The Sleeping King (18 page)

He opened his mouth to declare that very thing—but no sound came out. Stunned, he tried again. Nothing. He tried to force a shout past whatever blocked his throat—

—The wench had
silenced
him.

Furious, he glared at her. He stripped off the Boki belt and tabard and threw the necklace of teeth and bones to the ground, and then pointed at his throat.

“Not a chance!” she retorted. “Came back to loot us and finish me off, did you? What is the matter? You didn't steal enough supplies the first time?” She swung the short sword in his direction, but he dodged the blade easily. His father was ten times that fast with a broomstick.

Still, Will had no desire to find out what other, more lethal magics she might have in her arsenal. He danced backward away from her clumsy attack, holding his hands well away from his sides to show her he was unarmed and meant her no harm.

She flew at him like an angry sparrow defending her nest from a hawk, wisps of dark hair flying across her furious, frightened face. He twisted and dodged her completely unskilled swordplay until the whole thing began to strike him as rather hilarious.

Perhaps it was the grin upon his face or maybe his failure to attack in kind, but one or both finally seemed to penetrate her panic. The sword wavered. Lowered to her side. The angry glow about her right hand dimmed somewhat. The wildness drained from her huge, dark, entirely mesmerizing eyes as she stared at him.

He pointed once more at his throat.

“Oh, it'll wear off soon enough,” she groused. “It has been almost five minutes already.”

Sure enough, the tightness around his throat began to ease, and in a few moments he was able to ask cautiously, “Did orcs attack you?”

She nodded at that, then added in a rush, “I could not believe it when they charged out of the forest. What on Urth are orcs doing in this area?”

“It's a long story and I do not know the half of it,” he replied grimly. “Do you have any healing for your companions?”

She shook her head miserably. “I know some healing spells, but I cannot renew a life, yet.” She added defensively, “It's a difficult spell to master.”

“What happened?”

“I was tired and the
prala
—the brother—told me to take a nap. I was sleeping when the orcs charged out of the woods. They knocked the wagon over. I must have hit my head and kind of panicked—”

From what Will had seen of her wild reaction to him there'd been no “kind of” about it. She'd completely gone to pieces.

“—I tried to help, but the orcs were so big and strong…” She began to cry as she spoke, her story interrupted by sobbing breaths. “So many of them … and not just orcs. Goblins and monsters … our guards were killed so fast … the
prala
tried to fight with magic, but he's a healer, not a combat caster … I didn't know what to do … then something hit me on the side of my head.” She buried her face in her hands, unable to continue.

But he got the gist of it. Awkwardly, Will stepped forward and put his arms around her slender frame. She threw herself against him, wrapping her arms tightly around his waist. He stiffened in surprise and patted at her back ineffectually as she sobbed into his shirt.
How long was she going to be doing this?

Clueless as to how to proceed—his mother had never devolved into emotional displays—he stood there for what seemed like a week of Sundays.

Eventually, the girl raised her head and stepped away from him. “Thank you,” she murmured.

For what?
He let her wet his shirt for a few minutes. He mumbled something incoherent, and it seemed to satisfy the emotional girl. “What's your name?” he asked.

“Rosana. You?”

“Will.” He frowned, not wishing to offend her, but there was something different about her, and the accent … “You're not … Are you…”

“Gypsy,” she answered defiantly. “The great gaj—sorry, the high matriarch—in Dupree took me into the Kaer—gah! I did it again. The Heart—so it's all legal and aboveboard.”

“Umm, okay.” Will looked around the clearing cautiously. “We probably should get out of the middle of the road in case another Boki patrol comes back.”

“Boki?” she repeated skeptically.

Curse it, curse it, curse it.
He wasn't supposed to talk about it to anyone but that Aurelius fellow in Dupree. He backtracked quickly, doing his best to play stupid. “Isn't that what all orcs are called?”

“Hardly,” she answered scornfully. “Boki are legendary fighters. They're a particular tribe of orcs and live in Forest of Thorns in the far north of Dupree. They do not live anywhere near here.”

