Beyond the Pale (67 page)

“We’re too late, Grace.” Travis gasped for breath even as he winced at the sharpness of it. “We came here for nothing.”

Grace studied the sets of hoofprints, then she nodded. “Maybe not.”

Travis frowned at her.

“Look,” she said. “One of these sets of hoofprints heads back toward the castle. And look here.” She pointed to the snow. A single red drop. Blood.

Travis tried to scrape some of the ice from his beard. “I don’t follow you.”

Grace’s eyes glowed. “Don’t you see, Travis? The wounded conspirator has gone back to Calavere.”

His brain was slow from the cold. It took a moment for realization to break over him, then he gazed at her in wonder. “So all we have to do is find someone in the castle who was wounded tonight, and we’ve got the conspirator.”

Grace grinned. She opened her mouth to say something. Her words were cut short as a different sound drifted on the air. High, piercing, silvery: the sound of bells.

Travis and Grace stared at each other. The standing stones loomed above them in the twilight like dark sentinels.

“What is this place, Travis?” Her voice was a whisper of wonder and fear.

“I don’t know. I think maybe once, long ago, it was sacred to the Old Gods.”

“The Old Gods?”

“Not the gods of the mystery cults, but the ones that came before, the ones that were the mothers and fathers of the Little People before they all vanished.”

He could see the shudder beneath her cloak. The words escaped her lips with the soft fog of her breath. “The Little People …”

Again the bells sounded, high and clear. Travis took her hand—they had to follow. They crossed to the farside of the circle. Just beyond was a short stretch of white, then a tangled wall that rose from the land, black in the deepening gloom. The bells sounded again, but Travis and Grace hardly needed them now to know where they were being led.

They halted as gnarled shapes loomed before them: the edge of Gloaming Wood. Beyond were shadows. They listened, but now all they heard was the mournful hiss of wind through bare branches. There was nothing here.

No, that wasn’t true.

“Look,” Grace said.

At first he thought they were some sort of tracks in the snow. Then he realized they weren’t tracks at all. They were words:

“But what does it mean?” he said.

“I don’t know.” The words barely escaped her clattering teeth. “It’s a message.…”

He shivered. It was so cold, and night was falling. He turned back toward her.
How are we going to make it back to the castle, Grace
? He tried to ask the question, but he was too numb, too weary.

Grace’s gaze flickered to the trees, then back to Travis, and she nodded, as if she had decided something. She reached out and pulled him close to her, then shut her eyes. He almost thought he heard her whisper something.

“Touch the trees.…”

And all at once the world was as warm as springtime.

It was long after dark when they reached the castle, and they were cold again. When they rode up to Calavere’s gates a jolt of panic stabbed Grace’s chest.
You were out too long, Grace. The gates are closed, and you’re too tired to touch the Weirding again. You’re both going to freeze out here
.

However, as they rode near, they saw the gates were not closed. The feast would run late that night, and many of the lesser nobles and counselors were staying in the town, not the castle proper, and would need to stumble down the hill in the frigid night to their waiting beds. The men-at-arms started to raise halberds as the two rode up, then their eyes locked on Grace’s ghostly visage and they nodded. She and Travis rode through, into the bailey beyond.

They left the horses with the stableboy, who appeared just as sleepy as before, then returned to Travis’s chamber. It was still empty—the others had not yet returned from the feast. But it was not really so late. They had been gone no more than three hours. It only seemed as if they had been on an impossibly long journey.

“I’ll get a fire going,” Travis said as they shut the door and threw their cloaks on the bed.

Grace clutched her arms over the bodice of her gown. For a while they had been so warm, o wondrously warm. It had been so easy to reach out with the Touch, to sense the life hidden in the leafless trees, and to draw it to her. The Weirding of Gloaming Wood was far richer, far more potent than anything she had ever sensed in the garden. Even the horses seemed to feel the radiance when they mounted them, for the beasts pranced and snorted, and stretched their legs as they cantered back toward the distant castle.

That her magic had saved them from frostbite, or worse, Grace was certain. However, the warmth had begun to fade as they came to the bridge over the Dimduorn, and by the time they reached the foot of the castle hill they had been shivering again.

