Emergence (Book 2) (19 page)

"Where are we?"

"The veil," she said absently, not looking at him.

"Did I die?"

"No."

A puff of breath escaped him, and he sank to his haunches, head bowed, fingers l
aced behind his neck. "Goddess's blood, I want to."

Ciara didn't reply so Berk glanced up to make sure she hadn't abandoned him here. Though he wouldn't have blamed her. She still stood beside him, but something in the distance had her full attention. He followed her gaze to where two hazy shapes flitted back and forth like swarms of gnats. One seemed to glitter with reflected light. The other looked black as a starless night.

"What is that?"

She frowned, her face a mask of concentration. "I think that's the drug Linea gave you. I've never seen anything like it."

"She said it was an alchemist's mix." Berk stood slowly. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to get rid of it."

"Ciara." He reached for her, but drew back before touching her. "Don't bother. You can keep healing me, and she'll just come up with new ways to torment me. The only thing I have to look forward to here is a slow death. Please, just let me go. It would be a blessing. I don't want to die begging for it at their hands."

"I'm not going to let you die at all," she said, still watching the swarming shapes. "I have a plan
to get us out of here, but I have to take care of this first. Now just be quiet."

He opened his mouth to object, but her sidelong glare silenced him, so he swallowed the comment and watched in growing fascination as a white glow began to build around her. She worked it with her hands, molding and forming it, then sent it out toward the swarms. They tried to dodge away as it neared. Ciara pursed her lips, and flicked her hand, muttering something under her breath. A section of the black swarm snuck past the light and streaked toward her. Berk moved without thinking, darting in front of Ciara to shield her from the assault.

"Berk, no!"

The swarm hit him like a blast of nails, and Berk immediately recognized the pain that shattered through him. He sucked in a shocked breath and dropped to his knees. Ciara gave a frustrated growl. She squeezed his shoulder and said something he didn't catch. Her words were garbled and distant compared to the roaring of his pulse. His vision started to fade, the mist of the veil growing dark, and Berk hoped this time he actually died.

***

"Berk."

His eyes were open but not seeing. Ciara shook him gently. They were going to run out of time.

"Berk, I need you to come back now. Please."

His chest rose and fell in even, steady breaths, and his skin felt cool beneath her hand with no touch of fever. She'd led him out of the veil after containing the poison Linea had used on him--twice, since he had been foolish enough to jump in front of her the first time.

No, not foolish. Brave. Trying to protect her. Not knowing she hadn't been in any danger.

She sat back on her heels and chewed at her lower lip. She had nothing to give him. The last of the sweet wine had gone with Linea's brother, and she'd used the only water she had to cleanse his wounds. She couldn't go wandering the veil hoping to find him again because she'd be too exhausted to carry out her plan. Unlike many of the others she'd concocted, this one stood a good possibility of actually working.

Ciara leaned in and patted his cheeks, calling his name again. Without any other recourse, she bit her lip and slapped him. Hard. His head rocked to the side, and a red welt blossomed across his cheek. The noise sounded loud enough to be heard to Guldarech, and Ciara looked over her shoulder, praying Orn didn't come barging in. When she turned back to Berk his eyes, watering but lucid, were trained on her.

"Guess I deserved that," he said, his voice raw and just above a whisper.

Ciara let out a breath. "I'm sorry. I needed you to wake up and you weren't. I have a plan to get us out of here. How do you feel?"

His gaze narrowed, and the look reminded her of Bolin. "What kind of plan?"

"A good one." She bit her lower lip. "Only...I'm not sure how well it will work, and I'm hoping it won't affect you because I don't think I can carry you. But I will have to find you some clothes."

"No." Berk shook his head. "Whatever it is, no. You're going to get yourself killed. Or worse."

Ciara grabbed his hands. "I can do this. Trust me. It's really just a simple sleeping spell. By now, everyone except the guards are probably already asleep anyhow. The spell will knock them out
, and keep them that way until we're gone. Then hopefully nobody will bother checking on us until morning."

Berk glanced down, and extracted his hands from hers. "I don't know much about magic. No one in my family has any. What you did for me just now was amazing. I feel much better. But I can't let you risk it."

"It's simple healing magic," Ciara assured him. Simple, though she had never used it on more than one person at a time, and never without laying hands on them. She only hoped she had the strength to hold it until they were well away.

"And if it puts me to sleep?"

"I'll try to make sure that doesn't happen."

"If it does, you'll leave me here." He made it an order.

Ciara shook her head. "You wouldn't think of leaving me behind, why should I leave you?"

"Because I can fend for myself."

"You can't. Not here. You said it yourself; she'll just keep torturing you until she's had her fill." She rolled her lips shut, and looked away. "I won't let that happen. I can't."

Berk closed his eyes a moment, nostrils flaring as he inhaled. "I have a duty, Ciara. We were sent to see you safely to Nisair. What happens to us--as long as you get to Nisair, the rest doesn't matter."

An exasperated growl escaped her. "You sound just like Bolin. In both cases, you're wrong. It does matter what happens to you. There are people who care about you who don't know me from the scullery maid. Do you think they'd value my life over yours? Do you think I do?"

"They understand the life I've chosen."

"Well, I don't. And I never will." She stood to look down at him, fists on her hips. "We're both going. If you argue with me, I will put you to sleep, and drag you out of here by your hair."

The corners of his mouth twitched, and he raised a hand to cover a su
spicious cough. Ciara glowered.

"All right," he said, "but promise me one thing?"

