Sleepless (Curse of the Blood Fox Trilogy, Book #1) (24 page)

“How sad,” I
said. “I still can't remember the name of the place I was born. I really wish
there was something left of it.”

Traken was
suddenly at my shoulder in human form.

“Well, you're
left,” he said. I wasn't sure if it was meant as comfort or a joke, but I let
it go silently and started footing the way down from the peak of the hill
towards the closest protrusion. As I came closer, drifting cautiously through
the grass, I felt a heavy uneasiness press against my throat. Despite the serene
setting of green leaves waving in the breeze and birds singing far off songs,
everything in this quiet, town-less landscape felt touched by darkness. I
wasn't sure what was making me think so, but my skin tingled against the nasty
sensations that pooled in my chest.

Bad. Run,
s
omething scared and
primal inside told me.

“This place
holds a lot of power,” Traken said in a hushed tone, breaking me free. He was
just a little behind and must have seen me flinch, but didn't say so. Perhaps
he knew exactly what I felt... perhaps he was feeling it too. We both stopped
walking at the first strange object we came to, about chin high sticking up out
of the ground, and I leaned in to take a look. It was completely green, covered
in fungi and plant-life, weeds twisting and crawling up around its sides. In
fact, I had to tear off three thick layers of vines and brush before I could
even guess what I was looking at. I brushed a finger along the gritty surface.

“It looks
like the wall of a stone building,” I said.

“Or an
overgrown rock,” Traken pointed out helpfully. I shook my head at this, and
followed the ground carefully with my feet, using my renewed memories as a
strange map in my head. This wall was in the spot of the dairy farm, and if
that were the case, then the next long outcropping of overgrown rock could have
been the schoolhouse. The connections went on like this in my head, and I
followed the shadowed trail deeper into the silent ruins of what might have
been my home. I came up on an area of flat land soon enough, which all the
other protrusions seemed to converge around.

“If I'm
right, then this was the square,” I said, tone flat. It really was
disappointing after all. This place was only a piece to the bigger mystery, and
one that had long grown cold. What could it tell me now? I just felt old and
out-of-place here, like I was late to a celebration and everyone had gone home.
Even Traken seemed to be affected by it, shifting irritably and continually
smoothing his hands over the mercenary’s robe that had been mine. As I stood
melodramatically, facing the truth of this empty find, he actually put his hand
on my shoulder to steer me.

“Let's go,”
he said.

I stepped
forward with him, and suddenly the green vegetation at our feet broke and
crumbled away. There was no time to think or act—we hurtled downward, tumbling
over each other, and the sun disappeared somewhere above.

I wish I
could say I was knocked unconscious. I would have actually preferred the Dream
to the full hour of screaming and cursing that ensued. I had been hurt in
fights before, and I couldn't rightly recall how I had handled those wounds,
but this was excruciating—and this was not a fight.

We were at
the bottom of a well. I knew that, because I could now remember that there had
been a well right in the center of the town, though it should have been
surrounded by a circle of bricks. It was proof that this really was the town I
grew up in, which was little comfort now. This particular well, once sustenance
for my people, had run dry...which meant we had fallen a long way down a brick
tunnel only to hit hard-packed dirt at the very bottom, along with some stones
and the remnants of something metal and rusted that I had just barely missed
impaling myself on.

As the agony
of the fall finally ebbed, I took in deep breaths and tried to evaluate the
situation. My eyes were blurred with tears and it was dark, but what I could
make out was horrifying—my fingers were bloody and a couple of them were
showing bone, while my ankle had a large bump on it and was difficult to move.
I had landed hard frontwards on my hands and legs, which was fortunate despite
the pain. If I had landed on my back I would have surely broken it on my
swords. They were thrumming gently off to the side, buried under the pack that
I had hastily thrown off in an angry fit of pain. Everything hurt. My knees
felt strangely numb, and I could taste blood on my lips.

It took a while
longer still for the pain to become bearable, holding back nausea and sweating
ice as I lay perfectly still in the dark belly of the well. When I finally
opened my eyes entirely and looked up, I realized we weren't in complete
darkness. The stone walls of the well, going all the way up, were glowing with
pulsating white symbols like the ones I had seen trap Traken in the Falcon's
den. I felt my stomach plummet at the thought. If these were anti-magic symbols
of any sort, then this was probably a headhunter's trap.

The hole
above, glowing with the bright day sky, felt very far away.

“Traken,” I
said, finally realizing that I hadn't heard him the entire time I had been
suffering. I felt his body against my good leg and looked over.

He wasn't
moving. He was on his side, arm twisted underneath him in a strange position.
Blood glistened from a spot on his forehead, which had pooled onto the ground.
A fist-sized rock lay just above his brow.

