Brightly Woven (38 page)

I watched his eyes cast out over the crowds and took a careful step back. I didn’t want anything to interrupt this moment for him.

They gathered with the others at the base of the stairs, dismounting from their horses. Several attendants rushed forward to lead the animals away.

North was still scanning the crowd as his mother walked up the steps to where the queen was waiting. Wordlessly, the Sorceress Imperial handed over a scroll, and the crowd hushed as Queen Eglantine read it.

“I would first like to thank each one of you for your service to our people,” said the queen loudly. “It was at great risk that you traveled into our enemy’s country, and that kind of bravery does not go unnoticed.”

At her side, the Sorceress Imperial turned away from the crowd. North climbed a few steps and turned to face the crowd again. From that height, he spotted me right away. I gave a little wave, and the grin on his face was enough to send a flush of happiness through me. He jumped down from the steps and forced his way through the crowd. I ran forward, an enormous smile on my face.

“It gives me great pleasure,” the queen was saying, “to accept Auster’s terms for peace.”

I threw my arms around North’s neck, and the crowds flooded around us, sending up songs and shouts into the air. I laughed, pressing my cheek against North’s warm skin, and felt one of his hands come up to tangle in my hair.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said, and when he bent down to kiss me, we had the time to make it last.

There was still a large crowd gathered in the courtyard later that afternoon, as I sat on the ledge above. North’s notebook was open before me. I thumbed through it, taking notes of my own.

Fallbright leaves mixed with heartroot intensified the pain
, I wrote inside the back cover of
Proper Instruction for Young Wizards. Fallbright leaves are rare but may have a better effect blended with a combination of georgeroot and cattail leaves
.

Now that he was back and things had settled down, there
was only one last problem pulling at my consciousness. The war might have been put to rest, and Dorwan shipped off to Auster, but we had yet to overcome North’s curse.

“What are you doing?” North asked, coming up behind me. He wrapped an arm around my chest and drew me back toward him.

“A little research,” I admitted. I snapped the books shut and turned around. I had a few ideas about the curse, but I didn’t need to bring them up quite yet.

“Research!” he said. “Don’t you know you have a companion of limitless intelligence and magic? What do you need books for, when you have me?”

“I’ll keep that in mind for the future,” I said. He leaned down to kiss me, but I pulled away at the last moment.

“Now, now,” I said. “You’ll have to treat me with a little more respect. They consider me a goddess in some countries, you know.”

North laughed loudly, reaching for me again. “Yes, but I’ve always considered you a goddess, Sydelle Mirabil.”

I smiled, letting him pull me close. Wizards, honestly.

“Can I see your hands?” I asked him. “Just for a moment?”

I could tell by the look in his eyes that he didn’t want to do it. “Right now?” he asked, taking in the sight of the wizards and humans milling below.

“There’s nothing to be ashamed of,” I murmured. I lifted one of his gloved hands and kissed it. He seemed to relax.

“If you weren’t so beautiful…,” he said, and slowly began to tug at his gloves.

I drew his hands closer to me, inspecting his skin for any signs that the curse had spread. North shifted his weight impatiently, but I kept my eyes fixed on where the black began and ended.

“It really hasn’t spread since Arcadia,” I said, turning his hands so his palms were faceup. “I feel so relieved.”

“Yes, but I really haven’t done any hard magic since then,” North said. “The next time I have to cast a spell, I’m sure you’ll see a difference.”

“Wayland.” We turned toward the dark-haired woman watching us from a short distance away. North yanked his gloves back on, turning away from his mother.

“I didn’t realize it had already progressed so far,” said Hecate, her face pale. She looked smaller to me somehow, though she was still dressed in the resplendent robes of her office. “Are you in pain?”

“I’m
fine,”
North said. He tucked his hands into his pockets. “We’ll be leaving soon. You don’t have to worry about our causing more trouble.”

She pressed her lips together, then said, “You could stay. We could speak to the healers about the curse, and you could help Oliver and me with the Guard.”

“I don’t belong here; you know that.”

“Yes, but…” I felt North’s body tense beside me as she continued. “You’ve proven yourself to be a smart, resourceful
wizard. I like having you around, and I’ve missed you greatly these years. I know now it was the right choice to send you to be trained by Pascal, but that doesn’t mean I don’t regret the time we’ve lost.”

“Don’t go soft on me now,” North said. “You’ll need all of those hard edges to deal with the queen’s new policies.”

Hecate scowled. “I suppose I won’t be reappointed when the rankings come next spring. If you’d like to participate in them—”

“You know that’s not an option for me,” North said.

“Not now,” I said, “but maybe in the future?”

They both turned to me in surprise.

“I have some ideas,” I said to North. “I’m not certain they’ll work, but if you’re willing to try, I am.”

“Try, please,” Hecate said. She brought a hand up to his shoulder, and for a moment I thought she would try to embrace him. Instead, North leaned down and kissed her on the cheek.

