The Twelve Kingdoms: The Mark of the Tala (14 page)

That day marked the true beginning of the battles.

The rescue mission returned, bloodied and unsuccessful, having lost six men and women to the Tala. No one would tell me how many Tala had died. The rumors of monsters and wizardry amplified, tales of people disappearing into thin air warring with stories of dragons and wolves becoming panthers and then eagles.

Shouts and screams in the night spoke of more confrontations. Sometimes the Tala snatched more prisoners, leaving those taunting coins in the place of living people. More often, Hugh’s people attacked, driving potential raiding parties back. No one seemed to be able to find the ones who’d disappeared, nor ever saw them being taken.

The mystery chewed on us all. More and more, the people of the castle whispered of black magic and cast fearful glances or angry glares in my direction. The place reeked of rose water.

I no longer dreamed, instead falling into a deep sleep that felt endless. Each morning I crawled out of bed, groggy, bogged down with inaction, my skin crawling over my bones like the birds that circled Windroven in untiring spirals. When I was allowed up on the parapets, I spent most of my time studying the way to Moranu’s chapel. It might as well be in far Noredna. I couldn’t get there.

I paced my gloomy rooms, going from one blockaded window to the next. If I leaned my eye up against the narrow slits, I could see slices of the action below. The day had blown in cold, with freezing rain, and I’d been forbidden to walk the castle walls, for fear I’d slip and fall to my death. I hadn’t pointed out that more than a few people would rejoice to see that happen.

The nasty weather didn’t stop the fighting. The two forces clashed against each other, charging forward, falling back. Sometimes a swarm of black creatures would seem to surge over a battalion like a wave from the ocean, and when it receded, all the soldiers would be gone, washed clean from the earth. Not all disappeared. From my vantage point, I could see the wounded carried into the courtyard, to be taken below for healing or to be mercifully killed. None were Tala. Hugh refused to take prisoners.

Others muttered that the wizards could not be captured.

I turned my back on the sight, clenching my teeth to keep from screaming. The doll my mother gave me sat by the bed, staring at me with glassy, accusing eyes. I felt I knew what she would advise me. What she herself had done.

Annfwn needs you,
it whispered.

Each passing moment drilled Rayfe’s words through my skull, echoed by the shrieking birds in my veins.

Come to me.

Come to me.

Come to me.

Finally, I no longer harbored any doubt that I would. That I must. The only question that remained was, How?

I found Dafne in the set of rooms Hugh had indulgently given her. I say “indulgently” because the interconnected suite was larger than even Amelia’s. The rooms weren’t in a desirable part of Windroven, though, so none of the other ladies were likely to complain. Here the castle ate deep into the rock of the old volcano. Windows weren’t even a possibility. She’d set up shelves and tables, organizing the tomes according to her own arcane system.

“It’s warm,” I said, surprised. I looked about for the woodstove, like she’d had back at Ordnung, but didn’t see or smell one.

Dafne didn’t look up from the tome spread on the table. She spoke to the pages she bent over. “It’s from the ground. The volcano may be defunct, but the warm rivers that used to fuel it still run below.”

“Oh.” Another thing I didn’t know much about. I could just picture Ursula shaking her head at me. With a pang, I missed her, suddenly and fiercely. Always I’d thought Amelia was closer to me, but these days forced together showed how little Amelia and I bore in common, when I couldn’t ride off on Fiona and leave her to her gossip, flirtations, and love poetry. “I’d, um, love to hear more about that.”

Dafne glanced up at me now, tucking her hair behind her ear. “No, you wouldn’t. What is it you do want to know?”

Now that it had come to the point of asking out loud, I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it. What if she laughed in my face? Or worse, told Hugh I’d completely lost my mind, which I likely had. I circled the room, examining the shelves. I glimpsed more in the next room.

“You can’t possibly have brought this many books with you.”

“No—it turns out Avonlidgh packed many away. Windroven happened to be a convenient place to keep them. Far from the High King’s displeasure.”

“Anything good?”

“All knowledge is worth having.”

I wound my fingers together. “Anything about . . . shape-shifting?”

She narrowed her eyes. “You’re still wondering whether that wolf in the chapel was Rayfe in another form?”

I laughed at that. I wondered a lot of things, but that wasn’t one of them. That I knew.

