Fire Wolf Page 9

  “And she hasn’t woken since?”

  “Briefly.” Skye ran a hand through his hair, snagging his fingers on the tangles and dried mud. He had to look as atrocious as Cal and Myah. The stench of bog clung to him.

  “You,” Master Griffith commanded one of the maids, “get her boots and clothes off.” He fixed his eyes on the second maid. “You, get blankets and more heating pans for the bed. Now.” He clapped his hands, ushering the servants into a frenzy of movement.

  Skye shuffled backward, keeping close to the door and out of the way of the flurry of movement. He didn’t know what to do. How to help. He had done everything he could think of. He had done what his father had taught him during one of their hunting trips when he was a boy. Cal had fallen through the ice of a frozen lake. They had fished him out and got him warm. But Cal had never lost consciousness. He shivered and chattered his teeth and made inappropriate jokes about what happens to a southern born when exposed to ice and snow.

  To a child, the mishap felt like an adventure instead of the precarious life and death situation it was.

  But this, with Myah, was not an adventure. It was his worst nightmare.

  Master Griffith fished something out of the folds of his robes and clutched it in his fist. A blue weaver stone in a gold setting dangled from a gold chain that glinted in the firelight.

  The spellweaver lowered his body, bracing himself on the frame of the bed, and kneeled, ignoring the maids working around him. With both hands, he held his weaver stone and lowered them to Myah’s chest, so that his palms hid the crystal. His eyes fell shut, and the wrinkles around his eyes and on his forehead creased into tight lines. A slight snoring sound came from his nose as he inhaled and exhaled through his nose. As he breathed, a faint blue light formed. It started as a glimmer and grew into an orb until it encompassed Myah and Master Griffith, surrounding them in its cool glow.

  The light strobed, pulsing like a heartbeat. Skye threw up his arm to block the blinding flashes. Seconds, maybe minutes passed, and then the blue magic dissipated, the embers merged with Myah’s body.

  Master Griffith panted, as if he had been running, then slowly rose. His hands visibly shook.

  His gaze drifted to Skye. “I’ve healed her the best I can.”

  Skye released a breath, not even realizing he’d been holding it. “What did you do?” he asked.

  “Warmed her core temperature and did what I could to speed up her body’s natural healing process. It will still take some time for her to fully recover. Had you waited any longer, she would have died.”

  He never should have let her come to the City of Kings. He should have protected her better. She was light in a dark wilderness. She was—

  “Are you going to explain to me what really happened?” Master Griffith asked, an air of anger morphing out from him like a weapon piercing everything in the room. “You look like you’ve been in a fight.”

  Skye took a step back. “I—” He didn’t know what to say. He and Cal both looked like they’d been worked over. “I fell trying to get Myah out of the river.”

  “A fall did all that?”

  His wrinkled hand gestured at Skye from head to toe. The weight of his anger blasted Skye again, making it hard to breathe, but he managed, a firm, “Yes.” He could not tell this old spellweaver the truth. If Edgar knew … Skye didn’t wish to ponder the consequences for any of them. Edgar had forbidden any rebel activity against the queen staged from Nordlin, an edict his niece repeatedly violated.

  Master Griffith opened his mouth but closed it as the door burst open. Edgar and Caitlyn, still in their bedclothes went straight for Myah. With his presence nearly forgotten while the healer addressed her family, Skye slipped out of the room—shaken to the core.

  He had almost lost Myah.

  And it was his fault.

  ~TEN~

  Garrett stood atop one of the rolling hills, gazing down at the tent city. The Osten army encampment spread out before him in an arc, the lines of each tent row following the smooth lines of Namir’s rolling countryside. Fire pits pockmarked the landscaped, the smoke sweeping out to suffocate the camp each time the wind shifted direction, and the snow had been churned into a brown, murky messy that reminded Garrett of the swirl of chocolate amid vanilla ice cream often favored as a dessert at court.