Grace tucked a stray wisp of ash-blond hair behind an ear.
“You never asked, Travis. You never asked how I was able to keep us warm.”

He looked up at her, a piece of kindling in his hand. “I knew you would tell me if you needed to, Grace.” He set the wood on the hearth, then shut his eyes and spoke a quiet word. “
Krond.
”

Flames leaped to life, and golden light shone forth.

The heat of the fire drew Grace forward. It was harsher than the warmth of the Weirding, brighter and crueler: the heat of consumption, not of life. All the same she held her stiff hands out. That Travis had just used magic as surely as she had, struck her only after a minute.

“We’ve both learned so much, Travis.” She gazed into the flames. “It hasn’t even been two months, but we’re getting used to this world, becoming part of it.”

Travis stared at the fire as well. Or was it his hands he gazed at, held out before him? They were fine hands, Grace noticed for the first time, long and well shaped.

“I don’t know, Grace,” he said in a soft voice. “I don’t know if I could ever get used to this world. Oh, it’s wonderful in some ways. It’s beautiful here, even if it’s frightening, too, and I have more friends here than I’ve ever had in my life. But I don’t belong here, I can’t forget that. That’s why I have to get back to Colorado, to get back home.”

Grace opened her mouth to reply, then shut it. What would she say? Did she feel the same? She was not so certain. How often did she think about Denver, about the Emergency Department? Of course, she thought of them every day. Yet they seemed distant, like someone else’s life—a movie that whirred through a dim projector and now had run out. Grace looked at her own hands. She wasn’t so certain she wanted to go back. She wasn’t so certain she could.

“How about some wine?” he said.

She stood with him. “I can get it.”

“No, I’m the saloon keeper, remember? It’s my job.”

The cup of wine turned into two entire decanters. They went into the side chamber where Melia slept, stirred up the fire in there, and flopped on the enormous bed. They drank cup after cup and laughed as they talked about the things they missed in this world.

“Pizza,” Travis said. “I’d trade the whole lot of kings at this council for one good pizza.”

“I’d trade them all for a hot shower.” Grace stretched on the bed, just thinking about it. Showers were the only thing that had kept her functioning in the ED. She would stand under the shower in the residents’ locker room and let the industrial-strength nozzle blast her, powering away all the fear and blood and suffering. To be clean was to know peace.

“How about beer that doesn’t have stuff floating in it?” Travis said.

She nodded and gulped her wine. “Or blue jeans? And T-shirts? And real underwear: cotton with elastic, a clean pair every day?”

Travis groaned. “Stop it. You’re killing me!”

Grace clutched her stomach. It hurt to laugh—it had been so long, and she was out of practice—but it was good and did as much to warm her as wine and fire.

At last the long ride, the warmth, and the drink did their work. Their voices grew soft and dreamy as they lay across the bed, then fell quiet altogether. The last thing Grace saw were big flakes of snow falling outside the window. Then she was falling, too, into sleep.

It was a soft sound that woke her. At first Grace thought it must be the sound of the snow, it was so quiet. She snuggled against the warm body beside her—Travis—and let herself sink back into slumber.

But if it was the sound of snow, how had it come from inside the chamber?

Grace opened her eyes. It was dim—the fire had burned low. She saw nothing, then her eyes adjusted. Something above her glowed in the last crimson light of the coals: long, sleek, pointed. A blot of shadow hovered behind it, but she couldn’t make that out either. The thing started to descend, and she knew what it was.

Grace shouted the one word she had time for. “Travis!”

She pushed hard against his shoulder—he let out a groan of protest—then she rolled in the opposite direction. A sharp hiss passed by her ear, followed by a soft thump. The knife had sunk into something. Was it mattress or flesh? She could not turn to find out, she had rolled too far. The bed vanished beneath her, and she fell hard to the floor below.

From her hands and knees she looked up. The shadow was before her now. Only it wasn’t a shadow. It was a man in a robe of black. She couldn’t see his face—it was a pit of darkness within the heavy hood—but his hand was big and powerful, and in it he gripped the knife. Scarlet stained its tip. Her stomach shrank into a cold knot. Travis.

