The Golden Apple (6 page)

She knew she was shivering, but was past caring, past worrying whether he thought her tough and cool. She was too close to vomiting.

She felt a sudden, strange sense of weightlessness, had to close her eyes against the dizziness. She lowered herself down, but instead of the prickle of pine needles and soft sponginess of the forest floor, she felt as if she was floating on air.

Bile rose in her throat and she gasped and curled in on herself, squeezed her eyes closed.

When she was a child, she had gone often to the lake with her mother and thrown herself off the bank into the deep water, somersaulting as she leapt. She felt that same sensation now, but slower, more deliberate, and thought with an uneasy jolt that she must have a fever.

Then the ground was beneath her, as if a soft cloud had been pulled from under her, the pine needles sticking to her palms, digging into them with tiny, sharp pricks.

She’d had no sense of Rane at all for the last few minutes, but she felt him now, turning towards her in the darkness. His wonderfully warm hands were on her, slipping something beneath her cheek so her face was not on the dark, damp soil of the forest floor, his voice crooning to her, as if she were a sick child or injured animal.

These small considerations touched her, made her want to cry, but instead she curled up tighter still. Breathed deep.

The dizzy feeling was abating. She looked up, saw him hovering over her, and struggled to sit up.

“What happened?”

His face was difficult to make out in the dark, but she sensed his hesitation.

“Tell me. I felt so sick.”

He brushed a pine needle from her hair. “That was what some call the Evil of the Forest.”

“It was here? That’s what made me ill?” She sat up straighter, leaned against the tree. “How are we still alive?”

“It’s not like that. It can kill, but usually it…plays. Twists things from what they were. It’s capricious, but not always cruel.”

“You’ve seen it before? What does it look like?” She wondered why she hadn’t seen it. She felt the cold brush of fear at what might have been done to her by the bogey man of the woods. The reason no one with a sound mind ever entered the Great Forest.

“Have you ever seen a fireball?” He did not sit, but remained crouched, ready, and she realized the danger had not past.

She nodded. “During bad thunderstorms. When lightning strikes and the earth does not absorb it. Balls of fire, racing across the ground.”

“What people call the Evil of the Forest is like that, but not created from lightning. We can thank bastards like Eric the Bold for it.” He stilled, listening, then turned to her again. “When sorcerers unleash too much power, they cannot channel it all. They create pockets of wild magic, like fireballs, racing away, absorbing, feeling, affecting the world.”

“So it’s not conscious? Not a living being?”

“It’s a being.” He lowered his voice. “It dissipates very slowly, leaving traces of itself behind. Strange things that shouldn’t be. And I can sense it thinking, moving with purpose.”

“And why do these balls of wild magic only exist in the Great Forest?”

“It took me a long time to find out.” The look on his face was of stone. “The sorcerers send them here, instantly banish them as they are formed. They are dangerous. As dangerous to those who made them as to everyone else. The Great Forest has become the refuse ditch of the sorcerers of the Middleland.”

She was silent as she absorbed what he’d said, readjusted years of thinking on the nature of the Evil of the Great Forest. She’d always imagined it a sorcerer. A monster of some kind.

Rane rubbed a hand over his face. “The wild magic that just paid us a visit is newly formed. Vital and strong. I think we can thank Eric for it. No doubt it was formed when he created that cursed glass mountain.”

“Thank the heavens it passed us by, then.” Kayla shivered.

As she spoke, someone started screaming. High pitched, desperate screams that flayed her nerves.

Rane ignored them, did not even turn towards the sound. He watched her, a strange look on his face. “What makes you think it passed us by?”

Chapter Eight

“D
jan or Holt just ran into it.” Rane stood, braced and ready for action, although there was nothing he could do. Nothing he could ever do when faced with wild magic.

He still did not know why it left him unchanged. How he could feel it, find its treasures.

It seemed drawn to him, like a cat finding the one person who doesn’t like them to rub against. He and Soren had always been able to sense wild magic, and somehow endure its interest unscathed.

He’d felt it touching Kayla, arm-thick bands of power, curious and ruthless, that had slipped past his protection like a long-limbed sea monster, even as he willed it away. Willed his body broader.

She seemed unharmed. Unaffected. But it had lifted her up, turned her this way and that as if viewing a strange toy from every angle.

He’d seen an old woman turned young and beautiful, and mad with it. A tree grow legs and skulk off into the dark forest, confused with its new life.

Strange creatures that should not, could not, be.

He did not want to think what was happening to Djan or Holt. They knew the dangers of the forest as well as he did. Had heard his and Soren’s tales. Knew what had happened to their father—

The screaming cut short, as sudden as running into a door.

“If it didn’t pass us, if it knows we were here, why aren’t we screaming, too?” Kayla pushed herself up to stand next to him.

“I don’t know.”

She shuddered, her whole body involved, and bent to pick up her pack. “Let’s move away. In case it decides to come back for us.”

And in case whatever Djan or Holt had become was even worse than two thugs out to steal from them. He should really see what had become of them. There were hours yet until daylight, and he didn’t want any nasty surprises.

“Let’s go.” He picked up the saddlebags.

“Where?” She whispered, slinging both their packs over her shoulder.

“I want to see what happened to Djan and Holt. We can go back to the camp, depending…”

“Depending on what?”

“Depending on whether they’re still a threat.”

She said no more, and he started forward, bending to scoop up a short, thick stick.

