Honor Bound (7 page)

"He has a use for you."

The green witch's hand flew to her
mouth, cutting short a gasp of horror. "I'm his whore?"

"No!" At least, Honor hoped she
wasn't. "He's an alchemist, and you're an herbalist who supplies
him with things he needs for his work. Also, I suspect he has you
watched in hope of finding your son."

"He never will! Fox ran to the
forest! He escaped!" Panic gave way to uncertainty. "Didn't
he?"

"Fox escaped." Not to the forest,
perhaps, but to the tunnels of Sevrin. "Would you like to see
him?"

Tears filled the woman's eyes and
she began to pace the tiny room. "I can't. Not as long as I carry
the amulet.
Eldreath gave them to all his
women. I tried to throw it away so many times, but every time I . .
. forgot. I just forgot. Like an old woman who goes into the next
room to fetch something, only to have it slip from her mind before
she takes a dozen steps. That's how it was with Eldreath's amulet.
I can't rid myself of it. As long as I carry it, he can find me.
He'll find
me
. Not
my boy, not Fox."

"Eldreath has been dead for twenty
years."

Keefin agitation dropped from her
like a cloak. She sank back onto her chair and blew out a long
breath.

"Good," she said flatly. "That's
good."

"You can be free, Keefin. I can undo
the binding, if you wish."

The green witch sat in silence for
several long moments. "Some things are best forgotten," she said in
a small, subdued voice. "Somehow I . . . I feel certain that I must
have forgotten many such things."

Honor leaned forward and placed one
hand on the woman's shoulder. "Your son is in danger, Keefin. You
might know something that will help me find him and help
him."

She shrank away from Honor's touch.
"But . . . I don't know you. Why should I trust you with my
son?"

"Do you trust Ziharah?"

"Oh yes," she said without
hesitation. "But Ziharah was killed by the gatherers. Or . . . or
maybe not entirely killed. But there was so much blood, and her arm
. . . Her arm was shattered beyond anything I could repair . .
."

Her brow furrowed as she pieced
together fragments of memory. "I tried to repair her arm. She must
have lived after the gatherers took us. And Fox! Gods above and
below! He didn't escape to the forest, did he?"

"No," Honor said. "But last time I
saw him, he was free and safe."

Keefin took a long, steadying breath
and pushed herself to her feet. "Dawn approaches. I suppose you'll
be needing starlight for that unbinding."

* * *

Undoing Rhendish's spell took longer
than Honor had expected, even in a garden bright with starlight.
The music that sang through her blood and bone had been muted by
the adept's "improvements," and magic was slow to come to her call.
And the spell itself was not quite right—knotted and uneven, like
cloth woven by an impatient child.

She knew the moment the spell
unraveled. A low moan tore free of the green witch and she fell to
her knees like a puppet whose strings had been cut. She covered her
face with both hands as wrenching sobs rocked her thin
form.

At last she lowered her hands and
raised pain-filled eyes to Honor's face. "How you must hate
me!"

Honor blinked. This was the last
reaction she would have expected.

"They would have killed my boy,
Ziharah." The words spilled out of the woman in a frantic rush.
"They threatened to throw him off the ship if I didn't keep you
alive."

"In that case, I should thank you
for your care, not hate you for giving it."

"There's more," Keefin said,
wringing her hands in dismay. "They wanted magic. Fox was only a
boy, and I didn't have enough to interest Volgo—"

"Volgo?" Honor said sharply. "A tall
man with a blond beard?"

"Yes. He was the leader of the
gatherers. He would have killed both Fox and me at the cottage if I
hadn't told him about the Thorn."

Suddenly Honor felt none too steady.
She sank down to the ground beside the green witch and took her
hands in both of hers.

"Tell
me
about the Thorn. Tell me
everything. Don't assume I remember anything about it."

The woman nodded as if this request
was perfectly normal. "You brought it to my cottage to test me. You
said there was rogue magic about, and you came to see if I was the
source of it."

That sounded dimly familiar. "Did
Volgo get the Thorn?"

Keefin shook her head. "I saw you
hide it amid some ferns before the battle began. I came back and
took it while you were fighting them. There's a hidden place in the
forest nearby, under a moss-covered stone. Hestis, my teacher,
would leave things there for me from time to time, so I knew the
elves would find it."

This, too, tallied with Honor's
memories. She knew some of the elves who had dealings with Keefin.
She'd left a note for Fox advising him to return to his childhood
home, knowing that this would be his best chance of making contact
with the forest folk. And apparently the elves
had
recovered the Thorn, since
Asteria had it in her possession at the midwinter
tribunal.

"It was the only thing I could think
of," Keefin said. "As long as Volgo thought you could lead him to
valuable elfin magic, he would try to keep you alive. For that, he
needed me, and he needed Fox to make sure I did my best for
you."

"It was a reasonable ploy," Honor
admitted. "Why do you think I should hate you?"

"Because I'm the reason you were
captured. The amulet must have led the gatherers to me." Horror
flooded the green witch's face. She seized Honor's wrist. "How many
years have passed?"

"Since the gatherers came to your
valley? A little more than ten."

"And Eldreath has been dead for
twenty, you said."

Honor saw where this was going.
"Rhendish is a sorcerer. Volgo works for him. Rhendish must have
found out about the amulets and learned how to use the seeking
spell."

"So if Rhendish could track me down,
he can also find Fox!"

"You gave Fox the amulet?" she said
sharply. "When?"

"Not long ago. A few days, perhaps.
The amulets are passed down when the child comes of age or acquires
magic. The compulsion to keep the amulet is also passed down. Fox
won't be able to cast it away."

