The Flame in the Mist (11 page)

“The Wrath of Mord be upon her!” The rage in Nocturna’s voice sliced through the early morning Mist and into Jemma’s nerves, promising revenge. She pictured Nox urging his black stallion, Mephisto, along the track, the horse’s hooves thundering behind her as he bore down on his target, so easily visible out in the open—

Jemma veered to her right and hurtled down the steep incline into the forest.

And then the storm began.

Jemma sped over rocks and rotting branches, through sheeting rain that pounded the earth, pounded her. Thunder roared overhead, a great beast whose lightning talons raked through the air again and again, stripping trees of their limbs and striking the ground around her. Her Stone thumped against her chest as she ran and she clasped it, willing its help. But it had no effect on the storm, and seemed powerless in the thick of the forest.

And now the forest, too, was assailing her. Tree limbs stretched out, whipping her face as she passed. Roots rose from the earth like skeletons from the grave, tripping her. Again and again she slammed to the ground, terrified she’d squashed Noodle and Pie. Again and again their nips and squeals told her they were all right, and she struggled to her feet, picked up the increasingly battered book, and pressed on.

Finally she stopped and fell to her knees. The mauve tea essence had completely worn off; she was exhausted, and felt as though her pounding chest would tear open, baring her heart to the vengeful Wrath of Mord, which surely this was, unleashed by the furious Nocturna.

“Must … find somewhere to hide,” she gasped. “Can’t … keep going …”

Between the firs, through a curtain of rain, a shadow moved. And another, darting into view, then disappearing. Fear shot into Jemma’s veins and she took off again, stumbling over the uneven ground yet managing, somehow, not to fall. Her clothes were heavy, soaked through. And still thunder roared, and lightning speared down. In its brief flashes, she could see more shadows gathering. They looked like pale Mordsprites, small, bedraggled, skeletal. She lengthened her stride, but the ground was slick, and she slipped, slamming facedown in black mud. Hauling herself to her feet yet again, she came face to face with one of the shadows.

It was not a Mordsprite at all, but the gray silhouette of a child, a sunken-cheeked, hollow-eyed boy of no more than five, his ragged arms reaching out to her through the Mist.

Jemma stood petrified, her heart hammering as he swayed closer, oblivious to the chaos crashing down around him. Others closed in behind him, a straggling band of waifs, all moving in the same direction.

Toward her.

“What do you want?” she rasped. He opened his mouth and emitted a hissing sound, his words, if there were any, inaudible in the storm. The others joined in with strangled moans and wails. Noodle and Pie turned frantically in her pockets, urging her to flee, but her muscles felt as slack as chicken giblets, and she couldn’t move. The boy was a mere arm’s length away, almost touching her—

And then, he walked through her.

For a split second, a freezing shudder seemed to separate Jemma’s mind from her body. It brought her to her senses, and she took off down the hill again, past the ghostly herd
whose grabbing hands were as insubstantial as chilly gusts of wind.

But there was one more ahead, staggering out from behind a tangle of brambles. A girl … no, a stooped woman, carrying a long stick in one hand. Her face was haggard, hair plastered over it by the rain, lips curled back in a gap-toothed snarl.
Just keep running—straight through it, like the others
, Jemma told herself. The phantom-woman stepped aside, but Jemma felt a slap on her arm as she passed, as real as any slap Shade had ever given her. She stopped, then turned to see the woman scurrying away up the hill, cackling like a maniac as she disappeared into Mist. The muted tolls of eight o’clock began thrumming out from on top of the crag. Jemma staggered on, the thought of the Agromonds coming after her shooting through her like acid.

“Noodle … Pie …,” she stammered. “I don’t know how much more I can take. We have to find somewhere to hide.” But the Wrath of Mord was not about to show any mercy. Raindrops turned to beads of ice that stung her face and hands, and she could barely see a few feet in front of her, let alone spot any cave or overhang that might give shelter. And now she became aware of something new stalking her. Something low to the ground, scuttling alongside. Two of them, three, and more—she didn’t stop to count. Then several scudded across her path.

Spiders. Enormous, hairy wolf spiders. Nox had taught her and the twins about them, and the particularly venomous variety that inhabited Agromond Forest. One bite could easily kill a grown man. And they were hemming her in, forcing her along a path of their choosing.

