Witch Queen (9 page)

“You made me
kill
my wife and child!”
cried the man.

A string of spit flew from his mouth as snot
ran down his nose. His wet eyes gleamed with the primal fury of a
husband and father who wanted nothing more than to avenge the loss
of his family. I had seen this fury before. I had felt it myself. I
understood it.

My fingers trembled as I gripped my sword
and tried to protect myself. This was a man who would die trying to
kill me, a man who had nothing left to live for, and I was
terrified.

“I’m sorry,” I began. I was surprised that I
actually meant it. I backed away an inch at a time. Garrick’s
frightened face flashed in my mind’s eye. Why had he volunteered? I
couldn’t see him anymore, and I prayed to the Goddess that I might
still have a chance to save him.

I turned my attention back to the mad,
grief-stricken man who was attacking me.

“I didn’t mean for any of this to happen,” I
said.

I slipped a little further away from him and
gripped a handful of earth with my left hand. He seemed even larger
as I looked up from the ground.

“I swear,” I blurted. “The priests did this.
They’re the ones to blame. Listen to me. They’re not even priests,
they’re necromancers. They’re using evil magic—”

“Liar!” he roared.

He leaned over me, and I could smell the
malty stench of cheap ale on his breath.

“They told me you would say that. You lying
bitch. I—I killed them. You made me kill my family, and now you
must die to make amends for what you made me do.”

His eyes gleamed with savage fury, with a
heightened madness from a man who’d lost everything he loved. The
clang of metal against metal was still echoing through the night
sky, and I prayed silently that the others had fared better than
me.

“For Romila,” he chanted, out of breath.
“For the Creator. For Madolina and Imilia. I’m going to slit your
witch throat.”

My mighty enemy hefted his great sword out
of the ground and whirled it at me as though it weighed no more
than a mere feather.

But I was already moving.

I hurled my handful of earth into the man’s
face and leaped to the side. He screamed. One hand went to his face
as his blade went wide and missed me completely. I came up behind
him and drove my sword into his back until I felt it lodge against
bone. But if I thought had him then, I was sadly mistaken.

My sword slipped from my grasp as he turned
around with unnatural strength, the blade still embedded in his
back. Baring his teeth like a beast, he let out a guttural growl.
Before I could react, he caught my throat with his free hand.

I reached up and tried to pry his fingers
away, but it was as though they were made of steel. I thrashed
violently, kicking out with my legs—but I couldn’t reach him. His
hold on me hardened, and he squeezed tighter and tighter. I could
hear him laughing. The sound of my heart thundered in my ears.
Would my magic help me survive without air? Could I come back to
life once I was dead? I didn’t think so. Ada’s scowl flashed in my
mind’s eye as I felt my life and the success of my mission fade
away while the pressure around my neck increased.

My blood rushed to my head. There was
nothing I could do. I couldn’t fight against these hands of steel.
My magic didn’t give me that kind of strength.

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t scream for
help. My magic couldn’t save me.

CHAPTER 7

T
HE ROMILIAN’S FINGERS CRUSHED my
throat. Something snapped. For a moment I was sure he had broken my
neck, but I could still move my legs. My eyes felt that they would
pop. My throat was aflame, and I was drifting away to the
darkness.

He pulled me closer to him, so close that I
could see the hairs inside his nose and feel his hot pungent
breath. I tried to look for the others, but the world was a blur of
grays and black. The blood throbbed in my ears, and I felt a shift
inside me, as though my soul had been diminished. I was fading out
like a puff of smoke.

“Yes, you’re going to die,” he said. “I can
see the fear of death in your eyes. Death is far more merciful than
what my family suffered, how they…”

His voice broke, and I would have felt sorry
for him if he weren’t trying to kill me.

I could feel the pommel of my sword against
my hip. With the last of my adrenaline, I let my hands slip from
his that were around my neck.

He pulled me closer still until the stubble
of his days-old beard brushed my cheek, and he whispered in my ear,
“But you
will
suffer. Yes, that’s right. You will suffer and
burn as the devils and demons torture your soul for all eternity in
hell—”

I grasped the pommel of my sword, and his
eyes went wide as I drove the blade deep into his back with all the
strength the Goddess allowed me.

He spit up blood into my face and then
loosed and released his hold around my neck. I stumbled back and
found my footing. I filled my lungs with cold, wonderful gulps of
air, and although it burned like liquid fire down my throat, I
didn’t care. The pressure behind my eyes lessened, and I fought off
a wave of dizziness and looked up.

I heard a wet cough as buckets of blood
spilled out of my attacker’s mouth and down over his shirt.
Drowning in his own blood, the big man’s eyes flashed with fear and
then glazed over. He slumped to the ground at my feet.

For a moment I stood there, staring at this
big dead man whose hatred for me was worse than that of my late
father’s. But I felt nothing, no anger or sorrow at ending his
life. If it stirred anything in me, I didn’t have time to dwell on
it.

I knew that Garrick needed help.

I yanked my short sword free from the dead
man’s back and sprang to my feet. Although my face was sticky and
stank of the man’s blood, I didn’t bother to wipe it off. I fought
the lightheadedness and nausea that threatened to tip me over as I
looked around.

The forest floor was carpeted with blood,
and m
en lay
sprawled
like gutted
marionettes.
I searched for faces I recognized, but there
weren’t any.
In spite of the blood that covered
most of their cloaks and tunics, I recognized only yellow and
orange Romilian colors.

