Trial by Fire (35 page)

“You’ll kill her.” Gideon strode forward and offered his handkerchief. “At least put them in silk.”

“She’s managed this long,” Thomas said indifferently.

“Carrick, put them down.” Gideon allowed a hint of malice to enter his voice as he said the Outlander’s name. Really, it was beyond the pale that a drub was allowed to fondle a witch’s willstones, let alone a drub who had gone behind his back and played up to his father. He’d given Carrick too much power by making him a captain. But he’d deal with Carrick later. “Father, a witch’s bond with her stone is much deeper than the average person’s. This could injure her to the point where she’s of no use to you.”

His father nodded quickly, not wanting their prize too damaged. Carrick balked. After a moment, he reluctantly slid all three stones into the silk handkerchief Gideon had proffered. He obviously didn’t want to give up the feeling of strength coursing through him at the touch of a great witch’s stones. Gideon knew the feeling. Even through the silk, he could feel the thrum of power reaching into him. It was intoxicating.

The girl curled up into a ball. She tucked her knees under her chin, her ribs still shuddering with sobs. The crying stopped, but she began to whimper. Gideon opened his hand and saw the three stones.

“We’ll have to move her. Get her out of the city. Lillian can never know about this,” his father was saying fearfully, but Gideon was only half listening. “She can’t stay here. I won’t risk getting caught imprisoning a witch.”

“But where? There aren’t many prisons that can hold her,” Carrick said.

“I know where we can take her,” Gideon replied testily. Lillian had just reminded him of the perfect place not six months ago, asking if it was still of use. She hadn’t explained why she needed it, but when he had checked it out for her, he’d found that it was sound. “It’s old and very strong.”

“Is she going to die?” Thomas asked.

“No,” Gideon replied. He forced himself to hold only the edges of the silk so the stones swung free of his touch. He felt the lack of her essence immediately and understood something about Rowan that he hadn’t before. “We need to discuss this, father.”

“I should think so,” Danforth said with a satisfied smile. “The Council will have to believe us now.”

“No,” Gideon interrupted. “Don’t tell them yet. Why should they benefit when they were too spineless to back us in the first place?”

“We’re going to need support, son,” Danforth said.

“Yes.” Gideon stared at the girl, his mind turning over rapidly. “But
after
we figure out how to control her for ourselves.” He looked at Carrick. “Do you know how to spirit walk at all?”

The Outlander looked away and shook his head. “But I know of one who does. The shaman.”

“Find him,” Gideon ordered. “In the meantime, I’ll work with her.”

“And how do you intend to do that?” Thomas asked. “With her stones she could crush us, and without her stones she’s like this,” he said, gesturing to the girl’s prone body.

Gideon looked down at the stones in his hand again. Golden, rose, and smoke. Something clicked in his head. He had no idea what it meant that Lily had every color of willstone possible, but he knew one thing. The fact that there was more than one made him the luckiest man in the world.

“Yes, but there are three of them, father. Three willstones,” Gideon said excitedly. The idea was still solidifying in his thoughts. He removed the huge smoke stone from his palm and held it in his other hand. He looked at his father and found understanding and approval. “Divide and conquer.”

Lily dreamed of the Woven. They were chasing her through the forest. Their bodies were a jumble of fur and barely stitched-together skin. Raw bones showed through their sores, and their eyes and tongues were rotting in their heads. One of them looked like it was half human, half boar—caught in the middle of a painful transformation. The wereboar had yellowed tusks growing out of a human mouth and called Lily by name as it chased her.

Rowan told her to climb, and Lily tried to dig her fingers into the walls of the stone cabin, but she kept slipping. She broke her fingernails down to the quick as she tried to scrabble up the impossibly high wall.

The Woven pulled her down by her ankles. They didn’t wait to kill her before they started eating her. Somewhere, Rowan was screaming her name, but he was too far away, and she was in too much pain to reach him.

Juliet hurried through the market. She was sure now that the young man with the dark hair and light eyes was following her. He had the muscular, lean frame of a fighter, and the enormous willstone at the base of his throat was crawling with the bright filaments of power. He was definitely a witch’s mechanic—a powerful mechanic to a powerful witch.