“I’m wondering how I learn to do it.”

Silence fell between us. I couldn’t bear her considering gaze and fiddled with a little book lying on the edge of the table. Love poetry. Of course.

“You think that kind of thing is in a book?”

“Well, I don’t know, do I!” I snapped at her. She didn’t blanch but regarded me with that scholarly calm. “But how else am I to learn? How else can I get out of this fortress and put an end to this stupid war?”

“If you go to Rayfe, it won’t end the war, just this particular battle.”

“That’s enough for me. You asked me what my plan was? This is my plan.”

“To what? Learn to shape-shift into a bird and fly over the walls?”

“You make it sound silly, but after everything we’ve seen, I know it’s there. It’s in me, somewhere.” I clutched the leather vest over my heart, leaning over the table to persuade her. “I can feel it, more every day, my mother’s blood, like an animal clawing to get out.”

“Fascinating.” Now she regarded me like one of her books.

“Don’t act like you didn’t know this. You knew to get Moranu’s priestess here to help me. How did you know that?”

She sighed. “Why don’t you sit down, Princess?”

I slammed my hands on the table. “Don’t ‘princess’ me! How did you know?”

“Sit, Andi.” Dafne pointed at a chair. “Stay.”

I glared at her, then yanked out the chair and plopped myself in it. “Fine. Happy now?”

“Yes.” She sat down opposite me, folded her hands, and propped her chin on them. “Tell me your plan.”

“I already did.”

“In rational detail.”

“I fly over the walls, meet up with Rayfe. He sends the prisoners back. And I—I guess I marry him and go back to his castle or his tree house in the wild forests of Annfwn or whatever. Happily ever after.”

At least until I’d popped out some replacement babies.
Blood pawn
. Ursula had thrown that phrase out. Now I wondered if she hadn’t been uncannily accurate.

“You left out the part where the combined armies of the Twelve Kingdoms dog your heels, laying waste to everything in their path, to rescue you. Rayfe and his people have made an effort to minimize bloodshed and damage.”

“How can you say that?”

“Open your eyes, Andi.” She held up a palm, as if showing me evidence. “Have they burned the fields? Set fire to the forests? Hurled rocks to break down the walls? I’ve been on the receiving end of Uorsin’s battle strategy. Believe me—he would not be so patient.”

“But—”

“You read the histories of Uorsin’s campaign to become High King. He is not a man to give up what he believes belongs to him.”

“But if he thinks I betrayed him—” Tears caught in my throat, choking me. Screams, the smell of charring flesh. So many people were dying, and yet I couldn’t bear to think of that happening to Fiona.

“You must convince Hugh that you’re making a sacrifice. He must be forced into a binding alliance. There’s no other path.”

“He won’t. He keeps citing his honor. His word to me and to Uorsin.”

She stared me down. “You have to give Rayfe enough leverage.”

“Leverage?”

“What is the one thing Hugh values above his word?”

“Nothing. The man is as noble as the day is long. He lives and dies by his word. Nothing matters to him more than that . . .”

I trailed off. There was one thing.

Amelia.

I stared at Dafne, aghast. “How can you suggest such a thing?”

“I’m not suggesting anything. I’m offering you possibilities.”

“I couldn’t put Amelia in danger.”

“She wouldn’t have to be in actual danger. She only has to appear to be.”

“I can’t do that. It would be true treason.”

“No one would have to know. No one but you.”

“And Rayfe.”

She nodded at me. “Yes. He would have to know your plan.”

Come to me.

“Which leads me back to flying over the castle walls.”

“Shape-shifting is not in any of the books, Andi. Not our books, anyway.”

“I know how to make contact with him, with no one else knowing, if I can just get there.” I held my breath, but she seemed unsurprised by my confession. “But I have to get outside the walls.”

“Did you say you wanted to know more about volcanoes and how they work?” Dafne raised her brows at my confusion. “The warm currents.”

“I’m contemplating betraying my beloved sister to blackmail her husband into selling me into marital slavery so I can betray my father and King’s commands, and now you want to tell me how volcanoes work?”

“Yes, I do. See, it’s easier to build a castle like this into a volcanic mountain because it’s not solid rock.”

“Dafne, this is all fascinating, but—”

“It’s not solid rock,” she repeated. “It’s riddled with caves and tunnels. That’s how the warm air gets in here. Through natural passages in the mountain.”