“Oh, no,
no
 …” Jemma broke into a run; the spiders ran faster too. She tried to veer in another direction, to jump over them, but they reared up and waved their forelegs, keeping her moving, driving her on to Mord knew where as ice pellets the size of pebbles hurled down on her.

“I can’t … go … on …” She was on the verge of giving up, stopping, sinking to the ground, letting the spiders, the forest, the storm, the Agromonds, have their victory—

The ground fell away, and she tumbled into a deep hollow, over sodden leaves and pine needles. Noodle and Pie spilled from her pockets. Her pouch came untied and tumbled in next to her. She looked up. Spiders were crouched leg to leg around the rim, like spectators at a stoning, eager to watch her being battered to death by ice pellets, or simply gazing into this large bowl in the ground at their prey—Jemma and the rats—before devouring it.

Terror and weariness turned to fury. If she was going to die, she would die fighting. She leapt to her feet, throwing off the rain-drenched cloak and the wineskin, then yanked her knife from her boot top and waved its blade up at the spiders.

“All right!” she yelled, her face pummeled by the relentless ice. “Come and get me—but I’ll slice the legs off of every one of you first!” She was taut, ready for the onslaught. But the spiders turned their backs, and in quick succession, each shot a thick, glistening thread from their underbelly. The threads blew across the hollow, carried by the wind, and caught on roots on the other side. Then, circling over the net they had created above Jemma’s head, the spiders began spinning. She sliced and slashed with her knife, but it glanced off the threads, as ineffective as a feather trying
to cut through steel. Soon, the spiders were no longer visible between the thick webbing. Their pattering footsteps faded to silence; the pounding of ice pellets was reduced to a steady hiss; the thunder outside became muted. In no more than a minute, the spiders had sealed Jemma and the rats under a glistening white canopy.

“Mord take you!” she shrieked, stamping her foot on the soggy leaves. “Why didn’t you just kill us, and be done with it? Why leave us to rot down here?” She looked around frantically for Noodle and Pie. They were sitting in the center of the hollow, licking each other’s fur, evidently completely unruffled. “Rattusses—you’re not scared? Didn’t you
see
those beasts? We’re going to make a fine feast for them!”

Something rustled behind her. She wheeled around. Nothing. But there was a dip in the ground at the rim of the web, forming a hole that looked big enough for her to crawl through. She peered out of it. An enormous fanged jaw moved into view, and eight jet-black eyes peered back.

“Aaagh!” Jemma recoiled. “Keep away! If you come any closer, I’ll … I’ll …”

The spider remained motionless. Then Noodle scrambled onto Jemma’s feet, clambered up to her shoulder, and took a flying leap out of the hole.

“Noodle—stop! It’ll eat you alive!”

Noodle snuffled at the spider’s jaws, then hopped back onto Jemma’s shoulder and squeaked softly in her ear.

Friend. Because of yesterday. Feo’s Offering
.

Jemma remembered the pain she had felt for Feo’s eight-legged victims. “You mean … somehow it knows what happened?”

The black eyes moved closer. Calm washed over her. And
then came the same sense of wordless words she had felt earlier from Noodle and Pie, only this time, they came from the giant arachnid bathing her in its gaze:
Safe here. Rest. Storm will pass
.

Just like the bats, they had been protecting her.

She blinked, and the spider was gone.

Rest
, it had said. Suddenly, she realized how badly she needed to. Fight and flight drained from her; she sank to her knees and crawled to where the cloak lay next to her shawl pouch and the book. Just as they had done earlier, the book and cloak had worked their magic: they, and the leaves around them, were dry. So was her pouch. She curled up under the cloak, Noodle and Pie nesting in beside her.

In seconds, she too was dry and warm. For a moment, she looked up at the white canopy above her, marveling at how shiny it was. Then, to block its brightness, she pulled the cloak over her head and closed her eyes. Thoughts of Marsh and Digby sputtered through her mind, before fading, with everything else, into sleep.

