The Golden Apple (16 page)

He pressed himself into the wedge between the ground and log, and winced as there was a sudden flash of purple.

Only one man screamed. The rest never got the chance.

There was nothing more.

Rane waited one minute. Then another.

He lifted his head up and looked over the top of the log.

He was alone.

The gem lay, winking and glittering in the oblique light of the sun, nestled amongst the packs and bags the men had dropped when they’d crouched together.

Rane wondered if they were dead. Or changed.

There were no frogs on the ground this time.

He struggled up onto the log, swung his legs over and slid off it onto his backside. Shuffled himself forward, until he reached the place Travis had knelt and thrown down his things.

He tipped everything out of Travis’ pack, and by the time he had his knife wedged between his tied hands, he was sweating with effort, his body shaking as the enchantment throttled him.

He eased it out of its sheath. Carefully, so carefully, he felt for the dragon, brushed his thumb over it and touched the blade to his ropes. They fell away immediately.

He dropped the knife, rubbing his wrists and biting back a cry of pain as the blood rushed to his hands. The knife lay at his feet, dull, rusted. Nothing.

He smiled as he picked it up again, rubbed his thumb over the dragon cast in relief on the hilt. The blade gleamed a sudden blue, and he bent to the ropes at his feet. As they fell to the ground, he rose up, faced west. The sun had already sunk past the top of the trees, and the sky was aglow with color.

He wondered what hell Soren was living in right now. The thought was bitter on his tongue, because he could do nothing about it, could not take a step in his brother’s direction without the enchantment’s punishments.

Then he turned back to the camp, carefully wrapped the gem and strapped it to his body. He rifled through Tavis’s supplies as fast as he could.

His coin purse was gone. And his moonstone with it. Travis must have attached it to his own belt.

He closed his eyes and clenched his fists against the flash of anger and loss at the moonstone, but there was nothing he could do. No way to get it back.

He took all the food he could carry, two water bottles, and found a path north east. Began to run.

With every step, the enchantment eased the hold on his throat a little more, and a new weight rested heavier on his shoulders.

Because knowing what it could do, he could not give the gem to Eric.

Chapter Twenty-two

D
arkness fell like a wave from behind, eating up the forest, while in front of Kayla, due west, the sky was bright gold.

Wild magic had followed them all day as they walked, first one sphere, then another, then another. They dodged and hid behind trees, shot forward and then spun, still and unmoving in mid-air. She did not know how many were around her now, a flock of explosive magic, shimmering purple in the dusk light.

Sooty ignored them.

Kayla had expected to reach a town by now, or have found some sign she was in Therston, but she hadn’t seen another person since they’d left the village.

She needed to find a place to camp, but her feet kept moving even though she’d passed more than one suitable clearing.

Rane thought Soren was being tortured, and while he was in Jasper’s power, she could not rest.

Without any warning, Sooty stopped on the path, her ears twisting, her nose lifting. She started forward again, half-crouched, and a frisson of fear brushed up Kayla’s arms. Her heart beat faster, and she saw her hands were already glowing purple-green in readiness.

The wild magic spheres drew nearer.

She moved forward cautiously, and stepped into a wide clearing. Sooty bounded across to a cart standing to one side, sniffing the corners. There were a few logs placed around an old fireplace, and bags lying on the ground. Abandoned in haste.

Kayla’s gaze swept the camp, nervous and ready to flee, but there was no one there.

The night had finally caught up with them, and the sky was in its last deep indigo before it turned black. Here and there, she saw the flicker of wild magic between the trees.

She crouched beside the bags. They were travel packs—full of food, water, clothing and blankets for the road.

Rane had left her more than half the food, but if she rescued Soren, he would need as much as he could get. Clothes, too.

She had a deep sense of unease about this place, as if the people in it had been swallowed up by a dark nothingness.

They weren’t coming back.

Her fingers brushed rope, and she lifted up a piece of it, knotted on one side, cut straight and clean on the other. There had been a captive here.

She shivered. Whoever these people had been, they would not miss their supplies.

Sooty sniffed at a log to one side, pawing it a few times. Her ears moved ceaselessly, her body tense. As uneasy here as Kayla.

When Kayla had taken what she could carry from the bags, she hefted her saddle pack over her shoulder.

“Let’s go.” She was vibrating with an urgency to be gone, her movements jerky.

Sooty looked across at her, then west, and a low growl rumbled from deep in her chest. Fear pricked down Kayla’s spine at the sound.

She forced herself to move, crouched down beside the cat. “What it is?”

She heard the voice a moment later, a man calling out.

Another voice responded, and someone stepped into the clearing.

“They aren’t here. They’d have come all the way to the stronghold if they’d gotten this far. Wait…” The stranger saw the bags and then Sooty and her almost at the same time, and jerked back.

Sooty growled again, long, low and ending in a hiss.

The second man joined him, a knife in his hand.

“Good evening.” Kayla rose from her crouch and inclined her head. Behind the men, on the path they’d used, two spheres of wild magic rose up. “Can you tell me the way to Jasper of Therston?” Her fingers threaded themselves through the raised fur on Sooty’s neck.

“What do you want with Jasper?” The first man leaned forward, peering at her in gloom.

“Private business.” She flicked back her hair. “You know the way?”

“Aye, we know the way.” The second man stepped forward, staring at her boldly. He smiled. “Come with us and we’ll take you there.”

