The Blood Curse (24 page)

“Any humans nearby?” Bode asked.

“There are some in Delpy,” Serril said. “Petrus’s looter and a couple of others, running as a pack. We’ll have to deal with them tomorrow. If they haven’t eaten each other.”

A shiver ran down Harkeld’s spine.

“How much further to the anchor stone?” Adel asked. His voice was pitched higher than normal, as if his throat was tight. His fingers fiddled with his empty bowl.

He’s scared
.

But everyone around the fire was scared. They just hid it better than Adel, looking stoic, like Bode, or grave, like Innis.

“At least a week. If we don’t encounter any problems.”

Harkeld glanced at Petrus, seated alongside him. Petrus didn’t look stoic or grave; he looked worried.

N
O ONE MADE
a move to turn in. They sat around the campfire, waiting for the curse to arrive. Harkeld expected to feel something—a prickling running over his skin, or perhaps underneath it, or in his blood,
something
—but he didn’t realize the curse had reached them until Malle stirred and spoke. “Look at our shadows.”

Harkeld glanced at the faces around the campfire and saw that the curse shadows were thicker, darker.

Now, his skin prickled. It felt like every hair on his body stood on end. His heartbeat sped up. The Ivek Curse.

The shadows looked too thick to breathe through, too thick to see through, but they weren’t. He felt no different than he had before. Except more afraid.

They waited another half hour, another hour. No one seemed to want to go to bed.
How can I sleep knowing the curse is here?

Finally Rand stood. “Adel, you’re on watch now, with Justen. Petrus and Gretel are next. Then, Innis and Bode. Flin, Serril will sleep in your tent tonight.”

“Sir... do I still need to be called Flin?”

Rand halted and turned back to face him.

“There’s no one to hear us now,” Harkeld said.

“Fithians,” Serril said.

“But the curse—”

“Do you
know
there are no Fithians between here and the anchor stone?” Rand asked.

Harkeld hesitated. “No.” If they could carry safe water with them, then so could Fithians. “But even if there are, surely it’s no longer necessary—”

“If it makes a Fithian doubt who you are—for even half a second—it’s worth it. For all of us.”

Harkeld drew breath to argue, and looked at Rand’s face, weary beneath the thick curse shadows, and released it.

CHAPTER FIFTY

J
AUMÉ MUST HAVE
fallen asleep. When he woke, it was dark and he was in bed, with the blankets pulled up to his chin.

For a moment he was confused. Was he at home? Were Mam and Da in the next room? Was Rosa asleep in the little cot by the window?

And then he remembered: Mam and Da and Rosa were dead. He’d run from the curse and Bennick had saved him. It was Bennick who’d put him to bed.

Jaumé snuggled deeper into the blankets. Memory of Mam and Da and Rosa nibbled at the edges of his mind. He could see Da’s face, mad with the curse, could hear Rosa screaming, smell Mam’s blood, feel it slippery beneath the soles of his feet—

He pulled the blankets over his head and fastened his attention on the one thing that mattered: he was staying with Bennick. Bennick, who whistled and whose eyes smiled the way Da’s had and who was teaching him to use a sword.

By holding Bennick in his head, Jaumé was able to forget Mam’s blood and Rosa’s scream and Da’s mad face.

He went to sleep again.

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

H
ARKELD CRAWLED OUT
of the tent. A cold wind gusted. The dawn sky was as smoky and orange-streaked as dusk had been. A black hawk drifted in lazy circles above them. Innis, not Serril. Serril was eating breakfast.

The water mages and Rand were at the creek, crouching, looking at the water.

Harkeld rubbed his face, combed his hair roughly with his fingers, and walked across to them, hugging his cloak around himself.

“... very interesting,” he heard Malle say. She scooped some water up in her hand, looked closely at it. “Can you see that, Adel? Each particle is affected.”

Adel bent his head and peered at the water in Malle’s hand. “I see it.”

“And the surface, that film, like a curse shadow...” Malle released the water and wiped her hand on her trews. “I’d like to make some notes. I brought some vellum.”

“I’ll get it,” Adel said. He trotted over to the pile of supplies, gangly and gawky and puppy-ish.

Rand saw Harkeld, and beckoned. “Can you see it?”

“See what?”

“Look at the water.”

Harkeld hunkered down alongside Rand and stared at the creek. What was he looking for? The water looked perfectly normal, clear where it wasn’t reflecting the orange dawn. “See what?”

“Look at it out of the corner of your eye.”

Harkeld obeyed, but all he saw was water and reflections and... He frowned, squinting. “Kind of oily on top?”

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“The water’s curse shadow,” Malle said. “Or its equivalent. I’ve never seen anything like it. What Ivek did is unprecedented! All-Mother only knows how he managed it.”

“Can it be undone?” Rand asked. “Without the anchor stone? Could you take a cupful of this water and return it to its natural state?”

Malle opened both hands in a shrug. “I don’t know. I shall certainly try.”

Rand frowned thoughtfully, and pulled on his lower lip. “Is it worth Innis trying too? She’s strong enough to lay curses. Maybe she’s strong enough to uncurse some of this water?”

“Again, certainly worth a try.”

Harkeld frowned. “Wouldn’t that be dangerous for her?” A question Petrus would have asked if he was there.