“Oh, don't be
dead,” I breathed. I used my good hand and the scraped palm of my bad hand to
pull myself closer towards him. His body radiated heat, and as I touched a
finger against his clammy neck, I felt life.

“You're still
breathing,” I whispered. “Why aren't you awake?”

No response.
I reached for my bag. My fingers slipped off the leather three times before I
could finally hold the strap firmly and pull it. A few sharpening stones fell
out, and then the remains of the apple bread. I fumbled for the canteen behind
that, and almost didn't have enough healthy fingers to open the top. I had
never felt so much like a broken doll.

“You had
better not be playing with me,” I whispered, and used shaky hands to pour some
water on Traken's lips, and then his head wound. He didn't move. Inching closer
on my belly, I groaned when my ankle did not want to move with me. I slid up on
one side, propping the top half of my body up against the wall near his head.
It was such a small area, the bottom of this well. His feet brushed the round
wall on the other side, and even propped up against the wall my body reached
hallway across the floor.

A few deep,
steady breaths later, my muscles were rested. With concentrated effort, I
retrieved the roll of bandaging cloth out of my bag. It was mostly gone.

“Should at
least be enough for your big skull,” I told Traken, trying not to look at him
very hard as I unrolled it and set to work carefully wrapping his wound. It was
unsettling seeing him so still. I was so used to being alone that I had
forgotten what it was like to have a companion, and then face losing them. This
was worse than at the Falcon's den... I had saved Traken without a thought, but
I hadn't actually believed he would die if I didn't. Now I had a strange,
humbling sensation that I could be left all alone in this dark hole, waiting
for the headhunter who set the trap to come put me out of my misery.

“It doesn't
make any sense. Why would someone set up something like this so far away from
everything else?” I pulled the bandage tighter, but not too tight. “What makes
them think sorcerers are going to be all the way out here?”

Except for
the fact that one was, and he had been caught.

I tried to
move him gently. It took a lot of soft nudging to do it without jarring him too
much, but I finally turned him on to his back and cushioned his head with the
small cloak I still had at the bottom of my pack. It was too bad his last head
rest, my festival robe, had been left behind escaping the unicorn's monster. It
would have given me more to work with. For now I used the sash hanging around
my neck to wrap the broken fingers of my hand. The pain was so vivid I had to
bite down on the leather strap of my pack while I worked.

“You...
better wake up,” I said after spitting out the strap, sitting back heavily. My
good hand brushed his hair, and it reminded me of earlier. I curled my fingers
into it.

“Your hair
feels the same as your fur, Dogboy,” I said, trying to laugh. It turned into a
cough. “I knew you were all mutt.”

My smile died
in the deafening silence. What had I gotten us into? If I sat still enough, I
could just barely hear him breathe. I wanted to stand guard, to keep him safe,
but I could feel my eyes stinging. My body and mind were strained to their
breaking points, and the Dream was swelling in the dark recesses, powerful and
threatening.

I couldn’t
let me take me. Not now, not in this condition. Not yet.

The minutes
crawled by. I studied the looping glyphs on the well walls, wondering how long
ago they might have been put in. Why had no one ever tried to rebuild my
village? Even if the well had gone dry, another could have been dug. Did
everyone just forget its existence entirely? We had been secluded, but a whole
village couldn't just disappear without creating some stir, could it? In what
condition had these headhunters found it?

The questions
blurred in my head, and the Dream menaced my thoughts from the shadows again.
The Meditation the monks had taught me was all I knew that feigned sleep and
helped recover some energy. I let out a long breath, summoning the mantra in my
mind that had carried me through many sleepless nights.

“The sun
rises every day,” I began, keeping my eyes steady on the bright opening far
above. “I will with it. The dream becomes life, and life burns like an eternal
torch.” I took a long breath. “In my chest it lives.” I breathed out. “And I
give it to the sky to give back to me. I am the beginning and the ending. Night
will eventually fall, and so will I. But first, I rise.”

Squaring my
shoulders and closing my heavy eyes, I repeated the lines again and again,
slowly and with concentration on each word. I said it till my throat was raw,
and even then I mumbled it under my breath. Everything that ached dulled in the
strength of those hypnotic words.

The light of
the sun slowly disappeared above. It amazed me to look up and see it gone, but
it was much longer until a purple moon finally reached what I could see of the
sky. It reminded me of the night before, staring up at stars framed by maze
walls. What was I doing wrong to continually end up like this?

“You sleep
way too much,” I grumbled at Traken, trying to distract myself from dark
thoughts. My voice was raspy and low, and I coughed, whole body shuddering. It
was then that he finally stirred under the hand touching his hair.

“Alone.” I
froze. His voice was soft and cracked, but I heard it distinctly and wondered
what manner of dream could have summoned it. He mumbled again, though in words
that were either not words or too low and slurred to be understood. I moved my
hand to his shoulder and shook.

