The Blood Curse (36 page)

Harkeld touched the handprint. It was rock-hard. “You think it would be safe to do that to the anchor stone?”

“I’m not a stone mage, or a fire mage, but I think... yes. If you need to.”

“T
RY NOT TO
worry about the anchor stone,” Rand said, as they walked back across the paddock. “I don’t think Ivek intended it to harm you.”

“I doubt he even thought about me. He didn’t think I’d ever be born. I’m... impossible.” A Rutersvard prince with mage blood in his veins. Ivek’s joke against the Kingdoms.

“Fortunately for the Seven Kingdoms, you’re not.” Rand glanced at him, his face half-shadowed in the gloom. “Innis and I will be with you at the anchor stone. If your hand is damaged, we’ll heal it. I promise you.”

If I still have a hand.

They walked in silence, their boots crunching in the dirt and wisps of dried grass. Cora had made him a promise, too. To have one of the healers strip his magic from him once the curse was broken. Harkeld tried to imagine it: the gland in his skull dead, no more fire magic in his blood.

He looked for Innis, and found her sitting on the tailboard of the wagon. Petrus was with her. She was holding one of his hands in both of hers. They were talking, their heads bent close together.

A month ago he’d wanted nothing more than to be rid of his magic, rid of Innis and Petrus and the rest of the mages.

Now, he no longer wanted that.

H
ARKELD WENT TO
sleep in the back of the wagon, with Serril on one side of him and Rand on the other, and dreamed that he sat on the driver’s box. He saw stars, saw the black shape of a mountain range. Night was silent around him. There was no smell of smoke, no smell of anything. No wind. No icy chill in the air.

Someone sat alongside him. He felt the warmth of a shoulder, an arm, a thigh. His recognition was immediate: Innis.

“Are we sharing a dream?” His voice sounded loud in the silence. “Are we sleeping close enough?”

“Must be.”

Harkeld took her hand. With that touch came the familiar sense of bone-deep contentment. It trickled into the hollow space inside him, filling him as rain filled a dry pond after drought. Despite everything that had happened today—the cursed child, Gretel’s death—he found himself feeling happy. Truly, deeply happy. And Innis was happy, too. He sensed it through their handclasp, sensed her grief and exhaustion—and her happiness.

Happy, because she loved him. Because he loved her.

T
HEY SAT IN
silence, holding hands, while the stars moved leisurely overhead.

“How’s Petrus?” he asked, after several hours had passed.

“More upset than he’s letting on.”

“He loves you, you know.”

“I know.” He felt the sharp pang of her regret. “He didn’t used to. Not like he does now. It’s new. Since he went on his Journey.”

“Would you...” Harkeld closed his mouth, decided not to ask the question, but Innis heard it anyway.

“Would I love him back that way, if you weren’t here?” She was silent for a moment. “I don’t know. Maybe. Probably.”

S
TARS ROSE FROM
behind the dark bulk of the mountains and traced slow paths across the sky. The cool calmness of the night sank into Harkeld’s skin, and the warm contentment of holding Innis’s hand hummed in his blood. “Gretel’s grandfather and mine were brothers. She told me today.”

Innis hadn’t known. He felt her surprise, and the rush of her emotions as she remembered Gretel’s death, and knew she sensed his own emotions: grief, regret.

“She said I’ve got lots of cousins.”

He’d lost one family, lost his birthright and his name, but that no longer seemed such a terrible thing. “The deal I made with Cora—to be stripped of my magic once this is over—I’ve changed my mind. I want to study at the Academy. I want to learn to use my fire magic properly, see what kind of healer I am.”

“Truly?” He felt Innis’s swift hope, her cautious delight.

“Truly.” He let go of her hand, put his arm around her shoulders, pressed a kiss into her hair.

There were other things he wanted, too. But he wasn’t going to discuss them with Innis while they were dreaming. When he asked her to marry him, he wanted to be awake.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN

T
OWARDS DAWN,
K
AREL
began to stir, to twitch his head from side to side, to mumble. Britta threw back her blankets and knelt, trying to see his face. “Karel? Karel, can you hear me?”

But it seemed that he couldn’t. The mumbling continued, the twitching.

It was a relief when dawn grayed the sky and the Fithians unrolled from their blankets. Bennick crossed to the wagon, the boy at his heels. “He’s talking in his sleep,” Britta told the assassin. “But he won’t wake up.”

Bennick climbed up into the wagon and bent over Karel for a moment. “It’s the fever. Feel how hot he is?” He unwound the bandages and checked Karel’s injuries.

“Are they all right?” Britta asked anxiously.

“A little swollen. Not too bad.” Bennick retied the bandages.

“But the fever—”

“If these start seeping pus,
then
we worry. Hold his head up; I’ll get some more feverwort into him.”

CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

T
HEY STOPPED AT
the first village they came to. Wind blew through the empty market square, rattling the shutters, kicking up dust. Jaumé shivered. The village felt dead, as if even the straggling weeds around the well had stopped growing.