“Thank you.” She did not feel afraid any more. The sight of the spheres steadied her. Made her remember she was not helpless, even though she suspected they meant to do her harm. They did not realize wild magic hovered at their backs, latent with menace.

She put her hands behind her, lest they betray her with a glimmer of light. “Come, Sooty.”

Sooty rose to her full height and walked beside her towards the men, still growling faintly at the back of her throat. It occurred to Kayla the men had not realized the size of her before. She was as black as the night, and hard to distinguish from the shadows.

She saw their cocky anticipation turn to fear.

The first man said nothing. He spun back the way they’d come and ran, letting out a shriek at the sight of the wild magic. He ran around it, and it let him pass. The second stumbled back a few steps. “No harm meant.” His voice rose high. He spun back to the path and followed his companion, moaning as he passed the wild magic.

They were the first people she’d seen since leaving the village, and the way they’d said Jasper’s name made her think they knew him.

Perhaps they were his men.

She rubbed Sooty under the chin, her fingers sparkling with excitement. “Let’s follow them.”

* * *

Jasper was a man with something to hide. Or something to protect. His stronghold was worthy of the name, a strange mix of fort and old castle.

As the big gates swung closed on the two men, Kayla moved back between the trees, her heart sinking. At least ten men had stood up on the ramparts, bows lifted, as the running men approached. She would need to find another way in, the front was too well-guarded.

Behind her, the string of wild magic spread out. When one spun close, her hands sparkled bright and hot. It calmed her. Helped her to think.

She pushed up her sleeve. New spheres from her spells this morning on Sooty and Gert spiralled up her inner arm like a stream of bubbles twisting through the water.

Sooty butted her hip and she dropped her sleeve back in place. Time was wasting.

She kept moving, working her way through the dense undergrowth until she was behind the compound. It was right at the edge of the forest, and Jasper had had all greenery beaten back at least twenty feet from the fence. To get to it, she would have to step into the open.

The ramparts were empty here. Silent.

She could create a diversion, but she did not want anyone to suspect trouble. She would rather sneak in undetected. And out the same way.

She slid her pack under a bush, taking only the golden apple. If Soren was badly injured, she would need it to heal him. She jammed it into her trouser pocket, felt the weight of it pulling at her belt.

“I want you to stay, puss.” Kayla rubbed the cat between her ears. “You’ll be hard to hide.”

Sooty lifted her head, and Kayla scratched her under her chin. “Stay. Wait for me here.”

She lay on the ground and crawled forward, using her hips, elbows and feet. It felt as if she was exposed for minutes, the muscles in her back tensing, expecting the sharp pain of an arrow at any moment.

But nothing.

No alarm sounded, and at last she reached the rough wood of the perimeter fence. She leant against it, trapping her hands between her body and the wall, and thought of a narrow opening, just wide enough for her to crawl through.

It was harder than it had been before, and she realized she was just outside of the forest here, that using wild magic was an effort.

She wriggled her way back to the treeline, and approached one of the spheres, and a part of it separated, came to her, and she cradled it in her hands for a moment, before putting it in her other pocket.

By the time she had crawled back to the fence again, she was sweating.

She thought again of a small opening, one hand in her pocket, and the flare was muted, light leaking from either side of her body, and there was suddenly an opening where her feet pressed against the fence.

She knelt, stuck her head through, and checked there was no one waiting for her on the other side.

After a beat, she lowered herself to the ground and wiggled through, rose to a crouch in the darkness.

She was in.

Her elation was tempered by the utter silence. It unnerved her. She would prefer to hear some noise in the distance—the quiet made her imagine a thousand eyes on her.

In front of her, a high, long building ran close to the fence, stone walls rising three floors. She looked back and up, saw a wooden platform ran the length of the fence she’d just come through, high enough to bring a man shoulder-height with the top. Wooden ladders were propped against it for access. There were no guards standing watch or walking the boards, there was nothing but a strong stench of burnt wood and tar.

She crept forward and pressed up against the building, felt the rough crumble of sandstone against her fingers.

The feeling of eyes on her was still strong. She moved, quick as she dared, along the wall until she reached the end of the building. Steeled herself to look around the corner.

She hesitated.

It didn’t make sense for Jasper to place fewer guards at the back than the front—coming in had been too easy. And the deep, unnatural silence made her so nervous her fingers sparked. She slipped them into her pockets, her left hand tingling in its little sphere of wild magic, her right hand pressed hard against the golden apple.

It saved her.

A bolt, shot from above, from the guards’ walk of the stockade wall, slammed into her from behind.

She felt the blow, the pain as it pierced her, and the immediate counter of the apple, her body torn and mended in a moment.

The bolt dropped from her shoulder to her feet, and she tried to run, stumbling, her legs weak, her heart pounding so loud she was deafened by it. Her fingers gripped the apple, and with every step, she felt a new surge of energy.

“You missed!”

The words were shrieked from somewhere above her head. There was a thud and someone cried out.

Kayla ducked around the corner of the building, crouching low. Her breath came in pants. They had been there all along. Some spell had been at work to stop her seeing them.

Men were running towards her across a large open space from the main gate, these ones visible, but she had the sense none saw her, and to make sure they did not, she wished herself invisible. A glow escaped her pocket, but so quick, and so close to the ground, the men who glanced her way did not break their stride. She had the feeling the wild magic she’d brought with her had just used itself up.