Bound (26 page)

A mouth closed on hers again, kissing and then drawing her lips open against his. His tongue was in her mouth and an electric heat blazed through her as she responded with her own. Then the darkness swallowed everything.

When she woke at dawn, Fay felt like her head had been turned inside out and a deep ache filled her heart and body. She couldn't remember why she felt this way. Confused, she looked around and saw that everyone else was asleep. She walked over to the Aben, knelt on the bank and splashed water in her face. She heard movement behind her and turned to see Keari. He knelt beside her and washed his own face.

"You went to sleep so quickly last night, I didn't have a chance to ask you if you were all right," he said, his voice low to avoid waking the others.

Looking at him, she thought about what Tavis had said, that Keari cared about her like family. She was surprised how much she liked the idea. "I am, yes. I just- I guess I needed to get some of that off my mind."

He nodded and they both rose, turning back to the camp. "I think you should stay close to Tavis today. I'm concerned about what we'll find and, well, the boy has strength and determination. I know he'll do his best to protect you if something happens that prevents me from doing so."

Lydia was awake when they returned to the camp, but Tavis hadn't moved. With a knowing smile that made Fay blush, Lydia pointed wordlessly to her, then Tavis. It was a clear enough message. She wanted Fay to be the one to wake him. Briefly, she considered the many pranks she had seen in her years at the academy, but dismissed the idea. It had never looked like much fun to be on the receiving end of them, and she was keenly aware that she owed him for his kindness the night before. She knelt beside Tavis, who lay on his back, and put a hand on his shoulder. Instead of waking up, he smiled and one of his hands rose to clasp hers. He rolled slightly toward her and his hand shifted on hers, making her aware of the callouses there from his life on the farm. She didn't understand why she suddenly shivered and felt too warm at the same time, but she tried to ignore it.

"Tavis," she spoke softly, "wake up."

His smile widened and he opened his eyes slowly. He stared at her, blinking in the early morning light.

"I can't believe I managed to wake up before you, Tavis," Fay said, trying to suppress her laughter.

"I had the nicest dream. You were there," he mumbled sleepily.

That froze her in place and, like the shiver, she was confused by her own reaction. Suddenly, Tavis came all the way awake and sat up. As he broke eye contact with her, he blushed deeply. He quickly extricated himself from his sleeping roll and left the campsite before she could even move. He didn't return until everything else had been packed up.

They continued down the road, into the valley where she had been born and spent her early years. With every step they took, the feeling that something was wrong with her home intensified. It became worse when she saw the outer fields that lined the road as they reached the valley floor. They were all either lying fallow or covered in the matted rotting remains of old, unharvested crops. The smell of the decaying vegetation was unpleasant, though she quickly became used to it. There was a stone shed by the side of the road, used to store tools for working these outlying fields, and she was disturbed to see the thatched roof had collapsed inward. It looked to have happened sometime many months earlier, but hadn't been repaired. She had never seen something left in disrepair so long in Iondis. What had happened here, she wondered.

They didn't see a single person as they approached the manor, though it was now late-morning in the prime of the planting season. Fay knew there should have been folks from Wyver all over the fields, tilling the ground and sowing the seeds. Even the air felt wrong to her. It was as if something in her home was broken and had leaked into everything around it.

An hour later, they got their first look at the manor that was the heart of the estate, and this drove everything else from her mind. The walls were darkened, as if with soot or dirt, and she saw a shutter on a lower window hanging upside-down from a single remaining nail. Weeds were growing between paving stones everywhere in the once spotless courtyard, some as tall as her knees. She saw a carriage off to one side of the courtyard, but from the awkward way the horse hung in the traces, she knew even at this distance that it was dead.

"I don't understand. It wasn't like this two years ago. How could things have deteriorated so rapidly?" In her agitation, she didn’t realized she had spoken aloud until Keari grabbed her reins and pulled Rain around to a stop with him. The others stopped as well, staring at them both.