She was flying like the wind down the crag, the skirts of her dress trailing in silken threads behind her. Voices screamed from the castle, calling her name in a strange, muddled way—“Ma-Jemmajemjamem!” The bell began its fiendish toll, once, twice, thrice, and on and on. Something was chasing her through the Mist—a monster, attacking—its jaws about to snap her in two.… She grasped her Stone, and an immense force filled her, propelling the monster backward in a blaze of aqua just as the bell sounded out for the ninth time. Nine o’clock. Nine … nine …

Jemma woke with a gasp and heard the last toll fading into the distance. Was it real, or had she just dreamed it? Nine … her birth time … Her body tingled, her head swam with murky images from her dream. Blue-green light surrounded her—or was that, too, in her head? And where was she? The hollow. The spiders. The forest, Mist, and gray shadows. She wanted to run from them, run from it all—the nightmare she was waking from, and the one she was waking to. But where would she run? To her family? She didn’t even know who she was, let alone who they were.
Jemma, I’m Jemma! I must go … far, far from the castle, from the Mist.…
The blue-green pulsed like a gentle heartbeat, lulling her. Weariness washed through her bones. Everything blurred into oblivion, and sleep folded her back into its heavy arms.

*  *  *

Jemma peered out from under the cloak. Colors sparkled in front of her: blue, red, golden and green pindots, which shimmered across her vision, and then merged into two golden shapes, with four red dots shining out of two small, furry faces.

“Hello, Rattusses. What time is it?”

Hello. Afternoon
.

“Afternoon! I’ve slept for hours.” Jemma pulled the cloak around her. For a split second, the rats’ faces seemed to separate again into myriad colors before reconfiguring into snouts and whiskers. Puzzled by her shifting vision, she sat up. Her stomach growled. “Ouff, I’m hungry. That must be why I’m seeing things. Thank goodness for Drudge’s food packages!”

She reached for her pouch and unwrapped it. The two crystals lay on top, their grayness almost completely gone today. She set them aside. The scent of bread and cheese made her mouth water, and she, Noodle, and Pie tore into their meal. The bread, flattened from her falling on it, was deliciously stale, and the cheese was perfect—runny with age and reeking of feet. Only after she and the rats had devoured most of it did she think to ration their supplies.

“Oh, well,” she sighed, taking a more restrained swig of sour milk from the wineskin. “Let’s call it my birthday treat. We’ll have to be more careful, though, and make the rest last. Now, I suppose we’d better think about moving on.” But although the thought of the castle still being so close chilled through her, the idea of having to face the forest again, and the storm, sank like mud into her bones. “Some birthday,” she muttered.

Thirteen.

With every passing year, Jemma’s birthday had become less fun and more pompous. But the one person who had always celebrated it with enthusiasm was Marsh. She would hug Jemma, smuggle treats for her from the kitchen, and tell her some special new story. Marsh’s absence seared through her now. To think of her, cast into the forest with all its dangers … How would she survive?
I got ways of protectin’ myself
, she’d said. With all her heart, Jemma hoped so. And she still had those dangers to face herself.

Noodle and Pie wriggled onto her lap.

“I’m scared, Rattusses,” she said. “I don’t know what these Powers are that Marsh said would come out at my birth time, but that was hours ago now, and I don’t feel any different.” Powers. The hour she was born. All at once, Jemma’s dream came back to her. Being chased. The voices, calling. But something about it had felt odd. What was it? Then she realized: the person in her dream had been wearing a long silk dress, nothing like her shorter, woolen one.

“It was almost as if I was someone else,” she murmured. “Someone from long ago. She was being attacked, then she felt this jolt of energy
—I
felt it—just as the clock struck nine.…” And the jolt she’d felt—was that her Powers coming into her? If so, what form were they supposed to take? The book had Power, and her Stone; but
her
? She felt weak and afraid. Perhaps being Initiated was a way of sealing Powers in, and would have given her courage. But it was too late for that now. Even if dreaming strange dreams and thinking she heard rats and spiders speaking to her counted as Powers, they were surely no defense against Mist and monsters.

Jemma sighed, then forced herself to her feet and went to the opening to look outside.

Pale gray, everywhere. The Mist, swirling over rocks and tufts of grass. Daylight dwindling. But at least the storm was over, and a fine pins-and-needles sensation spattered her face: freezing drizzle. That was better than ice pellets, but still cold and miserable. It was so tempting to stay in the warmth of the hollow. Even if the Agromonds were still searching for her, she’d be well hidden. But would they even bother, now that it was too late for them to steal her Powers?