Angst (Book 4) (27 page)

6

Magdel hunched forward and clutched the reins with her right
hand. With her left, she desperately clung to Giorge’s limp arms as they
dangled over her shoulders. Her son’s chest pressed heavily against her back as
she fought to keep him from sliding off the saddle. It was difficult. She
wasn’t an experienced rider and didn’t know how to steer the horse very well.
Fortunately, she didn’t have to; it was running along with the herd without any
guidance from her at all. That let her focus on keeping Giorge and herself in
the saddle, and the long years of meticulous balance exercises she had
undergone as a child made that seem deceptively easy.
I should tell the
patrol to stop
, she thought as Giorge shifted suddenly to her right, almost
toppling both of them from the horse.
But I can’t do that to Giorgie! They
would ask too many questions.

Giorgie said he took The Tiger’s Eye
, she thought,
not really comprehending what it meant.
He said something made him do it.
Giorge began to slip to the left, and she automatically adjusted her posture to
bring him back the other way.
The curse isn’t over, is it? Symptata lied!
That didn’t surprise her, but it did make it more difficult to deal with the
situation.
Why did Giorgie open that damned box?

But she knew the answer. She had been consumed by the curse
long before it had fastened its grip on Giorge. It had been a harrowing
experience before she had succumbed to it, and it had started when she had
found the first box. She had thought she was prepared for it, but she hadn’t
been. She had fought so hard against opening it, but the curse had reached out
and forced her fingers to pick the lock on that box. It had puzzled her at the
time, but only because her fingers seemed to know how to pick it when she
didn’t. But she had kept her head and studied the movements with fascination.

It wasn’t Giorgie’s fault,
she thought with grim
determination.
I have to help him. But how?

She couldn’t tell the patrol about it; they wouldn’t
understand the curse. All they would care about was that Giorge had made the
volcanoes erupt. They would arrest him—or worse. If only Embril had come back
with him! She understood magic. She would understand how the curse had made him
do it. But Embril hadn’t come back. Giorge said that she had become a horse and
was running after Darby. Magdel frowned. That couldn’t be true, could it?
Embril a horse? But Lieutenant Jarhad had accepted it as if it were true, so
perhaps it was. But Magdel didn’t believe it. Darby hadn’t taken The Tiger’s
Eye; Giorge had. So why would Darby run? Why would Embril follow after him if
he wasn’t running? No. Giorge had done something to them. She frowned and
slumped forward to distribute Giorge’s weight a little more evenly over her
back.
What have you done, Giorgie?
She wondered.
Embril was kind to
us!

But it
wasn’t
Giorge. It was the curse. It had made
him take The Tiger’s Eye, and it had made him do—

Do what? There was no way for Magdel to know. She hadn’t
been there, and Giorge wasn’t going to tell her. He
couldn’t
tell her.
The curse would see to that. She frowned. But he had told her he had taken The
Tiger’s Eye after he came to, hadn’t he? Maybe he would tell her what else he
had done if she asked him about it? But he was unconscious again, and she
couldn’t ask him. How long would he be out this time? What was causing it? Was
it the curse? Or something else?

She almost called out for them to stop so she could find out
what was wrong with Giorge, but she didn’t. There wasn’t anything they could do
for him, anyway. All they did the first time was grumble about losing time and
wonder how long it would take to get going again. Oh, they had looked for a
head wound but when they didn’t find any, it left them stymied. “Our healer is
away,” Lieutenant Jarhad had admitted. “If this were a battle injury, I could
tend to it. But it isn’t.”
No, it is the curse causing it, and I have to
find a way to end the blasted thing.

Yes,
she thought.
I have to end the curse for
Giorgie. How can I do that?
Several minutes passed as she concentrated on
staying in the saddle while the horses slowed to navigate around an overgrown
section of the road. When the road cleared, they sped up again, and she had an
idea.
Giorgie put the skull together. I have to take it apart again.
She
would have stopped then, but decided it would be better to wait until they
stopped to rest for the night. She needed privacy when she opened the box, and
the patrol didn’t need to know what she was doing. They
couldn’t
know
what she was doing. If they saw the gems in the skull…

She continued to think about what she would do until they
finally stopped next to a stream to give the horses a chance to drink and rest.
Lieutenant Jarhad brought his horse up next to her and reached out to pull
Giorge upright. He held him that way and asked, “How long has he been out?”