I leaped and made my way back towards the
silhouettes of men who stood near our camp. Leo was bent over and
breathing heavily, but he was alive. Will was gasping for breath
next to him, and Max and Lucas knelt in quiet conversation next to
something I couldn’t see. Nugar walked around the fallen bodies and
kicked a few to make sure they were dead. One of the bodies tried
to drag itself away, but Nugar’s axe found him. They were alive.
All except for one.

I went straight to where Max and Lucas
knelt. And there he was.

“Garrick!”

He laid on his back in a puddle of his own
blood, and his face was expressionless and as pale as the moon. I
could see a gash on his chest the size of a man’s fist. I could
even see layers of pink flesh and white bone inside it. Bile rose
in my throat, but I pushed it back. Even though I knew no one could
recover from such a wound, I let my sword slip from my hand and
fell to my knees next to him.

I pressed my hands against his wound
instinctively and attempted to stop the bleeding. But thick blood
seeped through my fingers like coagulated wine.

Garrick’s wet eyes met mine, and his lips
moved.

“Shh—don’t talk,” I said, blinking the
wetness from my own eyes.

I felt the others crowd around me.

“You need to keep your strength. We’ll—we’ll
find a healer. Yes. And they’ll stitch you up, good as new. Just
you hang on, you hear me?”

My voice cracked, and I didn’t know whether
it was because I had been strangled, or because I was witnessing
the boy’s life spill away. He was too young to die. He didn’t
deserve this. I began to sob quietly.

Garrick’s eyes gently rolled into the back
of his head.

“Garrick!” I cried.

But I knew he’d already gone. The light
faded from young Garrick’s eyes.

I had never expected to feel anguish like
this for someone I hardly knew. In fact, I didn’t know him at all.
All I knew was that he had joined this quest to help me. And now he
had died in vain.

Blinking through the tears, I reached out
and touched his cheek gently, staining his face with his own blood.
His eyes were the color of the West Sea. I had never even cared to
notice before. He would never grow up.

I leaned over and whispered so that no one
else could hear, “I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry. Please forgive
me.”

I wept as waves of emotions raced through
me, as though they had come from somewhere hidden deeply inside my
soul and been waiting to come out. The pain
was deeper and harsher than anything I had ever felt
before. I didn’t care that the others saw me cry, at least maybe
now they’d think of me as more human.

As I
cried my last tea
r,
an
unyielding
ra
ge pounded through me.

“Why? Why was he even here? He should have
stayed home with his family. He was too young, too
inexperienced.”

“He had no family,” said Max softly, but his
black eyes were grave.

“He was an orphan from the Pit. He had grown
up on the streets until we took him in a few years ago. We were his
only family.”

I had more in common with Garrick than I’d
realized. “You shouldn’t have let him come. You should have known
better.”

“Why? Who are you to stop him from doing
something he believed in?”

Max’s face darkened. “He wanted to be here.
He believed in this quest, just like we do. He had the right to
defend his land just like any other man. He believed it was the
right thing to do. There’s honor in that. I won’t let you take that
from him.”

My insides tightened. I knew Max was
right.

“We all knew what we were facing when we
decided to come.”

I looked up. Leo was staring at me, his gaze
as grim as the rest.

“Garrick knew the risks,” he said. “And
still he wanted to come. There was no stopping him once he had made
up his mind. But he had vowed to see you safely into Witchdom. We
all had. And only death could release that pledge. He knew what he
was doing. We all do.”

Leo’s face hardened. There was no blame in
his eyes. In fact, I couldn’t see a trace of blame in the others
either. Clearly, they did not blame me for Garrick’s death. But I
knew that if anyone was to blame, it should be me.

My eyes burned, and I fought back the tears.
I prayed to the Goddess that one day I would make this right. For
Garrick. For Jon. For everyone.

My rage shifted to the real enemy. I
sheathed my sword and sprang to my feet in search of answers. It
took barely twenty seconds before I found them.

A low, wet cough, sounded from amongst the
bodies.

In two leaps I found a middle-aged Romilian
who was still alive. His good eye widened in contempt, and the
corners of his mouth lifted in a smile. Big mistake.

With hands sticky and covered in Garrick’s
blood, I hit him in the face, over and over again, until I couldn’t
feel my fingers.

“Why? Why did you do this? Why have you
attacked us?” I panted.

My voice was hoarse, and my throat was on
fire. I could feel it closing up. The others closed in around me,
but they didn’t interfere.

“We haven’t even entered Romila, and yet you
attacked us in the night like a bunch of cowards. Why? You
bastards!”

The Romilian’s good eye hardened as he
focused on me, and he smiled again.

I was furious. I leaned over so that my nose
was nearly touching his. My breath came hard and fast, and I
smelled the sour stench of the man’s piss-pot odor.

“You spineless prick,” I said through
gritted teeth, my entire body shaking with rage. “Tell me now, or
I’ll slice your throat right here, right now, and let you bleed
out. I’ll do it. You know I will.”

“I do not fear death,” said the man in a
thick Romilian accent. His teeth were smeared with blood. “The
Creator awaits me,” he croaked.

He paused for a moment as his breath
escaped. “Beyond the gates of this world…I will join his kingdom
and be cleansed of all my sins…to live for eternity in
paradise.”

“That’s priests’ bullshit.”

His lips twitched upwards. “I do the will of
my high priest. The Creator speaks through him…I am but a
messenger.”

I drew my sword and pointed the tip at his
good eye.

“Well, if it’s death you want, I shall give
it to you.”

My blade trembled, and it took a great
amount of self-control not to puncture his eye by mistake.