“Are you
awake? Can you hear me?”

“Hear,” he
mumbled, voice slowly gaining strength. “Hear what?”

I touched his
forehead; it was burning. When his eyes snapped open, his gaze was unfocused
and feverish. He blinked, staring up into the dim, pulsating light cast by the
symbols.

“We're in an
old well,” I said slowly, gripping his shoulder harder. “Someone must have made
it into a trap. Those symbols are like what the Le Fam used, right?” He
shifted, tried to roll, then started screaming. His back arched high. “Traken,
stop! Stop. You can't move that arm. I think it's broken.”

His howl
reached animal-like levels. Sweat and tears mingled, glistening off his face,
as he moved away from me and sluggishly pushed himself up to his feet with the
arm that wasn't twisted and mutilated. He swayed, stumbled, and turned around
in a circle twice. His eyes roamed like one who could find nothing stable, dark
depths reflecting the pulsing glyphs.

“So now we’re
caught,” he said. “Trapped.”

“We are,” I
agreed. I clawed the dusty side of the well wall and managed to pull myself to
my own feet as well, putting all the weight on one leg. My knees, now no longer
numb, stung when I moved them. “We will have to think of a plan. First, though,
you should calm down and possibly sit. I don't know how bad the head injury is,
but it may be serious.”

He felt the
makeshift bandage on his head, but backed away from me when I tried to move towards
him. Standing as we were, the tips of my fingers could have touched one side to
almost the other in the old well. He couldn't move far.

“Stop doing
that,” he said, an animal growl forming deep in his throat.

“Doing what?”
I breathed out warily. His voice was flat, but slightly crazed.

“You are
trying to get me to go against my orders, but it won't work. I won't do it. My
loyalty is to my master, and only my master.”

“I'm not
trying anything of the sort,” I said, shivering. I wanted to retrieve the cloak
that had been pillowing his head, but his eyes told me that any sudden
movements at the moment would be a bad idea. “You have a fever along with that
gash in your head. Just relax. Everything’s going to be okay.”

Traken patted
his own head again as he spoke. “I may have a fever, Blood Fox, but I know what
I see. Tricks won't work.”

“What
tricks?” I growled back, pushing off the wall. I wanted to grab his collar and
shake hard, a reaction slightly concocted by the pounding in my own head. “Are
you really so paranoid? I have done nothing.”

“Nothing, she
says,” Traken mocked with a sneer, pushing his weight away from the opposite
wall and reeling forward to meet me in the middle. He grabbed my shoulders and
shoved before my aching limbs could retaliate. My back hit the wall hard and my
full weight landed on my ankle. I strangled a moan and almost crumpled.

“You're
acting like a mad man,” I hissed, battling back the spots in my vision.

“If there is
anyone mad here it is you, my defective princess. Hurting your captor, helping
your captor; telling me things you would tell no one else and placing trust as
if you expect me to place it in return. You are too smart to do these things
without realizing the consequences. Why? Why are you torturing me like this?”

“Whatever is
torturing you, it isn't me,” I said, reeling forward and lashing out with my
good leg just as Traken lunged again. He tripped on my leg, but rolled forward
and caught my arm, yanking me with him. I flipped over his back, and cried out
as my injured foot hit the opposite wall. I rolled to the side quickly and
slammed my elbow into his hurt arm in return, relishing the screamed moan. A
second later his weight was trapping my upper half against the ground, and his
face was close enough for me to feel the hot, ragged breaths against my cheek.
I almost spit at him for it.

“You're being
a child,” I told him. His eyebrows arched in mock amusement.

“A child? So
says the baby among us. You have nothing, my sly fox. You have no power over
me.” He said those last words with a crazy vehemence, as if he were making what
he said true with sheer will. For a moment the scene in the unicorn's labyrinth
came back to me—Traken forcing me to order him. It had slipped my mind so fast,
in all the jumble of strange events. Now I wondered at it again.

I tried to
push him away, but froze and tears pricked the corners of my eyes as he used
his hand to pin my own, crushing my broken fingers under his fist.

“
Augh
—Traken,
stop! Stop it!”

I screamed it
like a demand, putting my will behind it like he had said, but his voice
drowned out mine like a storm. “I know who I am! I know what I can do. I know
who I serve.” I thought he was about to strike as he shifted, but his face came
forward instead and his nose brushed ever-so-gently against the skin where my
neck met my shoulders. His voice was delirious, but his words grew softer. “You
think... you think you can sway me with this delicious scent, with those
wonderful eyes. You can't. That stupid man's feelings…out. Out of my head.” His
grip tightened on me, eliciting hissed pain. His fingers buried themselves into
my tattered robe. “
Out of my head!
Make it stop!”