Magdel stretched her back and said, “Since shortly after we
started out.”

He nodded and released Giorge, who flopped forward against
her again. Then he turned aside and said, “Kaleb, carry Giorge with you the
rest of the way.”

Kaleb was a fierce-looking young man with a tangled mass of
greasy auburn hair and walnut-sized hazel eyes that always seemed to be
expecting something to jump out of the trees at him. Maybe something had, once;
it would explain the thin scar near his ear and the crimped way he held his
arm. He rode over next to her and reached across with both arms to drag Giorge
over to his horse. He scooted back in the saddle and draped Giorge over it in
front of him, as if he were a sack of flour. It didn’t look comfortable, but
Giorge wasn’t aware of it, was he?

Magdel scooted back in the saddle and waited for the patrol
to continue on. They rode for a few more hours before setting up camp for a
short night’s rest, and by then she had a plan. She asked for a tent of their own
so that she could tend to Giorge, and then asked them to bring her his pack. It
was mostly filled with what Giorge had taken with him when he and Embril had
gone after Darby, but Symptata’s box had to be in it. Where else would Giorge
have put it? Inside the box was The Viper’s Skull, and that was what she was
after.

She waited until she was sure Lieutenant Jarhad wasn’t going
to come back to check on them, and then she put the pack on the cot near
Giorge’s feet. She untied the flap and lifted it—and then let the flap slip
from her fingertips. The Viper’s Eyes were staring out at her from the Skull,
and they sparkled with an inner green gleam. They seemed to be mocking her,
laughing at her, but that didn’t prevent her from taking the Skull out of the pack
and setting it between Giorge’s feet.
Why did Giorgie take the Skull out of
the box?
she wondered as she reached for one of those insidious diamonds.
That’s
why the curse isn’t dead.
She tugged on the diamond, but it didn’t budge.
She tried to pry it out of its settings with her poniard, as she had done with
other gems, but it still didn’t budge. She tried to remove The Viper’s Breath
and Fangs, but they were too securely held, just like they had been in
Symptata’s sarcophagus. She frowned.
What if it isn’t because Giorgie took
it out of the box? What if it’s because he replaced the stones in the Skull?
How did that verse go?

She closed her eyes and mouthed the words:

There is one chance—

and only one—

To lift this burden

and be undone;

When the Viper’s Breath,

the Viper’s Fangs,

and the Viper’s Eyes,

are found again

and once more merged

with the Viper’s Skull,

The curse will end;

the quest fulfilled.

The Viper’s Skull was whole again, wasn’t it? Why hadn’t the
curse ended? She frowned. Had Giorge been undone? No, that wasn’t it; there was
another verse. It had been one of the stanzas on Symptata’s sarcophagus:

The curse is lifted; the curse is gone;

Your life is yours to live again;

But here forever you shall be,

until in death, you join me.

Something reached into the pit of her stomach and squeezed.
What if Symptata didn’t lie? Giorge had said he had died, hadn’t he? Could it
be possible that
Symptata
was the one who had taken The Tiger’s Eye?
Were they somehow joined? The curse…

Magdel shook her head. There was only one thing she could do
to break the hold the Skull had on Giorge. She had to put it back in the box.
Giorge wouldn’t have thrown the box away, so it should still be in his pack.
She rummaged through it until she found the box resting on the bottom. She
pulled it out and set it on the cot beside Giorge’s hip. She tried to open it,
but the lid didn’t move. Giorge had locked it. She tried prying it open with
one of her poniards and tried to snap the lock with the blade’s tip, but
nothing happened. She bent down to study the inside of the lock and shook her
head. It was the same kind of complex lock the box she had found had had. She
couldn’t pick that one until the curse took over, and she was sure the curse
wasn’t going to help her this time. Could she pick it on her own? Would the
curse impede her efforts if she tried?