She turned down a quiet alley and glanced around the corner anxiously, waiting for him to pass her by, but when she looked again, she couldn’t find him anywhere.

“Juliet,” said a deep voice behind her. A familiar voice, she realized, even as she jumped. Juliet spun around, and her pursuer dropped his face glamour. Juliet relaxed when she saw that it was Rowan. “I need your help,” he said desperately.

He looked awful. His eyes were sunken in shadow, his clothes were rumpled, and he hadn’t shaved or combed his hair.

“What happened?” Juliet breathed.

“They’ve taken Lily. Please. I can’t hear her.” He was nearly frantic. “I think they’ve taken her willstones away.”

Juliet’s skin crawled at the thought. “What can I do?”

“She could hear you even without willstones. You’re sisters,” Rowan said. He took Juliet’s hands in his, begging her. “I know your loyalty is still with Lillian…”

“I’ll help,” Juliet said, cutting him off. It hurt her to even think of it, but she didn’t know who she was loyal to anymore. “What do you need me to do?”

Rowan’s eyes closed briefly with relief. “Thank you, Juliet,” he whispered. “Come with me.”

Juliet followed Rowan, knowing full well that every step she took with him brought her farther away from Lillian.

Lily? Where are you?

Lily heard Juliet’s voice in her head, waking her. She opened her eyes. It was so dark she may as well have kept them closed. Her head pounded and she felt dizzy. She tried to reach out to Rowan, Tristan, and Caleb but all she felt was an intense, stabbing pain when she tried to mindspeak with them. A seasick feeling gripped her, as if she were pitching around in the bottom of a ship. The pain had lessened somewhat, but it was still all she could do to keep from throwing up.

“Are you awake, girl?” a man’s voice asked.

“Where are you taking me?” Lily rasped. Her stomach heaved but nothing came out. She was completely empty inside.

“We’re not going anywhere, girl. Nowheres at all, at least not on this earth,” the man said. His voice rumbled with a mix of sympathy and amusement. “It’s the vertigo of being separated from your willstones that makes you feel like you’re being tossed about on the ocean.”

Lily put her hand under her and felt straw, and under that, rough stone. “Well, since there’s never been a boat made out of rocks, I’ll believe you,” she said, even though she could feel herself rising and falling on giant swells.

“Careful, girl. Logical thought like that could get you hanged,” the old man said, chuckling.

Lily sat up and tried to steady herself with her hands. If she could just fix her eyes on something, it might help. “Is there any light?”

“The only light they allow down here is magelight so as not to give you energy. This is a witch’s prison. An old, forgotten one.”

“And are you a witch?” Lily asked, swallowing down the bile burning her throat.

The old man laughed. “Not a lot of male witches running around, and most of them that are witches don’t rightly know it,” he replied, amused by something that Lily didn’t understand. She’d never even heard of a male witch before. “No, girl, I’m something they got no prison for, even if she did stick me in here.”

Lily lay back down, her eyes closing. She fought her mounting confusion and asked the most relevant question. “And what are you?”

“I’m a shaman, Lily,” he said. All traces of humor left his voice. He sounded serious and steady. “I’m going to teach you how to spirit walk.”

“So this is where you’ve been,” Lily mumbled as sickness overwhelmed her. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Sorry I’m late,” he said with genuine regret. “I was detained.”

She knew she should care that she’d finally found the shaman, but all Lily could feel was spinning blackness pulling her down and all she could think of was her sister. If she listened very hard, she could almost hear Juliet’s voice in her head.

Lily? Where are you? I’m trying to feel where you are, but there’s too much granite blocking the way.

Help me, Juliet. I’m in the dark.

Lily came to and saw a glimmer of magelight. She lifted her head—her neck complaining of a vicious kink—and quickly glanced around.

