced razor claws and fangs long as daggers.

He threw himself sideways as the bear swung one giant paw down in a blow that would have scissored through flesh like a knife through butter.

He spun and darted, luring Beskin away from Callista, drawing ever closer to the fallen sword. Beskin followed, roaring his rage and pain. His breath blew hot on David’s neck as he swiped at him. Claws tore into David’s calf, dropping him to the ground. Rising up on his hind legs, the bear bellowed in triumph. Lurching with one last gasp toward the sword, David braced for the crushing, gut-ripping, claw-tipped strike. Instead, a rush of wind and feathers brushed his face.

The bear roared and reeled backward, deep gouges
slashed across its snout. The crow dove again, raking and clawing. David snatched up the fallen sword, and before he could breathe or think or regret one more ghost to haunt his dreams, he drove the blade through the enforcer’s chest. Pulled it free with a sucking yank and slashed downward, slicing deep into the bear’s shoulder and neck.

Blood gushed from the bear’s throat and it slumped to the ground, its eyes glazing as death approached, its great hairy body fading in a rush of shimmering air back into the naked pallor of a man. Beskin stared up into the hard sky and the girl in her cloak of crow feathers. Blood spilled from his mouth and his chest as his life ebbed. “It’s true. Lucan lives.”

Badb returned his black stare. “He never died.”

Crumpling to his knees, David retched his stomach empty. His body shook with tremors, his head crawling with voices, dry and crackling, smooth and silky sweet, hard as a smithy’s anvil. Fey magic sizzled the air, and he gripped his skull as if his brain might leak out his ears.

“The enforcer is dead. They will see you the rest of the way to Dunsgathaic,” Badb said, her voice coming from far away and yet echoing through his shattered skull.

David looked up to see a group of gray-robed women surrounding them. Old, seamed faces and gnarled fingers; plump, young cheeks and curious stares. One stepped forward. Small as a child, she walked with the grace of a dancer. Her golden eyes shone like the sun. Her potent Fey-blood magic nearly doubled him over. “The stones will see us home,” she said.

“I can’t,” he tried to explain. “I mustn’t.”

“It is for us to maintain the path between. You must bear her body.”

“The dream . . . you don’t understand. I’ll kill her. Badb, tell her . . .” But the Fey had flown, the crow no more than a black speck in the sky.

“Child of the clans, bring her or leave her, but
you
will come with us to Dunsgathaic.
You
, the Ard-siur wishes to see.”

Weak from illness and blood loss, he couldn’t fight. Besides, there was no point. He knew a superior force when he saw one. And these, for all their soft words and slender figures, were as single-minded as any of Napoleon’s officers. Marshaling his last ounce of strength, he scooped Callista up in his arms as they tied a rope threaded with golden and pearlescent strands to his wrist, the other end knotted around the wrist of the young priestess.

“The connection will carry us together through the void of between. Do not fear the dark. Do not heed the cries. Do not speak to those who would lure you from the path. And whatever happens, do not loosen the knot binding us together.”

“What lies within the between?”

“The abyss where the Unseelie dwell, the soulless and the damned and the forgotten.”

He limped with his precious burden behind them up the hill to the ridge and the stone circle. Stepped into the waves and wash of Fey magic captured there. The midnight black took them where none of his Imnada senses worked. He was blind and deaf to the emptiness around him. He felt only the weight of Callista’s body in his arms. Only the heat of the rope taut against his wrist. The force of magic tore his words
away, then his breath, drove his stomach into his throat, clawed at his mind with a thousand screaming voices.