Cedar knew what the Madders were doing. They were causing a distraction so he, Mae, and Wil could reach the barn, the horses, and hurry out to the river.
Mae had her gun drawn and so did Cedar as they made a run for the barn. The sheriff had been stretching the truth a bit. The church wasn’t completely surrounded, and there were no other men around the barn.
The horses inside the barn were saddled. He didn’t know who had taken the time to see to it, other than maybe Miss Dupuis and Mr. Wicks. Whoever it was, he silently thanked them. There was an ax hanging on the wall, and he took that before swinging up into the saddle. Mae was already astride her horse.
Then they rode as quickly and quietly as they could out of the barn and across the field through spindly trees and shadows, Wil leading a winding path to the river.
Cedar was breathing hard. Everything was more difficult with the tie between him and Father Kyne. He felt Father Kyne’s pain, felt the draining weariness of his wounds as if they were his own. And the aches and pains he’d been enduring since he came to town felt even worse. Wil felt Kyne’s pain too, but seemed to tolerate it much better than he did.
Cedar could bear this pain for a few hours, maybe for a day or two if he could spend them in a sickbed, but if Kyne didn’t begin to mend or heal in that time, Mae would have to break the spell. Cedar felt a need to repay the debt of Kyne carrying their curse, but both of them, or all three of them, dying wouldn’t do the world a bit of good.
They urged the horses into a slow lope, following Wil as he carved a path through trees and brush toward the river.
The crack of gunfire broke across the cloud-heavy sky. Then return fire rolled out.
“The church,” Mae said.
Cedar nodded. Leaving Hink, Miss Dupuis, and Wicks back to guard Father Kyne was really no more than a gunfight waiting to happen. They’d be wise to surrender. As far as he knew, the three of them weren’t on the mayor’s hanging list.
Even though he wasn’t a praying man, he found himself wishing there was more he could do, more any of them could do, to turn that fight in their favor.
The gunshots were constant, then became more sporadic, but did not cease.
Wil, panting, stopped short of the river, which lay on the other side of a thin line of trees. He lifted his head and looked up at Cedar.
“Is this the place?” Mae asked.
Cedar dismounted, throwing the horse’s reins over a low branch and drawing the shotgun out of the saddle holster.
“River’s just that way,” he said. “It rushes between two rocks, but is iced full over.”
“And you are sure the Holder is beneath it?”
“I am sure. And there’s more. When we came out this way last night, following that Strange, it stood on top of the ice, pointed at the river, and said one word: ‘help.’”
Mae frowned. “So you think it wants the Holder too?”
“I don’t know what it wants. I don’t know what help a Strange thinks I’d be willing to offer. But it wasn’t the call of the Holder that brought me to the river. We followed the Strange, and as soon as we were near the river, we could hear the voices of children.”
Mae had dismounted and was in the middle of tying her horse to a bush. She looked up at Cedar, startled.
“Children? But Wil said he saw them sleeping in the old mine shaft.”
“Strange like to play with a man’s mind. Show him roads off the edges of cliffs, show him lights down the bottom of ravines, or promise him his heart’s desire and deliver nothing but smoke.”
“So you don’t think the children are really here? You think the Strange somehow made you imagine their voices?”
“I don’t know. It makes the most sense.”
“Do you hear them now?”
Cedar pushed the pain away and listened with ears sharper than any man’s. Wind scrubbed through sticks, birds and beasts in the forest searched for food, the city clattered and clamored behind them, while far-off trains whistled and airship fans rose and fell. Plenty of noise in the silence of the day.
But no children crying. No voices calling out. No sorrow.
“I don’t hear them,” he said. “I don’t even hear the Holder. But I know it’s here.”
“Then let’s go get it.” Mae settled her satchel across her shoulders. It was filled with herbs and other small tokens to help focus her spell craft.
She had also made sure to holster a gun at her hips, and when she looked up at Cedar, he reached out and brushed the hair away from her cheek.
“Be careful,” he said.
“I will be. Is the binding too much?”
“It’s bearable.” It wasn’t a lie. Yet. “Do you think it’s helping him?”
“More than I expected,” she said. “I’m not practiced enough with what bindings and vows can do. I’ve spent too many years without using spells, and now that I am free of the coven…” Her words drifted off. Cedar knew that in some ways she regretted leaving the sisters. The coven had been her home, her sanctuary for most of her younger life. If Jeb Lindson hadn’t wandered through their fields and led her heart all the way to the wedding aisle, Mae would likely still be living her life with the women in Kansas.
“. . .now that I am free of the coven’s restrictions and rules,” she continued, “I am finding magic useful for so many things.”
“I would have never survived the blizzard before we came into town without your warmth,” he said. When she tipped a smile at him for how exactly that sounded, he smiled back. “Also,” he clarified, “without your spells that bound warmth to my bones.”
“I’m just happy we…” She shook her head. “I’m just happy. And it’s been a while since I could say that.”
Cedar nodded. He felt the same.
But time was slipping away. He walked down the rough path to the river, Wil sliding, like a shadow, beside him.
The wind went dead, though there was nothing to block it. Wil growled softly and stopped well before they left the edge of the trees.
Cedar felt it too.
“Witchcraft,” Mae said. She stood at Cedar’s left.
“A spell?” he asked. “Can you tell what kind?”
He shouldn’t be surprised to find spell work in the area, though he was certain this spell had not been in place just last night.
“I’m not sure. It’s powerful. Whoever cast it is very practiced in the arts.”
She pressed her fingers on his sleeve as he took a step forward. “Why? Why would someone cast a spell over this section of this river?”
“Is it made for repelling people from this road? From this river?”
“Yes, and more than that. Can you feel the…well, it’s sort of a deeper rooting that runs beneath the road too. That line of stones?” She pointed at the row of small stones carefully set front to back in a straight line blocking the way to the river. “If we walk over those stones, or disturb them in any way, we’ll let whoever cast this know that their spell has been disturbed.”
“We need to reach the river.” Cedar rolled possibilities through his mind. “Unless you can draw the Holder up from the bottom?”
“With a spell?” Mae shook her head. “I could call it to itself, bind it to its own if it were broken, but to just call it free—I do not have that power.”
“You could bind it to me,” Cedar said. “And we could break it.”
“No.”
He had been studying the icy water, but at her tone, looked down at her.