The Fire Prince (The Cursed Kingdoms Trilogy Book 2) (8 page)

CHAPTER SEVEN

H
ARKELD SPENT THREE
evenings practicing how to put out fire. On the fourth evening, when Cora held a flaming branch towards him, his hesitation lasted less than a second. He called up his magic and reached out to grasp the branch. There was a sensation of warmth, but no pain.
Snuff,
he told it. The flames instantly extinguished.

Harkeld put the branch back on the pile that was to be their campfire.

“Did you burn yourself?”

He shook his head.

Cora snapped her fingers. His right cuff caught fire.

Harkeld didn’t jerk back in panic, as he had the first time she’d done that, two nights ago. He laid his left hand on the burning fabric.
Snuff
.

“Excellent.” Cora flicked her plait over her shoulder and turned to the piled wood. “Fire-lighting. When you snap your fingers, tell your magic you want a handful of flames.” She demonstrated, snapping her fingers, opening her hand to show him the flames burning on her palm.

Harkeld reached for his magic. It came easily, a warm tingle in his blood. He visualized a tinderbox—flint striking steel—and snapped his fingers.

His palm became even warmer, a tickling sensation. He opened his hand. Flames burned there.

Harkeld took hold of a branch, gripping it tightly. Within seconds it caught alight.

“Good. Light a few more.”

Harkeld lit six branches, then clenched his fist.
Snuff
. The tingling warmth faded.

Cora smiled. “Well done.”

Harkeld didn’t return the smile. “Are we finished for tonight? I’ll help Justen with the tents.”

“Of course.” Cora reached for an iron pot and hooked it on the tripod over the fire.

Harkeld walked to where Justen was pitching tents.

The armsman glanced up. “Going well?”

Harkeld grunted. He unrolled one of the goat-hair tents. Each time he used his magic it came more easily. Each time, he became more of a witch.

They worked without speaking. The armsman had been subdued the last few days, even though he hadn’t known the dead fire witch.

Around them, tall trees crowded close, streamers of bark hanging from their trunks. Warm rain began to patter down.

“Wrestling?” Harkeld asked when the tents were up and blankets and bedrolls laid inside.

Justen hesitated, clearly unenthusiastic, and then shrugged. “Ach, why not?”

They stripped to their trews. Harkeld rolled his shoulders, loosening them, and crouched.

Justen took a deep breath and seemed to shake off his gloominess. “Ready?”

Harkeld nodded.

They circled, grappled, and broke off. Harkeld felt stiff in his muscles and sluggish in his blood.

They grappled again, swaying, each striving for dominance. Harkeld shifted his weight, flexed one hip, heaved.

Justen landed on his back. He showed his teeth, climbed to his feet and crouched again.

Harkeld won the first two bouts, but lost the next. Two of the witches, finished with unloading the packhorses, stripped to their trews and began to wrestle too. Harkeld ignored them, concentrating solely on Justen. The armsman’s Grooten amulet caught the firelight, gleaming like a small moon.

Their bouts became more vigorous. Harkeld began to pant. His skin was slick with sweat, slick with rain. His ill humor was gone. He felt fully awake for the first time in days.

Justen circled and came in low, his shoulder taking Harkeld in the abdomen. He let the armsman’s weight propel him back and twisted, tossing Justen aside. The armsman rolled and sprang to his feet and bulled forward again, even lower, catching Harkeld off balance. An iron-hard arm gripped behind his knees and heaved.

Harkeld hit the ground hard, rolling, ending up on his back.

Justen laughed. “Got you.”

Harkeld sat up, grinning. He wiped rain and sweat from his face.

“Flin, Justen, dinner,” Cora called.

Justen reached down a hand. Harkeld gripped it and let the armsman pull him to his feet.

They dressed in their damp clothes. “I need to piss,” the armsman said, jerking his thumb at the trees.

Harkeld nodded. He walked across to the fire. Rand and Cora had hung a spare tent between two trees. He hunkered under it and accepted a bowl of stew. The stew was made with dried meat, but it was Ankenian meat, flavored with Ankenian spices, piquant and peppery. A couple of minutes later Justen ducked under the shelter, followed by Innis. Harkeld glanced at the witch. He’d not seen her all day. She must have been flying in wide sweeps, far ahead, far behind. Or was she taking some shape he’d not yet noticed?

The armsman filled a bowl and sat alongside him. No, Justen was more than his armsman; he was his friend. Harkeld wasn’t sure when their friendship had happened, but he was glad it had.
I’d go mad without Justen.

I
T WAS STILL
raining in the morning. Before they’d gone a league, they came across a woodcutters’ camp. The forest had been felled on either side of the road for a hundred yards. Despite the rain, men were hard at work. Harkeld heard the
thock-thock
of axes, heard voices shouting, heard the sharp splintering sound of a tree trunk snapping. A tree fell with ponderous grace. The dull thud of its impact reached his ears a couple of seconds later.

Lukas would love this
, he thought, and his half-brother’s face filled his mind’s eye—the gap-toothed grin, the bright blond hair, the blue eyes.

Grief ambushed him, choking his throat, stinging his eyes.

Harkeld cleared his throat, scrubbed his eyes with his sleeve, but the grief sat with him while the stretch of cleared land on either side of the road became broader. They passed more camps, passed oxcarts piled with tree trunks laboring eastward.

