Mistwood (6 page)

She wondered how much of the lore surrounding her
was
wrong. Perhaps she had built up much of her own legend deliberately, to make her task easier. Maybe that was the problem now: she was trying to live up to her own lies.

The Shifter, it turned out, was not a great rider. Presumably it wasn’t a particularly useful skill for a creature who could be a horse herself if she chose. Isabel was fine when the mare walked, cantered, and even trotted; in fact, she rather enjoyed watching the mountainous terrain flattening into gentle hillsides, the grass bending ahead of the wind in dark green waves. Far ahead she could see trees beginning to dot the hillside, and the breeze that stirred her hair made her skin tingle. She could feel mist on that breeze, as faint as a whispered breath. The Mistwood was still hours of riding away, but she knew where that mist came from. It made her feel like she
was
the legend, like she could shift just by wishing it. It was enough to make up for the discomfort of riding.

But Rokan, it soon became apparent, liked to gallop. He liked to gallop really, really fast.

After the third time he had to wait for her to catch up, she shifted her breathing steady and said, “I would prefer that you not do that. I have enough trouble protecting you from others without worrying that you’re going to kill yourself accidentally.”

Rokan laughed, his hair in windblown tangles, his face alive with pure exhilaration. “Don’t worry about it, then. I’m an excellent rider.”

“I can’t help worrying about you. It’s part of what I am.” He smiled even more widely at that, and she said repressively, “Besides, it wouldn’t matter how good you were if someone had sabotaged your saddle. Did you even check the saddle girths?”

Rokan’s grin died, replaced by an expression of concern—which had been her goal, so there was no reason for a pang of regret. “No.” And then, challengingly: “Did you?”

“I would have been able to tell by the way your horse moved if there was any problem.”

“Well, see? That’s why I brought you along.” Rokan smiled, but it was a regretful smile that brought no light to his eyes.

A piercing cry sounded above them, a cry that sounded eerily like a human scream. They both looked up to watch a hawk spiraling upward in the air, higher and higher. A sharp pain ran through Isabel as she watched the dark shape against the blue sky; she had a sudden memory of soaring, of wings spread to catch an updraft, of folding those wings for the heart-stopping drop on unsuspecting prey. She imagined the edges of her body blurring, forming feathers to lift her off the earth.

“Spirits,” Rokan breathed, and she felt an almost physical thud as she was pulled back to earth—or back into her body—though since the horse beneath her didn’t stir, it must have been only in her mind. “What does it feel like to fly?”

“It feels free,” Isabel said.

Rokan turned his head and smiled at her—an astonishingly wide-open smile that transformed his face, stripping away any hint of seriousness, his eyes alight with wonder. Isabel jerked her gaze back to the sky, a sudden energy tingling through her. The hawk let out another sharp, piercing cry. That cry, combined with the spread of wings and the way it wheeled across the sky, formed a message:
Danger. Human danger.

Isabel dismounted and knelt in one smooth movement. She pressed her hand against the grass, pushing at the dirt beneath it, closing her eyes. Subtle reverberations ran through the ground, and some part of her was able to pull out the ones she cared about, to know what they meant. A heavy weight, over the hills to the south. Stomping hooves. A horse.

Someone was watching the road to the Mistood. Waiting.

Isabel got to her feet and snapped her eyes open to find Rokan watching her, dark eyes wide, the way a man might watch a glorious sunset or the crashing sea. She felt alive with power, completely nonhuman; her skin might swirl away into mist at any moment.

“We have to go,” she said. There was nothing human about her voice, though it formed human words, and Rokan’s fingers tightened on the reins.

“Why?”

“This isn’t safe.”

Rokan was instantly tense, alert, and afraid. His hand moved to the hilt of his dagger. “What do you want to do?”

“I want,” Isabel said, swinging back onto her horse, “to go back to the castle. Now.”

They got back in half the time it had taken them to ride out. And this time she had no trouble with the galloping at all.

On the sixth morning, on her way up the tower stairs, Isabel met Albin coming down.

They froze for a moment, the sorcerer in his thick red robe that reeked of old potions, Isabel in a pale violet gown with her golden hair tied up in braids. Then the door to Ven’s workroom opened, and the apprentice stopped short on the threshold, all the blood draining from his face.

Isabel gave Ven a coldly impersonal look, then turned back to Albin. “I’m here to ask your apprentice some questions. I would advise you not to interfere.”

Albin drew himself up. “I don’t take advice from a creature like you.”

“Call it a warning, then.”

His face hardened, and Isabel realized that she had miscalculated. She hadn’t thought he would be foolish enough to once again test his strength against hers. But she hadn’t taken into account his reluctance to lose face in front of his apprentice.