“Be good, Mother,” he said. “If you need me, I’ll come back. You know that.”

“I hope to see you at the summer solstice. Both of you.” As she turned back toward the doors of the castle, she lifted her hand in a small wave, and we did the same. When she finally disappeared from sight, North released the breath he had been holding. I watched his face for any sign of confusion or hurt, but I found nothing but perfect calm.

He turned to me. “What do you say we leave now?”

“You don’t want to stay for the celebrations?” I asked, surprised.

“No,” he said. “I just want some quiet.”

North stepped away, reaching down for the bags I hadn’t noticed before. He threw them both over his shoulder.

“I was thinking,” he said, “that I would make you a loom. Would you be able to describe it to me? Exactly how you want it?”

“North,” I began, but he didn’t allow me to finish.

“It would mean a lot to me,” he said. “It’s something that I want to do for you. I’d only need a little guidance and to stop in one of the towns to pick up the tools I’d need. I think Fairwell would have something I could use, don’t you?”

“North, I would love anything you made me,” I began, wrapping my arms around his warm center. “But I was hoping that you could take me home to Cliffton. I realized after talking to Henry how much I miss it, and I need to see my family and friends. Could you take me there?”

“Of course,” he said. “I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.” There was a strange touch of sadness to his words that I didn’t understand, but before I could say anything else, he brought the cloak I made for him up around us and we were gone.

EPILOGUE

I
t was nearly a month and a half before that same smile returned. Once North had twisted us out of the city, I carefully plotted our path west. We stayed on the Prima Road, the road we would have taken to Provincia if we had been able. After walking its straight path across the countryside for several weeks, I had to admit that the way we had taken before, however roundabout, had been far more interesting.

North and I stopped when we were tired, ate when we needed to, and worked when our gold ran low. It was a familiar routine, but one filled with far less fear and a lot more joy than our earlier trip. Everything had changed between us, and yet it felt as if nothing had. It was strange to me how I could go from hating everything about a person to loving even his worst faults.

As we neared the imposing barrier of the Sasinou
Mountains and felt the first wave of desert heat wash over us, something in North’s demeanor changed.

“I think I can twist the rest of the way,” he said, stopping suddenly. His eyes were on the mountains, not on me.

“Are you sure?” I asked. “It looks as if it’ll be more than a mile.”

“Do you really want to try to navigate those beastly trails again?” North said. “No, thank you!”

He brought up his cloak before I could protest. I clung to his shoulders, holding him close. When our feet hit the ground, the cloak remained up around us, as if he never wanted the moment to end. I would have been perfectly happy to stay there, cocooned in darkness and his solid warmth.

But there was that scent, just a hint of it, a mere memory. Though I had experienced it only once, I recognized the way the smell of rain combined with the yellow dust and created a scent unique and beautiful.

The cloak fell down around us.

We were standing on the smooth surface of a rock, overlooking a valley of patchwork green and brown. There were roads, the old houses of stone and mud, the small schoolhouse, and the markets all still showing signs of the Saldorran attack.

I knew this view very well. That was Cliffton below us, though it was no Cliffton that I had ever known. There were patches of green dotting the valley, fields of vegetables and maybe even fruit. Not only that, but I could see the irrigation canal they had begun to dig. The lingering traces of the most
recent rain shower were around us, casting the valley in unfamiliar light. Heavy gray clouds hung low over our heads, and there was the delicious scent of wet dust and something else.

I walked over the ledge and looked out into the valley below.

“Do you not want me anymore?” North’s words came out in a rushed breath, and I realized he had been holding them in the entire journey back. “Is that why you asked me to bring you back here?”

I turned around sharply. “No! Not that, never! You know how I feel about you.”

“I don’t do well without you,” he said. “Who I was before—I never want to be that person again. But I told you when I took you away from here that when everything was over, it would be your choice. You would get to choose where you wanted to go and who you wanted to be.”

There was a pleading look in his eyes. In that moment, he looked as if I had stripped him of his cloak and magic. I could knock him back into that darkness with a single blow.

But how could he think, after all this time, after everything we had done for each other, that I would ever want to leave him?

I looked from the fertile valley below, cocooned by the rocky brown-and-yellow mountains I knew so well, to the small splotch of wood and sand that was my home. All of it, every grain of dust, was a part of me, and that would never change—but Cliffton had never held my future.

This time, I chose him.

“I thought we could stay for a little while,” I said. “To help them plant more crops and rebuild their homes. I think they could use the services of a wizard.”

“Are you sure?” he asked. “If you want to stay, if you want me to go, I will. This is your home—I understand that.”

“There’s nothing to understand,” I said. “My home is wherever you are. I just never had the chance to really say good-bye to the people and places I love. So if you’ll stay with me here, just for a little while, we can go wherever we want to go and do whatever we want to do.”

“That sounds nice,” he said softly, as if too scared even to breathe. I watched his face as the fearful resignation finally gave way to the first touch of hope. North took my hand, and we began the long walk down to the village.