Trial of Fire (19 page)

‘I just wanted some quiet, I suppose.’

Helen stared down at the forest floor beneath her feet. She was silent a moment, then whispered, ‘Guy told me what you … what Uncle Robert—’

In an instant, Andrew was on his feet, though quite who he was ready to fight, he didn’t know. Still his fists balled up and his heart pounded so hard Helen should have been able to hear it. ‘He shouldn’t have said anything. It was a secret! He promised,’ though he couldn’t remember whether he’d extracted a promise from Guy or not. ‘You weren’t supposed to know. I—’

Helen silenced him with a single, gentle look. It was obvious from her long dark hair, her dark brown eyes, the curve of her smile, that she was Finnlay’s daughter. The shape of her face was her mother’s, but the sweetness of her nature was all her own. Andrew didn’t know a single person who didn’t think the world of Helen. Including him.

‘Uncle Robert,’ Helen began softly and a little shyly, ‘wants you to be King. And to do that, he wants you to kill—’

‘Yes,’ Andrew said so she wouldn’t have to. He knew the memories were still painful for her. Kenrick had tried to drain Helen of her blood, use it to heal his own wounds, and he would have killed her in the process. If Robert and Finnlay hadn’t rescued her, or if they’d been a minute later, she would be dead now. Why could he not feel rage when the life of one of his best friends had been so at risk?

‘I don’t think,’ Helen said after a moment, her voice husky in the darkness, ‘that I could just kill my own cousin either.’

He looked up with a start. Then he noticed Guy standing in the shadows behind her. With a sigh, Andrew sank back onto his rock. ‘But it doesn’t matter what I want, or whether I could kill my own cousin or not – Robert says I will do it regardless. I know I should want to, and I know what he’s done, I just don’t—’

‘See how you
can
do it when you need to?’ This came from Guy as he emerged from the brush and stood beside Helen.

‘Exactly,’ Andrew said solemnly. ‘I feel like a coward.’

Helen moved and sat down beside him. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and gave him a brief, fierce hug. Then she said, ‘Who scares you more? Kenrick or Uncle Robert?’

Andrew snorted laughter at the silly question. ‘Why, Robert, of course!’

‘And yet,’ Guy said, ‘you keep fighting Robert on this thing, don’t you? You keep standing up to him, no matter how scary he is. You can’t do that and be a coward, Andrew. It’s not allowed. I know. I’ve seen the rule book.’

As Andrew and Helen looked at him, Guy smiled and added, ‘Seen it, memorised it, quoted from it …’

Andrew couldn’t help a small laugh emerging from him, releasing some awful tightness in his chest – though he didn’t know how he could feel so much better when nothing had changed.

Except that it had.

Andrew got to his feet and grabbed the horses’ reins he’d anchored under a rock. Feeling more daring than ever before, he took Helen’s hand in his and, with another laugh, led them back through the forest to the camp. For the first time since this had all started, he didn’t feel alone.

*

‘Robert, can you hear me?’

The heaviness sat on his back like a mountain, unmoving and unwilling. It was so hard to breathe now that he had to constantly remind himself to do so or he would die.

‘Where are we?’ Words were mouthed only; voice had long since deserted him as it required effort far beyond his present capabilities. Even mindspeech had become impossible.

‘By the Warle River, at the flatstone bridge. Can you open your eyes?’

One breath after another, feeding the last threads of his energy. If he didn’t get home soon, this would kill him, and then they would all die.

Little by little, light filtered in, dulled and shifting, faint and misty. Was that his sight, or the hour?

‘Don’t try to see too much, Robert. Dawn is still an hour away. Andrew
is unsure which way to go from here and doesn’t want to guess. Do we cross the river, or do we continue east?’

His eyeballs stung; his eyelids blinked rapidly to alleviate this small pain. The other, larger pains he didn’t dare address. Another breath in, bigger, more determined, and he opened his eyes further, trying to see, trying to remember the last time he’d approached from this direction.

Too dark. Too tired to bludgeon up the memory he needed. But he had to, or they would wander around this place for days until Andrew found something he recalled. By then Nash would have found them. They’d been out in the open for too long as it was. This trip had taken a day, two days longer than it should have.

