Nightspell (5 page)

Darri turned around and stared, which was a mistake. It reduced the maid to a quivering mass of terror. “She

doesn’t enjoy hunting?”

Meandra stumbled over a quick protestation that she might be mistaken, it probably wasn’t true, she should

not have presumed. A few more pointed questions did nothing but increase the ratio of stut ers to words.

Final y Darri gave up, dismissed her—a bit shortly—and turned her at ention to finding appropriate clothes.

Darri loved to hunt. It was the primary form of entertainment on the plains, and even among a tribe of

warriors who rode before they walked, she was one of the best. She could use the opportunity to talk to some

of the nobles, try to figure out what had happened to Cal ie to make her so unreachable.

And in the meantime, it would be fun to show this castleful of overdressed courtiers what a Rael ian princess

could do.

A sudden sound made Cal ie sit straight up. She could stil feel the impression of the couch fabric on her neck

and back; she rol ed her shoulders instinctively, but they didn’t ache, even though she must have been asleep

for hours. She had fal en asleep on the couch long after the card party ended, because she’d had nowhere else

to go. She was sure if she had gone to her bedchambers, Darri would have been there waiting for her.

to go. She was sure if she had gone to her bedchambers, Darri would have been there waiting for her.

The lamps had gone out, and the windowless room was pitch-black and cold. She had been asleep for a

long time. In the darkness, someone had just knocked something over.

“Jano?” she said, ignoring her pounding heart. This was the sort of opportunity he would love. Scaring the

living, and especial y scaring her, was one of his favorite pastimes.

Reminding herself firmly that she was no longer easy to scare, Cal ie reached over the arm of the couch,

groping for a lamp.

A hand clamped over her wrist. “Don’t.”

The hand was cold and clammy, but the voice was worse: dry, raspy, and gut ural, as if it was being forced

through a mouthful of dirt. Cal ie twisted and went for the lamp with her other hand.

Two seconds later she was on the floor, her head slamming against the far wal ; she had been lifted by her

arm and tossed across the room. Cal ie drew her knees up and bit her lip to keep in a whimper.

That inhuman voice rat led out of the darkness: “I said ‘don’t.’”

Suddenly Cal ie felt very much like the terrified child she had been when she first arrived in Ghostland. She

didn’t even think of get ing to her feet, or running, or fighting. Something about that voice drained every ounce of wil from her. She hugged her knees to her chest and forced her voice through her tightening throat. “What

do you want?”

“I am here to do you a favor.”

That was bet er than to kil you. But only by a lit le; Cal ie was familiar with Ghostland “favors.” She took a

deep breath, trying to figure out who was doing this. “Lovely,” she said. She had learned long ago how wel

sarcasm masked fear.

“Or rather, to do your siblings a favor.”

“Even bet er,” Cal ie said. “I’m eternal y grateful.”

The laugh was worse than the voice. “You think you don’t care about them? Then you need do nothing

when I tel you where they are.”

A prickle ran up Cal ie’s spine. In this castle there were places—people—whom it was wel -advised to stay

away from. Darri would have no way of knowing that.

She tried to tel herself Darri deserved to know what it felt like, but she couldn’t make it convincing. Darri

was here, after al . She had come wil ingly to this terrible place, where the dead walked with the living as if

they belonged on this earth. And she had come for Cal ie. Cal ie pushed herself up from the floor, her mouth

set.“Where,” she said, “are they?”

Chapter Four

It didn’t take Darri long to discover that being the best rider on the plains was of lit le relevance on a

Ghostland hunt.

When the horns blew in the distance and the riders around her streamed forward, she found herself

enveloped by darkness. The foliage overhead hid the light of the moon, and the enclosed torch on her saddle

pommel, ingenious as it was, barely lit the area past her horse’s head. She couldn’t see what was in front of his hooves at al . She hesitated for a moment—a moment too long, al owing the lights of the other saddles to get

ahead of her. Then she grit ed her teeth and dug her heels into the stal ion’s sides.

