Throne of Eldraine Page 13

  “We saw—”

  Will kicked Rowan’s ankle and lowered his brows in warning. “You haven’t seen a stag? Or our companions? Because if you haven’t then we need to keep searching. Don’t we, Rowan?”

  Oko’s gaze flashed to Will, a flicker of anger in the narrowing of his eyes. Rowan put an uneasy hand on her sword’s hilt at the burst of unspoken hostility. But the darkness in Oko’s eyes faded abruptly when he looked past them toward the clearing’s edge. A silky smile pulled at his lips.

  “Ah, here arrives a loyal companion,” he murmured with a lift of his eyebrows.

  Rowan turned to see Cado and Elowen entering the glade by a path she was certain hadn’t been there when she and Will arrived. She was so glad to see them, and obviously they were relieved to find the twins as well.

  “We feared we’d lost you,” said Cado as they hastened over. “Where is Cerise?”

  “We thought she was with you,” said Will in alarm, casting his gaze around the glade as if somehow he could spot the missing Cerise. How could he have left her behind?

  “I told you children not to ride off in a rush,” said Elowen. “These ruins are a maze of shifting paths. We’d better leave here at once and search—” The loremage broke off when she realized her horse was not moving as Oko fed it a tempting apple.

  He then offered a dead rat to Hale, who delicately snapped up the rodent.

  “What a magnificent creature you are,” Oko said, scratching the griffin at the top of its beak as it purred.

  In Ardenvale, no one approached a griffin without asking its knight’s permission. Cado stared at him from the saddle, too astounded by the impertinence to protest.

  Elowen felt no such impediment. “Who are you?”

  “This is Oko of Locthwain,” said Rowan, embarrassed by the loremage’s rudeness.

  Cado cast a look around the glade as if he expected an ambush. “What is a denizen of Locthwain doing in the heart realm of the Wilds?”

  “Have you already forgotten what I told you?” Elowen said. “Queen Ayara sent an envoy some time ago to negotiate with the Council of Druids.”

  “How perspicacious of you,” said Oko. “Am I not correct in identifying you, friend, as a loremage of Vantress?”

  “Why, yes, so I am a loremage. Without question the most knowledgeable scholar in the Realm when it comes to the Wilds.” Elowen tugged at the sleeves of her blue and silver gabardine as if stricken by an unfathomable attack of self-consciousness.

  Cado considered the handsome elf with a cold and suspicious gaze. “Have we met before? Something about you looks familiar, but I can’t quite put my finger on what it might be.”

  Oko sighed, eyes widening innocently. “Have I done something to offend you in the brief period of our acquaintance that you treat me with such distrust? I carry no weapon. In all aspects of life I endeavor to be quite the gentlest and most cooperative person, my friend.”

  “I am not your friend,” said Cado.

  “Perhaps not yet, although I hope your feelings for me may change as we get to know each other better. Perhaps we can help each other in our quests. I am waiting here for the Council of Druids to hear my plea.”

  “The Council of Druids was disbanded long ago.” Elowen frowned at the sky, gaze gone contemplative as she mulled over his words. “It’s said to meet only at times of great crisis.”

  Oko raised both of his hands in a gesture that encompassed everything within the glade: the fallen tower, the whispering grass, the trees on all sides rustling with leaves stirred by wind.

  “Is not the disappearance of the High King a crisis? Is the Realm not struggling with disorder and disagreement? Are the courts not fighting among themselves? Might this not be the very chance the council of the Wilds seeks to regain what was torn from them? By attacking when the Realm is weakened?”

  “Oho! My ears are all a-prickle.” Elowen leaned forward to use her seat to loom over Oko, but even though she was on horseback and he was on foot, he in no way seemed disadvantaged. “Is that why Queen Ayara sent you? Is she making an alliance with her kinfolk to assault the Realm in Algenus’s absence?”

  “No!” protested Cado. “I don’t believe it, not even of Ayara.”

  “I saw Queen Ayara in the amphitheater,” said Rowan, breaking in. “There is a council meeting, and they are discussing attacking the Realm, but Ayara is arguing against it.”

  “As she would do, with Linden still holding court at Ardenvale,” said Cado.