"How can you know what was here two years ago? You were not to return here after we moved you to Voleno." Though he had his robe and scarf on still, she could see deep anger in his eyes and possibly a measure of fear as well. His reaction made her flinch.

"I- I missed some things, a f-few belongings I hadn't taken to Rianza. I c-came back when I knew Father was in Bershan, and wouldn't be back for weeks. I got what I needed and left. The only person I saw was Neoro, our steward, and even that was brief because he was busy. It was summer. I remember the whole valley smelled of the growing crops. It wasn't like this at all, and the house... Not like that."

Tavis nudged Swift to her side and put his hand on her back. As they had ridden, his embarrassment had faded, and now she turned, looking at him gratefully. Keari let go of her reins and waved for them all to continue, but she thought he was even more wary than before. Their approach slowed, but it didn't take long to reach the courtyard.

The smell from the dead horse was atrocious, though from its appearance, it couldn't have been dead long enough to give off that much of a stink. The cart looked like it had either skidded to its current position sideways or been pushed there. A few of the paving stones had been pulled up by the wheels, leaving bare patches of dirt and weeds. Tavis stared at the carriage, the stag and scythe painted on the door, for a while before speaking.

"I think that was the one the messenger said Calder left in."

Fay was hardly listening. The semi-circle of marble steps in front of the main door had been partially destroyed, black char licking across the surface of much of what remained. She saw pieces scattered all over the courtyard. She slid from Rain's back, afraid what all of this might mean and moved toward the steps, calling out as she went. "Father? Father! Where are you?"

The words didn't carry, though. It was as if the air around them was dead and could no longer transmit sound. She doubted anyone in the house could have heard her. But when a hand grasped her arm, stopping her flight into the house, she nearly screamed before she looked around and saw it was Tavis. "Don't, Faylanna, please. We don't know who or what is around. We need to be careful. If your father is here and needs help, we'll do what we can, I promise."

She looked into his pleading eyes and tried to calm down. Then she heard Marcius' voice. He had been silent since her crying fit the night before, but now he whispered warmly to her,
There's nothing to fear in this place, Faylanna. It is our place and nothing can harm you here. Come to me, you're almost there, you'll be safe with me. I need you.
She nodded, though she wasn't sure who she was responding to. Tavis let go of her arm, staying close as they mounted the steps and entered the house. She was dimly aware that Keari and Lydia followed close behind.

Chapter 16

As she passed the threshold, slipping between the broken panels of the doors that dangled from the frame, Fay was rendered blind by the gloom. She waited just inside the door for her eyes to adjust, but even after that, the hall looked strange to her. The paintings that had been in the corridor were missing as far as she could see, only brighter squares, rectangles and ovals of silk on the walls remaining to show where they had been. She thought of all the portraits that had hung there before, generations of her family, and wondered what could have persuaded her father to ever take them down.

She moved down the hallway, stopping at the sitting room on the right, and understood almost at once why everything was so dark. The heavy drapes covered the windows, leaving the light that came in around them muted. Shadows gathered in every corner. She saw something in the room made her pause and take a few steps inside for a closer look. It was no longer the place she had played as a child with both of her parents, where games and stories and imagination had delighted her into laughter. The furniture in the room that wasn't broken had been covered with cloth and looked as if nothing in the room had been dusted since. The same odor from the courtyard permeated the house and she began to wonder if it had been the horse or if something else was dead. Or perhaps someone else, she thought with a shudder.

Splinters and chunks of wood were scattered around the room,. She traced them back to a door in the other interior wall of the sitting room. It looked like someone had smashed it down, though there were gouges in the door that made her think of claw marks. The door was hanging askew from one hinge and she saw the privy behind it. The dark, reddish splashes on the walls made her eyes water and she turned to Tavis, who rubbed her shoulder wordlessly.

