“I told you!” Mari said, grabbing his arm and pulling him back toward his bed. “You can get up tomorrow, if you feel up to it. Not a moment sooner!”
“But—”
She shook her head firmly. “Not another word. I’ll call the guards and have you restrained—if I have to!”
Candabraxis took a shuddering breath as another pain stabbed him. This time he managed to hang on to his jars, though.
“Maybe I’d better,” he muttered. There would always be plenty of time tomorrow….
Evann spent most of the day helping Harrach hunt for meat, and together they brought down a stag. The camp had roast venison for dinner.
Warm and yawning, his belly full, Evann sent his men to bed and walked first sentry duty himself. The cold, clear night seemed to hold promise. Uwe, somehow, still managed to cling to life. They had rescued Hawk. There was no apparent pursuit from the Hag or the goblins. He nodded. Everything had turned out well enough. Now, if they could only get their king back …
Around midnight, he awakened Harrach for sentry duty and then turned in. Evann fell into a deep sleep almost instantly.
Then, suddenly, he awoke with the certainty that something had gone wrong. He didn’t know what told him aside from an unmistakable feeling deep inside.
The fire burned low, providing a dim flickering orange light. He listened, but heard nothing out of the ordinary, just the soft snores of the men around him. Reddman paced outside the farmhouse on sentry. It was nearly dawn.
Rising, Evann padded softly around the camp. Everyone was present. Kneeling beside Uwe, he touched the boy’s forehead to check his fever— then recoiled in shock.
The boy’s flesh was cold as ice…. Uwe was dead.
That had to be what had awakened him. He felt a deep wrenching inside, as though a part of himself had been torn away. Another friend lost on this mission. It had better prove worth the expense. King Graben had better be freed.
“What is it?” Hawk asked, sitting up suddenly beside Uwe.
“He’s dead.”
Hawk threw off his blanket and checked Uwe, too. Then he sat back and shook his head. “There wasn’t anything we could do for him,” he said softly. “I sat up with him part of the night, holding his hand when I heard him cry out in his sleep. At least he felt no pain. This was a better death than the Hag would have given him.”
“We’ll bury him at first light,” Evann said, voice suddenly husky. “Then …”
He found he couldn’t continue. Rising, he went out to walk alone, away from camp, and wait for the sunrise.
“I’m sorry, lad,” he whispered, half to himself. “I’m so sorry.”
They spent the morning hours cutting a grave in the frozen earth for Uwe. They laid his body out properly, as a warrior deserved—with hands folded across his chest, the hilt of his sword between them. Then they covered the grave with loose rocks. It was hardly the funeral cairn the boy deserved, Evann thought, but it was the best they could do so far from home.
“He was a friend and a comrade who died too young,” Harrach said. “The gods will look after him.”
That seemed like a fitting close. Taking a deep breath, Evann tried to put the events of the morning behind him. He had lost many men over the years, friends and relatives both, but seldom had their deaths hit him as hard as Uwe’s. It seemed so needless.
“Let’s go,” he said gruffly, turning toward camp. “We have a long distance to go today.”
“Forty miles on horseback is easy enough,” Hawk said eagerly. “We can be in Alber tonight.”
Evann glanced at him a trifle angrily. “We just buried a friend. We’ll get to Grabentod in good time.”
“Of course,” Hawk murmured. “That was thoughtless of me. I’m sorry … years trapped in the Hag’s service have cost me my manners, I’m afraid.”
“It’s nothing,” Evann said. He made a dismissive gesture with one hand.
Even so, Evann wondered … Death is a universal among soldiers, and a soldier shows respect at a companion’s funeral even if he wasn’t a friend. It is one of those things everyone does. To a man of the sword, it is as much an instinct as breathing.
Eagerness to return to civilization after years with the Hag, though … he could see how that might make Hawk want to rush. He might have felt the same way himself after being so long from home.
The next day, around noon, Candabraxis awoke. In his mind, he still saw the spell that he wanted to create to protect Castle Graben. It was a massive rune, surrounding and incorporating all of the castle walls and towers and buildings, a rune so large and powerful that not even the Hag herself would be able to penetrate it.
Rising, he found Mari asleep in a chair by the door. Good, he thought, it will make work much easier without her interfering. He felt stronger today. He knew he could make it outside without her help.
He went into his workroom. First things first: his hand. The wound felt sore today, a dull constant ache, but not at all as sharp.
He rolled up his right sleeve, unfastened the bandage, and carefully began to peel it back. Blood had stiffened the cloth, but fortunately it wasn’t stuck to the wound.
Wincing, he saw the long jagged cut, carefully closed with a seamstress’s tiny, meticulous stitches. It had already begun to heal … and it would be quite a scar, a long white line running from the tip of his thumb to the heel of his palm. Slowly he flexed all his fingers. Yes, he thought, he could work with only a little discomfort.
He found a clean bandage and redressed his wound, adding a few lotions from his own stores to speed the healing process.
Then, changing into clean gray robes, he began gathering up the tools he would need. Mari, he found, had swept up the herbs he had dropped yesterday and put them in new jars. He smiled. She was a good woman, had worked hard, and deserved to sleep.
He, on the other hand, had work to do….
Parniel Bowspear hung, suspended by his arms, shivering and half naked, from a hook in the ceiling of the Hag’s cave. His hands and wrists ached, and sharp pains shot through his shoulders. His tongue felt thick and fuzzy; breath came in quick rasps. He prayed he’d die soon.
A cackling laugh broke into his thoughts. Raising his head slightly, he gazed down at the Hag through swollen, bloodshot eyes.
“Kill me and be done with it,” he tried to say. All that came out, though, was a low, gasping moan.
“What say you, my pretty-pretty?” the Hag asked in mockery. “You want down?”
“Kill… me!” He felt a brief triumph that those words had come out clearly.
“Very well, pretty-pretty.”
The Hag crossed to the wall and released the rope tied there. It snaked up, through the ring in the ceiling, and Bowspear fell to the floor with it.
He couldn’t move his arms. He whimpered. He’d never felt so much pain in his life.
“Oh, you’ll scream,” the Hag said, advancing on him, the serpents attached to her lower body hissing in delight. “I’ll have my pleasure first… and if you satisfy me, you’ll live.”
With the strength of twenty crones, she picked him up, and as she kissed him, her dank breath foul as the stink of a swamp, her serpents twining around his body in a crushing embrace.
Bowspear began to scream.
Twenty-Two
Candabraxis worked at a feverish pitch throughout the morning. He began in the castle’s kitchens, coopting every spare child he could find … twenty-two in all, ranging in age from perhaps eight to thirteen or fourteen.
“This is a great magic,” he told them when he had gathered them all in the central courtyard. The other servants—their mothers and fathers, mostly—had seemed all too eager to get them out from underfoot. “When it is done, all of Alber will be protected from the Hag. But, to accomplish it, I will need your help.”