  “Queen Linden?” Oko scoffed. “She received the title because of her marriage to the High King. She is not High Queen in her own right. She has not enough authority to lead the Realm.”

  Elowen gave a scornful snort. “Pah! How little you know of Linden, young pup! I don’t like her much but she does more than anyone to hold the Realm together.”

  Cado’s tone was stern. “You might as easily say Algenus is the banner of the Realm that waves beautifully in the breeze while Linden is the haft to which the banner is affixed. Do not mistake me, many hands carry the Realm, not just one. But Linden’s strength and responsibility has held us together and will keep the Realm unified for a great deal longer—” He broke off, then finished in a quieter voice, “Even if the worst happens.”

  Will said, “Where is Cerise? We need to find her and look for the stag.”

  “No need to go looking as all paths lead to this glade.” Oko gestured toward the vine-draped seat where Rowan and Will had first seen him. In the interval it had blossomed with an astounding array of purple and white flowers. “Will you join me for a small but refreshing meal while we wait? I would be not only gratified but jubilant to be honored with your company.”

  Elowen laughed heartily and rather caustically. “You’re an admirable sight, I admit, and very well spoken with a charming manner. But even you cannot think us so ignorant as to eat a meal offered to us in the Wilds. And especially not within a faerie ring.”

  “A faerie ring?” he asked with gullible sweetness, tilting his head to one side.

  “Come now, young fellow. Don’t think to play this game with me. I know what a faerie ring looks like.” She indicated the clearing. Only then did Rowan realize the glade itself was round, with mushrooms crowded at the edge of the trees to create a white circle. A circle she and Will had crossed without noticing in their haste to seek the stag.

  “And by the way, you’re no lord of Locthwain,” Elowen added.

  “You injure me with your doubt.” His tone remained light but he clenched his hands, shoulders gone stiff.

  “It took me a moment to notice. Nowhere on your person do you wear the sigil of Locthwain’s goblet.”

  Oko glanced down at his clothing, then up again with the narrow-eyed gaze he’d cast at Will moments before.

  “Just another elf making trouble,” Cado muttered.

  “Perhaps,” said Elowen. “Tell me, Oko. Which is your mother’s clan? Into which clan was your father born?”

  “Why do you ask?” he said in a too quiet voice.

  “Any elf is obliged to answer that question or be dishonored. There’s something about you that doesn’t add up. I don’t think you’re an elf. I think you’re an imposter. Maybe even a witch.”

  “A witch!” Cado drew his sword.

  Oko reached out like a snake, striking to grasp Elowen’s wrist with his left hand. “I don’t like people who accuse me,” he said in a tone so chilling that Rowan nudged her mare forward to push between the loremage and the elf.

  But it was too late. With a sparkling flare of light, both Oko and Elowen vanished. In their place appeared two crested eagles, one perched on the ground and the other in the saddle. Elowen’s horse shied. Dislodged, the eagle in the saddle squawked loudly and flapped into the air, followed by the other eagle, the two rising so quickly Rowan couldn’t tell them apart. One kept flying while the other landed at the edge of the clearing and in a twist of light turned back into Oko.

  Oko whistled, the sound so har
sh and loud Rowan covered her ears and Will ducked reflexively. All three horses snorted and sidestepped to get a better line of sight on the noise.

  Cado reined Hale around, the griffin spreading his wings in make ready to attack. The vegetation behind Oko thrashed with movement. The hunter appeared out of the forest with the stag walking to his right and Cerise limping beside Sophos on his left. Cerise’s hands were bound in front of her by a vine whose nettling sting had turned the skin raw and red at her wrists. Her face was bruised and smeared with dirt. A leaf covered her mouth like a gag.

  “Wait!” shouted Will to Cado before the griffin could leap. “We can’t risk Cerise. Did you see what he did to Elowen?”

  Oko looked over the new arrivals with a sour stare, all his good humor and charming smiles flown away like the transformed loremage. “Dog, I’m disappointed in how long it took you to fetch the stag. I see you caught another morsel on the way. And a unicorn too! Murderous beasts, I hear! Guard our guests. They mustn’t leave the faerie ring.”

