The Blood Curse (18 page)

He turned and found her standing behind him.

“I won’t drink a drop of water, I promise.” Petrus put an arm around her. He wasn’t sure whether to be angry with Prince Harkeld for giving him permission to hug Innis, or not.
Permission? Like I’m one of his bondservants.

Innis hugged him back fiercely, then stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “Be
careful
.”

“I will.”

Petrus stripped out of his clothes and stuffed them into one of the packsaddles.

The prince wandered over. “You heard her,” he said. “Be careful.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be back. I’m planning on breaking some of your ribs tonight.”

The prince grinned. “You can
try
.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

P
OX UNTIED HER
ankles when he brought her breakfast: bread and cheese. He left her wrists bound.
So this is how it’s going to be. Tied wrists
. A hindrance to escape, yes, but nothing she couldn’t overcome.

Britta chewed her food, and looked around. A broken stone with a jagged edge lay less than an arm’s reach from where she sat in her nest of blankets.

Why not?

Britta finished her bread and cheese. She climbed to her feet, picked up her blankets and shook them, dropped one, picked it up again and curled the stone into one palm.

She slid the stone into the pocket of her cloak. Escape was possible again.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

P
ETRUS FLEW SOUTH
and east, following the roads he’d memorized from the map. For the first thirty or so miles they were clogged with refugees, then the numbers dwindled. These were the stragglers, the people too poor to have horses and too elderly or infirm to walk fast.

A strong headwind slowed him. He had to work hard for every mile gained. The road climbed, winding up valleys and over ridges, passing through a village, cresting finally at a high plateau. This was poor land, eroded into gullies and hillocks. Crumbling stone walls marked out an uneven patchwork of small fields. He saw solitary farmhouses, small hamlets. In the distance, smoke smudged the sky. Beyond the haze of smoke were snowy mountains to the east and south.

The headwind didn’t ease. It came from the south, sweeping across the plateau and funneling down the valleys to the northern lowlands.
Rut it
. The next few hours were going to be tough.

He followed the main road—a cart track, really—laboring to make headway. A lone farmer was trying to bully a flock of goats northwards. Once Petrus passed the man, the road stretched empty.

A hamlet came into sight. It was tiny, little more than a dozen buildings around a dusty market square with a well at its center. Petrus flew low, circled the square, landed on the edge of the well. He folded his wings, cocked his head, listened. Utter silence, apart from the wind.

After several minutes, he glided down to the ground and changed into himself. The curse shadows on his skin didn’t appear to be any darker or thicker than they’d been before.

Petrus changed back into a hawk, spread his wings, and headed into the wind again. The smoke in the sky had spread.

He followed the road south-east, towards the mountains. He saw goats grazing in stony fields, hens pecking in the dirt around abandoned farmhouses, a flock of gray geese, but no people.

The next village was almost large enough to be called a town, fifty or sixty houses clustered together, bounded on one side by a river. Delpy, was the village’s name—if he was where he thought he was.

Delpy wasn’t empty. His hawk eyes saw movement when he was almost a mile away: two men crossing the market square.

He flew faster. Were they cursed?

The men kicked a door, broke it open, vanished inside. They emerged as Petrus glided down into the square. He stared at them intently, looking for signs of madness and bloodlust. The men kicked open another door, pushed inside.

In the middle of the square was a covered well. Off to one side was a whipping post. Petrus landed on the whipping post and waited for the men to come out. All around the market square, doors sagged open.

He examined the men when they emerged into the sunlight. Unshaved faces, ragged clothes, each with a sack slung over his shoulder. Their curse shadows seemed no darker than normal.

Looters.

He launched himself skyward again. The source of the smoke was closer now. His sharp hawk-eyes told him what it was when he was still several miles away. A barn and a farmhouse burning.

Petrus circled for several minutes, examining the scene. The barn had collapsed in on itself, but two walls of the house still stood. Embers glowed and acrid smoke billowed upward in great clouds, pushed north by the wind.

There were no people that he could see, no animals, yet the fire was no more than a few hours old. If the farmhouse had been abandoned... why the fire? Was it accidental, or deliberate?

Instinct told him it was because of the curse. Someone—someone cursed—had torched this farm.

But who?

Petrus glided cautiously down to land and shifted into the shape of a dog. He lifted his muzzle and sniffed. Smoke, yes, and also... blood.

He trotted around the house and barn, ears pricked, hackles up. His nose told him that blood had recently been spilled, that several bodies lay roasting in the remains of the house, and that one body was in the charred barn.

He padded warily across to the well and sniffed. Nothing.

Petrus sat down in the dirt, trying to piece together what had happened.

Someone had killed the inhabitants of the farmhouse and burned it down.

Had the killer lived here, or come from elsewhere?

Was the curse here?

Petrus shifted into himself, and rose to standing. He looked down at his body. Thick, dark curse shadows swathed him.

Fear prickled across his scalp, prickled down his spine. Cold sweat broke out on his skin. His heart was suddenly galloping. Every instinct he had clamored for him to change shape, to flee.

Petrus inhaled a shallow breath, a second breath. Nothing threatened him here. The only people in the smoldering ruins were dead.

He sidled two steps to the well and peered over the lip. He couldn’t see anything.

