Fool's Errand (29 page)

Feeling sick unto death and reeling with the shock of having been torn from the relative warmth and comfort of Azriel's protective embrace, Persephone could not find the strength to warn her handsome husband against reckless heroics. All she could do was wince at the smell of the giant's dirty furs against her face—and at the feel of his meaty hand gripping her leg tight, and at the pounding pain in her upside-down head. She couldn't feel her gloved hands, but she could see them dangling just past the ends of her dark hair, which had come loose of its messy plait. Vaguely, she felt droplets of warm liquid shivering at the tip of her nose before falling away; turning her head slightly, she saw a trail of crimson spots in the snow next to Rachel's footprints, and she realized that her nose must be bleeding again.

That's not good
, she thought dully.

“Isn't ascending farther up the mountain going to make Persephone sicker?” came Rachel's anxious voice then, so faintly that Persephone found herself wondering how her friend could be so far away and so close, all at the same time.

“Probably,” the Khan grunted in response.

As Persephone hung limply over the Khan's shoulder, dimly pondering the fact that this response ought to have made her feel angry or scared but instead made her feel nothing at all, she felt a sudden, searing pain behind her eyes.

Then a darkness as seductive and inviting as Death abruptly stole over her, and she knew no more.

TWENTY-NINE

Eighty-eight beans left in the jar

P
ERSEPHONE AWOKE SLOWLY
in a place that sounded and smelled like an overcrowded barn—and to an agony worse than any she'd ever known. Worse than hunger, cold or thirst, worse than being whipped or beaten, it felt as though her hands and feet had been pounded with a mallet, stuck with pins and set ablaze. The pain was so bad, in fact, that it was all she could do to lie unmoving instead of groaning aloud or vomiting or—

My hands and feet!
she thought with a jolt.
I can feel my hands and feet!

Hard on the heels of this most welcome knowledge was the realization that she was thinking more clearly and breathing more easily than she had in days and that she was no longer shivering with cold. On the contrary, she seemed to be sweating profusely. Without opening her eyes, she shifted imperceptibly and felt a weight upon her. It was a poorly cured fur, judging by the odour, and it seemed that there was another beneath her. Relieved that the Khan were clearly trying to warm her up (encouraging news in view of the fact that the goddess of the mountain preferred
frozen
corpses), Persephone had just begun to listen in earnest for some indication that Azriel and Rachel were near and well when she sensed a large, smelly presence right in front of her face. Heart in her throat, she lay unmoving and tense, wishing that she still had her dagger and waiting to see what the presence would do. When the presence did nothing but
breathe
on her, she slowly opened one eye the merest of cracks …

And jerked her head back in surprise when she discovered that she was nose to nose with an enormous sheep. The beast sported mighty curling horns and a magnificent coat of flowing, white wool that looked as though it had been washed, combed, oiled and trimmed on a regular basis. At Persephone's sudden movement, it baaed noisily, turned and bolted away from her.

Realizing that there was no longer any point trying to maintain the pretence of sleep, Persephone opened both eyes. The first person she saw was Ghengor, the Khan warrior who'd carried her to this place. He was standing nearby with his feet shoulder width apart and his battle-axe clutched tight in one hairy hand.

“Did you enjoy startling the great lord ram of our herd, villain?” he demanded in a voice quivering with outrage.

“I didn't mean to startle it,” croaked Persephone. “I just—”

“I am not interested in your excuses!” bellowed Ghengor, shaking his battle-axe at her. “And my prince will not be interested in them, either!”

Heart hammering hard, Persephone gingerly placed her throbbing hands against the ratty fur upon which she was lying and pushed herself into a sitting position. “Where is your prince?” she asked, blinking at the pain in her head. “And … and where are my companions?”

Instead of answering her, Ghengor stalked off after the startled ram. Persephone watched him go. Then, seeing that there were no other enraged, battle-axe-wielding warriors within gutting distance, she took a tentative sip of warm, nourishing broth from the horn mug at her side and surreptitiously surveyed her surroundings.

The Khan lair was a vast, high-ceilinged cavern, presumably somewhere deep in the high mountain. It was meagrely lit by dung fires and crude candelabra crammed with dripping tallow candles. These guttered and smoked so badly that Persephone was surprised she was breathing at
all
, let alone breathing better than before. Most of the rocky floor was strewn with ragged furs and straw so ancient that it hardly looked like straw at all. At the very centre of the cavern, however, a perfect circle had been swept bare and ringed with sheep skulls, each of which had a candle jammed into the hole that had been drilled into its polished top. There were filthy, fur-clad children and men (but strangely—and ominously—no women) and immaculate sheep
everywhere
—including upon every single one of the many rock ledges that jutted out from the cavern walls. Even as Persephone wondered how on earth one got up to the ledges near the ceiling, the baaing, bolting great lord ram scrambled up onto a lower ledge and began gracefully making his way upward, the disgruntled warrior right behind him, leaping effortlessly from ledge to ledge in spite of his great bulk.

As she watched the sheep and the warrior scatter the other occupants of the ledges as they climbed ever higher, a voice directly behind her whispered,

“Pssst!”

Turning around so fast that she knocked over the half-full horn mug of broth, Persephone saw a sight that truly took her breath away. It was not that Azriel and Rachel were lying trussed up on the ground—
it was that on the ground next to them were Fayla and Tiny!

