Witch Queen (13 page)

Murmurs reached my ears until they became
clear male voices. All of them were familiar, except for one. As I
pieced together the events before I blacked out, my heart leapt as
I recalled the fire, the magic fire, and the man who had saved me
from the dead—the man with magic.

I sat upright and immediately regretted it
as a wave of nausea hit me. Faces steered towards me. They looked
relieved. I was ashamed of my blood-encrusted and stinking self.
Rose would have been mortified at the state of me.
I
was
mortified at the state of me.

My undergarments peeked through holes in my
shirt, and cool air seeped through a large tear on my leather
leggings. New scar tissue covered much of my arms, and I could see
scars on my legs and feel them on my back. I shivered at the memory
of the cold mouths of the dead chomping on my flesh.

I shouldn’t be alive. But I was.

I would have broken down and cried if I
hadn’t known that I would heal. I might not have been able to do
fire magic, but I could recover. It had to mean something. The
Goddess was not finished with me, not yet.

I peeled the hair from around my eyes and
looked around.

I was in a clearing on the top of a grassy
mound. We were surrounded by rolling golden hills of tall swaying
grasses. I could see a wall of forest behind me to the west. A
magnificent black warhorse was grazing in a meadow with a herd of
smaller but still glorious beasts. I saw a horse with antlers, and
I suspected my mind was playing tricks on me. Still, Torak’s
presence made me smile for the first time, and I began to relax a
little. The air was cool and sweet and marvelous.

In the distance to the east, I could see
snow-topped mountains, and I began to feel uneasy again. I didn’t
recognize where we were. I had memorized Rose’s map, and those
mountains should have been behind us, not hundreds of miles to the
east. Somehow we appeared to be back in the west part of Anglia,
and one of those mountains was Baltar’s Peak.

How long had I been asleep?

Everyone appeared to be safe, except for
Max. I swallowed hard at the memory of his passing. I could have
suffered the same fate. Leo came towards me, looking as if he
wanted to speak, but my attention had turned to the only unfamiliar
face.

In the light I could clearly see an ageless
face, neither old nor young, and yet there was a hardness in it
that held sorrows and pain. He could have been in his mid-forties,
but his dark green eyes were ageless. He looked like some wise king
from an ancient legend. He had three white lines of powdered paint
across his forehead, and one over each of his high cheekbones. The
skin around his eyes and mouth was weathered and hardened with
time. It was not a handsome face, but it wasn’t unpleasant either.
It was a face that commanded attention. It reminded me of the high
witch, Ada.

I had remembered the hair, however. In the
sun his long emerald-colored hair swept over his broad shoulders
and hung to his waist. I’d never seen anyone with hair that color
before. His hair looked magic.

The stranger sat with his legs crossed in
the same way I’d seen some of the witches sit when I stayed in Gray
Havens. He looked as though he had been meditating, and I had
broken his concentration.

My companions had settled away from him and
were eyeing his fingers nervously, like they expected fire to shoot
from his fingertips at any moment. I could feel the tension. It
seemed a little rude to me. This man—this stranger—had saved us
all. But then I saw something in the stranger’s eyes that made me
wonder if the animosity wasn’t coming from both sides.

The stranger’s jaw twitched, and I could see
the tension in his shoulders. He watched my companions as though
he’d rather be anywhere else than here with them.

But something different sparked his
attention as he turned to me. Interest? Importance?

He stared at me without blinking, without
any shame of staring at someone for an
offensively
long
time. And so I stared right back. I looked at him just as hard as
he looked at me. We stared at one another until I saw a small
twitch of a smile on his lips. He pushed himself to his feet and
made his way towards me.

Leo was appraising my injuries. Blood
covered most of me, and Leo lingered a little too long inspecting
my fresh bite marks.

“How do you feel?”

“I’ve been better.”

My voice was rough, and my mouth felt like
it was stuffed with sand. I yanked at my clothes, trying to cover
my bite marks with my shredded shirt.

“But I’m all right. Mostly hungry and
thirsty. Can I have some water?”

