Mystic (28 page)

“Get the chest ready,” Ohzem told Zicon.

Zicon strode to the chest and snapped a leather cord from his neck. On its end, Sim saw a heavy key, which Zicon inserted into the chest. The key turned smoothly, sounding a solid thunk as the lock released.

Zicon opened the heavy chest.

It seemed as if an icy wind rushed through the cave. Sim couldn't see what the chest contained, but Zicon stepped away from it, as if to give it room. He placed himself behind Pomella, and grabbed her arms.

“Sim!” she cried.

“Pomella, I—!”

Jank ground his face into the rock.

Ohzem held the knife above his head. “Ceon'hur! By this action, I summon thee!” He struck with the knife. Pomella screamed. Sim's eyes widened in horror.

From his compromised angle, Sim couldn't see what happened. But he saw Pomella lift her arm and look down at her side. Blinking, Sim focused.

The strike had cut her dress and sliced her ribs.

Silence filled the cave. A thin red line of blood leaked out of the cut.

Ohzem lifted the knife and held the bloody blade in front of his face. With a grim expression he flicked it downward, speckling Pomella's blood across the stone floor.

“What did you do?” Pomella said, voicing Sim's thought. Why hadn't Ohzem killed her? Wasn't that what they'd come here to do?

Suddenly the floor cracked and erupted as stone shot upward. The cave shuddered and pebbles trembled down from the ceiling. Large boulders rolled upon one another, forming the huge shape of a man.

The Green Man towered over them all, except instead of being made of plants and soil, he was formed entirely of rock pulled from the mountain. Sim's heart thundered. The Green Man was here! Like a massive armored warrior, he rose over his opponents. Bits of dirt crumbled from his stone arms as he stretched them wide.

“Ox!” Pomella called.

“Who shed the innocent blood of a candidate under my protection?” the Green Man roared.

“Ceon'hur,” Ohzem said, bowing slightly. “I am privileged to once again be in your presence.”

Sim gasped. The Green Man was the ceon'hur?

“Why have you bound this girl in iron?” the hulking creature asked.

“It is not her who shall remain in iron,” Ohzem snarled.

He lifted both his arms, staff and bloody knife stretched toward the ceiling, and made a throaty sound, somewhere between a cry and a gurgling chant. Light flared, and a large ring of iron lifted out of the nearby chest into the air. Shaped like a single massive wrist cuff, it was wider than Sim could wrap his arms around. Four thick iron chains hung off of it.

With a piercing yell Ohzem punched his arms outward, and the ring of metal flew toward the Green Man, striking him around the neck and clasping shut. White-hot light blazed from the metal, burning stone. The Green Man clawed at it with his rocky hands and stumbled backward. The chains connected to the neck band lashed out and secured themselves to the spikes trapped in the ground.

Zicon dragged Pomella outside the ring of spikes. As the Green Man flailed, Ohzem also backed away until his boots were just beyond the circle's edge.

“I have waited decades for this day,” Ohzem said, maniacal glee on his face. “They said the guardian, the ceon'hur, could not be defeated. But I have learned of a greater power. The Myst exists in all things, but in iron, it is weakest. And atop this mountain, of all places, you are vulnerable.”

Quentin stepped up beside Ohzem. “Is it trapped?”

The Green Man charged toward Ohzem, hurling huge shards of stone at him. Quentin leaped back, but the Mystic did not flinch. The chains around the Green Man pulled tight. The flying rock crashed harmlessly against an invisible barrier at the circle's edge.

“Yes, he is bound here,” Ohzem replied. “You are free to destroy the High Mystic. We leave for Kelt Apar immediately.”

The Green Man thrashed, but his chains held him fast. “Defilers!”

Sim's mind wheeled. The Black Claws had never planned to kill Pomella. It was Yarina they were after. All this was just a ploy to disable her guardian.

“What about this one?” Jank asked, shaking Sim.

“Do whatever you like with him,” Ohzem said.