Without thinking, Persephone threw her handsome, hog-tied husband a smile to show that she shared his joy that sometimes words and wishes
could
bring back the lost and the dead. Then she cast a cautious glance over her shoulder. Upon seeing that her outraged captor was still busy trying to catch and calm his precious ram, she unsteadily got to her hot, stinging feet and hobbled over to get a better look at Tiny, who—worrisomely—was not tied up at all but was instead lying on his back. Fayla, whose wrists were bound in front of her and whose ankles weren't bound at all, was kneeling at his side.

“Thank the gods you're both alive,” said Persephone, grunting as she ungracefully manoeuvred herself into a kneeling position. “How badly are you hurt?”

“I'm fine,” said Fayla, whose left eye was swollen shut and whose beautiful hair was tangled and matted with blood and dirt. “It's Tiny who's hurt.”

“Not much hurt,” gasped the big red-headed Gypsy.

“Both of your legs are broken,” said Fayla tightly.

“Not much broken,” groaned Tiny, biting his lip.

Nodding, Fayla wordlessly leaned forward to wipe the sweat from his brow with a rag held in her bound hands.

Persephone shared a tense look with Azriel, the knowledge that a man with two broken legs could not travel—let alone descend a treacherous mountain—hanging in the air between them. Then, turning back to Fayla, she said, “What happened? How did you survive the avalanche?”

“Turns out it was man-made—a Khan trap,” replied Fayla. “We were all supposed to be swept over the edge to our deaths or into the arms of the waiting warriors, whichever fate the ‘mother goddess of the mountain' saw fit to grant us. Unfortunately for the Khan who sprung the trap, the bear showed up, and things didn't quite go according to plan. But I guess it doesn't really matter since they got us all the same. Worse still, they know we're Gypsies—one of them spotted the mark on Tiny's hip through a tear in his breeches.”

“And do they know why we've come?” asked Persephone in a low voice.

Fayla shook her head. “They said it was for the prince of their tribe to hear our explanation and to decide what's to be done with us,” she murmured as she leaned forward to tenderly wipe Tiny's brow again.

Persephone nodded. She still felt weak—as Ghengor had warned, warmth and nourishment had allayed her symptoms but had not cured her of the mountain sickness that had caused them. However, she felt considerably stronger than she had earlier, and with the return of her strength had come the return of her determination and sense of purpose. The situation
appeared
desperate, but in truth it was not desperate at all. She and her companions had wanted the Khan to find them—indeed, they had been
counting
on it. And though they'd not exactly been welcomed with open arms, Persephone had to believe that the Khan would see reason once she had a chance to explain that they were seeking the healing pool for the good of
all
people. Once that happened,
surely
the Khan would be convinced to tell what they knew about Balthazar's discovery and to do what they could to help Tiny.

Unconsciously straightening her spine and lifting her chin, Persephone laid a comforting hand upon Fayla's shoulder and said, “Don't worry, Fayla. It's going to be—”

Before she could say “all right,” there came a shout from outside the cavern. Upon hearing it, three big, beardless men hurried to heave open the stout wooden door at the mouth of the cavern. The next instant, two heavily cloaked figures wearing the horned helmets of warriors stomped inside in a flurry of swirling snow.

At their appearance, there arose a sudden, anxious murmur.

“What happened?” bellowed Ghengor as he leapt down to the floor of the cavern with the now-placid great lord ram at his heels. “Where are the others?”

The slightly smaller of the two snow-encrusted warriors removed his helmet and shook out his long, stringy hair. “The others went after Dax and Xanther,” he announced in a lilting voice that shocked Persephone into seeing that he wasn't actually a “he” at all.

“He” was a woman!

Looking around the cavern, Persephone was amazed by the sudden realization that
all
the beardless Khan whom she'd assumed were men were actually women.

“What do you mean they went after Dax and Xanther?” Ghengor was demanding now. “What happened to Dax and Xanther?”

“It appears that they were taken,” replied the woman warrior grimly.

“No!” cried Ghengor, flinging up his hands in horror. “Taken by whom?”

Extending her arm, the woman warrior opened her massive hand to reveal a shred of brightly coloured cloth and a small piece of coloured glass that might have come from a potion jar.

“Taken by Gypsies.”

THIRTY

T
HE MAN IN MEANEST HOMESPUN
lowered the spyglass to his lap and rubbed his aching eye. In the waking hours since the princess had gotten swallowed up by the avalanche, there'd been so much to see that his poor eye had hardly had a rest at all.

The previous evening, in addition to regularly observing the General's camp to ensure that no messengers were being dispatched, the man had alternated between following the upward progress of the two soldiers and watching the site of the avalanche for some sign of the princess. He'd seen no sign of her, but shortly after the avalanche had ended, he'd seen one of her companions emerge from behind a rock face and linger for a few moments before starting back down the mountain on a path that appeared as though it would lead her directly into the arms of the ascending soldiers. Shortly thereafter, he'd watched as mountain men who looked more like bears than men had appeared out of nowhere to dig out and drag away two more of the princess's companions, one of whom looked to be injured. By the time they'd disappeared into the mists of the high mountain, it had grown too dark to see anything more, anyway. So the man had carefully stowed his spyglass, chewed on a piece of dried venison to ease the gnawing hunger in his stomach, sipped sparingly from his water skin and lashed himself to the tree to get some much-needed sleep.