Accidental Sorceress (Hardstorm Saga Book 2) (16 page)

“You are taking the children to Muzarat to sell them to some beggar lord,” I began.

He said nothing.

“You could leave them here. Ina, the herb woman, would take them in. All nine.”

He kept watching me, his intent gaze never leaving my face.

“I will go to Muzarat with you instead of the children.” Saying the words aloud left me breathless. I felt cold inside at the thought of the life waiting for me, and the cold spread through me, to the tips of my toes.

Graho’s shoulders tensed. Anger narrowed his lips.

“I know one woman is not much to replace nine little beggars,” I rushed to say. “But I am a hard worker. I have been a slave before. And I am a healer.” I hoped my powers would come back to me. “I am a good herb woman.” I swallowed. “You will journey easier with me. You will not have to carry me.” He’d
had
to carry me before. I looked at my feet. “Again.”

“No,” he said, tight-lipped.

“I will gather herbs along the way. I will sell them. I will heal people. I can make baskets. I will earn as much as the children would.”

“No.” His shoulders stiffened even harder.

I was drowning in desperation like I had been drowning in the sea. Without thought, I reached for my knife and pulled it from its sheath, grabbed the handle tightly.

He saw but did not move. He held my gaze in the moonlight, his chest rising and falling evenly.

Despite the cold, sweat beaded on my brow.

With everything I was, I hated the man before me. But I could not reach out my hand to harm him. I slowly slid my knife back into its sheath, tears burning my eyes. I hoped he could not see them. The thought of this man seeing me weak and broken once again was intolerable.

But he did not laugh at me or mock my weakness.

“I fear for you, my lady,” he said on a deep sigh.

I shook my head. How could he fear for
me
, when only a moment before I had the blade out to cut his throat?

“What would you wish to do,” he asked quietly, “if all things were possible?”

What a strange man. We were without means, refugees in a world at war. Our possibilities were most limited. Truly, we were little above slaves ourselves. We had our freedom, but no shelter, no protection.

“I would give these children a loving home,” I said.

“Beyond that,” he pressed.

I would save my people.
I did not dare tell him that, for fear that he might yet turn out to be one of Emperor Drakhar’s spies. What better disguise than a traveling merchant?

“Do what it is you wish to do,” he suggested. “We live in a time of war. We’re all likely to come to a bloody end. We might as well meet that fate while doing something we believe in.”

I barely heard the second half of his speech.
Raise an army?
I bit back a bitter laugh. “It is not possible.”

“Who but you makes it impossible?”

“The world.”

“You want this thing very much?”

With all my heart and soul. “Yes.”

“Then you must conquer the world.”

Spoken like a man who was used to power and riches. He must have been a very wealthy merchant before he had become trapped on our side of the Gate.

But he had neither power nor riches now. Now he sounded as if he had lost his sound mind.

“Come with us to Muzarat,” he offered again.

He wanted it all, the children
and
me. No man was as greedy as a merchant. No doubt, he was in a hurry to build his wealth back.

When I said nothing, he pushed on. “Do you
want
to go back to the High Lord’s Pleasure Hall? Serve the next Kadar barbarian?”

His cold tone turned the word
serve
into an insult. The denial that the Kadar were not barbarians was on my tongue, but I swallowed the words. Had I not thought the same, not that long ago? For certain, they were a hard people and given to war and violence. But I had also found much honor and nobility amongst them.

“I will never be a concubine again,” I said. And, in that moment, I knew that I would never be a slave again either, not willingly. Never again would I meekly go along with my fate.

That thought filled me with sudden strength, more than I’d had in days. I felt as if I had been underwater all these past days still, only now reaching the surface, only now being able to breathe or open my eyes fully to see.

I stood and looked around, at the merchant, at the children, at the inn. Suddenly the night noises of Ishaf reached me. My lungs expanded.

Without making a conscious decision, I was walking. I walked out of the inn’s courtyard, walked through the sleeping city, to the city walls. These I climbed and stood on top of the ramparts, looking past the ships in the harbor, out over the moonlit sea that had swallowed the warlord I loved.