  Most of the military men were in tents, out of the flurries of snow coming down on them, but some of the Elite Guard, his guardsmen, toyed with the ward protecting the Nordlin boundary. They probed the waving field of energy with their swords, only to be tugged into the shimmering barrier and emerging a few seconds later from the blue-green monster. As the ward expelled them, the men dropped to their knees, vomiting. The men razzed each other each time someone failed, the amusement further fueled by spirits and the high from their successful ambush against the Nordlin raiders the day before. The laughter rang above the din of noise radiating from the horses, wagons, and men.

  Bored soldiers did stupid things, Garrett mused, but they would never get through the wall of magic. Edgar Leicht had never been lazy in his magic studies, and the proof of that stood before him—a splendidly crafted barrier that not even Queen Elysia had managed to crack in eight years.

  While they enjoyed their downtime, Garrett waited impatiently, preferring to pace the hillsides at the edge of the sparse Namirrian forests than sit inside his warm tent. The bitter cold kept him alert. He was eager to move, anxious for the news. He needed to know what had happened to the girl, where she had gone. Was she safely hidden away beyond the wards, outside of Elysia’s grasp? Had she—?

  He closed the question off before it could fully form in his mind. No. He couldn’t think about it. For the first time in eight years, he felt a measure of hope. Nothing full and encompassing, but a measurement that he could hold in the palm of his hand.

  At least his men’s antics kept him amused in the dying light of day, kept his thoughts from ruminating too much on the what-ifs.

  Garrett needed this hope.

  “I told you it would be the ruins!” Malcolm’s voice boomed, destroying Garrett’s train of thought like a boulder launched from a trebuchet.

  A heavy hand clapped him on the back, shoving him forward a step before he recaptured his balance. Garrett narrowed his eyes as he turned to look over his shoulder. His spine straightened at the sight of the satisfied smirk curving the corner of Malcolm’s cruel mouth. Blood still speckled his second’s worn face, and sick glee lit his dark brown eyes.

  Garrett angled his body to face the older man, fighting every single impulse to clock him in the jaw and knock him into the snow. The loss of almost fifty rebels plus the lives of Osten soldiers was hardly worth celebrating.

  But then, to most of these men, it was another day with blood in the snow.

  Garrett gave him a nod. “Well done,” he said evenly.

  No doubt Malcolm had been salivating to hear that praise since they had split up two days prior. He had only just returned to the encampment with his men an hour before. They had continued to search the border between Oasisian and the camp for any survivors from yesterday’s massacre. If the blood on his face were a tell, he had found plenty to amuse himself with.

  If Garrett could have saved them all, he would have, but then, if he always gave away the queen’s plans, she’d know who her spy was. He had proven his loyalty enough, his worth, but no one was above her suspicion. He walked a line, hovering a trench, and the line had begun to erode with his ability to stomach the bloodshed. He needed a way out, and until then, he couldn’t stumble on any of the stones in his path, or he would launch headlong into the abyss.

  “Well done?” Malcolm repeated, pulling Garrett from his thoughts yet again. Didn’t this son of a gutter witch know he had other things to do with his life than constantly stroking his ego? “That’s it! That’s it!” Malcolm’s booming voice rose enough that it drew the attention of some of the guards poking at the wards. The laughter quieted, and he could feel their eye
s on them. He and Malcolm would be shadows amid the halos of light cast from the waning sun behind them and the darkness of the patchy clouds churning flakes from the sky.

  If he knew the men of the Elite Guard, and he did, they had already started placing bets on how much longer it would be before Malcolm issued a formal challenge for leadership. The real question was whether they would bet on Malcolm or Garrett to win. They feared Garrett, especially after witnessing the five other challenges he’d faced since becoming master, but Malcolm had a head about him, albeit a temper, which would make him a trickier opponent from the brute-forced muscled barbarians he’d faced in the past.

  Garrett held Malcolm’s gaze. “What were you expecting?”

  Malcolm puffed out his chest. “I want you to admit that you were wrong.”

  Garrett leaned in and patted Malcolm on his chest. “Congratulations, commander. You were right.” He’d give him the win, at least this one.

  Malcolm sputtered. His second’s face turned the mottled purple color he always seemed to turn when Garrett pushed him over the edge from angry and into belligerent. Clearly, he hadn’t been expecting Garrett to cave so easily.

