The Fire Prince (The Cursed Kingdoms Trilogy Book 2) (56 page)

Innis shook her head.

“We’ll need to wait till we’re on board for Justen to become
our
Justen, though. Did Petrus tell you, Flin wants Justen back as his armsman?”

Innis shook her head again. A flicker of relief kindled in her chest—
I can be his armsman again
—followed by quenching realization. No, she couldn’t. The real Justen was here now. That would be his role.

“You and Petrus will need to tell him everything he needs to know about Flin, and his appearance will have to be tweaked slightly, but it will all be so much easier than it has been.”

Rand set the gruel pot on the fire and crossed to the tent. He crouched and stuck his head inside.

The prince emerged a couple of minutes later. Innis watched as he stretched and combed his hair roughly with his fingers. He and Rand surveyed the dissolving corpses. Rand grimaced and waved his hand in front of his nose and said something her ears didn’t catch.

No more lies, no more deception. Why, then, did she feel so miserable?

“How many new mages are there?” she asked.

“Five shapeshifters, four fire mages, a couple of healers, and Malle and her journeyman. Thirteen altogether.” Cora stirred the gruel. “We’re so much better off than we were this time yesterday that it feels like a dream!”

CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE

B
ENNICK SHOWED
J
AUMÉ
how to use the spyglass. The long, low island leapt closer. He saw the higgledy-piggledy black rock, saw the narrow neck of water that separated the island from the steaming, marshy shore, saw the great brown river that flowed on its other side, and the dense jungle beyond that.

“Where’s the stone?” he asked. “The one the prince has to break.”

“Must be that gray thing at the end.”

Jaumé shifted the spyglass—the island sliding past jerkily, making him feel almost seasick—and found it at the northernmost end. A gray lump. The stone that had cursed Da and killed Mam and Rosa. Hatred for it burned in him. He gripped the spyglass tightly, digging his fingers into the brass.

Bennick took the spyglass and put it away. Jaumé stared through the rain at the stone. Soon it would be gone. The prince would cut it in half with his axe.

CHAPTER EIGHTY

T
HEY MADE SLOW
progress in the heavy rain, riding along the riverbank with the Szal rushing past on one side and dense jungle pressing against them on the other. Several times, where the bank had slipped into the river, they were forced to detour into the jungle, fighting their way yard by slow yard through a gloom that stank of decaying vegetation and sulfur. Steam coiled up from the ground. Vines wound around them. Clouds of gnats, sheltered from the rain by the thick foliage, crawled into ears and mouth and nose, despite Rand’s oil. Harkeld sweated, swore, gritted his teeth. He clung to Hew’s promise that the jungle ended shortly. He could do this for another mile, perhaps two.
And then I shall go mad
.

It was closer to a league before the trees grew spindlier and further apart. The horses picked up their pace, sensing open space ahead. The jungle thinned further, he could see stretches of land ahead—and then they emerged from the trees.

Marshland stretched before them. Here and there, outcrops of dark basalt thrust up and the occasional finger of jungle made an incursion, but for the most part it was water and steam.

Harkeld spat a gnat out of his mouth.
Thank you, All-Mother
.

They set out across the marshland, two hawks flying ahead: Hew, and one of the new shapeshifters. A dark-haired man, he thought, from the bird’s size and color.

The sulfur stink was pungent. The horses didn’t like it. They put their ears back, became skittish. Harkeld stared around as he rode. He saw a pool that bubbled with a sound like a pot boiling, and one where a bright yellow crust had formed around its rim, and another where the crust was orange-red, streaked with white. He saw steaming sapphire-blue pools, steaming lurid green pools, and a pool of what looked like steaming mud. The sound of bubbling came from all around, and once, steam gusted vigorously from a vent in the ground, making his horse rear.

Harkeld wrestled with the reins, eyeing the vent. Were breathstealers spawning inside it?

In the early afternoon, they halted briefly to share out strips of dried meat. Petrus, Innis, and Justen had slept the morning in Rand and Cora’s pockets. Now Petrus flew overhead in wide circles and Justen came to ride beside him, his smile slightly cautious. “What a place!” Harkeld said. “Have you ever seen anything like it?”

Justen’s smile became more relaxed. He shook his head.

It felt good to have Justen back at his side. They didn’t talk much, but their silence was companionable. “Look, yellow water,” Justen said once, and a couple of miles later: “The ground looks like it’s covered with snow over there, doesn’t it?”

Once a bird with a large yellow beak and bright green-and-red feathers flashed past with a squawk. It looked as improbable as the colored pools. Harkeld blinked. “That was one of the new shapeshifters, wasn’t it?”

Justen shook his head. “No, it didn’t have—” He shut his mouth, looking uncomfortable.

“Didn’t have what?”

Justen shook his head. “Ach, it’s not important.”

“I’m not going to stop asking until you tell me,” Harkeld said, exasperated by this evasion.