The dark waves called to me still. But, no, I was not meant for the waves.

I looked into the night, my heart aching for my island of Dahru. And for a moment, I felt as if could see it, just on the horizon, behind the moonlit clouds, the lovely shape of home. I felt as if I could hear every heartbeat.

Batumar was no longer.

But I
was
.

Maybe I was no longer a healer. Maybe I was no longer the High Lord’s concubine. But I was here. I was the only one who could bring help.

Batumar had taken many a life. But I had saved just as many. Was that not as powerful? What if I could, by myself, accomplish the goal of our journey?

I had not died in the waves. I had not died on the rocks. I had not died of the injuries I had taken upon myself. They were healing little by little.

I could live with Ina, be an herb woman here, and a healer if my powers came back. But had I been kept alive for that by the spirits? To be safe behind the city walls of Ishaf while my people were conquered and killed?

While the children were sold in Muzarat?

My mind raced along with the night winds. Muzarat lay far to the south. The caravans to Muzarat left from Ker, this much I knew. And from Batumar’s maps, I knew that Ker lay a day’s journey south of Ishaf. Muzarat lay at least a mooncrossing’s journey by caravan from Ker.

Regnor, Lord Karnagh’s city, had been lost to the enemy, but Seberon, the country of the Selorm, had yet a free city left, now ruled by a warrior queen, somewhere to the east of Ker. The Silver River began in the hills of Seberon and flowed to the South Sea, going right through Muzarat.

I could travel to Seberon’s last free city, negotiate with the warrior queen. She was another woman, the most likely to talk with me. She would know much about strategy that I did not. She could teach me. She could advise me on how to free my people.

Would she teach me?
What did I have to trade for her help?
Nothing.
Yet who else could I turn to?

Lord Karnagh
.

If I could find him. He had disappeared when his lands had been overrun, but he had not been reported slain.

Lord Karnagh would come to our aid; he was Batumar’s strong ally. He had aided us during the siege of Karamur, and we had become friends of a sort. I was the only woman in the castle who did not cower from his battle tiger. He was a Selorm, an ancient race of warriors who bonded with their battle tigers and fought as one. His people were great in courage and fame.

If I could find Lord Karnagh… I closed my eyes for a second and clenched my teeth. I
would
find Lord Karnagh.

With Lord Karnagh and what warriors he might have left, we would travel south, making more and more alliances.

I had to somehow earn coin on the way, then book passage on a barge, float down the river and reach Muzarat before the merchant sold any of the children. For good coin, as much or more than he would receive at the market, I thought he would make the trade.

I would have the children, and have a full army, and then we’d go to Landria to ask them for their ships. If the pirates could sail the hardstorms, so could the Landrian navy.

Batumar’s cloak with the star map was lost, but I had embroidered it and I remembered every stitch.

A plan for a fool
, a small voice said inside my head. Yet Batumar’s plan had seemed no less impossible, and we had made it halfway through before tragedy hit. Mayhap another foolish plan would receive luck enough from the spirits to accomplish something.

Having a plan gave me a new sense of strength.

I looked up into the sky and thanked the spirits in advance for their help. Then, with one last look at the dark ocean, I returned to the inn’s courtyard and crawled under my blanket next to Nala and Mora, who were still sound asleep.

The merchant watched me settle in before he closed his eyes at last.

Nala curled up against me. The thought of letting her go broke my heart. I hugged her as she slept. I might let them go for a little while, but I would come back to claim them, I silently promised.

Chapter Fourteen

(The Hollow)

“Will you stay in Ishaf, Lady Tera?” Graho asked in the morning as we ate our last eggs and bread.

I made some fortifying herb tea for our flasks. “I shall go with you as far as Ker.”

“And then?”

“I shall journey toward Regnor,” I said, picking hay out of my hair.

I hoped to find Lord Karnagh along the way. If not, then I would go to the free city, to the warrior queen who held it, and throw myself and my people at her mercy.

