Swift Magic (The Swift Codex Book 2) (23 page)

Then the pressure was gone and raking teeth yanked me upwards. I stumbled to my claws and a ring of drakes surrounded me, a green face staring at me and roaring. A claw took me by the chest and shook me. I let them do it, too stunned to even feel it, too weak to stop it.

When I was cast to the dirt, another earth drake picked me up and draped me over their back. My neck dangled off to the side as they flew into the air and husks flowed beneath us. I blinked, telling myself that the fatigue would go away. Even as I finished the thought, my vision blackened and my mind went blank.

“
Why can't you behave?” Mordon asked when I next consciously knew I was awake. They'd put me back in the weeping willow room. At least Mordon was with me, reading a yellowed newspaper with the heading
Wildwoods Fish Wrap
plastered over the top. My nose flared with the scent of drake's brew, and Mordon gave me his then sat back in his chair.

“This is amazing,” I said, cradling the cup in pale hands.

“Might want to reserve your judgment until after you've had some.”

A slurp, a sputter, and a forced swallow later, I agreed. In no way was it similar to the gravy-like substance Mordon and the colony made. Thick, yes, and salty, but it was an herby-salty, one with a dirt aftertaste. How to go about making this drink, I didn't know, and I didn't want to find out. But even that small sip rendered strength to my limbs and warmed my belly. I forced myself to drink more.

I felt bruised. Taking even a shallow breath hurt. One place in my ribs in particular, below my left breast. Was it broken? I prodded it, winced, and decided it wasn't, but it must have come close. My jaw ached, and I belatedly felt where a front tooth was held in place with some sort of dental plaster.

“Do I look as bad as I think I do?”

“You deserve it if you do.”

I snorted. Should have known better than to expect sympathy. “Why, did anyone die rescuing me?”

“Rossalinda.”

Shock sucked my breath away. I looked at Mordon, expecting him to say that he'd been kidding, that Rossalinda hadn't died. Except she had. A dull ringing echoed in my ears. I tried to get my head around the idea. Danger I had accepted, that I might have died had been of no consequence compared to stopping the inevitable march of the husks. Killing someone had even been a thing I'd known was likely. But I hadn't been ready for this, for someone to give their life for me. Of all people, Rossalinda. Why her?

“I didn't expect anyone to follow after me.”

“You're a daughter of one of the most influential clans in the Wildwoods, and you didn't expect people to protect you?”

“I didn't know that about the Swifts.”

“You should.”

Everything felt distant, the dull scratch of a blanket between my thumb and forefinger, the steady patter of rain falling in puddles outside the hut, the unnatural stillness of a grieving village.

A woman had died to save me.

A woman who hardly even knew me, who had only seen me once.

It was too much to wrap my mind around. The sacrifice was too big. In the long moments when I'd made my decision, I hadn't thought that my actions could lead to a void in the heart of the community. That when I next went for my meal, I'd stare at the very place a woman had once been, a woman who should be here still.

“We were losing.”

“You acted independently of the plan. You should have contacted the group and fallen in, not streaked off to you own heroics. You shouldn't have even been there, you should have been here, not underfoot out there.”

“My place wasn't here.”

“You ruined what we were planning.”

The surface of the brew became choppy in my hands. I bit the inside of my cheek and fought down the emotions ripping me up from within. Rossalinda had died so I could live. It was a fact. I couldn't bring her back.

“I can't undo the past.”

“No,” said Mordon, “but you can act wiser in the future, and you won't do that unless you start behaving responsibly.”

“You couldn't trick the husks, no matter what your plan was. They don't think, they can't think. They are mindless voids, vacant bodies commanded by a general. And he had hundreds and hundreds of them at his call. Unless your plan was to target their leader, you were doomed.”

“You will never know our plan. You were too busy getting yourself killed.”

“There was no time for talking.”

“No time?” Mordon's voice rocked the air with its thunder. “The fight lasted for hours, Fera, and you didn't show your face until it was barreling straight for death. What were you doing in all that time? Do you know how I wished I could have had your help? We all did. We could have used your talents fifty times over. What were you doing, watching us?”

“No, I was here, where you left me.” I thought about it. There had been fewer than sixty battalion members, and the number should have been much, much higher, closer to two hundred instead. I'd thought I'd entered at the start of the fight, but I couldn't have. I felt angry, angry at Mordon, angry at the husks, angry at everything. “Didn't it ever occur to you that maybe I was there only for the final moments of battle? That maybe your combined wishes brought me to the battle? Time is lost in traveling, Mordon, it goes all strange here. I could have been waiting in this room for hours before leaving it. Did you ever think of that, or are you so pigheaded that you think I wanted heroism? Do you think so little of me that I'd stand back and watch as my village faces destruction?”

“That was wrongly spoken. I didn't mean—”

“But you did.” I pushed the brew away with a hiss of disgust. “You sat there waiting for me to wake up, thinking about how right your anger and fears were. Doubts about your possible mate? To think the worst of me during a moment of crises?” I spat the words, shot to my feet, and stomped to the door. Not feeling done with him quite yet, I turned back to Mordon.