This was dire news, but it explained
many things. Rhendish's need for an herbalist was small reason to
keep the green witch close at hand. Knowing the amulet would
eventually pass to Fox, however, gave Rhendish a sure means of
finding the young thief. And if Rhendish believed that Fox came of
Eldreath's bloodline, he would consider him a potential
threat.

Honor rose and pulled Keefin to her
feet. "Are there any stone floors in your cottage?

"No, but the stone wall surrounding
the hearth spans the kitchen."

"Show me."

The green witch led the way into a
room that was clearly intended to be a kitchen. No fire burned in
the open hearth and no cooking pot sat amid the lifeless coals, but
bundles of herbs hung from lines strung across room and a vast
collection of pots and vials claimed every inch of table space. No
wonder Keefin was little more than braids and bone.

Honor ran her hands lightly over the
stone wall, seeking a seam or gap. Finally she found a hairline
crack separating one of the stones from the mortar surrounding
it.

"I need a knife."

Keefin handed her a small, thin
blade. The elf slipped it into the gap and traced the opening. She
felt the slight give of a metal clasp and threw her weight against
the stone. A section of wall swung inward on silent
hinges.

Honor climbed through and paused
before shutting the door behind her. "It's best that you pretend
nothing has changed. Keep to the house, speak as little as you can
and as foolishly as possible. And if Rhendish comes—"

"He won't realize the binding has
been undone," Keefin said confidently. "I could tell even when
Rhendish was a boy that his talent for magic was small. He'll never
be the man his father was, all gods be praised."

The elf had a very bad feeling about
what was coming next. "His father was a sorcerer?"

Keefin nodded. "Rhendish had an
amulet, too."

The lamp on Rhendish's work room
table guttered. He reached for the cruet of oil and noted with
surprise that the light was no longer needed. Bright daylight
spilled through the windows. He had worked through the night and
the morning as well, with nothing to show for his efforts but a
dull ache behind his eyes.

He rolled his shoulders to work some
of the kinks from his muscles and returned his attention to the
tangle of gears he'd removed from Honor's arm.

Like all of his clockwork creations,
Honor's improvements contained bits of crystal hidden in a metal
framework more delicate than elfin filigree. Crystal provided the
means of imposing his will upon the machines he created, and the
complexity of the metal setting veiled its presence and
purpose.

This blending of metal and magic had
been a marvelous device, quite possibly his best creation. Had it
not been damaged during the attack on Muldonny's fortress, Honor
would never have bested him in a contest of wills.

The elfin skeleton shimmered in the
breeze, and the tinkle of crystal struck Rhendish's ears like
mocking laughter.

He snatched up a small hammer and
whirled toward the laughing bones.

In the bright light, the pale pink
crystal glowed like sunrise clouds. Rhendish lowered his weapon,
defeated by the skeleton's strange beauty. Fascinating, how the
bone fragments he'd removed from Honor's shattered arm had grown
into this shining thing.

He should destroy it. He knew that.
But he also knew that he could never bring himself to do it. He was
meant to build, not destroy.

Even so, when Volgo had first
brought Honor to Rhendish, burning with fever from a wound that
could never heal, the adept's impulse had been to grant her a
quick, merciful death. But the opportunity to explore elfin
physiology had been too tempting to ignore. Once he discovered that
her bones were crystal, how could he
not
explore the
possibilities?

At some point, Rhendish had gotten
caught up in the experiment and lost sight of the elf. He was not
sure when he'd stopped being a healer and become her jailor. He was
not sure that even mattered. What mattered was controlling the
experiment.

Control was important. Control over
his creations, his city, his island, the council that ruled Sevrin.
Control over magic, so that no other Eldreath could rise. Control
over himself, so that the taint of sorcery in his blood did not
destroy everything he'd worked so hard to build.

Booted footsteps beat a swift
crescendo in the hall beyond the work room. Volgo strode into the
room without knocking. Rhendish held up one finger to indicate that
his captain should wait in silence.

The man spoke anyway. "The elf
slipped away last night, just as I said she would."

Rhendish's lips thinned in
annoyance. "We will discuss the matter when I've finished the task
at hand."

He exchanged one delicate tool for
another, assuming that Volgo would leave and return when summoned.
But the fighter paced the room, pausing to twitch at the curtain on
one of the alcoves.

"I did not offer you a seat. How
very rude of me," the adept said in a dry, even tone.

Volgo dropped into a chair. He made
no sound, but tension rolled off him in waves. Rhendish grit his
teeth and fortified the walls of concentration. He had not survived
years in Eldreath's dungeon "school" to see his trained will
defeated by an impatient sword-swinger.

Several moments of charged silence
passed before Rhendish gave up the effort. He leaned back in his
chair and regarded the captain. To his surprise, Volgo was
clean-shaven. Unlike most men of Sevrin, Volgo favored a full beard
and had for as long as Rhendish had known him. His hair, which he'd
worn long and tied back, had been clipped as short as a cat's
fur.

Rhendish was more interested in the
change in Volgo's demeanor. One booted foot stretched out to one
side. Impatient fingers drummed against his knee, and his other
hand absently stroked the aurak-tusk hilt of his sword.

It occurred to Rhendish that Volgo's
attitude had taken a southbound road around the time he'd arranged
for a servant to "steal" the elfin dagger and sell it to Muldonny.
Apparently the "theft" had diminished Rhendish in his captain's
eyes, but it had been a necessary fiction and he saw no reason to
tell anyone, not even his most trusted servant, that he had
contrived the death of a fellow adept.