“I’ll get some.” Will turned back towards
the camp.

The green-haired stranger moved towards me.
He was taller and wider than I first thought, but his soft leather
boots made no sound as he approached. He stood facing me and
crossed his arms. His eyes were full of unspoken questions. The
others were very careful not to get too close to him.

I shifted around and asked Leo, “Where are
we? Please tell me we’re not back in Anglia near Erast?” I turned
my gaze away for a moment, taking it the scenery. “Although I don’t
quite recognize this place.”

“We’re in Romila. We crossed the border two
days ago.”

I kept my face blank and fiddled with my
linen shirt.

Will came back and handed me a water skin. I
quenched my thirst and felt everyone’s eyes on me. I felt a little
humiliated.
Who’d been carrying me for the last two days?
Leo was showing genuine concern for me, and it made me a little
uncomfortable. I tried hard not to think about how I must look and
smell, although I’m sure these men must have seen and smelled
worse. I pushed my vanity aside and concentrated on the more
pressing matters.

“Max is—” my voice caught in my throat, and
I was unable to continue. Garrick and Max had fallen, and I
couldn’t help but feel responsible for their deaths.

“I know,” said Leo, avoiding my eyes. “I saw
what was left of him. We buried…we buried what we could. After what
happened—”

He gathered himself and then relaxed
again.

“We didn’t want any more fire, at least not
for a while. I can’t get the smell of burnt flesh out of my
clothes. It’s like I can still smell it.”

I could see an invisible burden weighing
down his shoulders. And I realized that Leo and I shared a feeling
of responsibility for the deaths of our friends.

My stomach turned, and I waited for the
nausea to pass.

“What happened to you? I tried to keep up
with the group, but then there were dead things everywhere, and I
couldn’t see…I couldn’t think…”

Leo dragged his fingers through his hair and
sighed.

“It was madness. Total chaos. Everyone was
screaming, running away, trying to save themselves. The dead were
coming at us from everywhere at once. There was no chance of
escape. And then I saw the fire.”

He paused like he needed to collect himself.
“I’ve never seen fire that moves like that. Like it had a mind of
its own.”

Leo hesitated for a moment and then
continued. “I thought we were all going to burn. But the fire only
went for the dead. And the next thing I knew, the fire was gone,
and
he
showed up with you in his arms.”

That was exactly how I remembered it,
too.

“I don’t see any roads.” My gaze turned to
Nugar who stood behind Lucas with his large hands clamped around
the handle of his axe. He looked at me for a moment before glaring
at the stranger.

“But why are we here in this place? Could we
not find the black market road?” I asked.

“No roads are safe anymore, even the ones
less traveled.” The stranger’s voice was deep and sounded
ageless.

I kept my face emotionless and looked up to
the stranger. “Who are you?”

But even as the words escaped me, I already
knew.

He didn’t answer right away.

“Fawkes. We have a mutual friend. She asked
me to help.”

There was a wildness to him, the hard
defiance of someone who didn’t like to be told what to do—someone
like me.

“You mean the high witch, Ada?”

Fawkes’ eyes said
yes
.

The men twitched like a bunch of nervous
dogs, and I tried to ignore them.

“You’re a witch.” I couldn’t hide the thrill
I felt. I was both curious and a little frightened at encountering
my first male witch.

He said nothing, so I continued. “You saved
us. You sent the fire after the dead things, and it killed them.
You saved us with your smart fire, your
magic
.”

Lucas and Will winced, and I wanted to slap
them.
Bloody idiots.

Fawkes’ eyes gleamed, and he lifted his
chin.

“This world is no place for the dead. The
dead should not rise. It goes against every principal of life. It
is unnatural, and they leave scars on the world whenever they
rise.”

“You’ve seen those things before?”

“Yes. Long before your time.” He was silent
for a moment, and I sensed that he felt anger, loss, and
disgust.

“It takes a great amount of black magic to
raise an army of revenants that size. I’ve never seen so many at
once.”

