The Blood Curse (54 page)

Her healing magic told her what the curse had done to him; she could feel the insanity and the bloodlust, the mad savagery. Innis searched frantically with her magic, trying to find some part of him that was unaltered, trying to find the bond they shared when they dreamed together.

The prince snatched at her with his right hand, the fingers hooked like claws.

Innis didn’t release his wrist, didn’t stop pressing his left hand to the anchor stone, didn’t stop searching with her magic.

His fingers snarled in her cloak. He hauled her closer.

Innis tried to pull free while keeping her weight on his left hand. How much blood did the stone need?

Teeth snapped together half an inch from her cheek.

Innis recoiled. She wrenched free and released his wrist, scrambling back.

Prince Harkeld snarled and tried to follow her—and jerked to halt.

His left hand had stuck to the anchor stone, just like it had in Ankeny.

The prince uttered a baffled roar. He turned back to the stone and tugged. Tugged again. His hand didn’t come free. It was sinking into the sandstone as if it was mud, not rock.

Prince Harkeld raised his head. They stared at each other, both panting. Black curse shadows covered the prince, covered the stone, covered the snow. Killing lust was in his eyes.

“Harkeld,” she said. “It’ll be over in a minute.”

The prince didn’t seem to hear her. He tried to wrench his hand free again.

A faint groan came from within the anchor stone. A crack snaked across its surface.

The prince tried to free his hand again. The expression on his face changed. Not madness; but panic.

“Harkeld?” Innis moved warily closer.

The prince didn’t try to grab her, didn’t try to bite her. He uttered a wordless cry of panic, of pain.

Innis laid her hand on top of his. She felt what the stone was doing to him. Gulping down his blood. Greedy. Killing him.

“Melt your hand free!” she cried. “Like you did last night.”

But Prince Harkeld didn’t hear her. He was too caught by the curse, too maddened.

Innis grabbed his hair and hauled his head down. She thrust healing magic into him, and screamed in his ear: “
Melt your hand free!
”

For a fraction of a second she felt something—a bond as thin and fragile as a strand of cobweb. A tiny spark of sanity must have remained somewhere inside him. Fire magic coursed down the prince’s arm. His hand came free from the stone. He staggered back, and fell.

“Harkeld!” She dropped to her knees and reached for his bleeding hand, but he rolled towards her, snarling, snatching at her.

Innis scrambled backwards. “Harkeld! No!”

He grabbed her legs, hauled her towards him. Black curse shadows still covered him. Bloodlust was still in his eyes.

The anchor stone gave a loud, splintering
crack
and disintegrated. Gritty red dust sprayed out over the snow.

Prince Harkeld released her. His body spasmed, every muscle going rigid.

The ground beneath them groaned and trembled. The hillsides and the larches groaned and trembled, the very air seemed to groan and tremble—and then the groan died to a whisper and the whisper died into silence. Innis heard the snowflakes falling. It was as if the world held its breath.

The curse shadows melted away. Snow lay white and clean in all directions, uncursed. She saw Prince Harkeld’s skin clearly.

“Harkeld?”

Another spasm racked his body. He screamed, a raw, agonized sound.

Innis grabbed his arm and thrust her healing magic into him. She felt his pain, as if every vein and artery in his body had been slashed open with a knife.

She held him while he convulsed, while he screamed. Held him while his body went limp and he slipped into unconsciousness. He’d lost more blood than she’d realized. He was shockingly weak, his heart struggling to cope.

Innis kept his heart beating with her magic and hastily sealed the cut on his palm. But something else was wrong. Seriously wrong. She could sense damage, somewhere...

She searched frantically, sending her magic through his body, and found the injury inside his skull. Blood leaked from burst capillaries in his brain. Not just one hemorrhage, but scores of them. Tiny, seeping, fatal.

Innis worked with feverish haste to heal them, but for every one she mended, there were a dozen more. “Curse you, Harkeld,” she whispered, weeping, frantic. “You have to
live
.”