“Oh.” A pause. “We still should get out of the road.”

She ignored him and instead took a long, critical look at the wagon. “The axle is broken. Not to mention the oxen are long gone. The orcs have probably eaten them by now,” she added sadly.

“Liked the cows, did you?”

She threw him an annoyed look.
Bossy little thing.

“We must walk. Which means we'll need portable supplies,” she said briskly. “Find a sack while I gather food and gear.”

Like he didn't know what equipment was important? Irritated, he did as she said, nonetheless. She was the Heart member, after all.

Of all the Imperial guilds, the House of the Healing Heart was by far the most widely respected in the colonies. They were always willing to heal a commoner in return for whatever the person could afford to pay, even if the patient could afford to pay nothing. Without the Heart, and healers like this girl, willing to brave the dangers of a half-tamed land, a difficult life in the colonies would be nigh impossible.

In a few minutes he surveyed the small pile of supplies she'd collected. Rope, flint and steel, a long sword and two daggers from the guards, flatbread, dried meat, and several water skins. He added a waterproof tarp, a wool blanket, and a coil of snare wire to the pile, then commenced stuffing it all in the two large bags he'd found.

He passed her the smaller and lighter of the two sacks, and she lashed it to her back cleverly using a length of rope and a spare sword belt to distribute the weight comfortably on her hips.

Reluctantly, he muttered, “Can you show me how to do that?”

She smiled brilliantly at him. “A boy willing to ask a girl for help? Maybe you're not so dim-witted after all.”

Dim-witted? Were he not so interested in how she tied his pack and the way her soft, quick hands flew across his shoulders and down his back, he might have taken offense at that.

“How did you and your friends come to be here, tonight?” he asked curiously.

“This afternoon, we threw a wheel. By the time we got it fixed, dark had fallen. We tried to reach Hickory Hollow to spend the night. But the orcs attacked us instead.” She devolved into muttering under her breath that sounded suspiciously like she was taking the orcs' names in vain.

“I'm from Hickory Hollow. I need to go back and check on my family.”

She spoke sorrowfully. “We saw the fire of your village burning just before we were attacked. Orcs never burn until after they're finished looting and killing.”

She might as well have thrust a dagger through his heart. He sat down hard, right there in the middle of the road. His parents? His friends? All dead? It could not be. His mind went blank at the enormity of it.

“You were right before,” Rosana said. “We need to go.”

He looked up at her bleakly. They were all gone. Everyone he knew. Slaughtered like sheep. Ty had failed to save them. And his own insistence on his father making the attempt had gotten his parents killed, too. It was all his fault—

Rosana chided gently, “You are not the only person ever to lose friends and loved ones. This is the Kothite Empire. Tragedy and suffering are all around you.”

Stung, he retorted, “I know the suffering the Empire causes!”

A pause. Then she announced, “You will not get anywhere planted on your bum in dust.”

He clambered to his feet and muttered, “Has anybody ever told you that you can be a wee bit pushy?”

“Maybe once or twice.” She smiled crookedly at him. “Northeast, to Dupree, then. That's where the nearest Heart chapter with a heartstone is. Spirits from here would go there to resurrect.”

Hope fired in his breast.
Resurrection? Of course.
Maybe his parents—and the others from the hollow, of course—would resurrect in Dupree. It was an optimistic thought to latch on to, and at the moment he had need of such.

She started off down the road, and he followed, hurrying to catch up. “I think we should stay off the path—” He broke off, grabbing her arm in warning. He signaled for her to be silent and she nodded her understanding of the woodsman's signal.

There it was again. Twigs snapping, underbrush rustling, and leaves rattling underfoot. A big group. Headed this way. And totally unconcerned for stealth. Rosana looked at him frantically for confirmation and he nodded grimly.
Orcs
.

Stay close,
he mouthed. And then he took off running as lightly as his exhausted legs would carry him, racing for cover with Rosana on his heels.

 

CHAPTER

8

“Wait here,” Cicero ordered tersely.

Raina nodded, watching in amazement as he climbed the largest tree edging the clearing as easily as a squirrel.