She reached into her flowing sleeve for the dagger she now carried strapped to her arm. With her eyes on Albin, she pulled out the dagger and threw it sideways—not at Albin, but at Ven.

Albin would have been prepared with a magical defense. Ven only flinched and gasped, and the dagger thudded into the half-open door inches from his throat. Isabel had not looked at Ven when she threw the dagger, and she didn’t now. Instead she kept her eyes on Albin. “If I intended to hurt him, it would not be difficult. I’m merely doing what I was summoned here to do. I need some information about the prince’s magical protection.”

The implication—that she couldn’t force the information from
him
just as easily—would please Albin. Isabel waited a moment, then added, “I can have Prince Rokan order him to talk to me, if that would make this easier for you.”

Albin made a great show of deliberating, then jabbed his finger at Ven and scowled. “Answer her questions. But take care. She is an unnatural creature, with no human feelings, and the kings of Samorna are fools to believe they know her purpose. Don’t be swayed by her delicate form, and don’t make the mistake of trusting her for a second.”

Ven managed a nod. Albin fixed Isabel with another glare, then swept past them down the stairs.

Ven took a deep breath and touched the hilt of the still-quivering dagger, his hand shaking.

“I’ll need that back,” Isabel said.

“You could have—”

“Killed you?” Isabel cocked her head to the side, allowing herself a small chuckle. “I don’t miss.”

“No…of course not.” He took another breath, and the fear faded from his face, overshadowed by the awe she had grown used to—and started to enjoy—over the past few days. She smiled at him, and he grinned sheepishly back. Her smile wasn’t all calculation, either. There was something…easy…about being with Ven. She would have said she enjoyed his company, if such a thing were possible.

No human feelings.
Not being human herself, she couldn’t assess the truth of that. But she was fairly sure the Shifter didn’t feel a need to relax, or to be admired by anyone other than her prince. And wouldn’t enjoy either of those things. She spent time with Ven purely because he was useful to her.

“Well,” she said, “Albin will want to know what my questions were. We should review what you’re going to tell him.”

Ven nodded, turned, and went back into his room. As she followed, Isabel pulled the dagger out of the door and slid it back inside her sleeve. It left a deep narrow gash in the dark wood, which would serve as a nice reminder for Albin every time he walked up these stairs to his room. Inhuman or not, Isabel allowed herself a brief, smug smile before she shut the door behind her.

When
the attack came, it was completely unexpected.

Rokan had been thinking it would be a relief. He was thinking it at the moment it happened—sitting on the dais with a goblet of wine in his hand, watching the dancers step delicately around one another at yet another of the endless banquets, frustrated because he couldn’t get caught up in the light-headed giddiness that was overtaking everyone else.

The room was crowded and well-lit by late afternoon sunlight, the scent of wine so thick it weighed on the air, laughter floating through the music. Everyone was flushed, everyone was laughing and eating, everyone but him. The danger pressed on him, weighing him down. Parties like these made him remember how effortless it had once been to forget his cares, and how impossible it was now.

Not everyone was dancing. The Shifter stood near the wall, as still as a statue, her gaze flitting around the room. He watched her eyes move from a group of ambassadors in furious discussion…to a pair of dancers who had announced their betrothal that morning…to a serving boy who had just dropped a platter of roast fowl…to a cluster of richly dressed northern dukes murmuring too quietly for others to hear. Back in his father’s day not one of them would have dared even murmur—except for Duke Owain, too high-minded to learn stealth, but Owain wasn’t here. He had excused himself from tonight’s banquet due to a mild illness, leaving his niece unchaperoned. For all the good that did Rokan.

Still, the thought of Daria lifted his spirits a little. He started to look for her, and at that exact moment he heard her scream.

The dancing and the music took a few seconds to stop, and by that time the screaming had stopped, too. Rokan surged to his feet, trying to see through the crowd. A woman started shrieking and was joined by another. They were backing away from a spot on the floor.

Rokan’s heart stopped. Without remembering how he had gotten there, he pushed through the crowd, rudely shoving a duchess aside, barely able to think about how Daria’s scream had been sliced off in the middle. He stepped between the two shrieking noblewomen—they went abruptly silent when they saw him—and stared at the place near the wall where Daria must have been standing.

Some glass shards lay on the thin gray rug, surrounded by rose-colored wine. Otherwise, nothing.

He turned to call the Shifter and saw that she was right behind him, her face calm but her eyes darting to the glass and the wine, then to the people all around. With her was the sorcerer’s apprentice, but not the sorcerer.