It had been years since Darri had been afraid of fal ing of a horse. But as her mount plunged through

darkness, fol owing the baying of the hounds, fear rose in her throat and lodged there. She had seen it happen

—horses losing their footing on uneven terrain, going over, crushing their riders beneath them. Her horse

stumbled several times, and with each stagger she nearly stopped breathing. She couldn’t prepare for a fal

because she couldn’t see.

Branches whipped out of the blackness at her, slicing at her face and hair and arms, invisible until they hit

her. She crouched low over the horse’s neck, so low it made her feel even more of balance, but a sturdy

branch would knock her to the ground more surely than a misstep. She had never seen that happen, because

no Rael ian rider would ever be so careless.

This was madness. Even if al the courtiers on this hunt were outpacing her, it was stil insanity. Shame

bat led fear, and she felt herself pul ing back on the reins despite her best intentions. She had not asked how

many people died on a typical night ime hunt. Maybe the Ghostlanders didn’t fear death the way normal

people did.

She thought again of the contempt in their eyes, and loosened her grip. Her horse surged forward, his

powerful muscles sliding beneath her; then, just as she was leaning into his pace, he stumbled and came to an

abrupt stop. Darri, completely unprepared, was thrown forward.

The last time Darri had fal en of a horse without being pushed, she had been seven years old and trying to

switch from one steed to another at ful gal op. The second horse had pul ed a bit too far ahead, and she had

fal en flat on her face in the thick prairie grass. Varis had laughed at her, then helped her round up the horses.

Now she pitched forward into darkness, her hands stil on the reins, her face scraping against her horse’s

hide. The world inverted as she somersaulted in the air, and the reins jerked away from her fingers. She landed

on her back with an impact that knocked the breath out of her.

But even before her breath was back, she was on her feet and had found the reins. Gasping for breath, her

face hot with shame, she clenched them in one sweaty hand. At least there was no one there to see. The sounds

of the hunt had faded into the distance.

“Need help?”

Darri swore and looked up. A young boy with slightly crooked teeth was sit ing on a horse a few feet away.

Only the dim light of her pommel-torch lit his face; his saddle had no light, and his horse was perfectly stil . He looked familiar, but she couldn’t remember why. He also looked far too young to be along for the hunt. And

he was grinning at her in a way that her bruised pride interpreted as mockery.

She bit down the words, I’m fine, which were patently untrue and would only make the smile worse. “I

think I can manage,” she said. “It wil take a lit le time to adjust to riding in the dark.”

“You should have taken one of our horses. They’re trained for it.”

She turned her back on him. He watched in silence as she swung herself back into the saddle. Then he said,

“Cal ie was the same way. Wouldn’t touch another horse until the steed that brought her here died.”

She turned sharply in the saddle, exactly as he must have intended her to. The mocking smile was worse, but

now she recognized him. He was the boy who had been sit ing with Cal ie last night, when Cal ie had avoided

Darri’s eyes and leaned over instead to talk to him.

“Who are you?” she said.

He bowed from the saddle. “Jano. Bastard son of Duke Salir the Fourth.”

The fat man who had been kil ed last night had been Duke Salir the Twenty-first. Darri thought she was

successful in hiding her automatic revulsion. She was more interested in what this boy could tel her—and in

wiping that grin of his face—than in the fact that he should have been buried centuries ago.

“You seem to be having trouble keeping up,” the boy went on. “Why do you think that is?”

The hunt was long gone, but that didn’t seem to concern him. What had he been doing, a boy who didn’t

have to worry about fal s or chest-high branches, hanging al the way back with the bumbling novice? The

answer was obvious, and the absence of a torch only confirmed it.

“What interests me more,” Darri said, “is why you are fol owing me.”

He didn’t even try to deny it. “Maybe your sister asked me to keep an eye on you.”

“I doubt it.”

