Page 44 of The Arrow and the Alder

S eph blinked her eyes open to a dimly lit space. She was in a canvas tent, lying upon a woolen blanket. A lantern hung from one of the tent’s supports, casting golden light over two chairs, a desk, and a shelf full of fat old books.

Seph didn’t think this tent was temporary, but where in the world was she?

Her skull wrenched with pain, and she sat up just as voices sounded outside the tent, and a figure ducked inside.

Lord Massie.

Seph’s heart stopped as her last conscious moments drew into sharp focus.

“Ah, you’re awake.” Massie set whatever was in his hands down upon the desk.

On instinct, Seph shoved herself to her feet and lunged at him, but large hands clamped around her arms and jerked her back. Seph struggled against her captor—a bone-masked kith—but to no avail.

“If you’d given me the real coat the first time, we wouldn’t be in this mess, now would we?” Massie turned around. The lantern made his contrasts more pronounced, those black shadows against his pale skin and that silvery scar. “I won’t be made the fool, Josephine Alistair.”

Her captor shoved her to the ground with a force that knocked the air from her lungs. She coughed and wheezed, and she was pushing herself up when Massie was there, grabbing a fistful of her hair and pulling so firmly Seph cried out.

“You are so like your grandfather,” Massie snarled in her ear as she squirmed. “Meddlesome fool. Did you really think you could get away from me, daughter of Light? Did you honestly believe that I would let you?—”

“Careful with my pet, Lord Massie,” said a woman’s voice. “We have need of her yet.”

Ice filled Seph’s veins. She knew that voice.

Massie released her hair with a shove, but Seph hardly had a moment to gather herself before a set of bare, white feet appeared in her line of sight. And then the witch kicked Seph in the stomach.

Seph fell onto her back with a gasp, wheezing while the witch crouched and leaned over her, studying her with soulless black eyes. “Daughter of Light,” she said with a wicked curl to her lips. “It is so good of you to join us.”

“Go to hell—” Seph started, but an invisible force crushed her throat. She clawed her neck to dispel the pressure, but there was nothing there, and just as the edges of her vision began to dim, the pressure relented.

Seph gasped and heaved forward, clutching her throat while she filled her lungs with precious air.

“I do not wish to cause you harm, Josephine,” the witch said. “And as long as you do exactly as I ask, I believe you and I might get on rather well.”

“You…killed…her,” Seph ground out between her bared teeth.

“Oh, I see,” the witch said after a moment. “You speak of the little star.”

Little star? “I speak of Abecka, whom you murdered!”

She regarded Seph without expression. “You would grieve over a creature you’ve known for…a few weeks? A month?”

“You know nothing—” Again, that force clamped around Seph’s throat, and she couldn’t breathe.

The witch leaned in close. “I am quite losing my patience with you.” Her eyes were like two shards of onyx, shining and cold, completely devoid of anything human or living. “The coat, Lord Massie.”

Massie approached with a satchel. He opened the flap, and the enchanted coat glittered within like an opalescent pool, throwing its light and its power all over the tent.

“Now,” the witch continued, looking to Seph, who still fought for breath. “Repeat after me: This coat I freely give…”

Seph writhed and choked.

The witch loosened her grip just a little.

“I will never help—” Seph began, and the witch squeezed her neck again, cutting off her breath.

“How charming you are.” Her eyes glinted with something that Seph didn’t like, especially when punctuated by the witch’s accompanying smile. “Oh, Prince Alder …bring me the child.”

Seph’s heart was a mallet against her ribs, and then Alder’s massive form ducked within the tent.

He was dragging Rasia behind him.

No…

“We found her outside the gate,” the witch said to Seph. “I do believe she followed you outside and was about to run back and warn the others, weren’t you, little one?”

Rasia kicked and squirmed against Alder, but she might have been a kitten held by the scruff for all the difference it made.

Oh, Alder…

But before Seph’s anguish rooted, logic ruled over. It didn’t make sense that this would be Alder. That all this time he’d been working with the man who’d murdered his family––or that Alder would have gone to such lengths of deception for the coat. The very words deception and coat made Seph remember her grandfather. How he’d glamoured himself to look like his brother. She realized, too, that she could not sense him in the way she’d grown accustomed, and it was then that Seph knew with a certainty: this was not Alder. Was it…Serinbor? That made the most sense, but whoever it was, she felt in her marrow that it was not the Weald Prince.

This was a glamour.

“You…” Seph managed with growing fury. “I don’t know who you are, but you’re not Alder!”

“You think not…?” the witched taunted, looking oddly delighted. “You think you know what sort of creature the Weald Prince truly is?”

“I know that he would never do this to me or Rasia… who are you ?” Seph screamed at him.

“Don’t do it, princess!” Rasia yelled. “Don’t give her?—”

Alder—or whoever the person was—clamped his hand over Rasia’s mouth, but not a second passed before the fake Alder roared.

Rasia had bitten him.

Fake Alder shook off the pain, which inadvertently made him lose his grasp on Rasia, but she’d only made it two steps before the witch thrust a hand forward and a bolt of green light shot forth. It struck Rasia’s little body like a whip and wrapped around her tight.

Seph would’ve screamed if she had a voice, but the witch was still clutching her throat.

Rasia yelped and fell to the ground in a cocoon of blazing green light, and Seph’s eyes burned on the witch with hatred.

“The child is still alive,” the witch continued in a voice void of emotion. “But she will not remain so if you do not do what I have asked.”

Anger shook Seph to her core, and when the witch released her grip on Seph’s throat, she collapsed to her knees, glaring at the person glamoured as Alder. He would not meet her gaze.

“This coat I freely give,” the witch said again, this time with a mark of impatience.