“What happened?” Rokan demanded.

One of the noblewomen answered him. “She was standing there, talking to me, and then she screamed, and then—then she was gone. Like magic!”

Like
magic, indeed. The lady was a minor noblewoman from a seaside duchy, someone Daria couldn’t stand and would never have spoken to for more than a second. The jostling for position never stopped, even at a time like this. “Where’s Albin?” Rokan heard his voice rise and forced it into a semblance of rationality. “Where did they go?”

Isabel lifted her eyebrows slightly and glanced at the apprentice. “Ven? What can you do?”

The young man darted forward, knelt, and dipped his finger in the fast-disappearing wine. “I can track her. It will take a few minutes—”

“Then start now!” Rokan shouted.

Someone touched his wrist. Clarisse was standing at his side, two castle guards behind her. “Rokan, you have to calm down.”

He shook her off, suddenly aware of the reason for her warning—the mob of faces surrounding them, watching him, judging how he reacted to a crisis. He did not want to be aware of them. For a moment he hated his sister. “I don’t know what happened to her! I don’t know where she is or—”

“She’s in the castle,” the sorcerer’s apprentice said. He stood, his brow creased. “I can take you to her.”

“Rokan—” Clarisse said warningly.

“You stay here,” Rokan snapped at her. “Explain things.” There was nothing to explain, but Clarisse would manage anyhow. “I’m going. The guards will stay here and make sure nobody leaves.”

“You can’t go yourself—”

“I’ll go with him,” Isabel said almost dangerously, and Clarisse’s protest died on her lips. “Come on.”

They took off at a run. The apprentice was too slow, and Rokan almost yelled at him before he realized that he was concentrating hard as he ran. His breath came in short hisses.

“Ven?” Isabel said. “Do you know where you’re going?”

“I’ll know when I—There!” The apprentice came to a panting stop in the west hall, an almost unused corridor lined with rooms, with a few faded tapestries and a bare stone floor. A lock of hair flopped against his forehead, soaked with sweat. “That room. Over there.”

“That’s just an empty bedroom,” Rokan said, and started toward it. Then he jerked to a stop.

Isabel was holding his wrist. She stared at him, those eerie green eyes calm, her rose-colored gown stripping the wildness from her, making her appear ordinary and frail. But her grip was like steel.

He didn’t bother trying to break it. He inserted every ounce of command he possessed into his voice. “Let—me—go.”

“It seems clear,” Isabel said, “that this is a trap.”

“She’s in there!”

“I know.”

“She could die.”

“I know.” The grip, impossibly, tightened. “So could you.”

“I have to go in after her.”

“No.”

“Isabel.”
He did try to break her grip then, an effort as futile as he had known it would be. He slammed the side of his hand down on her arm, and she didn’t even flinch. Her arm looked like flesh but felt like stone. The glittering bracelet dangled on her delicate wrist.

The bracelet…it was worth a try. Anything was worth a try. Even though the hall was silent, Daria’s scream echoed in his head. “Shifter,” he snapped, “by the power I have over you, by the bracelet I gave you, by the Shifter’s Seal you took from me—
let go of my hand
.”

Her fingers opened slowly, reluctantly, peeling away from his wrist. He backed away from her, unable to believe it had actually worked. “Stay here.”

She shook her head angrily. “I
will
protect you, like it or not. I don’t have a choice. And you—you are the king of Samorna. You have no right to die.”

“I don’t plan to die.”

“You have no right to risk it. This is what they expected—that you would act like a reckless child. They want you, not her. It’s your responsibility not to walk into their hands.”

“Sorry, Isabel, but I’m human, and I do have a choice.”

“Then make the right choice!”

He turned away from her and snapped, “Ven!”

Ven raised his hand. The door burst, taking half the wall with it.

Daria sat on a plush chair near the bare bed, her hands bound behind her back, her dark hair half piled on her head and half straggling down her face. She let out a sob and screamed, “Rokan!”

“Don’t!” the Shifter shouted, but it was too late. He was already moving forward. He saw Daria smile, but even if he had understood what it meant in time, he was moving far too fast to stop.

When Ven raised his hand, Isabel felt a sizzle run down her spine. She saw the door splinter apart in slow motion, and knew what Rokan was going to do as soon as she saw Daria. Without thinking, she sprinted past him through the remains of the doorway.

A movement at the corner of her eye. A scent. She turned to face it just as a heaving mass of fur and teeth hit her in the chest.