“Wel , that’s smart of you.” The first intel igent thing she had done, his voice implied. He leaned forward

and stroked his mount’s neck. “Why would Cal ie imagine you would come along on a hunt reserved for the

and stroked his mount’s neck. “Why would Cal ie imagine you would come along on a hunt reserved for the

dead?”

“What?”

He gave her the smug grin of a child who had pul ed of a successful prank. “Only the dead hunt at night. Do

you think the living in Ghostland are suicidal?”

Darri’s horse snorted and shuf led his feet; she knew she should calm him, but her at ention was on Jano. “I

was invited!”

“Oh, real y? By whom?”

“I don’t know. My maid—”

“Meandra.” Jano straightened in the saddle. “She is a very good maid, but about two hundred years ago she

made the mistake of having an af air with someone high above her station. His wife was not pleased.”

This was not a prank. This was a trap.

Darri touched her heel to her horse’s flank just as the boy leaped at her, a reckless leap that would have

broken bones if his had been solid. But he was only solid for a moment, just long enough to knock her

sideways; then she felt his body fade away, warm flesh turning to a cold fog that sank into her skin. That

feeling, as much as the blow, was what made her let go of the reins.

For the second time in ten years, and in five minutes, Darri fel of her horse. This time, when she scrambled

to her feet, she was too late. The boy was floating in midair, slapping the hindquarters of first his mount and

then hers. The horses took of in a spurt of dust, forcing Darri to jump back. She grabbed for the reins and

missed, and horsehair whipped across her face in stinging lines. The last thing she saw, before the light

disappeared, was Jano’s grin as he looked down at her; then, with the torch gone, it was too dark to see

anything.

His voice emerged from right next to her ear. “Don’t worry about your steed. We rarely lose horses on the

hunt.”

He was close enough to touch her again. Darri bit down a scream and whirled away. Her breath sounded

panicked, and she knew he could hear it. She imagined his smile. “Why are you doing this?”

“Oh, come on. That’s rather obvious, isn’t it?”

“Don’t kil her,” a feminine voice tril ed. “Yet. We agreed we would kil them al together.”

This voice came from behind Darri. She started to turn, then stopped with her foot digging into the ground.

She didn’t want Jano at her back. But she couldn’t see him in the thick blackness. He could be anywhere now,

and she didn’t know how many of them were closing in around her.

A faintly sour scent wafted past her, and she heard twigs crackling. She turned again, this time in the

direction of the sound.

Varis had once told her what it felt like to ride into an ambush, the sudden realization that you were in a

trap designed to end with your death. He had said it sharpened every sense. But what use was that when she

couldn’t see?

She was a Rael ian princess. She had no fear of death. She told herself so firmly, but was stil glad of the

darkness to hide her shaking. “Why?” she said as steadily as she could. “Who are you?”

A torch blazed up in the boy’s hand, revealing a golden-haired woman with eyes that shimmered green even

in the dimness. Darri spared the woman only a glance before turning to the man who stood next to her.

Varis looked as terrified as she felt, which under other circumstances would have made her feel bet er. He

met her eyes for a second before looking back at the woman, with a sick horror that immediately told Darri

what she wanted to know.

“You’re dead too,” she whispered.

The woman smiled. “Oh, yes. Your brother found that out while he was taking certain . . . liberties . . . with

my person. I’m afraid he was quite distressed.” She smirked, catlike, and looked at Jano. “You owe me for that,

by the way. I can stil smel his puke.”

“So can I.” Jano made a face. “And why should I owe you anything? This wasn’t my idea, Clarisse.”

Darri looked around, not bothering to be surreptitious about it. They were in a smal clearing, surrounded

by grim gnarled trees and a darkness so thick it felt solid. The torch cast flickering light over tangles of roots and rocks and brambles. Even if she knew where to go, there was no way she could outrun a ghost who could

simply float over al those obstacles. And apparently Varis hadn’t thought to bring his silver dagger along on

this lark.

She couldn’t run. She couldn’t fight. She cleared her throat. “Then whose idea was it?”