16
We stopped well after dark, sleeping in an abandoned cabin.
Graves built a fire, though the White Monk argued against it, saying the Tala might detect our approach.
“There’s not a soul lives out here,” Graves scoffed. “We’re in the depth of the Wild Lands. We’ll be at Odfell’s Pass come midday tomorrow.”
We slept all in one room that night, Marin putting her bulk between me and the men, as if they might molest me otherwise. The White Monk lay between me and the door, like a faithful dog protecting me from intruders in the night. I avoided him and we hadn’t exchanged further words. It was surely my own imagination that I felt something more than that silly string of yarn thrummed between us, the lowest strings of a harp, sounding an inaudible vibration long after the chord faded away.
I’d never experienced anything quite like it. A strange and mysterious thing, magic was. I wanted to ask the White Monk so many questions—why could he do magic? where did he learn?—but I had promised not to reveal his secret. In my heart, anyway, since he hadn’t stuck around to hear the actual words.
And I really did want to be better about how I treated people. He’d done me an enormous service. I owed him at least my silence.
The next day, he seemed replenished. We still didn’t speak, but we had nothing to discuss. That is, not that could be spoken of with the others about. Mount, ride. The landscape grew steeper, with great boulders and very tall, straight trees. They formed infinite pillars into the distance, the evergreen canopy high above, and it hurt my eyes the way they seemed to fold into one another and multiply.
As the morning progressed, a feeling of uneasiness nibbled at me, then began taking greater bites of the peace of mind I tried to maintain. Shadowy shapes seemed to move in the corner of my eye, then vanished when I looked directly. The hair prickled on the nape of my neck, tingling as the White Monk’s magic had.
Sometimes snow sifted down from the branches and the wood creaked when a hand of wind fisted through the limbs high against the wintery sky. It seemed other things moved there, too. Wrong things. My memory flashed onto those strange oily creatures that had invaded Ordnung when the Tala attacked and came after Andi. I tried to get a better look, but they were like the childhood monsters that disappeared when you lit a candle.
“What do you see?” the White Monk asked, riding close, speaking for my ears only.
He said it in a serious tone, not as if I were being a silly girl, but as if I might see something he didn’t. Still, I hesitated to say anything. “I . . . I’m not sure.”
“Don’t think. Describe.”
That helped. “Shadows? Like a cloud when it crosses the sun, that kind of chill when it touches my skin. Flashes of . . . something out of a nightmare. Like the kind you have when you’re a kid and it’s mainly that you don’t quite understand what it is you’re afraid of.” I shivered.
He only nodded and pushed aside the hood and cowl, head bare to the cold while he studied the landscape. “I can’t feel it,” he said finally. “I thought I might.”
I opened my mouth to ask what he meant, but his horse sprang ahead into a trot until the White Monk reached Graves. They halted our procession, Graves squinting up at the trees and then back at me. They fell into a discussion, heads close so none of the rest of us could hear. Finally Graves shook his head and we moved forward again. The path grew steeper and narrowed, so we rode two abreast, Marin falling behind us.
The White Monk rode at my side, looking grim, his blade drawn, resting on his thigh. “Do you have a dagger?” he asked in a conversational tone.
“Me? Glorianna, no. I’d likely prick myself as anyone else.” He didn’t say anything to my standard joke. I suppose it wasn’t funny to a man like him. “Why, what’s going on?”
“Graves is a bold soldier, but he was a poor choice for this. He wasn’t part of the Siege at Windroven, nor the last attempt at Odfell’s Pass. Neither he nor his men mixed with Ursula’s Hawks on the journey from Avonlidgh, so he knows nothing of what they encountered. Fools.” His frustration filled the air, grit from a whetting stone.
“But you did?”
He laughed, under his breath and without sound. “I do my research.”
“And what did you find out?”
“To take the unseen seriously. And that the Tala aren’t the same as humans.”
Oh. “Is that who you think I’m seeing?”
He lifted one shoulder. “I wish I knew. If we could combine my knowledge with your senses, we might get somewhere.” Absurdly, given how much tension he radiated, he grinned at me, that scar hitching the lip on one side, eyes bright. He looked . . . happy, of all things. “Guess we’ll have to figure it out as we go, huh?”