A vicious smile spread across Jank's face. He stepped away from Sim and drew his sword.

“Sim … Sim!” Pomella yelled.

Zicon crossed his arms and waited. “Make it quick, Jank.”

Sim panicked. With his hands still bound, he ran for the mouth of the cave, but Jank was ready. The mercenary swung, sword biting deep into Sim's side and slicing across his abdomen. Searing pain cut into him as he went down. Blood poured across the ground and Sim marveled at how much there was. Somewhere behind him, Pomella screamed.

The Green Man roared and charged toward Jank, but the iron collar and chains burned white hot as he came to the edge of the circle. The ground rumbled as the creature merged back into the floor, but rose again and again, seeking a way out of the trap.

Sim convulsed in pain. Tears streamed from his eyes. By the Saints, this was it. He was going to die. What a blathering fool he'd been after all.

Jank wiped the blade clean with his bare hand. “Now the real question is, should I finish you here, or let you die of slow rot?”

He stepped around Sim, angling for a different line to attack. Sim forced himself to sit up and face his killer. He thought of his parents, his sister, and Dane. Maybe soon he would be with his brother and they could wander the Creekwaters as ghosts together.

“Stop!” Pomella shouted.

Jank leered at her and chuckled. “You're a pretty thing. I'll enjoy taking my time with you, too.”

Quentin drew his knife. “Touch her and I'll ruin you, commoner!”

Sim coughed blood. The world spun around him. He shook his head to clear the fog. He had to focus!

“The Mystic said I could do as I wanted!” Jank yelled. He glared at Zicon. “I don't care what you're paying us. I'm sick of being held on a jagged leash this whole time! This island is a stinking pile of mud and I'm tired of trudging through—”

Pulling from his deepest reserves, Sim roared and slammed his shoulder low into Jank's body. By the Saints, it hurt! They fell together and the hard ground knocked the remaining air from Sim's chest. He rolled off of Jank, trying to pull in a breath. Jank scrambled to his feet beside him.

With a snarl, Jank lifted Sim's sword. “You're finished, scr—”

With a roar, the Green Man's stone fist erupted from Jank's chest. The guardian lifted him into the air, twitching and gurgling, as if he weighed nothing.

Sim looked down. He and Jank had landed within the ring of spikes. Zicon took another step away from the edge. Even Pomella, her eyes wide with horror, stepped back.

The Green Man, the benevolent creature Sim had daydreamed of meeting as a child, stood in the center of the circle, his rocky form covered in fresh blood. The iron collar seared with white-hot heat, smoking against his neck. He dropped his raised arm and dumped Jank's lifeless body onto the ground.

Sim sensed a rushing of feet as Pomella hobbled into the ring and knelt beside him.

“We leave now,” Ohzem said, not a hint of emotion within his quiet voice. He waited for Quentin to whisper something to Pomella that Sim couldn't hear. Pomella snarled in response. Ohzem gave Sim one last look, like a cat leaving its kill, and slipped out of the cave. Hormin and Zicon followed, leaving Sim to die.

He couldn't move his body anymore. The gash across his chest burned, making it hard to breathe. His breaths came in quick gasps now. Somewhere, he thought he heard his mhathir call his name. Or perhaps it was Pomella. Bethy, maybe?

His eyelids became too heavy, and he lacked the strength to keep them open. Behind Pomella, the Green Man looked down on him, splattered blood running down his face like tears.

The last thing Sim saw before darkness took him was Pomella stroking his face. He wished she didn't look so sad.

 

SIXTEEN

BLOOD AND STONE

Pomella trembled as Sim's eyes closed. His head rested in her lap. The cave seemed to press down on her, making her feel small and cold and lonely.

“Is he dead?” she managed, her breath and hands shaking.

Oxillian's stony form leaned forward to peer more closely at Sim. One of his giant fingers reached down to touch Sim's face. “He is alive, but he will not last long.”

“You're the Green Man! Please, do something!”

