Bound (28 page)

The stables were even worse. One end of the long, low building was mere rubble, burned until the roof had collapsed inward. The rest of it also showed evidence of the fire, but remained standing. The smell that rolled out of it nearly made Fay retch, an ominous reek of old manure left unattended, smoke and decay. She remembered how much she had wanted to show Rain to her father and their groom, Cavil, who had both been passionate about well-bred horses. They had tried so hard in her childhood to breed quality stock here. She had known they would love the black stallion from the moment Ganson had shown the horse to her. She couldn't reconcile those memories with this stinking horror. Worse, behind the stench, she could feel a sense of dangerous anger, a beast ready to strike. Was it the vygazza she sensed, or had another monster been brought here by whoever had turned Iondis into this dreadful, alien place?

She heard the others catch up to her as feet crunched on the gravel in the yard but ignored them. Her father was around here, hurt. She had to find him. Nothing else mattered anymore. She dismissed the stables, sure he wouldn't be able to stand the smell any better than she could herself. She scanned the kitchen gardens but decided he couldn't be there either. The only thing to hide behind was the corpse, and though she couldn't smell it from this distance, she was sure it was nearly as ripe as the stables.

Tavis spun her around and his expression was angry and afraid. He said something, but the words didn't quite to reach her. Instead, she heard her father, behind her, his words faint and desperate. She twisted around in Tavis' grasp to look, the swiftness of her movement pulling her shoulder painfully, and he released her. Her eyes searched, knowing where her father would be.

Calder Derrion stood in the opening to the hedge maze that lay beyond the kitchen gardens. She instinctively sharpened her vision and hearing. His words became clear, as did his physical state, and she wanted to weep. He was bent over, one hand out and grasping the wall of the maze for support, as if he could no longer stand straight. He was far more pale than when they had met at her mother's memoria, and the look of illness about him was more profound. His clothes, the same he had worn at their meeting, hung from a body that had shrunk too much in the days since, and they were shredded and bloodstained. The skin of his face was stretched tight, making his cheekbones and jawline stand out in painful ridges. Cuts and bruises abounded on what skin she could see. His hair, which had always been the same honey color as her own except for a few silver strands, had gone completely white.

His words, barely spoken above a whisper, were brought to her ears through her magic. Even his voice sounded old, cracked and rough, nearly gone. She heard his happiness and sorrow as he spoke through clear exhaustion. "Faylanna, you're here. My good girl. For you, all of it."

A small voice inside her warned that it was not the same voice she had heard upstairs, but all that mattered was that he needed her protection. She took two steps toward him, but then froze as she saw movement beside her father. Suddenly time seemed to slow as she watched everything unfold. The inky blackness that had invaded Professor Ganson's study oozed out from the maze beside her father, rising as it approached him. She screamed as it crashed over him like a black wave and continued to sweep across the entrance, disappearing into another passage, leaving only the empty path behind.

Arms snaked about Fay's torso, jerking her back as she tried to run. She forgot she could do magic, forgot everything but her father, desperation sapping her reason. She fought and kicked, crying and screaming for her father as another set of hands, smaller, grasped her wrists and held on, trying to keep them from flying around. Still she fought. She had to save him. Words were spoken around her, but she barely noticed. Her eyes never left the spot where her father had been standing.

"Keari, help us. I can barely hold on!"

"I've got her, Mother, but we have to calm her down."

The words were meaningless. She knew she had to get to her father. They would do even worse to him than they already had if she didn't save him. Tears of frustration ran down her face as she continued to scream for her father.

Suddenly a face blocked her view, dark serious eyes focusing on her. Large, slender hands reached up and gently grasped her face over either temple. His eyes held hers like magnets, and she felt a tingle that spread from his hands through her whole head, then through her body. Keari. It was Keari, she realized, using his own magic for the first time she knew of. Calm invaded her, taming her mad need to rush after the blackness that had already killed her mentor and his partner. As the tingling calm spread through her, she stopped struggling, and her wrists were released. Lydia, she thought. It was Lydia who had tried to keep her from striking out at them in her terror. The arms about her body loosened, but they did not release her entirely. Tavis, she thought, and knew he was afraid she might still go rushing in.

"Faylanna?" Keari asked, her name filled with unspoken questions. He kept his hands where they were as his eyes searched hers.

"I'm all right, but we have to save him," she said, and was surprised how hoarse her voice sounded, how flat. Strange too that she was still crying, but it all seemed so distant. Only Keari and her father seemed immediate and real. And Tavis, always Tavis and the heat of his touch.

"I need you to tell me about this place, first. What is it?"

"The hedge maze. Father created it himself for Mother, when they first came to live at Iondis. He's been keeping it up all of these years since her death, but I don't think he goes there otherwise."

Her answer to his question was automatic, a reflex that she hadn't thought about. She hadn't intended to tell him about her father not visiting the maze anymore. She felt puzzled.

"The center, what's at the center of the maze, Faylanna?"

She was about to tell him when she felt a pull, a need to not tell him, to keep the center a secret. As she changed her mind about what to say, his question pulled her in the other direction, pressing her to tell all she knew about the maze and its center. For a moment, the competing desires held her in equilibrium and she remained silent. Then the pull of the question grew and became so overpowering that that the magic became apparent to her, the feathery touch that had become like iron buried in the words, compelling her to answer.

"A garden," Fay gasped over the pull to remain silent. She had to answer before the opposing compulsions pulled her apart. "A special garden. A trellis, covered in flowering vines. Marble benches in a circle."

At last his hands released her, and she felt the spellwork dissolve out of her. She heaved a deep breath as Keari straightened and looked over her at Tavis and Lydia. A sense of shock radiated in the air around her, and she realized it was Marcius' reaction to what the prince had done. She felt an echo of it in herself. She'd had no idea he could work something so strong.