Everything had taken longer than it should have. Serin’s blood, this whole war …

‘If you can see down there, those two rocks hanging over the river, and that dead tree trunk, well, they look as though they’d make some sort of landmark. Do they seem familiar? Robert?’

Cool, soothing, silky touch, like ice upon his burning skin. Jenn’s hand caressing his as though he were made of fine glass and might break under the slightest pressure. But she could give him no strength; she was using all she could to spell him this work, to allow him those few precious hours of rest, without which he would have been dead days ago. Though his vow had been to protect her, now she was protecting him.

He opened his eyes a little further, summoned the presence to swing his head this way and that. Somebody, probably Finn, had had the sense to turn his horse for him, to allow him a greater field of vision with the smallest amount of effort. It was enough.

‘Cross,’ he mouthed. He could see her turning to look at the flatstone bridge which crossed the ford. They would have to be careful, and he could almost feel her thinking that. Initially she had tried mindspeaking him, but she soon realised that even the effort of listening was almost enough to jolt his fragile control. He should never have attempted this in the first place. Better still, he should have found another way to hide the Key while he rested.

Oh, how he hated it. He had never embraced it, nor celebrated what it was supposed to stand for, and for all the Prophecy it had given him, and the Word of Destruction it had cursed him with, he had never before enjoyed such a hatred as this.

And the Key
knew.

How, he didn’t know, only that it did. But he didn’t mind: wallowing in such feelings had helped keep him alert and aware, ready for any bump in the road which might rattle his mask. Masks had never been designed to be
moved; that had always been their limitation. Moving a mask, strictly speaking, was impossible – assuming you followed all the usual rules about making one. Robert, of course, almost never followed the rules about anything. As a result,
he
had thought of making a moving mask while everyone else stood around and—

Laughter bubbled up inside him and he shortened his breath to kill it flat. Such an expenditure of energy would be enough to topple him. Years ago, decades, in fact, he’d gone out on a patrol with … Deverin. He’d been eleven? Twelve, perhaps? They’d had an interesting week and Robert had learned a lot from his favourite teacher. One night, they’d camped by a long lake and Deverin had taught him how to catch fish. They had, between them, caught enough for both supper that night and breakfast the next day; he recalled holding the fish to take the hook from their mouths, the way they wriggled and squirmed, slimy wet scales making a proper grip impossible, flicking up water, threatening to drive the sharp bone hook into his own fingers, tangling him in the catgut line, and at every moment, the heart-stopping danger that the fish might actually leap back into the water and escape—

‘Robert?’ Jenn’s voice once more broke into the silent world he inhabited, fighting with the squirming Key in its desperate bid to be free of his hook. ‘We’re going to start crossing now. We’ve had to light torches; the horses aren’t too happy. I’d prefer it if you dismount, but since I don’t think you can walk, I’m going to have Finnlay and Murdoch flank you. Just hold tight and we’ll get you across.’

He gave her a tiny smile from the corners of his mouth, all he could manage. He could feel the sharpness of the fisherman’s hook.

He hated the Key; it could only hate him back. If he’d had more energy, he would have laughed at the awful irony of his current link to it. All those years, so determined to having nothing to do with it, and now – now there was no escape for either of them.

At least there was no demon rattling inside him, poking at the hatred and making it burn. He knew it was still there, but now he had Jenn in his life – no matter how tenuously – the demon had no power to grab hold of his hatred and use it against the Key. On that score at least, they were all safe. For the moment.

He could hear the first stirrings of birds returned for spring, beginning their morning chorus. From memory alone he could tell where east was, for it was still too dark to see. He could hear movement from the others, the slightly unsteady gait of horses crossing the flatstone bridge, the gentle words urging calm upon them. This bridge, unlike most others on the Warle, was unusually narrow and the river was swollen with melted snow and spring rains.

He would be the last to cross, with Finn on one side and Murdoch on the other – but if something went wrong, neither of them would be able to help, and if his control of the Key slipped, it would be far too dangerous for them to be so close. He opened his eyes again, waiting a moment to let the mists swirl and shift into place. Then he saw Finnlay before him, holding the reins of his horse, watching the last of the others complete the crossing.

‘Finn, go.’