I didn’t know how to reply to that. Such an odd man, that this was fun for him.
“But you expect them to attack—that’s what you told Graves.”
“I think they’re aware we’re here, and we have the advantage because you can sense them. We should use that advantage.”
“Maybe we should go back.”
“Is that what you want to do?”
No. Even though fear nibbled at the edges of my mind, I didn’t want to give up, just because I saw some shadows. They hadn’t made any overt threats. Besides, Andi had invited me.
She didn’t invite the rest of them, though. Only me.
“Why can I see them?”
He sighed out a long breath of a person practicing patience. “It’s in your blood, Ami. Your sister is the witch queen of the Tala—did you think you had nothing of that in you?”
I had thought that. Until Lady Zevondeth showed me how to work the spell by using my blood. Maybe that’s why she wanted to keep our blood in her little vials. Like keeping keys that fit certain locks. “I can’t work magic,” I reasoned, thinking it through, “but my mother’s blood gives me certain access, a kind of sensitivity.”
“Yes. That’s right.”
“So why did you think you would?”
“What do you mean?” He seemed to be surveying the woods, but I sensed the evasion, a shifting silver thread.
“You said you hoped you’d feel it.” The realization dawned on me. “Are you—is that why you can do what you do?”
I’d tried to be oblique, but he flicked me an irritated, burning glance, then returned his attention to the woods and shadows. “If I were, if I could live in paradise, why would I be living this life of exile in the Twelve Kingdoms?”
“I don’t understand why everyone thinks Annfwn is so wonderful. If it’s really paradise, why haven’t I heard more about it?”
“Consider your upbringing.”
“How so?”
“You were raised in a bubble. Your father, far more than most parents, controlled what you knew of the world—as who he is, he had total control of your world, and made sure you only knew what he wanted you to, until you married and left home. After that . . .”
“What?”
“You went from one bubble to another.”
“You talk about me as if I’m some hothouse rose.” I meant to score a point, but he considered that thoughtfully.
“An apt analogy. Beautiful. Precious. Protected. Meant only to be touched and seen by a privileged few.”
Like Hugh had treated me, too. And worthless outside of that. He didn’t say it, but I smelled the weedy accusation beneath. It rankled, but I couldn’t argue with it. We fell silent. Snow began to fall, as if forming from the fog between the trees, fat flakes that landed on my horse’s hide and lay quivering before melting into nothing.
With a whoosh, a clump of snow landed off to the side and I started, my nerves twanging. The conversation, though uncomfortable, had been at least distracting.
“So what didn’t my father want me to know?”
The White Monk glanced my way, a quick assessment, and went along. “Only you can be the judge of that, but consider who he is. He placed his seat—the High Throne that was the trophy of his Great War—at the back door to Annfwn, as close as he could get to it without violating his pledge to your mother. Between his forces and the landscape, no one goes in or out of Annfwn without his knowledge. He cut it off from the rest of the kingdoms. If he couldn’t have it, no one would.”
It made a weird sense. I remembered minstrels thrown out of court for singing the “wrong” songs. I was framing my next question when something that wasn’t the wind soughed through the trees, strumming my nerves so they sang in response.
The soldiers ahead halted. We were against a steep wall on one side, a drop-off on the other, and the curve of the path kept us from seeing where Graves led the group.
Odd grunting noises floated down, disturbing in their formlessness.
The White Monk slid off his horse, holding a silencing finger to his lips, and gestured to Marin to go back down the trail. The soldier next to her shook his head—but obeyed the rule of silence—and pointed emphatically to show his desire to go forward. His fellows agreed, showing their impatience to help in the restless stamping of their horses’ hooves, an urgent cadence pressing them forward.
But we blocked their way.
The White Monk held up his hands in a gesture for me to dismount. So pressed together were we on the narrow trail that it forced our bodies into contact. Despite my tense nerves—or maybe because of them—that frenzied desire for him, complete with dark fantasies, leapt through me. I stepped away as fast as possible, but took the hand he held out, following him past the horses, smashing myself against the snowy stones to ease past the soldiers’ mounts.
We reached the clear space just past them and the White Monk pressed his blade into my hand. “Use it if you have to,” he said. Moving fast, he returned to our horses and, as near as I could see, moved his ahead of mine, nodding for Marin to slide hers behind his, pressed tight against the cliff wall. She’d been too stout to slide past as we had.