They retraced their steps back to the hallway. A short distance down from the sitting room, on the opposite side of the hall, was her father's study. Keari was already standing in the doorway, Lydia behind him. He had loosened the scarf so that it hung about his shoulders and she could see from the set look on his face that something was wrong in the room. He turned as she approached.

"Faylanna, I don't think you should see-"

His words only increased her worry and she peered around his shoulder into the room. Even the narrow view she had made her gasp in shock. She saw books strewn across the floor, covered with more splashes of maroon. It was enough to make her try to push past him, though he stood his ground and she wasn't strong enough to force him. After a few moments of unsuccessful struggle, she became frantic to find out what he was hiding from her and pushed him aside with the force of her magic instead of her arms. A small part of her was surprised how easy it was, but the rest of her was searching the wreckage for any sign of her father. She started scrambling over a pile of wood and torn pages that she thought must have been his bookshelf when, again, a hand on her shoulder stopped her. She knew it was Tavis without looking around. His hands were somehow very familiar to her now.

"Carefully, Faylanna, be careful. Please?"

She didn't respond but forced herself to slow down, trying to remember that she wouldn't be able to help her father if she hurt herself searching for him. She looked around the room more carefully. His large desk was on its side, far from where it normally sat. It had been ripped or blown in two, the pieces pushed aside to get at what or whoever had been behind it. When she saw the deep gouges in the floor in front of the halves of the desk, four nearly parallel marks ripped into the once-polished floorboards, she shuddered. The entire room was scarred with more of the same marks. She could guess what had made them, but shifted her perceptions, wanting to be sure. She crouched down by the closest claw marks, her hand reaching out to touch the pool of yellow just behind them, where the pads of its paw had rested.

"The vygazza," she whispered, horrified as her fingers hovered over the trace.

A hand grasped her arm and pulled her back from the sickly yellow streaks that circled the room in a stalking pattern. She turned to see Tavis, frowning again. His voice was worried as he said, "Not again. Please don't do that, not after what happened to you last time you touched that creature's trace. I won't stand by and let you, not this time."

She stared at him for a moment before deciding not to argue. Instead, she turned back and saw another trace among the yellow, her father's pale blue that she knew so well. It was like the vygazza had been playing with him, following him around the room. Blood splashes on the floor among the papers strewn about and on the walls stood out more clearly to her now, shimmering in the way only the blood of a Magicia did. She held her hands close to her chest, unwilling to touch the stains, already certain it would be her father's.

She turned back toward the door, thinking she had seen everything the room could tell her when she stopped, looking at the cold, soot-covered fireplace. Her eyes went wider still as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing. That the fireplace looked as if an explosion had taken place in it hardly registered. It was the mess that stood in front of it that had arrested her attention. She was sure it was her father's favorite chair, the one that had always sat in front of this fireplace for reading. Part of it was still there, stuffing trailing out of the remains of one arm and part of the back where it leaned against the bricks of the fireplace. But a few inches from it lay a puddle sunk into the floor. There were streaks of color in the fluid, cinnamon and green that matched the arms and leather covering of the chair, as well as the darker brown of the floorboards themselves. She was sure it was the rest of the chair, but didn't understand what had happened to it.

Fay approached it slowly, unsure how to proceed. Tavis joined her after a moment, holding a shattered piece of wood a little over a foot long. He gave her a warning look and she nodded. He didn't want her any closer to the puddle, and she wasn't sure she wanted to go further. Keeping his distance, he poked the stick at the puddle. It went in a few inches before Tavis reflexively pulled it back in surprise. Nothing came back out. The stick now ended where it had touched the puddle, and another shade of brown showed at the point on its surface where the stick had touched it.

"How can it still be a liquid? I don't feel any heat coming from it to keep it from becoming solid," Tavis asked, confused but backing a step away from the puddle.

"I don't know." Fay said, hearing unease in her own voice. "There's no touch of magic to it either. I don't know what it is."