Bound (Bound Trilogy) (41 page)

Forests passed under me, bare branches and pines, small lakes and ponds, swamps and towns, grasslands, hills, like a miniature version of my own country.

The sun was setting behind me when a city appeared beyond a high, grassy hill, surrounded by a low wall that appeared to be more for definition than for defense. In a trick of the light the buildings seemed to shine, bright and clean. Green-copper roofs contrasted with red and white stone walls, and the cobblestone streets flowed in a rough pattern of concentric circles near the center of town, breaking formation as they spread toward the ocean on one side and the hills on the other.

I settled in an old oak tree next to the outer edge of the wall to wait for morning.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Aren

D
awn lit the city. Horse-drawn carts entered by the gates nearest me, and their occupants set up booths in a street market that quickly filled with customers, many of them laughing as they bartered with the vendors. I wondered whether life here was always so pleasant. It wasn’t unlike the life of people in Luid. Not my life, of course, but I’d seen it. Not at all what I’d expected from people who were supposed to be so different from my own.

The largest building visible from my perch was wide and white, with a tall clock tower rising from one end. The governor’s home and offices, if I recalled correctly. Not Ernis Albion’s home, though. If this had truly been a smaller version of Tyrea, he would have ruled, and I would have found Rowan there. Albion had never taken that office, though no one could have stopped him if he’d wanted to. It was one of many things my father had never understood. Power was a game to him, and anyone who refused to play wasn’t to be trusted.

I flew around the outside of the city walls, past a busy and well-guarded harbor and several more gates, over farms and a smaller village that sat apart from the city proper. I caught sight of a building that looked like a hospital, and a school with children rushing to the doors as a young woman rang an over-sized bell to call them to class, but nothing that I could identify as the home of the island’s most powerful sorcerer.

A flash of light-colored hair caught my eye as I passed by a small gate, and I dropped closer to investigate. There was no doubt, even from a distance, that this was the man who had taken Rowan from me on the bridge. Even had I not been able to recognize his features, the haughty tilt of his chin would have given him away. He attached a full burlap sack to the back of his horse’s saddle, mounted, and rode west on the road out of the city.

I followed, staying well back and out of sight. He turned north and continued toward the shore until he passed through the iron gates of a well-kept property at the end of the road. He stopped to close the gates behind him, then disappeared around the back of a red-brick house, larger than any I’d seen in the city.

I kept to the cover of the trees, gliding just over their tops, and made my way around to the back. I settled into an orange-leafed elm with a wooden bench encircling the base. The position gave me an excellent view of the property, and the leaves would shelter me from the wind.

Their lack of security troubled me. There should have been something to keep intruders away, some warning of approaching danger, even if most people wouldn’t recognize me as such. Perhaps they didn’t usually need such precautions here, but I was proof that that could change very quickly. I began to worry that I’d made a terrible mistake, that this Albion wasn’t as powerful as everyone thought he was. Elegant and well-kept as this place was, it was hardly extraordinary.

The sounds of mid-day meal preparation coming from a door below me were nothing special, though the odors that wafted up reminded me of how long it had been since I’d eaten.

The young woman who walked toward the whitewashed barn didn’t see me. Neither did the middle-aged woman who went to the low-walled vegetable garden and picked slugs off of the plants, tossing them to a small flock of brown hens that followed her up and down the rows.

The next hours were among the most tedious of my life as I waited for some hint that I’d come to the right place. I saw no sign of Rowan, heard no one speak of her. Every time the door opened I hoped it was Rowan coming out, or someone carrying her clothes out to the wash-line, or a few people discussing a new addition to the household, but there was nothing. Around mid-afternoon an older man appeared. He looked like the descriptions I’d heard of Ernis Albion. He was tall and slim, with short, graying hair and a neatly trimmed beard, wearing glasses that someone as powerful as him shouldn’t have needed.  He passed near, spoke quietly to a pair of young girls who were returning from a horseback ride in the woods, and returned to the house without so much as looking up.

This is wrong
, I thought again.
He should know by now.

The older woman was back in the garden, and Albion seemed to be following her instructions as they picked vegetables.

Where are their servants?
I shifted on my branch, lifting my feet and stretching my stiff toes. The woman started toward a bench inside the garden, but Albion gestured toward the bench beneath my tree. I froze.

“I just thought we might get out of the wind for a few minutes,” he said as he eased himself down onto the bench.

“Whatever pleases you.” The woman sat and began snapping the ends off of beans.

“How’s our patient today?” he asked, and took a handful of beans to work on.

The woman gave him a sidelong glance. “No change. I thought Bernard would have told you.”

“I suppose he must have. Perhaps I’m becoming forgetful in my old age.”

She picked up a gardening glove from between them and slapped his arm with it. “Not if I can help it. Maybe I should put you on the regimen she’s on, eh?” She sighed. “Not that it’s doing much good so far.”

That would make her Albion’s wife, Emalda.

Albion patted her knee. “Give it time. I have complete faith in you.” He looked upward and spent a minute studying the back of the building. “Have you thought about moving her to this side? The morning sun might do her some good. I believe there’s a guest room available.” I followed his gaze to one of the small balconies that jutted out from the building at regular intervals on the second and third levels.

“Hmm,” Emalda said, not looking up. “If you think it would be better, I’ll have Marie put fresh linens on while supper’s cooking, and we’ll move the girl after. It’ll free the infirmary up for students, and she’ll be closer to my rooms that way. Yes, that will do nicely. Excellent plan.” They sat in silence as they finished their work, then stood together to go back to the house. Emalda stopped and looked up at the window. “Ern?”

“Hmm?”

“How long will we keep her? She’s certainly no trouble, but how long do we keep trying?”