Rasia twitched within that cocoon of green light, reminding Seph of another time, not so long ago, when the witch had nearly crushed Linnea’s throat.

“This coat…I freely give…” Seph ground out the words through her teeth.

“Of my own volition.”

Seph shut her eyes. “Of my own volition.”

“And I sever all claim to its power.”

There had to be another way! But Seph couldn’t find it or see it, not with Rasia convulsing beside her. Seph couldn’t believe everything had all come to this. That despite both Milly’s and Abecka’s visions, she would be the one to blame for the world’s destruction.

“SAY IT!” the witch screamed in a voice that broke open with its unnatural power.

Seph looked at the coat. That little token of hope.

Hope, always clinging to dead things.

“And I sever all claim to its power,” Seph said with defeat.

The witch’s eyes were huge, reflecting the prism of color within the satchel, as she waited.

And waited.

The witch’s triumphant smile faltered, and Massie took a step nearer.

“Did it not work?” he asked lowly.

The witch’s lips pinched together. “This is the real coat, is it not?”

“It is,” the impostor replied in Alder’s voice—a voice that had become so dear to Seph that it was difficult hearing it now, through the lens of a traitor. She had to keep reminding herself that it wasn’t actually the real Alder who was speaking.

The witch glared at the coat. “Then why isn’t it working?” she snarled through her teeth.

Just then, another bone-masked kith stepped through the tent flap. “Excuse me, Your?—”

The witch screamed in a fury and thrust a bolt of burning green light at the new kith. The bolt shot through his chest like a spear, his body went as rigid as a board, and he collapsed, dead.

The witch strode right over the dead guard as she stormed to the exit but paused there. “Bind the princess and gather your things,” she said without turning. “We leave for Süldar within the hour.” And then she was gone.

They’d been riding through the mist for what felt like hours. Seph couldn’t tell. Her present circumstances had plunged her into a haze of despair. Rasia was all right, but bound and sharing a mount with one of the bone-faced kith. The witch wasn’t about to let her go, now that she knew Rasia was a scryer, and she occasionally asked Rasia to check their surroundings, to see if they were being followed.

But who could follow them in this?

Even without Abecka’s and Milly’s visions, Seph could tell the curse was worsening—and fast. The air smelled strongly of rot, something like ash floated from a sky she couldn’t see, and oftentimes, as they wove through impenetrable mist and forest, a tree would topple and crash to the forest floor. One nearly fell right on top of her, and when it struck the ground, its trunk broke open like a rib cage and thousands of maggots and centipedes crawled out of it.

Time was short now.

As if that wasn’t disconcerting enough, Seph struggled from another torment: sharing a mount with Fake Alder.

They’d shackled her wrists with scrappers and bound her mouth so that she couldn’t spew all her vitriol over the impostor seated behind her. His thick arms were around her waist, holding her to him, and she hated every inch of her body that met every inch of his.

She hated how it confused her.

By the end of the second day, they reached Süldar. The old capital of Light had been a fortress, but the curse had ripped it apart, leaving a stone-wrought skeleton behind. Broken towers stabbed upward through the fog like masts in a cloud, and windows gaped open like rictus mouths. Shadows moved within the mist above, never coming into view but sliding just beneath the surface, like evil spirits trapped behind the corporeal veil of the present world as a rhythmic clanging echoed.

The moonstone mines.

Where Alder and Rys had been imprisoned.

Why did the witch bring them here––to this haunt of the past sitting like a beacon of evil among the mists?

The witch tipped back her head and let loose an animalistic cry. The mist swirled and churned with her inhuman screech, and some of the shadows lurking behind the veil pushed through in a terrifying mass of wings and claws.

Three depraved descended, landing prostrate before the witch. Seph spied a branding upon their backs—the same marking she’d spied on the depraved in Asra Domm’s courtyard.

Saints in heaven…

She was their master. Alder’s suspicions were correct. This witch was the force that helped Lord Massie rise to power, and Massie…

All this time, he’d capitalized upon the people’s fear, blaming Alder and his family to distract everyone from his own involvement.

The witch leapt down from her horse with impossible grace and power, and when her feet touched down, Seph could’ve sworn the ground shook. As if trembling beneath this great defiler, this consumer of souls, and wishing to expel her from its surface.

Her empty black eyes slid from one prostrate depraved to the next, observing them like a mother might her children.

“Did you take care of them?” the witch asked.

The depraved hesitated.

“ Well ?” asked the witch, with less patience than before.

“We…we followed them to the gorge near Amdell—” The creature made a grotesque choking sound on this last word, as if he’d gagged on it. Speech didn’t appear to be natural for the beast. “But there were too many archers?—”

“Bring me the child,” snapped the witch.

A moment later, Rasia’s captor drew his horse before the witch. Rasia was seated before him, blindfolded, but holding her head high—that sweet child. The bone-faced kith dismounted, then pulled Rasia down and brought her forward.

The witch clamped her hands on either side of Rasia’s head as she’d done a handful of times these past few days. Rasia went rigid as she inhaled sharply, and the witch’s eyes shuttered milky white.

Seph held her breath.

Finally, the witch released Rasia, and her eyes were black again.

But they were no longer empty. Fury burned within, and she looked at Fake Alder, whose arm flinched around Seph’s waist.

“I thought you said we needn’t worry about Lord Hammerfell,” said the witch.

A spark of hope lit within Seph. Could it be? Had Alder acquired his uncle’s help and followed them here?

“It seems I’ve misjudged him,” Fake Alder replied quietly.

“No matter,” the witch said at last, while the bone-faced kith picked up Rasia and put her back in the saddle. “You and Lord Massie will bring three of your best and come with me and Abecka’s heir. The rest of you will stand guard and defend the entrance, and be sure that our little scryer doesn’t run away.”