The Sentinel Mage (4 page)

“Yes.”

Harkeld followed the woman, landing jarringly on the hard-packed dirt at the base of the wall. He spun to face the riders. Five horses bore down on them, four riderless. Above swooped the hawks.

The gray-haired witch clambered down the rope. He jumped the last few feet, landing lightly in a crouch. “Take the bay.”

Harkeld nodded, glancing up at the guard tower. He heard shouting. A guard peered down. The rope twitched.

The horses halted. “Quickly!” the gray-haired witch cried, thrusting reins at him. Above, a guard was already scrambling down the rope.

Harkeld grabbed the reins and swung up into the saddle. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the guard push away from the wall, arcing towards him.

The man’s weight knocked him from the saddle as the bay surged forward. Harkeld struck the ground hard. He rolled, pushing up on one elbow. There was a ringing sound in his ears and no breath in his lungs. Dimly he heard the guard shout. Sunlight gleamed on an uplifted sword.

Harkeld raised an arm in defense. He had time for one thought—
I’m dead
—and for one emotion—astonishment—before a lioness barreled into the guard, knocking him off his feet.

The guard released his sword as he fell. The blade sliced past Harkeld’s upraised hand and smacked into the dirt.

Harkeld lowered his arm. He coughed, tasting dirt and blood, and inhaled deeply. The guard screamed. The sound echoed in Harkeld’s head. He blinked, trying to focus his eyes, and rose unsteadily to his knees. The smell of smoke was strong. He looked up. The rope was on fire, flames licking upwards. Above, on the parapet, a silver-maned lion roared.

The lioness suddenly pushed her face into his, her eyes golden. She turned her head and uttered a sound—part grunt, part roar—that sounded like a summons.

He raised his hand to push her away. Foul creature.

Blood dripped from his fingers.

Harkeld shook his head to clear it. He turned his hand palm-up. For a second he stared dumbly, seeing red flesh and white bone. Blood spurted from the wound.

Someone gripped his collar and hauled him to his feet. Harkeld jerked away, almost stumbling, before he realized it was the gray-haired witch.

He stood, blinking, trying to get his eyes to focus fully as a man he’d never seen before, with a grizzled brown beard and bristling eyebrows, ripped off a shirtsleeve and tied it tightly about his wrist. The spurting blood slowed to a trickle. The man tore off his other sleeve and bound Harkeld’s hand roughly.

“Mount!”

Harkeld did, clumsily, and sat swaying in the saddle, gripping the reins in his left hand.

They rode at a slow canter, the lioness loping alongside and a hawk flying overhead. By the time they reached the cool shade of the forest, the ringing in Harkeld’s ears had lessened and his head had begun to clear. He looked back before the trees closed around them. A line of fire ran up the wall as the rope burned. Figures clustered on the battlement, and behind them were the gilded roofs and gleaming marble of the palace.

Home.

Not any more.

He waited for an emotion—loss, rage—but all he felt was disbelief.

Movement drew his eye. Guards on horseback, at least a score of them, with a pack of hounds streaming in front of them.

He dug his heels into the bay’s flanks.

The lioness kept pace with him, but when he glanced back he saw that the other riders followed more slowly. Behind them, flames rose high. The forest was on fire.

Harkeld brought his horse to a halt. He twisted in his saddle. The flames spread as he watched, to the left and right, an impregnable wall of fire. And as the flames spread, so did his disbelief.

This isn’t happening to me.

CHAPTER FOUR

T
HEY RODE THROUGH
the royal forest for the rest of the afternoon. The witches followed no trail—huntsman’s or deer’s—that Harkeld could see, yet they rode without hesitation, pushing deeper into the coolness of the forest, beneath broad-boughed oaks and towering ash trees, through thickets of prickly yews.

Whenever they rested the horses in a walk, the gray-haired witch came up alongside him and unwound the bandage around his hand. The first time, Harkeld jerked his hand away.

“I need to heal it,” the witch said.

“Magic?”

The man nodded.

Harkeld hesitated. Magic was foul, filthy, a perversion of what was natural and right.

He looked down at his hand. The fingers were almost severed from the palm. Instinct told him not to let the man touch him; self-preservation insisted he did.

Harkeld held out his hand. He sat stiff and unwilling while the horses walked and the witch’s fingers rested on his palm. The edges of the wound slowly drew closed; after the third healing session, the bones were no longer visible, after the fourth, the witch released the tourniquet. When no blood flowed, he gave a nod of satisfaction. “Can you move your fingers?”

Harkeld shook his head. Bitterness surged inside him. He was a cripple, a swordsman who couldn’t wield a sword.

“Innis will finish the healing,” the man said. “Tonight.”

“Innis?”

The witch nodded at the lioness, loping beside the horses.

T
HE WITCHES HAD
a camp deep in the forest, beside a creek. Four tents and a campfire. Beneath the smell of wood smoke was the smell of stew.

A young, red-haired man tended the fire. He straightened at their approach and waved cheerfully. Harkeld eyed him. He had to be another witch; no human would travel willingly in such company.

The glade looked like a thousand others in the forest: trickling creek, oak and ash and rowan trees. Above the leafy canopy, dusk was settling into night. The glow from the burning forest lit the sky behind them. Harkeld dismounted. “The forest fire?” he asked the gray-haired witch.

“It won’t come near us.”