"That's where the Mirror must be," Keari said, "In the center of the maze."

She ignored his words, but seized on the sense of Marcius, of his being close.
Give him back, give my father back. Let him go. It's me you want, let him go
, she screamed.

"But do we even know how to get there, Ki?" Lydia asked.

The response from Marcius was against all expectation. Pleading.
I didn't take him, I swear, he's not in my hands. The other, the dark one, it must be him! He hurts people, not me. Please, you have to believe me. Would I ever hurt you that way, my sweet Faylanna?

"Do you know the way? Faylanna, do you know how to get to the center?" Keari asked. She ignored him.

Please, you have to let him go, make the other one let my father go
, Fay pleaded back, her voice on the edge of tears even in her mind.
You can, I know you can. Enough, you've done enough to him, let him go.

Words buzzed around her, a hand gently shaking her shoulder, all of it senseless. Only his words mattered, only Marcius, who could release her father, held her attention.
I never wanted to take him, Faylanna, never. But the others will not let him go. They say they need him still. How could I possibly convince them? I have no power over them.

Marcius, anything you want of me, you'll have it. I'll give myself to you, I will. Please, make them let my father go, take me in his stead. I promise, I will be yours, just let him go!

A strange, alien satisfaction was all that she felt, and she thought it was from him at first. Before she could do more than wonder if she had just sprung a trap, it was as if a hand reached out and down into her, latching onto something there. Not the bond, but a magical tether created by her vow. A strange voice, darker than Marcius’ responded.
When you are here with us, he shall be released, Faylanna. We await your arrival.

There was something buried in this voice, something in the words that should have worried her. She knew that she should be asking why Marcius hadn’t said anything himself, but the image of her father being swallowed by the darkness filled her mind until she could think of nothing else. She knew what she needed to do, where she needed to go, but that alarmed voice within her kept trying to warn that something was waiting here, hiding in the shadows to trap her further, and she hesitated. As if he could read in her hesitation all of her doubts, Marcius' voice caressed her mind, a strained whisper,
Come to me, come, my sweet. You have nothing to fear from the darkness, the others, for you will be with us, one of us. You will be with me, where you belong. You're so close, and you've promised. Come to me, beloved.

Still she hesitated, his last word falling oddly on her ears and into her mind. She realized why. She never heard love in his voice, not even now, when he spoke the words of it. Desire, need, hope and a certain amount of caring, but she didn’t remember ever hearing the kind of feeling in his voice that Tavis’ had when he told her he loved her. Before she could do anything with this realization, her head split with pain as her promise demanded she walk forward. Her words roared in her head, deafening her as her own magic demanded the fulfillment of her vow. Her hands flew to her ears, though they could do no good there, and her knees buckled. She would have collapsed to the ground if not for the arms around her chest that tightened reflexively when she sagged forward. She thought she screamed, but the sound was lost in the agony. A force built up and surged through her, breaking something, a barrier. She remembered and moved all at once, pulling her will and intent in as swiftly as she could and then expelling it all outward around her, laced with magic that amplified the force of her will. They flew from her, these people who tried to hold her back. The arms around her lifted away as their owner was thrown from her. As soon as the arms were no longer holding her in place, she sprinted up the path between the gardens and stable, making straight for the entrance to the maze as fast as she could. They would follow, but she could stay ahead of them. As she ran she felt a heat building in her body and the day around her seemed to grow cold and dark. In her mind, she could feel Marcius' exultation.

Chapter 18

Fay screamed the moment she stepped through the entrance to the maze. She could feel the wind of the building storm against her skin, but it was nothing compared to the one that suddenly tore at her mind. Her momentum kept her going until she staggered into a side path and fell heavily to the ground, her breath rasping in her chest and her hands clutching her head. The heat beat in her limbs in counterpoint to her heart.

There was no beginning or end to the storm in her mind and she couldn't shut it out. Her thoughts were swirled away into it, breaking off in the violence and she felt her deeper self, the core of who she was, trying to follow. The insistent pull of her promise was the only solid thing in her entire world. Then a hoarse screaming, her father's agony, rose up from the maelstrom and she clung to it, seeking some direction. Shoving herself back to her feet, she tried to follow the sound down one passage, then another, but she couldn't tell where she was going and then the scream disappeared. Afraid of what it meant for her father, Fay began to run. Left, right, right, she took passages at random, desperate to find him before it was too late.

Laughter, dark, human but uncaring, drifted out of the storm, wrapping around her mind as she ran. It was as if the source of the laughter found her struggles amusing, a joke for his own entertainment. She would have sworn at first that she had heard the laughter before, but as it went on it grew louder, deeper and took on an echo that bounced off of the walls of her mind, making it sound ancient and evil. Her hands flew to her ears again as she ran, forgetting that it would do no good to try to block the sound that she wasn't hearing with those ears.

A stone figure of a woman loomed up in front of her as she ran into a dead end and she skidded to a halt, falling to the ground in front of the statue. She looked up at the figure that seemed to dance while holding out hands that cupped a candle and knew she had once known who this woman was but the storm tore the thought away from her. She scrambled to her feet, running back the way she had come, the dark laughter dogging her heels, trying to tear her mind away from her body.

Another voice danced around this laughter, one that didn't try to hide its evil at all. It wasn't human and grated on her mind with every word.
You think you can run from me? I am everywhere, little human.
Another dead end and she sank to the ground, weeping. She screamed but couldn't hear herself. The dark voice exploded through her head in rage, bellowing until she thought her eyes would explode from the pain.
You thought he could protect you from us, you believed him, but we own him! There is no escape from us, child, you will be ours. Like your father, you have bound yourself to us already in your ignorance.