  “Yes, Master.”

  A stalk sprouted from the ground and at an astonishing speed twisted into a green halter binding the stag’s head.

  “If you’ll excuse me, my friends. And I know you will because I’m not giving you a choice.” Oko bowed with a flourish as he took hold of the stag’s vine-grown leash and walked into the trees.

  The vegetation thrashed and churned as if a hundred redcaps were beating the brush, but the rustling at the edge of the trees wasn’t animals or creatures. It was a spurt of impossibly rapid growth. Magical growth. Vines slithered between the trunks of trees, weaving a barrier bristling with thorns and nettles that wound up along the trunks.

  “Come on!” Rowan shouted, racing for the edge of the glade.

  The vines were taller than them already, writhing through the canopy, reaching ever higher. With her touch Rowan pressed lightning into them, but green, living things do not easily burn and her magic fizzled. Will’s ice touched them with no more effect than a fall of snow on a winter forest. Hale leaped skyward with Cado, but the vines had already grown past the canopy, weaving a lattice-work dome over the glade. They were trapped in a cage of thorns.

  From the other side, Oko raised a hand with a careless wave and strode away into the ruins, leading the stag.

  Rowan stabbed at the vines with her sword, but their skins were too tough for a blade to cut. She took a step back as a cold foreboding tightened its bony fingers around her courage and squeezed it dry. Will had gone white as snow, all heat drained from his face as the truth set in.

  “He must have done to Father in Beckborough what he just did to Elowen,” Will said hoarsely, meeting Rowan’s gaze with shared understanding. “The stag is Father.”

  She sank to her knees in the grass and pressed her hands against her head, rocking back and forth. Her heart thudded so hard in her chest she thought she might die rather than endure it a moment longer. But she did endure. She kept breathing. The sun began to sink toward the tops of the trees as shadows drew long over the clearing.

  “He’s taking the stag to the midwinter hunt,” she whispered. “That’s how he means to start a war between the Realm and the Wilds.”

  12

  Will recovered his wits while Rowan was still kneeling on the ground with her head in her hands.

  “Cerise!” He started toward the healer, who stared at him with wide eyes, unable to speak because of the leaf bound across her mouth.

  Rowan jumped up. “Stay away from her, Will. Stay out of the hunter’s range.”

  “He’s not going to hurt us,” said Will.

  “He’s the one with the big axe!”

  But Will knew Rowan was often too swift in judging others. Her impetuousness could do more harm than good. The hunter was dangerous, certainly, but he’d not made a specifically hostile action toward Will. Offering respect was the best way to receive respect.

  He approached the man with slow steps, holding out both hands to show himself unarmed. “Do you remember me? We walked together a short way outside Beckborough. We talked. I sang a few of my favorite tunes.”

  He hummed the chorus of “The Blooming Rose” and then fell silent, waiting.

  The man stared for so long Will thought he was not going to reply, but at last, in a low, hoarse voice he said, “I remember you, Will Kenrith.”

  Cerise stared at Will, waggling her eyebrows in silent communication that Will could not understand. Sophos stood beside the hunter with perfect calm, whether ensorcelled or trusting it was impossible to say, but under the circumstances Will was ready to take any risk if it meant they had a chance to escape the cage of thorns and go after their father.

  He edged forward until he stood within reach of the axe’s bite, were the hunter to wield it. Without meeting the man’s gaze directly, he spoke in his calmest tone. “Your name isn’t really Dog, is it? That’s just what Oko calls you.”

  Behind him, Cado said, “Will, move aside.”

  Will glanced back to see Hale gathering for an attack. “No, Cado! Let me try persuasion—”

  Before he could finish, the griffin inexplicably settled on the ground, folded his wings along his back, and lowered his head to rest on his forelegs as he gazed trustfully toward the hunter. With a startled oath, Cado dismounted and drew his sword.

  “Wait!” repeated Will more sharply. “Listen to me! He has made no move against us, only done what Oko commanded him to do. When Rowan and I first met them, months ago, Oko commanded him not to harm us, and he didn’t.”