Passages. Tunnels.

“Do you already know the way out?”

“Yes.” She stood and pulled a scroll from the shelf. She spread it over the table. “I love a builder who keeps careful plans.”

“Why doesn’t anyone else know about this tunnel?”

“I imagine someone did, once. It’s right here.” She traced the route with her fingertips.

“And it’s been sitting here in storage.”

She raised her eyebrows, giving me a pointed look. “This is why it’s perilous to ignore a librarian.”

I
n the end, it proved surprisingly easy to escape Windroven. That’s another thing about sieges—everyone gets so focused on keeping the enemy out that it never occurs to them that someone might try to leave.

I left just after midnight, after the sentries changed over and had settled again. I pleaded fear and expressed a need to sleep in my sister’s chambers, with all the other ladies. My guards didn’t give it a second thought. They certainly didn’t notice when I slipped out the other door to her suites.

We’d figured on an hour for me to walk to the chapel, half that to leave a message for Rayfe, and twice that to get back, since I’d have to be more stealthy on the way back in. That would see me safely inside well before dawn.

Dafne waited for me with clothes and supplies. She showed me the path again on the plans and offered to point the way. Or go with me. We’d had this argument already and I’d told her no. In case I didn’t make it back, I needed her here, to spin whatever story she could. She also didn’t need to be more involved than absolutely necessary, in case this went very, very wrong.

The tunnel wasn’t all that long. Tight in spots, but I’d clambered over enough rocks in my time not to have too much difficulty. It emerged into a cave. I had the borrowed dagger out, in case any beasts made a home there. But it was a craggy and narrow space, with a sharp floor.

I made my way outside and took a moment to get my bearings.

And to enjoy being outside those crushing walls.

I swear the air tasted sweeter than it ever had before. The stars glowed bright, twinkling in merry welcome. I looked for where I thought Moranu’s chapel should be and saw the place—under the waxing moon that hung low in the sky, shining through the scudding clouds like a beacon.

So be it.

It should have been more difficult to pass through the denuded farmlands and the successive rings of sentries, then the surrounding ranks of Tala. The half-moon shed some light, but the night lay dark and heavy. Torches blazed on the main castle approach, where even now I could hear the clatter and shouts of conflict. Above me, the guards on the parapet gazed out over the landscape, watching for an attack to approach, not one woman leaving.

I might not be able to shape-shift, but I’ve had a lot of practice at not being noticed. I drew heavily on that skill now.

The real test would be getting back again.

It felt like one of the dreams, really. I wondered if I’d know the difference. The dreams felt real and this seemed so unreal, animal shapes melting into the night as I made my way to the edge of the forest, weaving through the giant dark trees. Just to test that it wasn’t a dream, I stopped and wrapped my arms around one. The bark scraped my cheek and the leaves tossed far overhead in the stormy night. The trunk, though, never moved. Enviable, that—how trees might bow in some ways to the blasts and gales of the world but stayed firm and strong in all other ways.

Soothed, I continued easily intersecting with the road and following it down path after path.

Moranu’s chapel waited for me, hardly more than a cottage in the woods. Hair prickled on the back of my neck as I searched the looming shadows. I more than half expected to see Rayfe there, waiting on the doorstep. But he would be off with his people, storming the castle. Or looking for me in dreams.

Nevertheless, I sidled around the edge of the clearing first, before approaching the door. I held my breath as I turned the handle, hoping against hope that it wasn’t locked. I’d ring the bell if I had to, if my priestess had barricaded herself in, safe from enemy rampages.

But the handle turned silently under my hand, the door opening inward to the darkened chapel. The moon had obligingly risen high enough to shine through one of the round windows, shedding a bit of light. Enough for me to find the altar and kneel down where Rayfe had. The stone scraped my fingers. Clouds occluded the moon again, dropping me into utter darkness, leaving me to feel my way along the cracks.

There. The stone wriggled, moved a bit, then came loose. I felt inside and a small package wrapped in silk met my seeking fingers.

I pulled it out in wonder.

Real. All of it was real.

Holding the package up to the faint light, I unwrapped it with a frisson of anticipation. What had Rayfe been trying so hard to give me?