Justen screwed his face up in a grimace. “It’s... kind of like the curse shadows. I don’t think you’ll be able to see it.”

“Like the curse shadows?” His mind leapt to a new possibility. “You mean... mages can
see
when someone is shapeshifted?”

“It’s complicated,” Justen said, in a tone that indicated he didn’t want to discuss it. “We can try teaching you once we’re on the ship. Now’s not the time.”

Harkeld wanted to argue this point, but he didn’t want to risk fracturing their new friendship. He rode, frowning, turning Justen’s words over in his mind. Something mages could see... and he
was
a mage, so he should be able to see it.

He looked up at the birds gliding overhead—Petrus and the unknown shapeshifter—straining to see anything that would tell him they were mages, not ordinary birds. Did they shimmer slightly, as if sunlight struck their feathers even though it rained? He narrowed his eyes, but couldn’t be sure.

“Look,” Justen said, craning in his saddle. “It’s bright orange. Over there, around that pool.”

“There was one like that before,” Harkeld said, squinting up at the hawks, frustrated by his inability to see whatever it was that Justen clearly saw.
I wish I could go to the mages’ Academy and learn all this properly
.

The thought jolted him out of his frustration. He stopped staring at the birds.
What
had he just wished? To go to the mages’ Academy?

No!
a part of himself insisted loudly.
Of course I didn’t wish that!
But another part of him knew that he had... and thought the idea interesting enough to consider.

I
N THE LATE
afternoon, they came close to the Szal again. The large dark hawk landed, shifting into a muscular man with a short, black beard. Cora and Rand halted. The man began to speak, gesturing at the river, unselfconsciously naked.

“...best place for the horses to cross,” Harkeld heard him say in a rumbling voice as he and Justen rode up.

“Even though it’s in flood?” Cora asked.

“It’s the broadest point. Downstream it gets narrower and faster.”

Rand shrugged. “We should make an attempt. Otherwise we have to abandon the horses. Serril, this is Prince Harkeld. Flin, we’re calling him.”

The shapeshifter gave a nod of greeting.

Harkeld returned the nod. “We’re crossing here?” What little he could see of the river didn’t look promising.

“The packhorses are,” Cora said. “We’ll camp here and ride to the anchor stone tomorrow. It’s about nine miles north of here. We could make a push for it tonight, but it’ll be dark by the time we get there and I prefer to be cautious.”

“Any sign of Fithians, Serril?” Rand asked.

“No, but with the breathstealers, I’d hardly expect—”

“They survived the corpses,” Cora said. “They could probably survive breathstealers, too.”

“Only if there’s a virgin among them,” Serril pointed out. “And how likely’s that?”

“Fithians are like cockroaches; they can survive cursed near anything. They were waiting for us at the last anchor stone. We need to proceed as if they’re waiting for us at this one too.”

“We’re patrolling from here to the coast,” Serril said. “The steam makes it more difficult than I’d like. We can’t smell anything other than sulfur and we can barely see past our noses.”

“Hmm.” Cora glanced around at the flat, marshy ground and the steaming pools.

Harkeld followed her gaze. The nearest basalt outcrop was a good half mile away, barely visible. There were no stands of trees within view.

“Not much cover here. It’d be hard for someone to creep up on us. All right.” Cora slid from the saddle. “We’ll camp here. Serril, join us for a meal. Say, an hour?”

I
NNIS CHANGED INTO
herself once the packhorses were unloaded and fed. She walked to the riverbank and looked out over the Szal, rain dripping steadily from her hood. Less than a furlong of the wide river was visible. The channels ran full spate, water rushing and hissing between the shingle bars. It seemed impossible that anyone could cross it.
The horses will all drown
.

Footsteps crunched towards her. She glanced back. Petrus. The real Justen now circled in the sky above the camp.

“Isn’t it great that Justen is here?” Petrus said.

“In a way I wish he wasn’t. Or you. I don’t want either of you to die.”

“Well, I don’t want
you
here, either.”

Innis looked at the river. “I told Cora she should send me home, but she said she needed me here.”

There was a long moment of silence. “Innis... would you mind telling me what she said?”

“Oh...” Innis sighed. “She said she’d need to tell the Council, and that she’d recommend a comment is put on my record, but she wasn’t as angry as I thought she’d be.” In fact Cora hadn’t seemed angry at all. Worried and concerned, but not angry. She glanced at Petrus. “She said it was a good thing I listened to you.”

He shrugged.

“Thank you,” Innis said seriously. “I owe you, Petrus.”

He smiled. “No, you don’t.”

Yes, I do
.

Petrus’s smile faded. “Innis... what did Rand have to do with it? Why did she ask him to talk with you?”

“Oh...” Innis looked away from him and sighed again. “It was the dreams. Cora wanted to know more about them.”

“What dreams?”

Innis frowned at the foaming brown water in the nearest channel. Where to start?