A sound, a horrendous, gut-clenching sound, suddenly rose up from just ahead. A gibbering, like a strange animal or person gone insane.

Rane turned, saw Kayla frozen in place. Even in the darkness he made out her wide eyes.

“Stay.” He mouthed the word, not wanting to risk even a whisper. With infinite care, he lifted the saddlebags off his shoulders and gently set them down. He breathed in deep. Slipped the moonstone out of his pouch and clenched it in his hand. Only knowing he was now invisible helped him take a step forward. Then another.

When the sound was just a bush away, he crouched, moving slowly and carefully around to the right.

Djan’s torch lay on the ground, still burning.

Illuminating a nightmare.

* * *

Kayla sank down, remembering in time to set their packs gently on the ground. Rane had moved faster than she’d expected. She could no longer see him.

Then she heard him, his footsteps heavy and without caution as he ran straight towards her.

And still she could not see him.

The footsteps were almost on top of her when suddenly he winked into sight, and she could not help her scream of surprise.

“I forgot. Sorry, I forgot.” He hauled her to her feet, his face tense. He turned back the way he’d come. Listened.

The gibbering noise had stopped, and the bush rustled.

Rane did not wait to pick up the bags, he dragged her away, straight into the forest. The sound of branches snapping, of leaves crushed underfoot followed them.

Something large was after them, and the gibbering noise started up again. This time gleeful, rather than confused.

“What is it?
What is it?
” Kayla didn’t dare look back, her focus on the ground before her. On not tripping in the dark.

Then Rane stopped and she smacked into him, fell to the ground.

She started scrambling back to her feet when she saw why he’d come to a halt. A ball of purple-green light was just in front of them. It shifted and moved, blocking their path.

Whatever was following them stopped, too, and at last Kayla turned back to see. For the second time that night she felt bile rise in her throat.

It was a thing. A creature of stone and soil, dead leaves and wood. But it was human, too. Two sets of eyes, one where a head should have been, the other lower down the abdomen. They gleamed with madness. Eight limbs stuck out of it, a bizarre mixture of arms and legs. One of the hands held a double-sided axe.

It seemed as interested in the wild magic as it was in them, the eyes shifting from one to the other.

Beside her, Rane swore, an expletive she’d only ever heard on the knights’ training field.

“I’m going to disappear again. Try to draw it off.” He vanished even as he spoke, and though she could still feel him standing beside her, she felt deserted and alone.

Then he moved, not away from the beast but towards it. She heard his fingers scrabbling on the ground.

Sand. He was going to throw sand in its eyes.

As the sand struck it, it bellowed, a deep, whistling sound. The sound she imagined the forest would make, if it had a voice.

Neither of them expected it to move so fast, but it thrashed out at Rane even though it could not see him, and Kayla heard him shout with pain, heard the heavy thud of his landing.

Without waiting, without any hesitation at all, the thing came for her, screaming as it did, axe raised.

Kayla turned desperately to the wild magic, willed it to distract what it had made, willed it to move. Then she spun back, saw the monster falter, then stop.

There was a crackle, a snapping of static in the air, and the wild magic rolled past her and slammed into the Djan-Holt-thing. It exploded in a horrific rain of man and decomposing forest.

She hunched over, curled up to protect herself against the pieces thrown back towards her.

Her head spun.

She had willed the wild magic to stop its monster. And it had.

Chapter Nine

T
he nagging sense of urgency had returned, stronger than before, and Kayla guessed it was because they’d gone back to the camp. The enchantment did not like retreat.

She looked down at her hands, shaking with nervous energy, and rubbed them against her thighs to still them. Enchantment or no, neither she nor Rane had slept, and they couldn’t go on without rest.

She sat on her pallet, and tugged off her boots.

“It’s fortunate the wild magic moved when it did.” Rane was watching her, she could feel his eyes, but she concentrated on her boots, letting her hair swing over her shoulder to shield her face. She didn’t want him to see her confusion.

Had she directed the wild magic’s behavior?

“Yes,” she said at last. “Very fortunate.”

“I didn’t expect that thing to move so fast.” His voice was flat. “I’m sorry I left you in such a vulnerable position.”

She blinked. Looked at him at last. This was an apology? He was crouched beside the fireplace, and his face was haunted. His fingers traced the handle of the knife he’d disappeared for ten minutes to find, the movement distracted, as if he thought he’d have to draw it at a moment’s notice.

“You could hardly help it. You ran right at it to draw it off.” Despite how she felt about him, about how he’d lied to her, the moment he’d turned invisible and ran at the thing to throw sand in its eyes, she’d known he was a man of honor. He could have slipped, invisible, into the dark of the forest and left her to her fate too many times for her to believe anything else.

It made what he’d done both harder and easier to accept.

At last, he turned to the small pile of sticks they’d collected and coaxed the flames to life. The crackle of the fire had never been so welcome.

She lay down and closed her eyes, felt the heat of the fire dance across her eyelids. “How does Eric not know about you?”

“Know about me?”

She was too tired to open her eyes and read his expression.

“He didn’t sense any magic in you. But you can disappear.”

There was silence, and Kayla almost drifted off to sleep waiting for his answer.

“I’m no sorcerer. But I have access to magical objects.”

“Mmm?”

“I find magical objects. I sell them.”

“That’s how you make your living?” She finally opened her eyes, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was busy with the fire again.

“I trained as a knight for Jasper, but we…couldn’t see eye to eye, and I went back to my family’s business. I’m a woodsman.”