The scarf fell away to reveal a wooden box with a hinged lid. Some design inlaid the top, but I couldn’t make it out. Inside rested my dagger, blackened with dried blood. His blood. A message in that, as he would know never to leave a blade uncleaned.

I lifted it out and set it on the stone floor next to me. I knew there must be something else.

A leather pouch rested in the bottom of the box. I set the box down, putting the dagger back inside, and unknotted the tie. Silver caught the light, and something with a dark sparkle. I held it up to the windows.

A ring. Chased runes shadowed the sides, with a stone set in, cabochon-style.

“My vow to you.”

I cursed on a half shriek, bobbling the ring. Tucking it into my palm, I stood and whirled around in one movement, my back to the altar.

A chuckle came from Rayfe’s dark shape near the doorway. Yes, very funny.

“You frightened me.” My heart pounded in my throat, choking me, but I managed to get the words past it. I could slide the borrowed dagger at my hip out of its sheath. Too bad I’d left mine on the floor, though the edge was undoubtedly dulled, sullied by his blood all this time. It would do in a pinch. Still, I’d come to negotiate.

“I apologize, Andromeda. My pleasure at seeing you finally here outpaced my sense.”

He stepped toward me, still a sinister black silhouette in his cloak, and I deeply regretted being trapped against the altar.

“Shouldn’t you be off, oh, laying siege to the castle?” The stone on the ring burned into my palm.

“Why should I be when the treasure I seek is right here?” Relentlessly he moved closer.

“But you didn’t know I’d be here tonight.”

“I hoped. You know I’ve been waiting.”

He stopped. Close to me. So close that, though I was on the raised dais of the altar, I still had to tip my chin back to see his face. Not that it did any good in the deep shadows.

“How have you been?” he asked. “I’ve worried about you.”

“I’m fine,” I lied.

He raised a hand and stroked my cheek with one black-gloved finger.

“Don’t,” I whispered.

“Do I frighten you still?”

Yes.
“No. You make me angry.”

“And yet, you’ve come to me as I asked, to give yourself to me.”

“I haven’t.”

“No?” He growled the word and I shivered. What had I been thinking? Wordlessly, I handed him the scroll I’d prepared. He took it and a stray gleam of moonlight showed that he raised a hawklike eyebrow at me.

Thankfully he stepped away, unrolling the parchment. A small blue light appeared near his shoulder, illuminating the sharp planes of his face. He heard my breath of surprise, because he glanced at me with a half smile. “A minor magic. I’ll teach you this and much more, my Andromeda.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him I wasn’t his anything, but I realized that wasn’t true. If all went according to the plans I myself had made, I would be handing myself over to him. Presumably after that I would be his, to do with as he liked.
Blood pawn
. The thought filled me with a kind of dreadful anticipation. An image of Hugh kissing Amelia with such tenderness flew through my mind while I studied Rayfe’s sharp profile, highlighted in silver blue. I shivered again. No golden prince he.

“Are you chilled?” he asked, still reading.

“It’s a stormy night.”

“It is. And you have no cloak.”

“I thought it would draw attention and perhaps hamper my movements. Secrecy is very important—as you can see.”

“Wise.”

He rolled up the scroll and tucked it into an inside pocket, his magic light winking out. Then he unfastened his heavy black cloak and swung it around me, long fingers tying it at my throat. His warmth and scent enveloped me, too, and I couldn’t meet his eyes.

“So this is your plan.”

I nodded.

“Clever,” he mused. “Have you no affection for your sister, then?”

“I have tremendous affection for her. You must swear to me that no harm will come to her.”

“Must I?”

“Or the deal is off.”

“You could simply come with me now. That would also put an end to this battling—without jeopardizing your sister.”

“It can’t happen that way.”

He grinned at me, wolfish. “Do you think to test me?”

I put the point of my borrowed dagger against his heart. “I’m serious. My father wouldn’t rest. He’d come after you.”

“Do you think I care about that?” His tone whipped out and I flinched.

“You should. If you care about the land and the people. He doesn’t.”

“You are all I want. Annfwn needs you. Everything else is secondary, at best.”

“You keep saying that. Why does Annfwn need me?” I ground out.

“That is an old and complicated story. Trust that we do. And that I admire your desire to save the lives of my people.”

“My people, too,” I shot back.

“In truth, they are all your people, aren’t they?” He fingered my braid where it hung over the cloak. “Put the dagger away, my part-blood.”