The rain became heavier, filling the ruts and potholes with water. Dirt churned into mud, making the road treacherous. Their pace slowed until they were little faster than the oxen. Each mile became a struggle.

At dusk they halted and set up camp among the tree stumps. Branches littered the muddy ground. Harkeld gathered several armfuls and piled them for a campfire.

“This is a good exercise for you,” Cora said. “You’ll find it harder than yesterday.”

Harkeld snapped his fingers. Flames tingled across his palm. He grabbed a sodden branch. The flames hissed out.

Harkeld tried again—and again the saturated wood quenched his magic. He hissed annoyance.

“Make them hotter,” Cora said.

It took intense concentration before he found the knack. The flames on his palm became fiercer, white-hot. He took hold of the branch again. This time his flames didn’t snuff out. The wood caught fire.

Harkeld released the branch. The flames began to die.
Oh no, you don’t
. He scowled at the branch.
Burn hotter, curse it. Spread
. The flames became white-hot, spread outwards. The branch started to burn in earnest, crackling and spitting.

“Did you touch the branch just then?”

“Uh... no.”

“Well done,” Cora said. “Now see if you can do that without losing your temper.”

Harkeld felt himself flush. Cora had a way of making him feel like a child.

Perhaps because I behave like one?

Water dripped from his eyebrows, from his nose, from his chin. He wiped it away and tried to do as she’d asked. It took several minutes before he figured out how he’d done it. If he lit a branch, just so, and if he then directed his concentration, just so, thrusting his magic at the flames without touching them...

Fire spread across a second sodden branch.

“Excellent.” Cora set up the cooking tripod. “Light the rest of the fire, please.”

Harkeld went round the fire methodically. At last every branch was burning strongly, despite the heavy rain. He sat back on his heels, unsettled.
I am much more a witch than I was quarter of an hour ago
.

CHAPTER EIGHT

S
AULT BECAME HILLY
. Ragged slopes climbed away from roads as narrow as cattle tracks. Gray boulders topped with grass reared like corpses freed from their graves. The valleys twisting inland held thin streams watering meager pastures. It was poor country, and these were poor people. They hadn’t yet run from the curse, and they cried out for news of it as Nolt and his men rode by.

Nolt never paused. At day’s end he chose camping places hidden from farm cottages and hamlets. There, in the twilight and into the night, Jaumé continued his education. He told himself he was training to be a soldier, and the lessons were: keep busy, be useful, work hard.

He sharpened knives. He sharpened Stars—a tricky job that ended several times with his blood smeared on the blades. He rubbed oil into the bows to keep them supple, then watched closely as the men restrung them. He wasn’t strong enough for that job yet. He asked if he could take his turn as watchman at night, but Bennick said no, boys needed their sleep, and watching was a man’s job.

Nothing dangerous, or even interesting, came out of the dark. Now and then a horse snorted and stamped its foot. The night bird native to this part of Sault made its curious call:
What-now? What-now?
The watchmen moved in and out of the glow of the fire. There was never a footfall or a breaking twig. Except for the curse, creeping towards them, Jaumé felt safe. Waking, he looked to see who the guard was and felt, from nowhere, Bennick’s hand tap him lightly on the brow, a touch that meant,
Go back to sleep
.

In the gray dawn they rode again. Jaumé’s pony, trotting hard, kept up with the horses.

Riding behind Ashandel, Jaumé noticed the man’s horse begin to favor its left hind leg. He looked at Bennick, riding beside him, and pointed, but Bennick only said, “He knows.”

They paused at midday, broke bread, drank from their waterskins. Ash led his horse apart and tied its reins to a tree.

Jaumé plucked Bennick’s sleeve. “My Da was a blacksmith.”

Bennick glanced at Nolt, received a nod. “Go help him then, lad.”

Jaumé trotted over to Ash. Ash’s hair was as silver as an old man’s—the prickly whiskers on his cheeks, his eyebrows, even his eyelashes—but he wasn’t much older than Bennick. His eyes were silver too, bright and shining. “Keep him easy, boy. Talk to him.” So Jaumé stroked the horse’s nose and whispered praise and comfort, while Ash raised its hoof and freed the pebble lodged in its shoe. The horseshoe was loose, and worn down on one side. Ash fetched tools from one of the packsaddles and levered it off. He handed Jaumé some nails and a new shoe and used his knife to pare the ragged edge of the horse’s hoof. Then he took the shoe, fitted it, and hammered in the nails that Jaumé gave him one by one.

“So you know horses, boy?”

“I’ve helped Da shoe horses. We used a rasp, not a knife.”

“Ha! What do I do next?”

“File the edges clean.”

“So fetch me a file. Then hold his head.”

When the horse was ready the band rode on. Jaumé, on his pony, simmered with pleasure. Now it wasn’t only Bennick he was friends with. He wanted to be friends with them all, although it might never be possible with Nolt.

Nolt was fixed on his purpose. He gave orders, sometimes with a word, sometimes a gesture, and the Brothers obeyed. There was no warmth in him, but that was because he was leader and must always be alert. He was like a night watchman who watched in the day. Jaumé was uneasy whenever he came close—his leathery face, his close-clipped beard, his stone-hard eyes that saw everything—but his trust in Nolt was almost as great as his trust in Bennick.

Nolt would keep them safe. He wouldn’t make mistakes.