Freed, the soldiers trotted past in single file. Too fast, and perilously close to the cliff’s edge, for one horse’s hoof slid off the uneven rocks, unbalancing them both. For a heart-stopping moment, they hung there, teetering on the brink. Then, with twin shrieks of terror, they fell together, horse and soldier, plummeting down to the far canyon below.
I cried out with them, taking an involuntary step forward, as if I could somehow catch them. The White Monk clamped me against him, hand over my mouth. I sobbed, tearlessly, of course. He pressed his cheek against mine. Not in remonstration, I realized, but in mute sympathy. Dampness made them slide together and I looked at him to see silent tears running down his face. Marin had her hands clamped over her eyes, as if she, too, wished she could unsee what had just occurred.
The White Monk released me and urged us down the trail to a place where we would be less likely to be knocked off into the crevasse.
We waited. I opened my mouth once to ask what the plan was, but the White Monk made that gesture of silence again. I didn’t see why. By his own estimation, the Tala already knew we were here. We’d been talking until the attack, so it made no sense for us not to talk at all now.
Still, I followed along. Do you trust me? he’d asked, and for no good reason, I did.
After a while, the White Monk stood and, taking his blade from me and motioning for us to stay put, crept up the trail again. I nearly protested. We hadn’t heard any sounds, not even those odd, soft grunts, for quite some time. He returned fairly quickly.
“They’re all gone,” he told us without preamble, crouching in front of me, “even the horses. You need to make a decision.”
“What does ‘gone’ mean? Dead? Did they all go over the edge of the cliff, too?”
He shook his head. “Vanished. The snow is scuffed, but there’s no sign of the men or the horses. No bodies. Just gone.”
I assimilated that, feeling the weight of things. “You think we should go back.”
“Is that what you want to do?” His unnatural eyes were intent but deliberately neutral. I couldn’t read what he thought was the right decision. But I smelled his anxiety, his driving desire to go forward, as hot as midsummer sunshine. “This is your mission. You’re the one who was invited.”
“Then why did you spirit me away from the fight? Maybe the Tala wouldn’t have . . . done what they did, if they’d seen me with the soldiers.”
He blew out a breath and studied his gloved hands, knotted between his knees. “I don’t think it works that way.”
“How does it work?”
“I think we’re dealing with the equivalent of . . . guard dogs, if you will. They respond to certain cues. Smarter than dogs, but not exactly rational beings you can reason with, either.”
“How do you know so much?”
He gave me a wry look through his unkempt brows. “Let’s say I’ve studied a lot.”
“So the princess will be allowed to pass, but no one else—is that how it works?” Marin nodded. “Then, if you go on, I’ll head down the trail to the last cabin and wait for you there.”
“Can you do that?” I kind of gaped at her. I didn’t think I could walk that far, and going by myself would be daunting.
“I’ve done that much and more, missy,” she answered, not unkindly. “I’d rather do that than be scooped off the mountainside by yon magical guard dogs.”
“We could all go back.” The White Monk regarded me with that neutral expression. “There’s no shame in a retreat when facing unfavorable odds.”
I didn’t like that he’d laid the decision so firmly in my hands. He was doing it on purpose, too. Making me take responsibility. Testing my resolve? Taking me seriously.
“I want to go on. If you think my invitation will protect me—after all, I have the babe to think of—then I’ll continue.” I didn’t like the idea of going alone, but I couldn’t place him in jeopardy, either. That’s how a good queen would decide, wasn’t it? “You and Marin can go to the cabin and wait for me there.”
He laughed, that soundless, under-the-breath one. “You’re not going alone. I’ll be with you every step of the way.”
“But what if they come after you?”
“I can take care of myself.” And his eyes glittered again, with that odd joy I’d glimpsed before. He wanted to come with me. More than he cared for his continued safety. This was why he’d wormed his way into being my priest confessor and bodyguard. He wanted to see Annfwn.
He gave his pack to Marin. Now I understood why he kept it tied to his back instead of his horse, as the rest of us had. A rush of relief poured through me that I hadn’t had the doll with me after all. It would be vanished with my horse, who was maybe broken at the bottom of a ravine. I hated to think of that fate for her. She’d been a good steed and the guilt ate at me that I might have brought her to her death.