Rand and Serril and Malle would want to know what the water looked like.

An empty leather bucket sat beside the well. Petrus hooked the handle on the rope and lowered it into the well, let it fill, hauled it back up.

Water dribbled from the leather bucket. Sight of it made his heart beat even faster.

Petrus took a deep breath. Touching the water wouldn’t infect him, only drinking it would. He reached out and unhooked the bucket, put it on the ground, crouched and examined the water. It looked ordinary, clear, the surface shimmering in the sunshine, except... The water reflected the light oddly.

He tilted his head to one side, looked at the bucket out of the corner of his eye. Yes, that reflection was wrong, as if an oily substance lay on the water.

P
ETRUS FLEW BACK
to Delpy, gliding mostly, with the wind behind him. Creeks came down out of the gullies. All of them had the oily reflection of Ivek’s curse.

The creeks flowed into the river that ran through Delpy. Dread swelled inside him as he approached the village. Did Delpy have the curse, now? Did the looters?

Petrus made two circuits of the village. The men weren’t in the market square breaking down doors, nor on any of the roads leading out of Delpy. So, where had they gone?

He spiraled down, landed beside the well, and shifted into a dog. The sound of glass smashing echoed across the square.

Petrus pricked his ears. Where had that come from?

The sound came again, and this time he located its source. The tavern on the south side of the square.

Petrus trotted cautiously across to the tavern. A sign hung above its door, creaking in the wind—a goose with its wings outstretched.

The door stood ajar.

Petrus halted on the doorstep and sniffed. Ale. And blood.

His hackles rose. A growl filled his throat.

Petrus nudged the door open a few more inches and slipped inside, slinking low to the floor. Smells invaded his nose—moldering straw, sweat, piss—but the strongest were ale and blood.

His ears twitched. Someone was giggling softly.

Petrus crept forward, his belly almost brushing the straw-strewn floor. His ribcage felt tight, his lungs tight, his throat tight. Past a bench lying on its side, past an upturned table...

There were the looters. One dead, one alive.

The smell of ale came from the tankards lying in the straw—and the smell of blood came from the man sprawled alongside them with his throat ripped out. The second looter sat beside his dead companion, giggling as he licked his fingers. Blood stained his face, his hands, his teeth. And beneath the blood was the curse shadow, so thick and black that Petrus could barely make out the man’s features.

Every hair on Petrus’s body stood on end. His lungs squeezed shut.
Run
.

O
NCE IN THE
air, Petrus felt only slightly safer. He wanted to get as far from Delpy as he could. But Rand and Serril had given him two tasks. The first one he’d completed; the second, he hadn’t.

He had to measure how fast the curse was advancing.

Petrus hovered, looking at Delpy and the river and the road, remembering the map.

The curse was travelling westwards, so that was the direction he needed to measure it in. Unfortunately, the river flowed north and the road ran north-east. Finally he found a line that went directly east-west, an old stone wall bisecting a paddock that had grass as sparse as an old man’s hair.

He paced out two sections of the wall, each an eighth of a mile long, with twenty yards between them, checked them twice, marked them, and sat on the wall to wait for the curse. The wind blew, carrying with it the smell of smoke and the chill of the snow-covered mountains to the south. After a few minutes he crouched down in the lee of the wall, shivering, wishing he could be a wolf, with a nice, thick pelt. But the Ivek Curse didn’t affect animals. He wouldn’t be able to see when—

The curse shadows covering his skin darkened.

Petrus’s heart seemed to stop beating for an instant. The hairs on his scalp felt like they were standing on end.
It’s here
.

He pushed to his feet. He wanted to run, but instead he made himself count.
One second. Two seconds
. He shifted into a hawk, flew an eighth of a mile along the wall, shifted back into himself.
Eleven seconds. Twelve seconds
.

Petrus hunkered down behind the wall and counted steadily. Not slow. Not fast. Just steady. He marked each minute with a pebble. The pebbles began to pile up. The wind couldn’t reach him behind the wall, but the stones were icy against his back and the dirt cold beneath his bare feet. The chill seemed to seep inside him.

He was almost relieved when his curse shadow darkened.

Petrus quickly counted the pebbles. Nineteen. And fifty three seconds. Close enough to twenty minutes.

For accuracy’s sake, he should do that again.
But my balls will freeze off
.

Petrus jogged along the wall to the second section he’d marked. Less than a minute after he’d got there, his curse shadow darkened again. “One second. Two seconds.” He changed into a hawk, flew to the last marker, landed. After two minutes of shivering, he gathered a handful of pebbles, laid them in a line, and changed into a wolf.

He lay in the lee of the wall, counting in his head. Not fast. Not slow. Just steady. When each minute passed, he pushed a pebble out of the line with his paw. At sixteen minutes, Petrus changed back into himself. The air, the stones, the dirt, were colder than he remembered. Seventeen minutes. Eighteen minutes. Nineteen.

At twenty minutes and six seconds, his curse shadow darkened. “Thank the All-Mother,” he said aloud. His feet were numb, his teeth chattering, his shivers convulsive.

N
INETEEN MINUTES FIFTY-THREE
the first time, twenty minutes and six seconds the second. Call it twenty minutes. Twenty minutes to cover an eighth of a mile...