Steel Maiden (27 page)

When the masked man had poisoned me I had
recovered, but somehow I knew this poison was
different
.

My vision blurred, and I saw images of men
and women dying, creatures eating children, oceans of blood,
maggots, darkness, and the dead rising. I was cold and hot all at
once. I fell to my knees and vomited a black liquid that wasn’t
blood.
What was happening to me?

Cold seeped through my skin, and my mouth
tasted as bitter as raw onion. My tears felt like hot iron on my
face, and my pulse roared in my ears. I watched in horror as some
kind of black ink spread under my skin and filled my veins. My arms
and hands were covered in thick black threads.
What kind of
poison could do this?

The nausea hit me again and I vomited. I
tried to stand, but the ground shifted. The trees zoomed past me,
and I felt like I was running around, but I wasn’t. I closed my
eyes in an attempt to keep the dizziness at bay, and I fought off
another wave of nausea.

I heard the sound of leaves and branches
crunching under the weight of feet. I heard the rustling of the
brush and then muffled voices. They seemed to be coming from all
around me. I kept my eyes closed and focused on the noises. They
were getting louder and louder. My heart pounded in my ears. Was
another red monk coming to finish the job? Or was one of my
competitors out to kill me?

“Elena?”

I opened my eyes and nearly cried out in
relief.

Prince Landon stood over me, watching me as
if he hadn’t expected to find me. I could barely make out the faces
of the five men standing behind him. He stared at the mess of blood
and the chunks of flesh on the ground beside me.

When his gaze returned to me, I couldn’t
understand the look in his eyes.

“L-Landon …” I breathed.

I retched again and a thick liquid dribbled
down the sides of my mouth.

“I’m sick. Help me. I think I’m dying.” I
was crying now.

I wanted to fall into his arms and let him
make everything all right again. I opened my mouth to speak, but I
was hit with another violent fit of nausea. I fell forward on my
hands and puked.

“We thought we’d lost you.”

I was so happy to hear Landon’s voice so
close.

“We’ve been tracking you for hours. We
thought we’d lost you for good, until we saw the light.”

I wanted to ask what light, but another sick
feeling rushed through me so powerfully that my muscles slackened
like I was made of water. I had no strength. I swayed to the side,
my arms shook, and I knew I couldn’t hold myself up for much
longer.

I raised my head, and with some effort I
reached out to him with my right hand.

“Landon.”

He moved towards me with his hands
outstretched.

I wanted to feel his warmth again. I was so
cold. I wanted him to hold me, to take me to his healers and mend
me. I closed my eyes and willed myself to feel better.

But I never felt his hands wrap around me. I
never felt the warmth of his body against mine. He didn’t take my
hand.

I gave a little gasp as the prince untied
the pouch at my waist and took it away with the stone inside it. He
dropped the small pouch into a larger leather one and clasped it
securely around his baldric.

I was too horrified and too hurt to speak. I
struggled with words that wouldn’t come.

Finally, I said, “Landon … what are you
doing … please … help me…”

He looked at me.
Was it pity in his
eyes?

“I’m sorry, Elena,” he said without emotion.
“But this is more important than you can ever understand. The high
priests promised to give me back my title and my lands if I brought
them the stone. Think about all the good I can do. I can rebuild
the Pit and remove the caste system. I’ll even put a stop to the
concubines. Think of that. Our people, yes Elena,
our
people
will heal. I have to do what’s best for my kingdom. I hope you can
understand that. You would have done the same thing.”

I opened and closed my mouth. I couldn’t
speak.

Trembling with heartache, I finally managed
to mumble through my tears and spit, “Landon, I don’t care about
the stone. Just find me a healer.”

But there was no kindness in his eyes
anymore. I wasn’t sure there ever had been. He looked as cold and
bitter as a harsh wind.

“I wish things could have been different
between us. I’m sorry.”

He turned on his heel and left.

The world went spiraling out of control. My
heart had been shattered by a man whom I’d come to care about. The
last of my strength gave way, and I fell face down into my own
vomit.

I sobbed. “Landon?”

I cried, reaching out to him, heaving my
body across the ground with my hands. But he didn’t come back. He
had chosen the stone, and he had chosen to let me die. I thought
we’d shared a connection, but I was wrong.

I watched through my tears as he disappeared
into the tangled woods. My hand fell lifeless to the ground, and I
felt my heartbeat slowing down until I couldn’t hear it anymore.
Maybe I should die. Maybe I deserved it.

When the darkness finally came, I let it
take me.

CHAPTER 28

T
HE VOICES CAME ALL at once, muffled,
like they were far away, like in a dream. They shifted and changed,
growing louder. They were shouting. I tried to tell the voices in
my dream to go away, to let me go with the darkness, but my voice
wouldn’t come. The darkness lifted, and the voices neared.

“Don’t touch her! She’s a witch. She’ll hex
you,” said a man’s voice.

“You heard what the others said. She’s a
magic bearer. That can only mean she’s a witch.”

“If you touch her you’ll be cursed forever,”
said another man, and I heard someone spit.

“I’m telling you, you’ll be under her spell
like a slave. You’ll be the slave of hell. Everyone knows witches
are the Devil’s whores. She’ll probably curse our families too. Is
that what you want? Is it?”

“Damn it, Jon,” said the other voice again.
“Just leave her. She’s probably dead anyway. Look at her.”

“She’s not dead,” roared a different voice
with authority.

I felt something brush my neck and then
press on my skin.

“There’s a pulse,” the man called Jon sighed
in relief. “She’s alive.”

I don’t know why, but I wanted to tell him
to let me die. If I couldn’t heal myself from the red monk’s
poison, he wouldn’t be able to help me anyway.

“Even if you take her, she’ll never make it
back in time. She’s too far gone.”