  “I’ll make sure Queen Elysia knows of your efforts. I’m sure she’ll wish to reward your insight.” That seemed to take the bluster out of Malcolm’s sails. The older man stilled and then narrowed his eyes, as if waiting for a knife to the ribs.

  The thought had merit, Garrett mused. One flick of his wrist and—

  A wolf howled, drawing Garrett’s attention to the copse of trees that interspersed the rolling country. Anticipation curled through his gut and elicited a smile from his thin-pressed mouth. Finally.

  “Enjoy the celebration with the men. You’ve earned it.”

  Garrett slipped past him, heading for the woods. His boots clomped through the thickening, frozen white.

  The farther he strolled away from the camp toward the woods, the less on edge he felt. The spindle of branches topping thick white trunks, the crisp, clean layer of white refracting the fading light of day, the air untainted by smoke, bile, and body odor.

  And then, there was the large gray wolf hidden somewhere in the shadows of the trees, waiting for him now as Garrett had waited for him.

  A branch snapped to his right. Garrett whipped his head toward the sound and instinctively drew his knife. Just because he was expecting a friend, it didn’t mean his enemies weren’t lying in wait. And Garrett had more enemies these days than friends—if he’d ever had any at all.

  “Lyulf,” he said, his voice pitched low.

  Stillness. Even the wind had taken a moment to catch its breath.

  Garrett relaxed, lowering his arm. He put the knife back into the leather strap across his chest. He was being paranoid. No one was out here but him.

  “Lyulf, you ragged gray monster—”

  Something slammed into Garrett’s back. One moment he was upright; the next he was facedown in a snowdrift and all he could see was white. Weight pinned his shoulders, keeping him in place. He lifted his head. Cold wet slithered down his cheeks and he had to blink to get the moisture out of his eyes.

  Then, a tongue slid across his cheekbone, replacing the snow with hot slobber.

  “Curse it all, Lyulf. Get off!”

  Garrett rolled and pushed against the animal, but Lyulf kept moving his head, slipping in more licks as Garrett tried to escape.

  “Get off,” Garrett ordered, laughing despite himself. “Lyulf!” he barked.

  The weight pinning him lifted, and Garrett opened his eyes. Lyulf’s enormous face hovered in front of his.

  “Was that necessary?” Garrett asked. Lyulf snorted, and then his thick, hot tongue slid up Garrett’s face, coating him from chin to forehead with saliva.

  “Gross,” he hissed and scrubbed his face with the edge of his black cloak. “I know where your tongue has been.”

  Lyulf grumbled and huffed and then flopped on his haunches.

  Garrett reached up, smoothing the fur in the space between Lyulf’s ears, as he rose to his knees. Lyulf’s erect ears swiveled, alert to their surroundings.

  “Did you follow her as I asked? Is she alive?”

  Lyulf’s body seemed to deflate with a sigh.

  “She’s dead?” A pang of fear stabbed him.

  Lyulf grumbled, the sound petulant and long-suffering.

  “Fine, just show me, then.”

  Garrett removed his gloves from his hands one by one. He pressed his palms to the side of Lyulf’s face and closed his eyes. His friend leaned forward, pressing the crest of his head to Garrett’s forehead.

  The magic started a prickle of warmth in his scarred left hand, then coalesced in his right hand, traveling up his arms in succession until it encompassed Garrett in a cocoon of magic. Flashes of light, like a fire sparking in a hearth, ignited behind his closed eyes until it morphed into the wolf’s color spectrum. Hues of grays, yellows, and reds turned into shapes, images.

  The girl trudged through the snow and ice toward the Nordlin border, her arms wrapped around her body as it convulsed with shivers. Her hair was matted and dirty; dried leaves and bramble stuck to parts of her cloak, and pieces of her brilliant red hair had been pulled from the thick braid. When she reached the ward, she fell on her knees, heaving breaths and puffing out thick clouds of gray from her lungs. When she rose again, she stole glances, searching for any watchers, before pressing her hand to a spot in the ward. A second later, the magic peeled away, a slit large enough for her to slip through. She disappeared through the boundary and then the image jolted. Lyulf was running and pushed through the crack before it closed.

  The images blurred in a dizzying whirl of color. Garrett felt his body sway forward, putting more weight against Lyulf, but the guardsman remained on his knees.