I knew it was because of the stone, the
Heart of Arcania, but I wasn’t sure if I should tell him about it.
I really had no reason to be suspicious of him. Ada had probably
already entrusted him with more information than she would me.

“The war between the realm of light and the
realm of darkness is really a war of souls. It is a war against
nature. Only skilled and powerful necromancers with the blackest
souls can conjure revenants. To raise the dead, one must create a
hole in the balance of all things, break through the veil, and
infiltrate the perimeter that protects this world from darkness.
Revenants are controlled by the necromancer’s mind. They are much
more dangerous than rogue spirits.”

I was intrigued at the mention of rogue
spirits. There was still so much I didn’t know about the world,
about my magic, and about magic in general.

Will shifted nervously. His hand went to the
hilt of his sword, and he kept looking around at the trees as
though he was expecting rogue spirits to come barreling out at
us.

I did my best not to roll my eyes at Will’s
uneasiness.

“But the fire killed them, killed the dead
things. I remember piles of ash after they were burned.”

Fawkes nodded, and his emerald hair waved as
he moved. I felt a little envious of his glorious locks.

“Only fire can put an end to the revenants.
Fire is a natural elemental. Revenants are not. And fire is the
only thing that can destroy them.”

“What about the high priest? Did you burn
him too?”

I felt a chill as I remembered what he said
about Rose. I prayed that he was burned with the rest of his army,
but I suspected I would not be so lucky. I had a feeling it’d take
a lot more than magic fire to kill the high priests.

“Fire will not destroy the necromancers,”
said Fawkes, as though he was reading my mind.

His eyes darkened.

“It’ll take a lot more than my magic to
destroy them. But after all the revenants had been burned to ashes,
I could not sense his black magic anymore. He might still be hiding
in the forest, or he might have turned back to Anglia. I couldn’t
tell.”

I shifted a little under Fawkes’ intense
stare, but I didn’t look away. I couldn’t sense the black magic
either, but I kept that to myself.

“He might be gone now, but I’m sure he’ll be
back. Or he’ll send more dead things, revenants, after us. He won’t
give me up so easily.” I watched for Fawkes’ reaction.

“Yes, I’m afraid it’s only a temporary
victory,” said Fawkes. “There was a dark power that traveled with
the necromancer. He will continue to raise not just the dead, but
things that are far worse than rotting corpses. Unless we stop
them, there is no telling what else they will bring forth in this
world.”

“Like demons,” I said.

Fawkes nodded. “Even before I had heard of
your quest, the forests and the earth had grown dark, and I had set
out to find where the darkness was coming from. The sickness is
spreading. I waited for you on the main road, near the borders of
Fell Forest. The road was unusually packed with temple guards, and
they were looking for someone. The nearby villages bustled with
gossip about you, Elena. Word had spread that the witch with a
blade was responsible for the black blight. There are hundreds,
maybe thousands of humans looking for you. To kill you.”

He took a breath and paused.

“The way to Witchdom is barred on the main
road,” continued the witch. “I knew you’d never make it. I came as
quickly as I could to warn you but then I was overrun by temple
guards and Romilians. I lost your trail. When I spotted the
necromancer and his company, I knew you were heading for the
northern road through the forest. I came as fast as I could.”

“Thank you, for that,” I said, but my
stomach clenched. If only he’d come soon enough to save Max.

Fawkes closed his eyes.

“There’s something dark in the forests. We
cannot linger. We should leave now.”

“She’s not ready yet,” snapped Leo. “She
needs more time before she can ride.”

Fawkes ignored him. “If you can ride, we
need to leave.”

I sensed that something had happened between
Leo and Fawkes while I had been unconscious.

“I’ll need to change my clothes and maybe
have something to eat. But I’m fine to ride.”

Leo looked surprised.

“Elena, you lost a lot of blood. You
shouldn’t have survived…but you did.”

I frowned at his pause. I knew what he was
implying, and I didn’t care to hear about it.

“I don’t think it’s wise for you to ride
now,” he continued. “What if your wounds get infected, and you get
a fever? What would happen if you got ill? We can’t take that
chance.”