“I
NNIS
!” P
ETRUS STAGGERED
to a halt. The snow was red with dust, red with blood. Prince Harkeld lay sprawled, his face as pale as if he was dead. Innis crouched alongside him, cradling his head. The terrible screaming had stopped, but the sound still echoed in Petrus’s ears. “Did he hurt you?”

Innis didn’t look up, didn’t reply.

Petrus grabbed her shoulder and shook her. “Did he hurt you?”

She raised her head, but didn’t seem to see him, blinded by tears. “He’s dying.”

“What? How?”

“His brain. Bleeding.”

Petrus released her shoulder. Brain injuries required more subtle healing magic than he possessed. He couldn’t help her, couldn’t help Harkeld.

A shiver racked him. He looked for the blankets and saw them sixty yards away, a dark patch in the snow.

Another shiver gripped him, so strong he almost fell. Petrus looked for the boy and found him standing behind him, eyes wide and frightened. “Help us, son?”

The boy nodded.

“I need those blankets.” He headed towards them, weaving and stumbling. His feet were leaden, clumsy, numb. Pain radiated from his shoulder, stabbing with each step, each breath. The boy trotted ahead, grabbed the blankets, brought them back.

“One on the ground,” Petrus said, through chattering teeth.

The boy laid one blanket down.

Petrus half-fell onto it, panting and dizzy. The boy wrapped the second blanket around him. The arrow snagged on the blanket, tugged in his shoulder, a jolt of pain that made everything go black for a moment.

Petrus blinked, and tried to focus. The snow was coming down more thickly. If they didn’t get shelter, they’d all die. “Our horses. They’re in the trees. Can you fetch them? We need the tents.”

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY

J
AUMÉ FETCHED THE
witches’ horses and put up two tents. He helped the female witch drag Prince Harkeld into one of them. The prince didn’t look like a prince. He was dirty and unshaven and his clothes smelled of sweat and blood. He also looked dead. As dead as Bennick.

The shapeshifter crawled into the second tent. He was shivering, his skin almost blue with cold. “Can you help me get this arrow out?”

Jaumé nodded. He cast a surreptitious glance at the witch’s feet, afraid he’d see hooves, but the man had human feet. And his eyes were human, too. Green.

The arrow had gone right through the witch’s shoulder. “We need to cut the fletching off,” the man said. “You got a knife?”

Jaumé shook his head. His knife was sticking into Bennick.

“Harkeld’s got one. On his belt.”

Jaumé fetched the prince’s knife and cut off the fletching.

“Pull out the arrow. Careful, the arrowhead’s sharp. Wrap something around it, or you’ll cut yourself.”

Jaumé wrapped the hem of his cloak around the arrowhead and tugged. The arrow didn’t move.

“Brace yourself against my back.”

Jaumé took the arrowhead in both hands, braced his boots against the witch’s back, and pulled
hard
. The arrow moved grudgingly—and then slid free in a rush. The witch gave yelp of pain. Blood trickled fast down his back.

Jaumé dropped the arrow and hastily pressed his cloak to the wound. He looked around for something he could use as a bandage, but there was nothing in the tent.
My shirt
, he thought. That’s what Bennick had used; torn shirts.

“You can stop pressing,” the witch said.

Jaumé cautiously lifted his hand. The wound was still there, in the back of the witch’s shoulder, but the blood had slowed to a thin trickle. “Are you healing yourself?”

The witch nodded. His teeth were gritted.

“Can I help?” Jaumé asked.

The witch shook his head. He sat shivering, both hands pressed just below his collarbone.

“Um... I’ll just put the blanket over you.”

Jaumé draped the blanket over the man, like a shawl.

“Thanks,” the witch said, and closed his eyes and frowned hard.

Jaumé sat back on his heels. This was how the witches had saved the prince in Ankeny. Magic.

He watched for several minutes, but there was nothing to see: just a man sitting with his eyes closed and his hands pressed to his shoulder.