  “It’s true,” said Rowan in a low voice, backing him up as he expected her to do. “I remember now. I was worried about walking anywhere with him, so Oko specifically told him not to harm us two.”

  “I never heard Oko countermand the order. He hasn’t done anything except what he’s been specifically commanded to do. He’s not Oko’s willing companion. He’s an unwilling servant. He deserves better than our hostility.”

  Cado shook his head. “I’m going to see if I can hack through the vines.”

  “If you do that, he’ll have to stop you. Let me try it my way first.” Will turned back to face the hunter. “Do you have a name, my friend?”

  The hunter blinked as at a slow measure of thought. At length he said, “I do not remember.”

  “May I unbind my friend Cerise?” Will asked. “I don’t think the pain caused by the vines is anything you intend for her. The vines are under Oko’s control, not yours. Unbinding her wrists doesn’t mean she’ll be free of the cage of thorns. It would just be a kindness.”

  The hunter turned his gaze to examine Cerise’s tear-streaked face and her raw, red wrists. “They hurt her,” he agreed. “Cut them off.”

  Rowan got to her feet. “Will, don’t—” She broke off. “No, you’re right. We have to act or we won’t save Father.”

  Will slipped his knife from its sheath and carefully sliced away the vines binding Cerise’s wrists. They withered as they fell to the soil. The leaf pasted across her mouth shriveled up and dissolved into dust coating her chin.

  Cerise wiped the dirt and bits of leaf off her mouth with the back of a hand and spat, then gave Will a sudden, gratifying hug.

  “What happened to you two?” she demanded into his shoulder.

  He put his arms around her awkwardly, wishing he were bolder. “What happened to you? Why didn’t you follow us?”

  “I was following you. Or at least I thought I was.” She released him and stepped back, glancing at the hunter as if expecting him to slam her into the dirt. The big man had not moved.

  Will said, “We got sidetracked too. How did the hunter catch you? Couldn’t Sophos have run him through like he did to that ogre?”

  “He has some kind of magic. When he blocked the trail Sophos just…went to him and wouldn’t listen to me at all!”

  “If the loremage were here she might be able to explain it.” Will scanned the interlace of vines overhead, but the eagle was long gone. At least something of
Elowen still lived, unlike poor dead Titus.

  “He’s been cursed,” said Cerise. “I don’t know why or how. Look at his veins, his face, his posture. He’s clenched up the way people do when they are fighting constant pain. His blood, his flesh, and even his mind has been blighted with some manner of corruption.”

  Without moving closer, Rowan said, “Do you think Oko cursed him? Do you think Oko is a witch, like Elowen said?”

  “There’s a shard of stone or crystal embedded in the flesh of his right shoulder just beneath his neck,” said Cerise. “I wouldn’t have gotten close enough to see it if he hadn’t captured me. Do you see it, Will?”

  The hunter still had not moved, nor did he object when Will sidestepped to examine the strange lump beneath his skin, although he was careful not to touch the big man.

  “What do you think it is?” he asked Cerise.

  “As a healer, I’m learning to trace lines of health and disease in a body. The shard is connected to the corruption in his veins. It anchors it somehow. It might be the nexus of an evil enchantment.”

  “Could it be a witch’s hex?”

  “I don’t know much about hexes. Healers can’t unbind them. Only a more powerful force can break them: death, a true name spoken, a true love’s kiss, an act of selfless sacrifice….”

  Will turned his attention back to the hunter. “Do you have a name, friend?”

  “I have no name.”

  “No name you remember, I suppose. Did Oko curse you with this blight?”

  His big hands clenched as he curled back his lips in a silent growl. “I see darkness and a gleaming mask made of silver chains.”

  Rowan had crept closer by slow stages. “We know Oko is a powerful mage. Shapeshifting. Vines grown into cages. Making us forget we met him in Beckborough. Dog, did you see Oko turn the High King into a stag?”

  The hunter lifted his gaze to her face, mouth turning down, and said nothing.

  “Don’t call him that,” said Will. “It’s degrading.”

  Abruptly the hunter said, “The stag was a man. Yes. He was a man first.”

  Cado said, “Will, ask him who killed the steward and the clerk. People we knew were murdered in cold blood that night.”