“Yeah, she looks like a corpse. Leave
her.”

“Shut up! The both of you,” growled the
dominant voice. “Or so help me God, I’ll kill the both of you!”

Something hard and strong wrapped around me,
and the next thing I knew I was floating. I remembered having
dreams where I could fly, and my feet didn’t touch the ground. This
was similar. The musky smell of a man’s perspiration filled my
nose. I didn’t remember ever being able to smell in any dream.
Maybe I wasn’t dreaming. I was warm and so sleepy. The man’s
fingers were hard with calluses and fearsomely strong. A wave of
nausea hit me, and once again I went tumbling down into the
darkness.

I woke to the sounds of angry voices again.
I was still floating. When I felt the searing pain of my skin
rubbing against the man’s shirt, I knew I wasn’t dreaming. I
trembled violently as a wave of cold fever rushed through my limbs,
and I burned with cold.

I felt the man’s arms squeeze me in response
to my trembling. As my head lolled back, my eyes snapped open.
Blurred shapes passed me by, tall shadowed figures, as giant as the
mountains. Trees, I figured. But as my eyes adjusted, the trees
appeared to have faces, gruesome faces with large, bulbous eyes and
fangs.
How can trees have faces?
I felt like I’d seen these
trees with faces before, but where? I felt a jerk, and my head fell
forward.

The shapes were moving faster now. My lids
were like iron, and I couldn’t keep them open. It didn’t matter.
Nothing I saw made any sense. I was confusing my dream with
reality, or I was going insane? Maybe a little bit of both.

“That’s as far as we’ll go,” I heard a voice
say. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

There was a rush of wind on my face, and I
was moving faster now. I was moving in a constant up and down
motion, and for a second I thought that I was riding Torak again. I
thought I heard a loud neighing, but that was impossible. All the
horses had left.

I felt a sudden rush of sick, and I vomited
all over myself. I didn’t have the strength to lift up my head, so
I let it loll to the side. Just the smell of the putrid, black
liquid almost made me sick all over again. I was thankful when I
drifted back into unconsciousness.

I knew I wasn’t dead when I woke with a
giant pulsing migraine that throbbed through my bones. I couldn’t
remember any dreams, only a cold, dark, and endless sleep that
pulled me down so deep that I felt as though I would never
wake.

Something warm washed over me and soothed my
headache. I pried my eyes open through my thickly crusted eyelids
and blinked in the bright light. I was in a bedroom. I lay in a
soft, comfortable bed with white linen sheets and a thick quilt.
The walls were paneled with pine and gave off a glorious smell of
woodland. I could also smell a faint scent of lavender. When I
realized that I was the source of the smell I stiffened.

Someone had bathed me. Where was I, and how
did I get here?

I heard something sniff, and without turning
my head or moving I rolled my eyes towards the sound.

Mad Jack sat in a wooden chair. His cheeks
were wet with tears, and his eyes were rimmed with redness. He was
alive. I hadn’t realized how relieved I would be to see him and how
much he meant to me until that very moment. I almost started crying
myself at the sight of his pain. I felt flushed and rolled away. I
felt I was intruding on a private movement. I knew he wouldn’t want
me to see him cry.

But why was he crying? And what was he doing
here? What was I doing here? Where the hell was I?

I waited for a moment, and when I figured
I’d given him enough time I made a sudden moan and moved a
little.

Mad Jack jumped to his feet, and I heard the
crash of a chair hitting the floor. I felt a sudden weight on the
mattress as he sat next to me.

“Elena?”

I opened my eyes again, more easily this
time, and stared up at him.

His dark eyes were rimmed with red, but his
tears had disappeared. He moved to take my hand but withdrew at the
last second, as though he thought better of it.

“What happened?” My voice was dry. “How did
I get here? Where are we?”

I realized that I was naked except for a
thin white shift. I flushed at the thought of someone scrubbing the
grime from my body.

He let out a shaky breath, and his smile
sent a thrill through me. His clothes looked freshly washed, and he
had shaved. His golden skin seemed to glow in the light, and
standing there he looked even more beautiful than I’d
remembered.

“We’re in Gray Havens.”

I pulled myself to a sitting position.

“What? The witches’ village? Are you
mad?”

I looked around the room expecting to see
human skulls, sacrificial objects, toads, and a large boiling
cauldron with children inside. But the room was spotless with a
single white painted dresser and a vase full of fresh blue and
yellow irises, daffodils, and purple coneflowers. It looked more
like a noble’s cottage than a witch’s hut. But then again, I’d
never seen where the witches lived or been inside one of their
homes.

“But why would you bring me
here
?
Whatever gave you that idea?”

Mad Jack’s smile sent my heart racing again.
I could see he was still struggling with whether or not to take my
hand. He didn’t.

“Because,” he said, his voice low, “you have
magic. So, I figured that you must be a witch, too. And who better
to help cure a witch than witches.”

I was surprised. “But you
hate
witches?”

His cheeks flushed a deep red, and I didn’t
understand why. He shifted uncomfortably, and he wouldn’t look me
in the eyes.

“I saw how you looked at me when I had taken
the stone. I saw something dark in your eyes. I saw it. And still
you brought me here?”

“Jon did the right thing by bringing you
here,” said a woman’s voice.

I peered over Mad Jack’s shoulder. A stout
woman with a serious face and kind eyes stood at the bedroom
doorway. She wore a shapeless dress of simple green linen. Her face
was lined with age, and yet it was still beautiful. Her skin was
like porcelain, fair, but not fragile, and her dark eyes stood out
against her fair skin. Her white hair was piled neatly in a bun on
the top of her head. She leaned carefully on a wooden staff that
was carved with faces of different animals. A long chain hung from
her neck with a pendant in the shape of a star within a circle.