The red-haired witch handed Harkeld a mug of cider and took the bay from him.

Harkeld drank, counting the witches and trying to stifle his fear.
Six of them.
Everything he knew about witches crowded into his mind. Tales of infanticide and bestiality. Tales of cannibalism. Tales of witches burning people alive. He forced himself to concentrate on the ordinariness of the scene: the tents, the pots hanging over the fire, the tartness and sweetness of the cider on his tongue, the red-haired witch whistling between his teeth as he unsaddled the horses.

“Let me see your hand.”

He turned his head.

The girl from the throne room stood beside him. He recognized the black hair curling halfway down her back, the pale skin, the dark eyes.

She looked human; Harkeld knew she wasn’t. She was a shapeshifter. Neither human nor animal, but a monstrous combination of both.

“Dareus says the tendons are severed.” The girl had the same accent as the gray-haired witch: sibilant
s
, guttural
r.
“If you wish to use your fingers again, I must look at your hand.”

She was dressed in a shirt and trews. Harkeld remembered the pile of clothes on the floor of the throne room, the shirt with its seams burst open, the ripped trews.

She’d been a lion, a hunting dog, a hawk. She’d been covered in fur and in feathers.

“The sooner it’s done, the better it will heal,” the girl said. She didn’t look like any of the animals she’d been. She was long-legged and slender, like a gazelle.

Harkeld braced himself, holding out his bandaged hand.

The girl didn’t touch it. “Let’s sit by the fire.” She turned away from him.

Harkeld followed, his legs stiff with reluctance.
She’s a monster
, a voice whispered in his head. By not killing her, he was going against every principle of rightness and conscience.

A log had been placed alongside the fire. The girl sat. He could see her more clearly in the firelight. Freckles scattered her pale skin. Her eyes were dark gray.

Harkeld sat on the log, putting as much space between them as he could. He extended his hand towards the witch, looking at the fire, not her.

The girl unwrapped the bandage and dropped it on the ground. He felt her fingers, cool, turning his palm towards the fire, examining the wound. Harkeld’s skin crawled beneath that light touch. It took all his willpower not to jerk his hand free. He clenched his jaw and stared at the flames.

He knew when she started. He felt it—a prickling sensation, neither hot nor cold. He was aware of every bone in his hand, every tendon, every nerve, every blood vessel.

Harkeld held himself utterly still, fighting the urge to snatch his hand from her grasp. He tried to concentrate on other things, on the stew pot and the steaming pot of water that hung alongside it, on the moths that darted close to the flames, on the witches rubbing down the horses, on the sound of the red-haired witch whistling.

Time seemed to stretch interminably. Each second was as long as a minute, each minute as long as an hour. Finally the girl released his hand. “Try to move your fingers.”

Harkeld hesitated, then flexed his fingers.

They moved.

Relief surged through him, so intense that for a moment he couldn’t breathe. He flexed his fingers again, clenched them into a fist, spread them wide. There was no pain, no stiffness.

The witch had given him back his hand, and twice today she’d saved his life. Monster or not, he owed her gratitude.

“Thank you,” he said, glancing at her, seeing gray eyes and a fine-boned, gamine face.

“You’re welcome.”

Harkeld looked down at his palm. A scar ran across it from one side to the other, pink and fresh. His skin crawled where her fingers had touched, as if her filth had contaminated him.

He stood abruptly and headed for the creek. He had to wash her touch off his hand, had to wash
her
off.

T
HE GRAY-HAIRED WITCH
told him his name while they ate—Dareus—and the names of the others: the woman, Cora, and the young male shapeshifter, Petrus, who’d both been at the palace. Bearded Gerit, who’d bound his hand at the palace wall. Red-haired Ebril. And the girl, Innis. Harkeld paid little attention. He didn’t want to know the witches’ names. They were monsters, not people. He ate without looking at any of them. When he was finished he put down his wooden bowl.

“Do you have any questions?” Dareus asked. “About your grandfather? About the curse?”

Harkeld looked at him across the campfire. “You have proof my grandfather was a witch?”

Dareus put down his own bowl and sat back. “Your mother’s birth was carefully planned. We’ve been trying to get mage blood into royal lines for close to a century. Although you’re the only—”

“It was deliberate?”

“Yes.” The firelight cast deep shadows over the witch’s face. His eyes were dark caves, his nose a bony ridge. “It was necessary to break the curse.”

They’d mixed their filthy blood with his mother’s line on purpose? Outrage held Harkeld rigid for a moment, then he pushed to his feet. “How
dare
you—”

“It had to be done,” Dareus said. “Ivek was a mage. It was our responsibility to find a way to break the curse.”

Me. I’m the way you’ve found. You bred me as a farmer breeds cattle.

He was aware of the other witches, dark shapes around the campfire, watching. “How long will it take to break?”

“Three or four months,” Dareus said. “Maybe longer. The bounty on your head will make it difficult.”

“Three months?” he said, appalled.

“The curse is anchored in more than one place,” the witch said. “It’s quite complex.”

Three months.
Harkeld shook his head. “I’m going to bed.” He turned away from the campfire.

“Ebril will share your tent.”

Harkeld turned around. “No,” he said flatly. “I will not sleep in the same tent as—”
as a monster
“—one of you.” He’d rather sleep in a midden than alongside a witch, sharing the same space, breathing the same air.