Jaumé crawled out of the tent. The witches’ horses were where he’d left them, huddled together, facing into the wind.
We need a fire. We need food
. But instead, Jaumé jogged through the snow towards where he and Bennick had camped. He veered around Bennick’s body and hurried into the trees, slipping and sliding on larch needles, pushing deeper into the forest.

The pony was where he’d left her. Jaumé hugged her tightly, gulping back tears.

J
AUMÉ BROUGHT THE
pony and the horses back to where the curse stone had been, then he fetched his sleeping mat and blankets, and the food and waterskins. It took several trips. The path he made was a curve around where Bennick lay. Bennick’s body was already covered by snow, but Jaumé could see the shape of him. And the arrow, sticking up out of the snow.

Next, he gathered branches for a fire. He didn’t try to light it; the snow was still falling.

He looked into the first tent, where the prince lay like a dead man and the female witch held his head, and into the second tent. The shapeshifter opened his eyes. “Almost done. Come on in, son. Tell me your name. I’m Petrus.”

Jaumé crawled in. “Jaumé.”

“Where are you from?” The witch’s accent wasn’t like any he’d heard before. The
r
was throaty, the
s
soft and hissing.

“Girond.”

“Which is where?”

“Vaere. On the coast. It’s a fishing village.”

The witch frowned. “East coast, or west?”

“East. As far east as you can go.”

The witch’s frown deepened. “And your family?”

Jaumé looked down at his hands. There was blood on one finger. He rubbed it off, and glanced at the witch. “The curse got them.”

The man nodded, as if this was the answer he’d expected. “Tell me how you got here, Jaumé.”

Jaumé told him everything. The witch listened, and sometimes asked questions, and once Jaumé asked the witch a question: “Bennick called you mages, and said witches and mages are the same thing, but... they’re not, are they?”

“Means the same thing, but witch isn’t a word we use. It’s not polite.”

“But...” Jaumé tried to find the words to explain his question. “But witches are
evil
, and they have hooves instead of feet, and goat’s eyes, and some of them even have asses’ heads, and... and you’re not like that.”

“No one’s like that, Jaumé. It’s a fishwives’ tale.”

“Oh.” Jaumé thought about this for a moment, and then put it aside to consider later, and continued with his story. The mage asked more questions when he got to the bit about the princess and her soldier, and even more when he described their escape.

“I’ll look for them tomorrow, first thing. And I’ll help you bury Bennick.”

“Brothers don’t like to be buried,” Jaumé said. “They just want to face Fith.”

“Then I’ll help you with that. Now...” The mage pushed aside his blanket. “Let me get some clothes on.”

“Are you all healed?”

“I am. See?”

Jaumé looked closely at the pink scars on Petrus’s shoulder, front and back. “Could you heal Karel? He needs it.”

“If I find him, I will.”

Petrus dressed, and went to check on Prince Harkeld. Jaumé followed. “How is he?” Petrus asked the female mage.

“Better, but not good.”

Jaumé studied the man lying in the tent. He was thin and ragged and dirty, like a peasant. Jaumé didn’t recognize him from Ankeny.

“Innis, this is Jaumé. He saved our lives.”

The woman smiled at Jaumé, a sad smile. Like Petrus, she had human eyes. Hers were dark gray.

Jaumé didn’t know what to say to her. He ducked his head awkwardly.

Petrus and Jaumé both crawled from the tent. The snow had stopped falling. The sky was darkening; night wasn’t far away.

“Did you gather this wood?” the mage asked.

Jaumé nodded.

“Good work. Let’s get a fire going and see to some food.”

Jaumé hesitated. “Can we turn Bennick to face Fith, first?”

Petrus looked at him for a moment, and then nodded. “Of course we can.”

They walked to where Bennick lay. Petrus crouched and brushed the snow from Bennick’s face, and pulled the arrow from Bennick’s forehead and put it to one side. The light was fading from the sky, and Bennick’s hair looked brown, not red-blond, and the hole in his forehead was black. His eyes were open. Petrus closed them, then he took Bennick’s legs and dragged him around until his head pointed towards the tallest hills.