“You and the rest of this village can think as you want. I know how it looked, but you're in the Wildwoods, and I would have thought you'd be wise enough now to know better than to accept appearances at face value.”

“Fera.”

“No! You shut up, you've said what you meant and there's no taking it back. I don't want to hear another word from you.” I started through the door.

“Stop right there,” Mordon shouted. “You can't walk out on an argument. You get back in here—” I hit the road and wanted nothing more than to be gone, just gone, away from this place, away from the village and the woods and the trials and tests and my parents and the whole stupid magical community and this chaos that Death had thrust on me.

But then I remembered what it was like before all of this. And it wasn't a pretty sight, either. I clenched my fist, feeling a dim and distant pain in my chest, warning me not to overdo it. What the devil was this all about? Terror started to eat away at the violent anger from the instant before. I did care what Mordon thought. What he thought mattered the whole world to me, and I was now beginning to agree with his assessment. What would the rest of the village think?

I stopped walking and sank down in utter misery, my knees in the hard dirt of the path. Not long after I scrubbed my eyes, I became aware that I had an audience waiting for me to pull myself together enough to talk with him. Taking a gulp of air, I gritted my teeth and prepared myself for further arguments.

But Mordon hadn't followed me.

Death was standing nearby on the other side of a tree, eating an apple.

There's something about him. You just know when he's close, and there's no mistaking him for anyone else, but neither can you truly say what he looks like. And it was surprising how unsurprising it was to have him show up without announcement, chomping away at an apple mere feet from where I sat. Nor was there any doubt in my mind who he was.

“Why didn't you take me instead?” I asked him.

“You'd be astonished how many survivors ask me that.”

“I don't want to be a survivor.”

“I could fix that. There's a splinter of your rib floating close to your left lung. If you're going to fall apart after every battle you, then it might be better for me to claim you now and pass your title on to someone else. That drake lord, for instance.”

“You leave him alone!”

“I come to everyone in their time,” Death said nonchalantly. “Listen to me. There are greater things happening here than an elderly woman dying. The Wildwoods are infected. You'll need help to overcome the problem if we wish to avoid another scene like today. I'll give you a spell to send the guilty straight to me, but you must not use it except for that purpose.”

“A spell? What spell?”

“You know what it is. It's been used on you before. Interesting little tidbit, unrecorded in any text. Only those who I give the power to may use it.”

I searched my memory, dredging up the image of a babushka who had come into my barn and assaulted me.

“Sisto cor.”

“That's it,” Death said with approval, “but be cautious when you use it, that it is not in the hearing of others, and that you do not use it for your own purposes, and that your target is the intended one. It is an invitation to my presence which no one can deny.”

“You brought me back,” I said. “Couldn't you do the same for a mistake?”

Death stopped crunching his apple. I heard the cry of people in the distance, and then Death knelt next to me. When had I fallen? My body was pliant beneath his hands.

“Rest on your right side, there, put your hands here and here, keep the pressure on it.” When I was suitably arranged, Death whispered in my ear, “I cannot restart a life without first there being a call for balance, a creation of something which challenges my presence, a thing which I cannot touch. An immortal. I cannot touch it, but you can. This is what gave you your life back, what returned your magic to you. And what has brought you in the Wildwoods. You and he, you are two ends of a magnet, balance and counterbalance. Opposite colors yet identical molds. As one of you grows, so does the other. He wants one thing, and one thing alone, and it would be disaster were it to come to be. You must prevent it. If you pass on, he will win. Lay still. Lay still. Keep your hands there. Help is coming. Just keep still.”

Hands stroked my hair.

“Just keep still. Help is coming.”

A kiss touched my cheek. I flinched.

“I am sorry, love,” said Mordon's voice. “I should have mastered myself better, not been so irrational. It was an unforgivable mistake.”

“Mordon?”

I squinted. I was laying just outside the willow hut, and I hurt everywhere. It was raining big, fat drops tainted with dust from tree leaves above me, and there was no sign of Death.

“What happened?”

“We argued and you collapsed as you were leaving the hut in a magnificent display of fury. Shh, keep still. You're hurt.”

“It's a bone splinter. My lung.”

“Shhh, the healers are here. Just keep still and know I love you.”

I felt too exhausted to struggle against the weariness anymore. My body weighed heavy on its skeleton. Mind was fatigued. The past haunted my dreams and anxiety for the future held me back from rest as I tumbled headlong into blackness.

I spent a day lying in my bed. When I was awake enough for it, I counted blades of grass beside me. My parents and Mordon took rotations watching me, forcing drinks of water and broth down my throat. Dimly I knew that I couldn't stop now, but I didn't know where to go from here.

Fey intuition, though, was a force not to be taken lightly. I could no more control who it was who died than I could conjure up a flame. The realization and acceptance of it did not come quickly, but gradually through dreams and a force of effort. And so it was that I became resolved to go back into the woods.

Before I was fit to do that, though, I had to regain my strength. During a time when I woke up to an empty room, I dragged myself up and went through the preparations for a healing potion. Years of practice made this automatic, and it seemed natural that the cupboard would supply me with precisely what I needed when I needed it. Mother's affection for the Wildwoods was wearing off on me, I thought while I stirred the no-cook drink together.