She was in a small room, no more than two paces in any direction. Three walls were solid stone and the forth, all bars. There was a raised pallet with a thin mattress for her to sleep on behind her, but Lily awoke to find herself on the floor. She recalled being placed on the bed, but she must have rolled out of it when the vertigo became too much to bear. In one corner was a bucket; in the other a bottle of water. Lily memorized the placement of everything in her cell because she knew she would be given little chance to see it again.

Beyond the bars was an alcove, and then a hallway. Lily saw other cells surrounding the alcove, but they were empty. The shaman’s cell must be directly next to hers, out of her line of sight.

The magelight came from the hallway. At the foot of the hallway was a small desk. Lily crawled closer to the bars of her cell and peered at the source of light. A figure was bent over the desk. The middle drawer was open, and the man was looking inside it with a rapt expression. She couldn’t see what was in the drawer, but she could feel his eyes on its contents.

A shiver of fear went through her. It was Carrick, staring at her willstones.

“Please don’t,” Lily begged softly. “Please don’t touch them, Carrick.”

He startled and straightened, as if he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t. Then he relaxed, as if he remembered that he was the one in charge. He brightened his magelight until he could see Lily clearly, and she could see him. His hawkish face held traces of Rowan, but the resemblance wasn’t a comfort. The chill in his dark, vaguely familiar eyes only made her more terrified of him.

“But you let my half brother touch them. Am I so different from him?” he asked.

“Rowan’s never touched my willstones. He wouldn’t hurt me like that.”

Carrick sneered at her. “But I would?”

Lily wanted to answer him. She wanted to say, “obviously,” but she didn’t dare. The drawer was still open and she was still his prisoner. She shut her mouth.

“What did my half brother show you about me?”

“One memory—a fragment of a memory, really. You were skinny and bruised.”

“Did he pity me?”

“He felt bad for you.”

Carrick’s eyes flashed. “Then why didn’t he help me?” he said through clenched teeth.

“Because he was just a little boy.” Lily shrugged, like her answer was obvious.

“
Later
,” Carrick barked. Lily jumped, sensing his anger unhinging him. His eyes had a wild look to them. “I mean later, when he was set up at the Citadel and his life was nice and plush. Did he ever think to find me or help me?”

“I don’t know. Maybe,” she pleaded. “He only had one memory of you. Carrick, he didn’t know you.”

“But he knew what I was going through. What was happening to me.” He broke off for a moment to calm himself. “Everyone knew.”

“He was too little. He didn’t understand.” Lily threw her hands up, losing patience. “
I
don’t understand.”

“But you defend him.” Carrick stared down at her willstones. “You defend him because you love him. And you love him because he’s special. Because he got taken to the Citadel when he was seven while I got taken to hell.”

His hand hovered over Lily’s stones. She pulled herself up the bars, tears already streaming down her face at the thought of him touching her three little hearts.

“Have you ever heard the saying, ‘Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’?” Carrick asked. Lily nodded desperately, hoping for any way to relate to him, to reach out to his humanity. “It’s a lie,” he said quietly. “There are things that a person can live through that make him weaker. Things that can leave you less than you were before. Maybe you’re about to experience one of them.”

Suffering descended on Lily like a claw from the sky.

Lily? Where are you?

I don’t know, Juliet. They haven’t said. This is all I have.

Lily replayed the brief images she’d seen—the cell, the alcove, and the desk.

Darn it. There are oubliettes like that everywhere. Can you be more specific?

Gideon and Carrick. That’s all I’ve got, Juliet. Find them and you’ll find me.

Easier said than done, Lily. They’ve disappeared. No one’s seen them in the city for days. Are you okay?

I’m in pain.

“Hey, girl. Lily girl. Are you dead?”

Lily uncurled herself from the ball she’d rolled into. Her nerves were still twitching with pain, but at least the worst was over. After she’d stopped screaming, Carrick had put her willstones back in the drawer and left. As a parting shot, he’d asked her whether or not she felt stronger, but she’d been in too much agony to engage in his repartee. She wanted to kill him. She counted that as a good thing. It meant she was still alive and kicking.

“Not yet,” she croaked in answer, unclenching her cramped fists.