“I can do very little,” Ox said, touching the collar around his neck. Black scars burned across his stone neck where the collar lay, but he gave no indication that he felt any pain.

Managing as best she could with her manacles, Pomella tore a long strip from her dress, beginning where Ohzem had cut it open. Needing more, she tore another from the bottom of her skirt.

She placed the strips across Sim's wound as best she could. His face was pale. Fevered sweat covered his face.

Pomella's composure threatened to break. A single jagged tear betrayed her and leaked down her cheek. Just an hour ago everything seemed to be going so well. But in a single moment of betrayal, everything had fallen apart. Gone were her hopes of becoming Yarina's apprentice. Saijar and Vivianna would return to Kelt Apar in the morning, and Quentin soon after. None of them would claim to know where she was. Pomella imagined Yarina selecting Saijar as her apprentice. Or, worse, selecting that culk Quentin! A ridiculous, bitter part of Pomella hoped he was selected just because she knew he didn't want it. Or did he? How much of anything he'd told her had been true?

“Who were those people?”

Ox looked at the cave's entrance as if trying to see beyond. “I do not know, but even now, I cannot see them. They blind and bind me with their iron.”

“Why did they do this?”

“There have always been those who oppose the Mystics and their ways. Kelt Apar has been contested many times.”

Pomella wracked her mind for a solution. Anger rose like boiling water bubbling over the edge of a pot. Easing Sim from her lap onto the ground, she stood and yanked against the chains binding her ankles to the spikes, but they held tight. She pulled harder, biting her lip against the pain until she cried out.

There had to be a way out. There had to be a way to save Sim.

Her eyes widened as she remembered
The Book of Songs
. She looked around in the dark for her canvas pack and found it a short distance away. She leaped for it, but her chains prevented her from reaching it. “Shite and blather!” she screamed. She dropped and rolled to her back, reaching with her legs. The toe of her shoes just barely touched the bag's edge.

“Come on!” she snarled, and stretched farther. She hooked the tip of the bag onto her foot and pulled it toward herself with a triumphant yelp. Her hands yanked the bag open. Dried rations spilled out along with her bottle of chi-uy and the glass vial containing Mantepis' venom.

Pomella froze. Her hand trembled as she lifted up the vial of vemon. If all else failed, perhaps she could ease Sim's passing. It pained her to hear his shallow breathing.

She clenched her fist around the vial. No.

Setting the venom carefully aside onto the ground, she put it out of mind and drew
The Book of Songs
from her pack.

“What are you doing?” Ox asked.

“There has to be something in here to help us,” said Pomella. “Do you know anything about the Myst that can help us?”

Ox shook his stone head. “I am not a Mystic. But I believe that if a Mystic were here, he or she would say there is always a way with the Myst.”

“Well, I
am
a Mystic!” Pomella snapped, ignoring the fact that it was presumptuous and unlikely to ever be true.

She flipped through the familiar pages, trying to remember if there was anything in the book that could help her escape. The pages flew by, but nothing appeared to be right. She gritted her teeth, frustrated that she understood so little. The only entry that seemed relevant was the page that described the song of opening, the same one she'd tried in the other cave with Sim. It hadn't worked then, and she doubted it would now.

“This is the last time I'm getting trapped in a cave with you, Simkon AnClure,” she muttered.

She paused on a page decorated with familiar lotus flowers. Other drawings beside them showed wounded animals: a dog, a horse, and a strange furry-faced creature she didn't recognize, with a long winding tail. The illustrations seemed to provide instructions for how to apply simple bandages and poultices. She couldn't understand the neatly written runes on the page, but she thought perhaps she could try to replicate the results if she managed to find the illustrated herbs. She only recognized a few of them.

Her heart sank. It didn't matter. She couldn't leave the cave to find herbs. All she could do was sit and watch Sim die.

Pomella slammed the book shut. How in Saint Brigid's holy name was she supposed to help when she was
locked up
!