  When the blur reformed, the girl lay facedown in the snow near the great river. Her cloak fluttered in the wind. Snow layered across her backside. So, she was dead, Garrett thought. This was not what he had hoped. Not—

  A rider pulled his horse to a stop beside her and nearly dove off the equine. He dropped to his knees at her side, sliding forward with the force of the landing. His dark skin made him blend with the oncoming night.

  “Myah!” the man shouted. He shook her, repeatedly shouting her name. “Lords, Myah! Wake up!” He jostled her again, and then flipped her over and tugged her into his lap and pulled off a glove, tossing it to the ground beside him. His fingers fell to her throat. Two pressed to the spot near her trachea, where the major artery ran to the brain. “Thank the lords.” His body sagged in relief.

  Garrett felt the same relief as if he had been there with them. Lyulf’s relief.

  The dark-skinned man tugged her into his arms and lifted. Her head lulled back, her red hair dangling toward the ground in a waterfall of braid and matted strands. He draped her still body over the horse, and then mounted behind her and tugged her upright, close to him, her weight supported by his body, and tucked his cloak around them both, before kicking his horse into a trot.

  The magic receded until Garrett felt only the cold air stinging his body. He usually didn’t feel the cold, but after the heat of the magic washing through him, the world felt frigid.

  He fell back on his heels, exhausted by the connection. He had forgotten how taxing, draining connecting to Lyulf could be on both his mental and physical strength. It was the price of magic, he supposed, but at least he knew for certain where the girl had gone.

  Nordlin, and she was going by the name Myah.

  The name curved around his tongue, familiar somehow. He searched through his memories of Oasisian. His time in the service of the Royal Guard. His friendship with Prince Draedyn. Drae’s spirited younger sister, Shay, with her red hair and fair skin, and a smile that would light up a midwinter’s night, and then ... Myah Leicht, the cousin from Nordlin that visited a handful of times. She and Shay could have passed as twins, the family resemblance was so striking.

  Striking enough tha
t perhaps maybe ... “Why were you protecting Myah Leicht?” Garrett asked. His thoughts buzzed. Was he right? Had the Leichts—?

  Lyulf snorted in his face. Garrett’s lips pressed into a frown as he wiped his cloak down the bridge of his nose and removed the water droplets from his right cheek. “Must you do that?”

  Lyulf rose up on all fours, making low whining noises, and then nudged Garrett in the shoulder, knocking him sideways into the snow. The wolf huffed.

  Garrett gathered a handful of snow and pressed it together with his fingers. “Really?” he chided, rising on an elbow, and then he chucked the snowball straight at Lyulf with a ring of laughter.

  Lyulf grabbed the ball out of the air with his mouth, chomping on the wet ice and letting it spill from his mouth in chunks.

  “Serves you right.” Garrett rose out of the snow to his feet, dusting off the powder clinging to him. “You think you can get back through the ward and keep an eye on things for me?”

  The beast’s head bobbed up and down in what Garrett had learned meant yes in Lyulf speech. Prior to his run-in with the girl he now knew to be Myah, Garrett had not seen the wolf in eight years, but he could still understand his friend’s nuances without spoken words. They were still connected, bonded. Time and distance had not diminished the link.

  Garrett plucked his gloves from the ground and pulled on the fabric one at a time. As he slid the second glove over his scarred left hand, he wondered how deep the connection still went. He hadn’t tested the full strength of their bond, not since the night Oasisian had burned and Garrett had been left a marred monster.

  “I’ll find you when I get to Nordlin City.”

  Lyulf grumbled. Garrett shot him a nasty look. “I’ll figure out how to get through. You just be waiting when I do. I have a feeling I’m going to need your help.”

  Garrett stroked his friend’s head. “Thank you. See you soon.”

  Lyulf pushed his body into Garrett’s side before disappearing as soundlessly as he had arrived.

  By the time Garrett returned to the camp, night had fully fallen. He cut around the camp to reach his tent on the outskirts. A guard stood at the entrance to his tent, along with another young man Garrett didn’t recognize. The young man wearing Osten livery shuffled from foot to foot, his arms braced around himself to fight off the cold.