The Brothers searched for barrels and found two in the tavern. They knocked out the bungs, letting ale spill onto the straw-covered floor. Bennick saw Jaumé’s shocked expression. “Easier to get the barrels outside if they’re empty. Come on, lad. Let’s look for feverwort. Someone here must’ve had some.”

B
ENNICK CHECKED THE
houses around the market square. In the sixth house, he made a sound of satisfaction. “Herbalist. Look.”

Herbs hung drying from the ceiling. Some were whole plants, roots and all, others were bundles of leaves, twigs, flowers, grasses.

Bennick prowled the room, looking up. “Here’s what we want. Feverwort.”

The feverwort still had its roots. Jaumé eyed the pale tubers.

Bennick saw his expression and laughed. “Don’t worry, lad. Can’t hurt you unless you eat it. Or better yet, boil it and drink the water.” He handed Jaumé the dried plants and turned his attention back to the hanging herbs. “Wonder if there’s any bone-knit...? Ah, yes.” He pulled down a bundle of twigs with tiny dried leaves on it. “And something for a poultice...”

J
AUMÉ’S ARMS WERE
full by the time they left the house. In the market square, Vught and Soll were heaving the empty barrels into the wagon. Hetchel was at the well, filling buckets.

Jaumé helped the Brothers fill the barrels, trotting back and forth between the wagon and the well until his arms ached from lugging buckets. Afterwards, hot and panting, he guzzled water, slurping it greedily, but once on horseback, he quickly grew cold. This was the sweeping, icy wind that he remembered from when he’d crossed Sault with Nolt. He huddled into the sheepskin jacket and pulled his cap low over his ears.

The wind smelled of smoke. Something large was burning to the south. Jaumé wondered what it was. Stubble fields? He didn’t think so. All the farmers would be gone by now, chased out by King’s Riders.

He kept a nervous eye on the smoke. He’d seen two things burn: Girond, when the curse took it, and the farm the hillmen had raided.

Smoke meant death.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE

I
NNIS FLEW IN
great concentric sweeps, checking anywhere a Fithian might be hidden—ditches and gullies, tumbledown barns, the charred ruins of farmhouses. In an abandoned hamlet, she landed and changed into a dog, searched for fresh scents, and found nothing. Two miles west of the hamlet, on a narrow track that wound up a dry gully, she found someone alive—a young woman, crawling.

Thick shadows almost obscured the woman’s face; she was cursed.

The woman headed up the gully, crawling painfully, slowly. She wore a tattered, bloodstained gown. One leg trailed awkwardly. Broken?

Innis’s head told her to keep flying—she couldn’t heal the woman, couldn’t uncurse her—but her heart told her to stop. Cursed or not, the woman was suffering.

Innis changed into a sparrow and landed on a nearby rock. The woman didn’t notice. She crawled onward, her attention utterly on her task. Her palms and knees were lacerated, leaving bloody marks in the dirt. Innis heard her breaths—harsh, gasping.

This close, she could see the woman’s face beneath the curse shadows. She was younger than Innis had thought; girl, not woman. Fifteen? Sixteen? A long braid of brown hair dragged in the dust. There was dried blood around the girl’s mouth, dried blood on her chin and throat, dried blood crusting her bodice.

Innis listened to the gasping breaths. Her tiny sparrow’s heart seemed to contract in her chest. Not horror, but sorrow.

A swift end to this painful, crawling death—it was all she could give the girl.

Innis took a deep breath, fixed in her mind’s eye what she needed to do—carotid, jugular, aorta—hopped off the rock and glided down to land beside the girl.

The girl didn’t notice. She dragged herself forward, grunting, gasping, leaving her blood on the cart track.

Another breath—a swift change into herself—her hand gripping the girl’s shoulder—the girl turning her head...

Carotid, jugular, aorta. Innis sent her magic into the arteries fiercely, rupturing them.

The beginnings of a snarl distorted the girl’s face—and then her body spasmed.

Innis released her grip and scrambled back as the girl collapsed on the track. “All-Mother,” she said, and she wasn’t sure whether it was a prayer or a plea for forgiveness.
All-Mother, what have I done?

The girl lay still, unbreathing. Her face was turned towards Innis, open-eyed.

Innis knelt on the stony track. Her heart beat fast, her breath caught in her throat with each inhalation.

The curse shadows covering the girl melted away. Innis saw her face clearly. There was a dimple on her chin, beneath the crusted blood. Her eyes were golden brown.

“All-Mother,” Innis said again, and pressed the back of her hand to her mouth. She was shaking. Rand had been right: it was a quick death. But it was brutal use of healing magic.

Innis lowered her hand, and made herself look at the girl’s face.

She’d felt the curse in the girl, in that second before she’d died. There had been nothing left of the girl’s personality, no human emotions, no pain, no fear, no despair, just a howling lust for blood. Innis could still feel the howl, reverberating in her fingertips.

She rubbed her fingers until the howl was gone, then reached out and carefully closed the girl’s eyes. “All-Mother, I give this girl to your care, that she may rest peacefully.”