Why did it feel like she'd had this conversation recently? "And what would that be?"

"If anything goes wrong, you run. Don't worry about me. Don't look back. Just head north."

Ciara chewed at the inside of her cheek. If anything went wrong, she had a strong feeling it would go from bad to worse quickly, and not in a way Berk expected.

"I can't do that." She held up a hand to stop any further protests. "There's no time for this. Please. I need to work the spell. It's going to take a bit of doing."

You have but to call me to you, daughter,
the voice slithered into her thoughts and across her nerves like a tremor through the ground.
I will see you safe.

And worse just got exponentially so.

***

He'd been little more than a boy. The marauder chieftain had taken great delight in giving Berk all the details of how they'd kept him alive in that steel cage for over a sevenday, adding only enough wood to keep the fire going beneath him. When he begged for water, they poured it over his skin. When he screamed for his mother, they mocked him. She told Berk how he kept them up at night with his cries, until one of the men had his fill and stoked the fire high enough to finish him. Berk could hear the screams in his head as though he'd witnessed it himself. The boy in that cage couldn't have been much
older than his brother, Cadyl.

The woman had laughed as she told the tale, and Berk had tried to kill her with his bare hands. He would have succeeded if the drug she'd put on the knife hadn't had him careening from torment to ecstasy like the surging winter winds against the mountain cliffs. One moment agony the likes of which he'd never experienced had him writhing on the ground, begging the Goddess to take him. Had him searching for a weapon to take his own life. The next, desire had him claiming Linea's body with a hunger that now made his skin crawl. And when the two overlapped it sent him on a spiral of unrelenting highs and lows before slamming him into the ground as though he'd fallen from the highest peak in the Reaches.

Berk shuddered and raked his fingers through the greasy tangle of his hair, holding his head and trying to fill it with other thoughts. But that led him to Ciara and what he'd almost done to her. Goddess's blood, he would have forced himself on her if the drug hadn't been losing its hold, and yet she'd turned right around and helped him. The whole thing twisted his guts into a knot as he waited for her to come back with clothes.

Her spell had worked. It amazed him. Magic had never been a part of his life. As often as he'd been in Nisair, he'd never spent much time around the
Imperial Mages, or the Emperor for that matter. Until now, he'd only been tended by normal healers, never by a
gifted
one.

He started up when the tent flap opened, his muscles tensing. Ciara looked his way then quickly averted her eyes, and he snatched up one of the furs to cover himself.

"We have to hurry," she said, keeping her voice low, a breathless quality to it. "I don't know how long I can keep everyone sleeping. There are more than I thought."

She dumped Berk's tunic, britches, and boots on the floor next to him and sat down abruptly, as though her legs had given out. Berk dropped down beside her, but she waved him away.

"Just hurry."

He did the best he could. The alchemist's mix no longer tortured him, but his shoulder throbbed and his head spun. He needed
Ciara's help getting his tunic on, and the movement started the wounds bleeding again.

"Leave it for now," he said when Ciara would have fussed. "We need to go."

She looked pale, her eyes hazed over, her face scrunched up as though in deep thought. When he took her by the arm to guide her out of the tent he could feel her shaking.

"You're sure you're alright?" he asked in a whisper.

She nodded and turned to the left. Toward the horses, if Berk had to guess. He stopped to get his bearings, then made for Linea's tent.

"What are you doing?" she asked, her voice as low as she could pitch it and still be heard.

"My weapons."

She tried to pull him back. "There's no time."

"That sword is my father's. I'll not leave it for them." He pried her fingers from his arm. "Wait for me by the horses. I won't be long. I swear."

He slipped through the hide flap of the tent and stilled, ears alert to the smallest sound. Linea had bragged how she would use his sword to gut
Imperial soldiers, after him, of course. She told him he should take that as an honor. He remembered spitting on her, and swearing it would taste her blood first. It rested on a chest beside her sleeping palette unless she'd moved it. Berk skirted the interior of the tent, barely daring to breathe. As he neared the marauder's sleeping form, she rolled onto her back and moaned softly. Berk froze.

His pulse hammered in his ears
, and he squeezed his eyes shut at the torrent of emotion that sound slammed through him. It called up visions sure to haunt his nightmares.

"Here and now," he whispered. "Here and now."

A soft snore escaped Linea, and pushed Berk back into action. His questing hands found the sword where she had left it. They shook as he slid the blade from its leather scabbard with a soft scrape, then steadied as he poised the steel over the marauder's chest, above the black hole of her heart. By the Emperor's own edict, marauders were to be executed upon capture. This woman's treatment of him paled in comparison to the horrors she'd inflected on others, and would continue to inflict if he allowed her to live. He'd taken life before. Each time justified, and each time had sickened him, but none had been as deserving as this.

A breeze whispered through the tent. A quick intake of breath gave Ciara away. She said nothing, just grabbed Berk's arm and dragged him outside. She released him as soon as they cleared the tent, and kept walking toward the horses, her gait unsteady.

"Ciara."

She held up a hand but didn't look at him. "I can't hold this much longer."

Two horses stood ready and waiting, the rest had been untied and left to wander so none would call for their herd mates after they'd left. It took Ciara two tries to get into the saddle, and if Berk hadn't stayed next to her she would have toppled off the other side. Ignoring the pain in his shoulder, and Ciara's feeble protest, he hauled himself up behind her. He reached around with his good arm and settled her in his lap.

"I won't do anything," he said when she tensed, anger and frustration at himself making his voice hard.

"Make better time with two horses." She murmured it, even as she leaned back.