“That’s an ugly thing to call me.” I shot a glance up into his shadowed face.

“I don’t mean it as such.”

I didn’t know what to say in reply, so I stared at the center of his chest, the blade gleaming silver against his dark vest.

“Why are you willing to come to me, if I frighten you so?” he finally asked, in a surprisingly gentle voice.

“I already told you. I explained it all in that letter.” Except the part about the strange changes in me. I superstitiously hadn’t wanted to put that into words.

“Only because you feel trapped into this course of action, then?”

“You are the one who accused me of indulging in inaction. What other reason could I have?”

“None, I suppose.” He sighed, and there might have been disappointment in it. “Put your dagger away and give me the ring, please.”

I hesitated.

“Believe me, you won’t get the drop on me so easily again. And the blade is at the wrong angle—you’d only get it stuck in a rib.”

“It would hurt, though.” I tried to sneer at him. He regarded me somberly, eyes dark.

“Yes, but my heart would be in no danger. The ring, Andromeda.”

I put the knife back in its sheath—what else could I do?—and opened my palm. He took the ring from me and brought it to his lips.

“I hadn’t dared hope that I might be able to do this for the first time myself. Your other hand, please.”

Mesmerized, I gave him my hand and watched him slide the ring onto my finger.

“My vow to you, Andromeda. I accept your plan. No harm will come to your sister.”

And to me?
The dark stone glittered in the moonlight, my hand white against his fine black gloves.

“I can’t wear it—they’ll see.”

“For now. Then, keep it hidden, until our wedding.”

Our wedding. I knew that. Still the word blew through me like a hard fall.

“And to seal our pact—a kiss.” His voice echoed rough with hunger.

Did he kiss you?

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“What will it do?”

“Do?”

I cleared my throat and made myself look at him, his lips, just a hand’s length away. “It binds me to you somehow, doesn’t it?”

He smiled, a flash of true amusement. “Not in the way you mean.”

“Does it have to be now? Can’t it be . . . later?”

“No. I think not. I’ve given you my vow; now I require yours. A kiss, Andromeda.”

“Everyone calls me Andi.” I wanted to sound strong, but my voice came out nervous.

He lifted his hands and cupped my face, coaxing me to look into his eyes, black in the darkness.

“I’m not everyone else. My kiss.”

With a sense of fatality, I nodded and steeled myself. I would have to give him much more than this. He sighed out a long breath, as if he’d been holding it, and dropped his head, angling a bit. Unable to bear it, I closed my eyes.

His lips brushed over mine, warm and soft. Just a whisper of a kiss. He pulled back and I opened my eyes, surprised. He flashed a grin at me, then wrapped his arms around me and pulled me in tight against his hard body. His mouth captured mine again, lips feeding on mine, coaxing and pulling, until I opened up and his tongue swept mine, hot, arousing.

Fire blazed through me. That animal something that had been pacing through my heart, clawing at my veins, swelled up and rose to meet him. I kissed him back, ferocious, starving.

I clung to him, rising on my toes to better reach him, to press my body against his, my fingers tangling in the black silk of his hair while his hands plunged under the cloak to roam my body.

He hummed, low in his throat, a pleased male animal. The sound wrenched me back to reality. I pulled back but he held me tight.

Dropping my weight, I fixed my palms on his chest and pushed, with more strength than I ever remembered having, sending him staggering back an arm’s length, a surprised and delighted laugh escaping him.

“It’s not funny,” I hissed. “And be quiet—what if we’re discovered?”

“Then I take you with me now and we begin our wedding night that much sooner.”

“Absolutely not! You have no idea what Uorsin—”

“I’ve lived my life under the threat of Uorsin and his fearsome retaliation. Annfwn has paid a dear price for his obsession. I won’t do it any longer. It’s time to balance the scales.”

“That’s easy enough for you, but you don’t know the price I’d pay!” My voice broke and I turned away, scrabbling at the ties of his cloak. “Here. Take your cloak and go. You promised to abide by my plan.”

“What price?” Rayfe’s voice came soft in my ear as he laid gentle hands on my shoulders. “Tell me.”

“Small in the grand scheme,” I tossed over my shoulder, moving out from under those warm and possessive hands. “Something that’s important only to me.”