She leaned back and reached for the picks she had hidden in
the lining of her belt. When the curse had opened the box, it had used two of
them. One was straight, and the other was a double-curved one that was tricky
to maneuver. She bent to the task, thrusting and parrying as if she were in
mortal combat with a mouse. That’s what she had thought it was like when the
curse had opened the box she had found, and that’s how she went about it this
time.

It didn’t work the first time—or the second. She didn’t give
up, though, and nearly an hour later, the lock finally fell prey to a twisted
parry meant to disarm her opponent. She carefully pressed the lever to the
side, and the box opened—but it wasn’t empty, like she had expected. It held
the largest ruby she had ever seen. If she wasn’t seeing it now, she wouldn’t
have believed a ruby could grow to that size. She reached for it—and quickly
pulled her fingers back. It radiated an intense heat—but her fingertips hadn’t
been burned. She frowned and moved the tip of her index finger toward it. The
heat was strong but wasn’t causing her skin to blister like it should have
done. Even when her fingertip nestled up against it, there was no pain, only a
strong sensation of power—and something else. She didn’t know what it was, but
there was
something
there. She was certain of it. The nape of her neck
felt like it did when she knew someone was approaching the shadow where she had
concealed herself. She slowly, carefully turned around—but no one was there.
The
feeling
was there, but her heightened senses told her there wasn’t
anyone close to the tent. What was causing it?

She turned back to The Tiger’s Eye—that had to be what it
was—and wondered what she should do. She couldn’t leave the Skull out of the
box because the curse was controlling Giorge and the only way she could think
of to break its control was to put the Skull away. But she couldn’t let
Lieutenant Jarhad find out Giorge had taken The Tiger’s Eye, either, and he was
bound to look in the pack eventually. It was the patrol’s pack, after all, and
the only reason they hadn’t already reclaimed it was because they had been too
busy riding for anyone to realize it. She couldn’t conceal it on herself
anymore than she could the Skull; they were too bulky for that to work for
long. So where could she put them?

She couldn’t put them in any of the men’s packs because they
frequently opened them to get things out. She could put them in the supply
packs, but that was risky; someone might notice the bulges and wonder what they
were, and she didn’t know which ones would be used first. That was the problem
with all the hiding places, wasn’t it? The patrol was highly mobile, and the
gear they had served that purpose. Everything was either unpacked frequently or
inspected each night and morning. She hadn’t seen even one pack left unopened
while she had been with them—except for Embril’s chest.

She frowned. No one dared go near Embril’s chest when it was
on the horses, and when they stopped for the night, it was one of the first
things they put in Lieutenant Jarhad’s tent. It was there, now….

Magdel removed The Tiger’s Eye from the box and set it next
to Giorge. Then she put The Viper’s Skull in the box—it fit neatly in its
cushioned housing—and closed the lid. She half-expected Giorge to sit up
abruptly, turn to her, and ask her what she was doing, but nothing happened. He
lay just as still as he had been lying since Kaleb put him on the cot.
Give
it time,
she thought as she used her picks to lock the box again. She
glanced at Giorge, but there still was no change.
Perhaps in the morning?
she hoped.

She reached for her belt and popped loose one of the
decorative studs. She pulled on it, and a long, thin, black stream of cloth
emerged from the pouch it had concealed. When it was free, she shook it. It was
a small bag made from very durable silk, and she slid The Tiger’s Eye into it.
It was a snug fit, but when she hooked the drawstrings of the bag to the loop
under her arm and draped her cloak around it, it was almost impossible to see
it in the dark. Then she lifted the cursed box and held it close to her belly.
She drew the cloak tight around her, more to avoid questions than to hide the
box, and stepped out of the tent. Lieutenant Jarhad’s tent was dark when she
reached it, and she thought about sneaking in and putting them in Embril’s
chest while he slept. It would be difficult….

“Lieutenant Jarhad?” she called through the tent flap, “May
I speak to you?”