“No more dangerous than dealing with any other curse. What’s cursed—or unhealed—can usually be healed, although the results are always best if the mage who laid the curse can be, er,
induced
to reverse it.” Rand looked at the water, and shook his head. “No one’s ever managed to curse a kingdom before, let alone a whole continent. How did he get his curse to bond with the water?”

Malle shook her head.

Adel hurried back to them, clutching a roll of vellum, a quill, and a flask of ink.

“Excellent,” Malle said. “We’ll start with a description of the water’s properties.” She leaned over the creek. Beside her, Adel hurriedly uncorked the ink flask. “Odor, normal. Color, normal. Flow, normal. Surface tension...” She cupped water in her palm, dipped a fingertip into the water. “Surface tension, normal.”

Rand caught Harkeld’s eye. “Go have breakfast. We’ll be a while.”

P
ETRUS WAS AT
the fire, eating gruel. Harkeld grabbed a bowl and sat alongside him. He knew the gruel would have been made using water from their barrels, but he still wanted to ask, to double check, to make
absolutely
certain. He bit the words back on his tongue. It was the sort of question Adel would ask. A nervous question. Revealing his fear.

Determinedly, he began to eat.

“What’re they doing?” Petrus asked.

“Examining the water. Malle’s going to try to uncurse some of it.”

He watched Serril strip off his clothes, shove them in a packsaddle, and change into a hawk. Serril took a moment to shake out his feathers, then sprang up into the air, climbing with great sweeps of his wings. The two black hawks circled in the sky together, their feathers shimmering with magic. Serril was twice the size of Innis.

Innis glided down and landed.

Harkeld looked away to give her privacy while she dressed. “What’s the shimmer?” he asked Petrus.

“Huh?”

“The shimmer.” He pointed at Serril with his spoon. “What is it?”

“No one really knows. It’s magic, obviously, but what or why...?” Petrus shrugged. “Philosophers have been debating it for centuries. There are dozens of theories, but only a couple of ’em make sense to me. One is that shapeshifters give off magic when they’re shifted, kind of like how we all give off body heat. The other...” He shot Harkeld a glance. “It’s kind of complicated. Do you really want to know this?”

Harkeld nodded.

“All right.” Petrus put down his bowl. “You see...” He paused, frowned, seemed to be figuring out how best to start. “Air isn’t just air. The same as rock and water aren’t just rock and water. They’re made up of particles that are too small for us to see.”

Harkeld looked at him dubiously. “They are?”

Petrus nodded. “And we’re made up of tiny particles, too. Not just blood and bone and skin and hair and all that, but tiny,
tiny
particles that no one can see.”

Harkeld felt his forehead wrinkle. “We are?”

“So the philosophers say. And the theory is that when we change shape, those tiny particles somehow alter, too, and that causes the shimmer.”

“It sounds... far-fetched,” Harkeld said.

Petrus shrugged. “Far-fetched or not, most philosophers agree on that part of it. What they argue about is
why
the change in our particles causes the shimmer. Is it because of how our particles interact with the particles in the air? Or is it because of how they reflect light?”

Petrus was looking at him as if expecting an answer. Harkeld shook his head.

“Exactly. No one knows. It happens when we shift shape. Only mages can see it. Those are the facts. The rest...” Petrus shrugged. “Just guesses.” He picked up his bowl and began eating again.

Harkeld stared at Serril, circling in the sky. Tiny particles?

He looked down at his gruel and stirred it. Some things were unexplainable. Like why the sun always rose in the east and set in the west. And why compasses always pointed north. Although the mages probably had theories for both of those.

“What’s she doing?” Petrus said, his tone sharp.

Harkeld looked up, saw Petrus frowning, and followed his gaze. Innis knelt alongside Malle at the creek.

“Seeing if she can uncurse some of it.”

“What?” Petrus put down his bowl and pushed to his feet.

“Rand said it was safe.”

“Nothing to do with that water’s safe.”

Harkeld watched Petrus stride over to the creek.

Justen crawled out of his tent, yawned, wrapped his cloak tightly around himself, and came across to the fire. Harkeld nodded a greeting to him.

Thick, dark curse shadows covered Justen—covered them all—but the shadows didn’t seem as threatening as they had last night. Already his eyes were used to them.
It won’t be long before I stop noticing altogether
.

After a few minutes, Petrus came back, his expression sour. “She wants to try.” He sat, picked up his bowl, and scowled at it.

“Try what?” Justen asked.

“Uncurse the water.”

“Huh.” Justen looked at the cluster of mages beside the creek, shook his head, went back to his gruel.

“She shouldn’t be here,” Harkeld said to Petrus. “It’s too dangerous.”

Petrus glanced at him. “Finally, we agree on something.”

“Well,” Harkeld said, putting down his empty bowl. “We also agree that I’m a better wrestler than you.”

Petrus almost choked on his last spoonful of gruel. “Better?”

Harkeld tried to look modest. Across the fire, Justen was grinning.

Petrus shook his head, snorted. He scraped his bowl clean and licked the spoon. “You know, you wasted a lot of weeks being a surly son of a whore.”

Harkeld conceded this with a shrug. “Another thing we agree on.”