The Golden Apple (23 page)

A scream, wild, feral, came from the stairs, and it was as if his earlier thought of the grindylow had conjured it up. It exploded into the room. Something had happened when he’d killed its mate. He must have snapped the control Eric had had over it.

And now he wished he hadn’t because it went for the closest target.

Kayla.

Sooty charged forward, hissing, her back up, but there was no chance she could stop it, it was almost on Kayla—

It shrieked, arching its back, writhing in place. Rane felt white-hot pain along the line Eric had made in his back earlier, and from its place against the wall, the purple creature let out a thin, exhausted cry.

Rane had seen its back, and knew with a crushing certainty its pain was a hundred times worse than his own.

Rane forced his head right, towards Eric, and saw the sorcerer’s staff glowed blue again. He was working a spell.

This was how he controlled his minions.

He imbedded something in their backs, and when he wanted to, he could bring them to their knees.

As Rane thought it, the grindylow did sink to its knees, keening, and then curled up on the floor, beyond sound.

Rane only had one welt across his own back, and still his knees dipped. He fought against it, fought to stand upright. He welcomed the pain, hoped Eric kept it up, ramped the agony up another notch. Because while he did, Kayla was safe.

He started walking to the grindylow, one foot-dragging step at a time. Sweat beaded on his forehead, on his upper lip, and he lifted an unsteady hand to wipe it away.

“Rane?” Kayla’s call was soft, and even though he didn’t think it wise, he looked at her, met her gaze.

She flinched at what she saw there. And he wondered whether it was his hatred of Eric or his pain that affected her.

Then he knew.

She turned to Eric with such rage, such focus, if there had been even the tiniest trace of wild magic in the air, Eric would have felt it.

She moved fast, scooping down to grab up Soren’s stick, and he saw what she was going to do.

“Wait.” It came out as a whisper, and he swallowed, worked some moisture back into his throat. All the while, Rane was getting closer, closer, to the grindylow. Eric needed to be conscious, needed to keep his spell going, for a little while longer.

She raised the stick up and back, getting ready to swing as she strode towards Eric, her face set.

“Wait.” It was loud enough for her to hear this time, and she stopped short, her gaze flying to his.

Rane stood over the grindylow, fumbled with his knife, missing the dragon once, twice. Then he had it.

He dropped straight down. Let gravity do the work for him as he plunged the blade into the grindylow’s neck.

The blood gushed and sprayed, covering him, but he couldn’t move. Now he was down on the floor, the thought of rising, of moving at all, was impossible. He sank lower, rested his head on the stone paving.

He wanted to reach behind him and rip the skin from his back, flay himself to be rid of the agony.

The creature beside Sooty had long since fallen to the ground, half-unconscious with pain. Its eyes opened, and for a moment they stared at each other, at floor-level, and he felt a bond forged between them.

And then the pain was gone.

Kayla had broken the spell. Eric’s hands were raised to protect his head, his staff on the floor, as Kayla brought back her stick for another blow. Blood poured from the side of his head.

He rolled out of Kayla’s reach, grabbing his staff and holding it close to his body, like a ward against evil.

“I will have my marks on you.” His mouth twisted and his eyes were narrow. “You will be mine.”

He threw out his arm, circled his staff over his head. He must have planned to vanish, but the light was still leaking from the crack Kayla had made earlier and he only flickered in and out of sight.

Kayla took another swing at him, but before she could connect, at last his staff worked, and he disappeared.

Rane tried to pull himself up.

He was weighed down. The receding pain from Eric’s spell, the bone-deep fatigue, the soul-deep sorrow over Soren. They held him in a grip stronger than two stone giants.

Then he turned to Kayla, and found her looking at him, the cool gray of her eyes calming, giving him strength. He reached out a hand to her and she helped him to his feet.

“Let’s go.”

Chapter Thirty-three

T
hey staggered out of the castle, and Rane was glad all over again he had killed the second gindylow. Walking back into the mists around the castle would have been impossible if it had still been loose.

Sooty ranged around them, protective, sniffing the air, and by the look on her face, not liking what she smelled.

The purple creature from the dungeon was slung between Kayla and himself, its legs dragging from shin to toes on the ground behind them as they lurched down into the valley.

Kayla kept looking across at him, her teeth worrying her lower lip. “How far is the forest?”

“It’s not that far. You’ll see it when we get through those wells.” His words were gasped, and he wasn’t breathing properly.

She gave a nod and didn’t speak again, putting her head down and taking the strain when she wasn’t glancing across at him, to check on him.

She had saved him. Saved his brother, although typical Soren, he had refused to stay saved.

She was all he ever wanted.

When she looked across at him again he held her gaze, and her eyes softened.

After that, they both concentrated on getting away as fast as possible.

Even though the creature they were carrying was tall, it didn’t weigh that much, not to him. It was starved and light-boned, and they got through the wells quicker than he thought they would.

The pain, the reaction from Eric’s spell, started to lift, and it must have been doing the same for the creature they carried between them, because it lifted its head a little and gave a small sound of astonishment as they stepped through the wells and into the mist fields where the gindylows had hunted him.

Rane remembered the angle he had come in at, and nudged them in that direction, until suddenly, they were out of the mists and standing near the river where he’d washed earlier.

Dusk was only just setting, the late summer evening sky still orange and pink in the west.

The creature struggled a little, and Rane realized it was trying to stand on its own.

He and Kayla stopped and it slowly got its feet under it, and stood, hands on their shoulders to keep itself steady.