We said good-bye to Marin, watching her steady, surefooted march down the trail. Then we headed up. This time I led the way, the White Monk at my back, by unspoken agreement. If I was the key to passage, then I should be in front.
When we reached the place where the soldier and horse had gone over, I couldn’t help but look, more than a little afraid of what I’d see, but unable to stop the horrid desire to find out. The White Monk put his hand on my arm. “Don’t look,” he said in my ear.
“Did . . . did they all go over?” I had to know.
“No. Only the pair we saw, I think. I have no idea where the others are.”
Of course, he had looked. Even though he’d shed the tears I’d wanted to at their sudden, wrenching demise, he’d had the stomach to see. Nevertheless, I was glad he’d stopped me, even if it meant I lacked his courage.
We continued around the bend to where Graves and the other men had been attacked. The trail widened into a clearing here, and a vast circle of disrupted snow bore silent witness to the strange battle that had occurred. Mud scuffed up from beneath stained the snow in patches, but no blood.
Still, something about the clearing felt odd. I stared around it, trying to discern why my nerves hummed and my grief, always in the background like a faithful hunting dog, descended, leaden and impenetrable in the corners of my vision.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know,” I answered. “Something.”
He waited patiently. I wandered through the clearing. No strange shadows prowled the perimeter, validating the White Monk’s theory that my presence gave us passage. Not sure what I was looking for, I spotted a clear patch that held, of all things, a spot of green. Bright, acid green, like the White Monk’s eyes when he was most amused—or most hateful.
Kicked-up snow mounded around it, but now melted, sliding off and making a damp, muddy ring. A patch of grass, incongruous in the frozen landscape, with a flower inside. A forget-me-not, but larger than it should be, the vivid summer-sky blue of Hugh’s eyes.
My heart clutched, the painful ball in my throat spinning. The White Monk crouched beside me. “What do you see?”
“I think—” My voice croaked and broke. I swallowed down the cursed ball of thorns. “I think this is where Hugh died.”
“I don’t see anything—just snow.”
“It’s like a little hothouse. Living grass and a forget-me-not, but the biggest, most beautiful one I’ve ever seen. It’s not possible that it’s here.”
His breath sighed out. “Then this is a memorial. An eternal blossom. Created and preserved by magic.”
I nodded, unable to say more.
“Only one person that I know of could do such a thing—and would want to.”
Andi. I tried to conjure up that image I’d nursed, of her fierce and corrupted joy as she plunged the knife into Hugh’s breast. Instead I saw her here, planting this blossom and making a little dome of eternal summer around it. I pulled off my glove and reached in, my hand passing into the moist warmth, the petals velvety and vibrantly alive.
I said a prayer, wordless, a formless burst of love, sorrow, gratitude, and remorse.
When I drew my hand away, the cold stung my skin, a reminder of what was real.
“May I try?”
I wasn’t sure why he asked my permission, but I nodded. The White Monk yanked off his glove and reached out as I had, but his fingers stopped in midair, as if encountering glass. He ran his hand over it, forming an invisible dome in the air.
“As the border will be,” I breathed out the revelation.
He seemed disappointed, a tinge of bitterness in the air. Then he took my hand and searched my face. “Will you try something with me?” The simplicity of the question belied the deep, emotional earnestness in his gaze. This mattered greatly to him.
“Yes.”
His scarred lip twitched into a smile and he opened his mouth to say something, then shook his head and tugged off my glove, gently, finger by finger. With a rush, the fantasy of him ripping off my clothes hit me again, and I had to bite my lip against it—and to stave off the black guilt that followed. Here I knelt at the spot where Hugh had given up his life only months before, possessed by this insane lust for another man. If the White Monk knew, he gave no clue, but he did cradle my naked hand in his, our skin touching in some deep communication. With our fingers laced together, he lowered our hands toward the blossom.
Seamlessly our hands slid inside, penetrating the perfect slice of summer together.
“I see it!” He turned his head and grinned at me, a smile so broad even the scar didn’t distort it, the greatest expression of pure happiness I’d ever seen on him. It made the thorns inside me prick with envy.
Nothing could ever make me that happy again.