He was back in a minute. “We appear to be at the southern margin of a line of forested hills. To the north and east stretches nothing but tree cover. To our west, the woods thin somewhat. If we are to find civilization, logic dictates that it will lie that way.”

Logic dictates?
That was awfully educated language from a bandit. It was a phrase she was known to use, in fact.

“Where are you from originally?” she asked him, trying to keep suspicion from creeping into her voice.

“The Sorrow Woods. North of Tyrel.”

“Are there schools in the woods?”

“Not all bandits are ignorant louts,” he observed. “Particularly not when they are bandits on account of the Kothite Empire.”

She had no idea how to respond to such a statement.

He smiled sardonically at her. “We do not have a school, but my village has a sponsor. A woman whom outsiders call the Black Widow. She keeps the oral histories of my people and teaches the stories to my kin. She is knowledgable on many subjects and enjoys teaching the children of my village.”

“Do you recognize this place, then?” Raina asked, looking around curiously. “Is it Alchizzadon?” Her gaze darted about seeking rune-marked mages wearing dark blue in the shadows.

“Not unless Alchizzadon is a clearing in a wood,” Cicero replied dryly.

“The porters said the Mages of Alchizzadon came from Jena. If we are near there, we might be close to their home.”

Her companion shook his head in the negative. “These are rowan trees, and the hills around us are old. Worn down. Jena is surrounded by oak forests with young, sharp mountains to the north. And rowans like a cooler climate than Jena's.”

Still, a prickle of magic tingled across her scalp as she looked around the clearing. Mayhap it was just the moonlight kissing the carpet of woodland flowers, soft grass, and moss that made it seem so extraordinarily beautiful. Each massive tree ringing the clearing was nigh unto perfect in form and symmetry. Every leaf was green and lush and perfectly placed upon its respective branch. The rod still gripped in her fist was growing warmer, vibrating gently, almost as if it were a living thing.

“I do not ever recall seeing rowans so tall,” she commented. The few specimen rowans she'd seen before were little more than stunted shrubs.

“These ones are unusually robust,” Cicero agreed. “And amazingly well tended. Trees as ancient as these are rarely in such good health.”

“Have you ever seen a wood so lovely?” she breathed.

He looked around, a frown taking root upon his brow. Of a sudden he took her by the elbow and hurried her toward the edge of the clearing. He muttered, “Let us be quit of this place, and quickly.”

“Why?”

“Because this clearing is fae touched.”

She turned eagerly to look at the clearing again. Might she see a pixie or a sprite if she looked carefully?

“Yon is a dryad grove,” Cicero growled. “I've no desire to tangle with one of them. Evil, conniving wenches, one and all.”

Raina swore she heard a faint tinkle of laughter on the cool night breeze. Cicero must have heard it, too, for he dragged her practically at a run toward the edge of the clearing.

He all but lifted her off her feet in his haste to be quit of the place. She did not fight him. They passed out of the grove and suddenly the night seemed darker and colder. Colorless. Cicero took off running, never letting go of her arm.

When her breath came in gasps, her legs were failing, and she felt faint, Raina begged, “May we please slow down and rest? I'm like to die of exhaustion if we go much further at this pace.”

With one last worried look over his shoulder, Cicero did as she asked. She flopped onto the ground, grateful for the cool and damp of the moss beneath her. When she had recovered enough breath to speak, she panted, “Who was laughing back there?”

“Dryads.”

Dryads were fae tree spirits known for their powers of seduction over males of all species. No wonder Cicero had been sweating grapes. She looked down at the rod in her hand, now cool and still. Just a stick. She stuffed it in her belt pouch.

“Are you planning to run me like that again?” she asked.

“Maybe. Why?”

“Then you're going to have to help me remove this blasted corset.”

His eyes widened in alarm as she stood up and presented her back to him. She wasn't brave enough to look over her shoulder and see what Cicero thought of all that. She merely waited expectantly, as if it were perfectly normal to have a male elf, and a bandit at that, partially undress her.