“What is your name?” Kayla asked it.

“Huri.” It looked at the water, and then turned away, and something about the way it moved told Rane she was female.

“Are you from here, or did Eric bring you from somewhere else?” Kayla fitted herself more securely under Huri’s arm.

Huri shook her head, her eyes averted from the river bank.

“I saw someone like you,” Rane told her. “Earlier today.”

As he spoke, a shadow rose up from the river bank, standing from a crouch.

It was the creature Rane had cut earlier, the white of the bandage stark against his purple skin.

Huri gave a quiet moan. It sounded to Rane like the final death throe of a tree, just after the last axe stroke.

She half-turned her back, her eyes down, her whole body shaking, and Rane moved away from her, letting Kayla take more of her weight, as he left himself free to protect them all.

Beside him, appearing so suddenly his heart skipped in a moment of sheer terror, Sooty butted his hip, her lips drawn back in a snarl.

The creature he’d met earlier, clearly known to Huri, and of the same people, raised his hands in alarm, and looked over their shoulders, to where Eric’s castle would be, if it wasn’t hidden from sight.

“Bad gone?”

“For now,” Rane said. “But he’ll be back.”

There was no way Eric would abandon his castle. He may have beaten a retreat, but he had too many magical things in the castle.

But not as many as he’d had.

Rane could feel the weight of the gem in his pouch. Along with a few other items that had called to him more strongly than the others in the dungeon, before they’d climbed the stairs and let themselves out.

Eric had lost this round.

But there was a war coming, and Rane knew the outcome was far from certain.

The creature before him suddenly called to Huri, in a language that sounded solely constructed of tongue clicks.

She turned away even more, twisting and hunching so she wouldn’t have to look at him.

He spoke again, more urgently, and she shook her head.

“What does he want, Huri?” Kayla looked between them, and Rane could see she was upset by the situation.

“He want understand why I hurt him. Tried to kill him. Didn’t want Eric to have him, like me.”

“Eric wanted you to bring him in, and you tried to kill him instead, so he wouldn’t become another of Eric’s slaves?”

She nodded. “Tried to tell him to run. He wouldn’t. Grindylow coming. Stone giant coming.” She made a gesture, a cut along her leg, and Rane’s gaze went back to the creature’s scar he’d seen earlier that day.

“What’s your name?” he asked him.

“Ker.” He looked between Sooty and Rane, and Rane wondered if he was considering his chances of fighting them.

“Do you understand what Huri is saying? That in order to stop you being made into Eric’s puppet like she had been, she tried to kill you instead?” Kayla stepped even closer to Huri, put her arms around her, and Rane realized Huri was close to collapse.

“Let’s talk about it on the way to the forest. I don’t think Huri can last much longer.” He stepped closer to Huri as well, and got her arm over his shoulder.

“Thought there no choice. But was wrong. Ker is alive. Fine.” Huri’s voice was soft, shamed.

They started moving again, with Sooty closer to them, now, and Ker trailing in their wake, keeping a cautious distance.

The forest was right ahead, and Rane could see a strange glow coming from it. Like it was lit with purple lanterns.

Kayla seemed to move faster, the closer they got, and when they were on the same level as the trees, and could at last see between the trunks, Rane jerked them all to a halt.

There was a sentinel line of wild magic spheres waiting for them, the line stretching as far as his eye could see in both directions.

“What is this about?” he asked Kayla, looking at her over Huri’s bowed head.

She took a moment to answer. In the end, she shrugged. “A homecoming welcome.”

* * *

They made their camp in the thin trees at the forest’s edge. Wild magic circled them, a fence that no-one would be foolish enough to try to breach.

Just being near them made Kayla feel better. Stronger.

Ker had hesitated at the sight, and then stepped in with them, had allowed himself to be included in the protected area.

He sat a little away from the fire Rane had started, though, as if he had no welcome with them, although Kayla and Rane had both asked him to join them.

Huri was either unconscious or asleep where they had lain her down.

Rane sat staring into the fire light, and Kayla reached out a hand and touched his shoulder. “I’m sorry about Soren. So, so sorry.”

He turned to look at her slowly. “How did you get him out?”

“I broke into Jasper’s stronghold, healed him with the apple, and then managed to trick Jasper into bringing us up above ground. I used wild magic to get us away.”

She thought how ridiculous it was that so much fear and exertion could be summed up into so few words.

Rane reached over and took her arm. Gently turned it over to look at her wrist.

He circled it with his fingers, tilted it so the firelight illuminated it. The fine pattern was denser, far more intricate, than it had been before.

She hadn’t looked at it since Nuen had grabbed her arm in Jasper’s stronghold, and she gasped. “It’s…beautiful.”

It was a delicate spiral; airy, light and detailed. It reached a handspan from her wrist up her inner arm.

She sensed Rane’s frown.

“You don’t think so?”

“No, it’s not that.” He rubbed a thumb over the markings. “I feel…nervous when I look at it. That it is taking you from me, marking you as its own.”

“It feels like the other way around.” She touched it lightly with her fingers. “Like I am marking it. Shaping it.”

“Why does it need you? Why does it let you use it?” He looked up at the wild magic around them. “Are they hemming us in, or protecting us?”

“Protecting. No doubt about it.” She withdrew her arm. “But sometimes protection can be misguided. Like leaving someone without talking about it, to keep them safe.” She had considered letting this conversation go. It was done. There was no changing that he’d left her and chosen for them both. She even understood why he had done it, but she would not let it happen again.