After we ate, the merchant gathered up the children, which was all the preparation we needed. We had no possessions to bundle up and ready for the journey, although we did have blankets. These Graho had purchased, as it turned out, so they were ours to keep. I wore mine like a cape around my shoulders.

We left Ishaf through the same gate that we had entered. The merchant in the lead, then the children, myself bringing up the rear so I would notice if anyone tired and lagged behind, which wouldn’t happen for a while. We marched at a good pace, filled with the energy of the morning.

The sun was barely up, but traffic already flowed into the city, traveling tradesmen, soldiers, and disheveled refugees. Oxcarts rattled on the cobblestones; overloaded donkeys brayed. I glanced back only once, at the red tower of Ishaf, glad that we had escaped the sorcerer’s eye before it could have fixed on us. I sensed a dark presence in the tower that made me shiver, and I wondered if the Ishafi elders might yet one day regret the bargain they had made.

As I was turning away from the city for good, I was nearly knocked over by one of half a dozen youths that raced by me, grinning and shouting, skipping with excitement as only young boys can.

I looked after them, wondering what game was afoot, and realized that their excitement wasn’t over a game. They had found prey.

One must have seen the dark shape in the ditch beneath the walls and alerted the others. Even as I watched, the boys surrounded the prone form of a beggar and began throwing rocks at him.

I gasped at this, even more horrified when I realized that no passersby would stop to help. They saw the assault but simply kept on walking.

I turned back and ran toward the boys, raising my arm. “Stop that at once! Away! Away!” If I sounded like a shrew, I did not care.

The boys started and looked offended at my interference but moved on as I reached them. They did not go far but waited in the shadow of the gate, ready to resume their heartless fun as soon as I went on about my business.

“Better fer it dead,” a scruffy city guard called to me. “Let ’em finish it.”

Instead, I stepped up to the beggar and took my flask from my belt, then filled a broken piece of a pot I found in the ditch near the man.

The city guard scowled at me and strode away.

I glared after him, then glared at others who were casting disapproving glances toward me. What was wrong with these people?

“Is this the charity of Ishaf toward its beggars?” I asked a fishwife who looked as if she was about to chase me off.

“Ain’t no beggar,” she scoffed. “’Tis a
hollow
. Nuthin’ but a wraith.” She glanced toward the red tower. “The sorcerer took the inner spirit. The poor body will be dead soon enough, nay sense in draggin’ out its sufferin’.” She spat in the dirt. “Sixth one, this one is. The sorcerer has taken one at every mooncrossin’ since he’d come to the red tower. The rest of ’em died fast enough.” She made a sign in the air, likely some local superstition for warding off evil spirits. “Harsh ‘tis, aye. But seems to werk. The city is yet free.”

I looked at the wraith at my feet. It wore a soiled, faded-black burlap cloak with the hood drawn deep over its face. Back bent, fingers—what little I could see of them—mangled and wrapped in bloody rags. Feet the same. I could see little of the wraith, in truth, beyond its general, broken shape.

“A hollow?” I asked the fishwife.

She scowled as if I were a foolish foreigner who understood nothing. “Empty inside. ‘Tis a void. A wraith, I tell ye.” Then she fixed me with a hard look. “Touch it, and it’ll suck out yer spirit to fill itself. See if it won’t.” Then she turned and hurried off, leaving her dire warning hanging in the air behind her.

The boys in the shadow of the gate waited, stones in every hand.

I looked to the
hollow
. A shiver ran down my spine. I stepped back to make sure we did not touch in any way. It did not raise its head, but remained on the cold ground in a broken pile.

I could not save the man it had once been, yet I could not leave this shell of a body to be stoned to death in a ditch. Even if the spirit was already gone, the body was still here. And bodies could feel.

It would die soon, the fishwife had said. I wished to see to it that the hollow would be allowed to die in peace instead of in pain.

“Come,” I said.

But it did not rise.

Maybe it could not hear. Or if it could, maybe it could not understand me. It had not yet even reached for the water I had poured into the broken pot.

Were the Ishafi right? Was the hollow beyond help?