She went over backward, the creature on top of her, her heart pounding—not with fear, but with shock at the thought that she had almost let the prince go in, that it could have been Rokan the beast attacked. He would have been dead by now. The creature’s teeth had closed over her neck the second it hit—but she had been ready, some animal instinct from when
she
had hunted, and her neck had turned to stone. The thing had hurt its teeth and now sprang away from her with a furious yowl.

Snowcat. Another shock. The size of a small horse, deadly at the best of times, worse when it was scared. Nothing could fight a snowcat—

—except another snowcat, Isabel thought, and grinned fiercely as the beast sprang.

But there was no snowcat to meet it; there was only a slim blond girl who had forgotten about the powers she didn’t have. Expecting to be a cat, she had half-risen to meet the creature, growling. By the time she realized, it was too late for any of the tricks she
could
manage. She landed on her back with the cat on top of her, its hot breath blasting into her face. A claw ripped open the side of her arm, trailing such fiery pain that she screamed and raised her other arm to push it off. Curved teeth tore through her forearm.

It will go after Rokan next.
She shifted her legs, making them stronger than humanly possible, and kicked. The snowcat yowled in surprise as it tumbled halfway across the room, but it landed on its feet. It crouched, heavy muscles rippling beneath white fur, and snarled at her.

She shifted her arms, ignored the pain that lingered even though the wounds were gone, and jumped to her feet. It was a leap that would have been impossible for a human, but at the time it was instinctive. She landed right in front of the cat, so fast it had no time to react. One quick step sideways, another leap, and she was on its back, her stone-like arm wrapped around its neck and pressing against the jugular.

The snowcat went mad, twisting, biting, scratching. She held on, shifting grimly and swiftly, repairing each gash and bite and scratch. The cat rolled, trying to crush her; her body went stone for a second, long enough to live and hang on, not long enough to avoid pain. The pain was a problem. She could feel the burning scratches, the ripped muscles, the crushed bone even after they were no longer there.

She held on, and after what seemed like forever the cat was still, a bloody mass of hot fur. Most of the blood was hers. She got to her feet, shifting the last of her wounds away, shifting her hair and skin at the same time. Cool, impassive—with the same unruffled expression she wore at court functions—she strode away from the huge cat’s corpse. Beneath the bloodstained gashes in her gown, her skin was white and smooth. She was the Shifter, and everything hurt, but nothing would show.

She had just fought a snowcat and won.

Who cares? I’ve probably
been
a snowcat.
But she couldn’t help the flush of triumph that went through her. She turned to Rokan.

Rokan was gone.

Ven stared back at her through the ruins of the doorway. There should have been awe in his eyes, but instead there was something else…something she didn’t recognize and didn’t want to analyze. She hesitated, then blurted, “Where is he?”

“He went to see if he could catch Albin,” Ven said. He, too, was cool and unruffled.

“Catch—” But she realized before she finished asking the question. Only magic could have brought the snowcat here and kept it docile until the right moment. Cats were notoriously difficult to manipulate with sorcery. It would have taken powerful magic.

Albin must have thought that even the Shifter might lose to a snowcat. Underestimating her again. She couldn’t summon up even the faintest hint of smugness.

“Albin knows spells that could have taken him halfway across the world by now,” Ven said. “But I guess Rokan had to try.”

Still not liking the expression on his face, Isabel turned away from him and started toward Daria. Who was also gone.

“Spirits!” Isabel snapped. “When—”

“Just now.” Ven’s voice was still infuriatingly calm. “He must have taken her. Fairly dangerous spell, that, even when the person you’re taking is cooperating with you.”

Cooperating with you.
It had not been a kidnapping. Daria hadn’t shouted a warning, even when Rokan had been about to walk in and the cat had been about to spring.

“Spirits,” she said again, more softly. “He really loved her.”

Ven shrugged. “Do you worry about the king’s feelings, or only his life?”

“Not all dangers are obvious,” Isabel said randomly. She had no idea what it meant, but it sounded good, and Ven was beginning to annoy her. And he was still watching her. She snapped, “What?”

“You didn’t shift.”

Long pause.

“I didn’t have to.”

“So?”

“So why should I?”

“Why shouldn’t you?”

Talking in circles had its uses. It had given her time to come up with an answer. “I didn’t want Daria to see.”

Ven’s eyes went so narrow she could no longer see their blue. “I saw your face when the cat leaped. You didn’t have time to take that into account.”

“
You
wouldn’t have had time. I did.” Isabel tried her enigmatic smile, despite a sinking feeling that it wasn’t going to work this time.

Ven said nothing. He merely stared at her for several seconds—a long, hard stare, clearly not liking what he was seeing.

Isabel stared back, fairly sure that her expression was the same.