Now, as he raised the knife again the blade turned cool silver. It had been firelight, not blood. The knife paused above her. Grace knew she would never be able to avoid it once it started to descend again.

“Get away from her!”

Travis stood behind the attacker, his stiletto held before him. The gem in its hilt shone red with the light of the dying fire. No, that wasn’t it. The jewel wasn’t reflecting the light. Rather, the light flickered within it, as if the gem had a life of its own. Travis thrust the stiletto out before him.

It seemed a casual, almost lazy gesture. The man in the black robe turned, reached out, and knocked the stiletto from Travis’s hand. It flew across the room and clattered to the floor, lost in the gloom. The attacker thrust forward with the knife in his own hand as Travis stared.

No. Grace was not going to watch this. She had seen enough death in the ED. From her awkward position she threw herself forward and clutched anything her groping hands could find. Her fingers closed on rough cloth. The attacker’s robe. She grabbed and pulled back with all her strength.

It was not much—she did not have a good grip—but it was enough. She jerked her head up to see the attacker lurch and his strike go wide. The knife sank into the wood of the doorframe. Travis tried to twist away from the attacker, but one of those powerful hands snaked out with impossible speed and contacted the back of his head.

Travis went limp and collapsed to the floor.

Grace screamed. Travis wasn’t moving. Was he dead? Or was he just dying, his life slipping away every second as fluid filled his cranial cavity, or broken shards of his occipital bone pressed into the back of his brain? She tried to crawl toward him, but black boots stood in her way.

Grace craned her head up. The man in the black robe towered over her. He had freed his knife and had wrapped both
of his strong hands around it. The tip was aimed directly at her face. She knew the speed with which he could move. There was no point in trying to get away.

I’m coming, Leon
.

Another flash cleaved the gloom. The knife slipped from the attacker’s hands, and his head lolled to one side. Grace frowned. Why was he hesitating? Then the attacker’s hooded head rolled off his shoulders and tumbled to the floor with a wet thud. His body fell like a tree before her, and she watched dark gore pump from the stump of his neck.

“My lady, are you well?”

She looked up at the sound of the voice. Another figure stood above her now, clad in somber gray. His face was hard as stone, angry as wind, but even in the darkness she could see the concern in his brown eyes. He lowered his gigantic sword, and blood ran down its edge.

The word she gasped was a litany of surprise, gratitude, and relief. “Durge.”

He reached down and helped her to her feet.

“Travis,” she said. “He’s hurt.”

Even as she spoke the word the others were there. Beltan rushed into the room and knelt beside Travis. Melia and Falken stood in the doorway.

“How is he?” the small woman said. Her amber eyes shone in the gloom, as bright as the eyes of the frightened kitten she held in her arms.

“Ouch,” Travis said as Beltan helped him sit up. He clutched a hand to the back of his head. “Who put the floor where the wall is supposed to be?”

Beltan’s grin shone in the darkness. “I think he’s all right, thank Vathris.”

“Thank his hard head, I should think,” Melia said.

“You were right, Durge,” Falken said as he stepped into the chamber.

Grace glanced at the Embarran knight. “Right? About what?”

“I grew concerned about you while we were at the feast, my lady,” Durge said. “You have been attacked once before. And while all the castle was at a revel seemed an opportune time for another attempt. I would have come sooner, but it was not so easy to extricate myself from King Sorrin’s company.
One of his personal guard was not to be found this evening, and the king fears to be without a number of knights around him. I am sorry I did not come sooner.”

Despite her still-pounding heart, she smiled. “But you did come, Durge.”

He bowed deep before her.

Falken stirred the fire. Flames filled the room with light. Beltan helped Travis up onto the bed. The blond knight’s face was troubled.

“And I am sorry as well, Travis. It seems I’m always away when those in my care are in danger.”

“No, Beltan.” Travis’s voice was hoarse but emphatic. “You were exactly where you needed to be, with Melia. You’re her Knight Protector.”

Beltan clenched his jaw but said nothing. Melia drew near to examine Travis’s head.