Finnlay looked up with surprise. ‘Go? We’re going right now. Just relax, Robert. Andrew said we’re not far now, just another couple of hours’ ride. Then we’ll work out a way for you to have a good long rest, and Arlie can tend those burns—’

‘No!’ Pain rattled through his chest as the word came out, the loudest he’d spoken in more than a day. Shocked, Finnlay moved closer, allowing Robert to drop to a whisper again. ‘You, Murdoch, go ahead. I cross alone.’

‘But, Robert—’ Finnlay began to protest, then stopped, his eyes flickering over Robert’s face. What he read there seemed to unsettle him as, a moment later, he nodded and stepped back. ‘Fine, but I’ll stay on this side, Murdoch on the other, in case you do need help.’ Finnlay took his brother’s agreement for granted, handing the reins up to him and calling out to Murdoch to wait for them on the other side of the bridge. Then he moved back, giving Robert space to kick his horse forward.

The horse did not like the river, nor the bridge made of long flat stones supported by smaller low stone pillars. The edifice had stood for three hundred years without falling, but the horse wasn’t to know that: all it could see was a too-narrow expanse of wet slippery rock and a river swirling around it, close enough to splash.

Perhaps it would be better if he tried the ford rather than the bridge – but in the spring this crossing would be too deep, hence the bridge. With determined hands, he patted and cajoled, and finally the animal walked forward, until it was standing on the bridge, where it stopped, shaking its head and snorting wildly. Robert wasted no time. He reached out and caught the animal’s feeble will with his own overstretched powers, forcing the horse to move. His hands began to shake with the effort, but now the horse walked slowly and steadily, though each step raked pain up Robert’s body. He held his breath now, unable to afford even that luxury and still keep control of the horse. A few more steps and then—

With a stumble, the horse gained the other side, its hooves sinking into the muddy earth already trampled by the others. He knew Murdoch was by his side, holding the horse as Finnlay quickly crossed, but he could see nothing, could feel nothing, could not even gain his breath … should not have done this—

He had to pull back now or he would have no reserve left to hold the mask, but he couldn’t see the lines now, couldn’t work out where the mask began and control of the horse ended. Dizzy now, the world tilted around him, and his whole body shook.

‘Robert!’

The voice rose up out of the nausea and he reached for it, grabbing it as a lifeline, pulling back from the tight control. Agony shot through him like an arrow through his body. As he gasped for air, his frail control slipped. He recoiled from the deafening clamour and dizziness overtook him. With a groan, he tumbled from the horse.

Even as Murdoch and Finn caught him, he could hear the voice again, crashing around inside the Key, leaking out into him like poison.

Enemy! I have you again, so very close: you can’t escape now!

*

Jenn left the others and ran back to Robert, but she couldn’t stop him falling. As they got him safely to the ground, she slipped the bag straps from his shoulders and removed the Key. At once Robert moaned and collapsed back, his breathing harsh and hard. He blinked a few times and whispered, ‘Lost the mask … He was Seeking; found us! He’s close. Can feel it!’

For a second, blind panic rose in Jenn’s throat, choking off thought. They couldn’t fight Nash here and now – Robert was simply not fit; he couldn’t win in this condition – Nash would kill him!

Robert reached out and seized her hand, his grip painful. ‘Get them moving. Defence … Jenn, he’s coming. I need time … to find a way—’

Even as he grunted and tried to say more, Jenn’s panic was swallowed by need and the plea in Robert’s eyes. Without pausing, she snapped off orders. ‘Murdoch, help me get Robert back on his horse. Finn, defensive positions. Now! Nash is on his way and we need to buy some time.’

She didn’t even see Finnlay go, but Murdoch came around and, with his hands under Robert’s shoulders, got him to his feet. For a moment, Robert swayed, seemingly unable to take his own weight, but then he straightened.

‘What are you going to do?’

He shook his head, his gaze drifting down to the bag at his feet and the Key it contained. ‘I need to make another mask, but I can’t if I have to fight him. There’s no point in running away if he can follow the Key.’

‘We can’t get away without facing him.’ The words fell into the silence between them. Robert’s gaze was steady now in the growing light and despite the awful exhaustion around his eyes, he’d lost much of that deathly pallor. He was pulling himself together through sheer will alone; she marvelled at his unbroken determination. But no matter his powers of recovery, Nash would still kill him.