He took her arm. “I don’t know.” He turned back and looked straight up at me. My heart jumped. “I suppose we’ll just wait, and pray that something happens to change the situation.” He turned away before Emalda saw him looking at me, and they went into the kitchen.

I waited for my feathers to lie flat and my heart to slow, then stretched my wings and flew toward the forest. I passed over the trees and came to the coast, where a white lighthouse perched precariously at the top of a steep cliff. A fat brown rabbit sat near the base. I killed and ate it. I doubted I’d find a better meal any time soon.

If Albion knew what I was, surely he knew
who
I was. He didn’t seem eager to be rid of me, though, or alarmed at my presence. Perhaps he was so confident in his own power that he wasn’t concerned. His attitude toward Rowan seemed appropriate. She was getting help. But apparently they couldn’t cure her.

What to do, then? I had to see her. Perhaps then I would know better.

He had been very clear about where and when she was to be moved, and it would make for an effective trap if that was his intention. I told myself that I’d need to carefully weigh the risks of going back, but I already knew what I was going to do.

#

The sounds of clanking dishes and animated conversation flowed from the kitchen windows when I returned to the house. Something broke, and several young voices laughed. I searched for a different hiding place, but the other trees were all too far from the house. I settled back into the elm on a high branch that reached toward the balcony, nearly touching it, but I stayed well back, hidden.

A tall window swung open with a soft creak.

“She’ll need fresh air, Ernis,” said Emalda, leaning out over the tiny balcony and breathing deeply. “We should leave this open, unless it gets too cold. Bernard, get some more quilts from downstairs, will you?”

The blond man passed close to the window a few minutes later and spread blankets over a lump in the bed, which was mostly hidden in shadows.

Don’t you touch her
. I supposed I should be grateful to him for bringing Rowan here safely and for leading me back to his home, but it was all I could do to keep myself from flying in through the window and ripping his eyes out.

I shook my head to clear my thoughts. This was so unlike me as an eagle.

Albion came to the window, and looked past me at something in the fields. He smiled to himself, with an expression I didn’t understand. I found reading emotions difficult when I wasn’t human. It didn’t look like a dangerous smile, but I had no idea what the man was thinking.

A clinking noise drifted from the room, metal striking glass. When I edged along the branch to get closer to the window I smelled peppermint and a few other herbs. I risked moving closer to the window to try to see Rowan, but the angle was all wrong. I shuffled back toward the trunk and dug my claws into the branch so I wouldn’t soar through the open window to her.
Patience
, I told myself.
They’ll have to leave some time.
The door opened again, then closed, and finally the room was silent.

I waited and listened for a few more minutes. I heard voices and sensed presences in other parts of the house, but not in that room. I pushed off, landing on the wide stone railing on the balcony. My wings made too much noise as I flapped to catch my balance, but no one came to the window.

And there she was. Not in trouble, certainly. She looked clean and comfortable, resting under several warm quilts that lay flat over her body, pulled up to her shoulders. It meant she wasn’t moving at all. Any time I’d seen her sleeping before, the blankets had ended up twisted around her legs and the bed sheets creased from her tossing and turning. I couldn’t see her face, hidden as it was in the shadows. I had to get closer.

She didn’t stir when I flapped into the room, or when the bed’s footboard creaked as I settled onto it.

“So,” said a voice behind me.

My head snapped around. Ernis Albion rested in a chair in the corner of the room closest to the window.

“What are we going to do about this?”

Chapter Thirty-Five

Aren

M
y talons scratched the hard wood of the bed as I turned to face him.

Albion made no sudden movements, did not speak. My skin prickled, fluffing my feathers, and I lifted my wings slightly. I had no real idea what he was capable of, or what he was thinking. He had been waiting for me, and I’d let my need to see Rowan make me careless. I deserved whatever I got for it.

His hand twitched, and I spread my wings farther to the sides, ready to fly out the window, or straight at him if I had to. That strange smile came to him again and he moved his hand more slowly, lifting a tea cup from the table beside him.

“Calm down, boy,” he said. “I think I know why you’re here, and I’m not going to hurt you for it.” He took a sip from the cup and grimaced. “I thought I might try what my wife has been giving to your friend, to see if it might wake me up a little. Probably a good thing she can’t taste this.” He set the cup down and stood slowly, keeping his arms spread and his hands open, non-threatening. I settled my wings, but every muscle in my body remained tense, ready to fly or to fight.

Albion moved toward the bed, moving in a wide arc around the end where I perched. He took a handful of Rowan’s hair and let it fall through his fingers. “Was it like this before? I don’t imagine it would have been easy for her to hide this at home.”

I hopped onto the mattress and side-stepped into the shadows at the head of the bed. I narrowed my eyes, and moved closer again. The strange tint I’d seen in her hair on the bridge hadn’t been an illusion. What I saw now was a complex color built from shades my human eyes would never pick up. To them, it would all be an unnatural, deep red. I shook my head from side to side.

Albion walked back to his chair and sat again. I stayed where I was, but never let him out of my sight. He reached for his tea again, then seemed to decide against it and folded his hands in his lap. “I’m curious about what caused her current condition. It seems Bernard didn’t get many details from you when you met.”

I shrugged as well as I could.

“So you don’t speak in animal form.” It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t try to answer. “I don’t, either. I need to ask you some questions that might help me decide what to do here, but I suppose you’ll need to change first. Will you need clothes?”

I nodded.

“I’ll find you something suitable, and see if I can keep everyone else from disturbing us for a while. I won’t be lying if I say I’m working on something to help her, will I?”

When he was gone, I used one foot to pull the blankets down a little and rested my head on Rowan’s chest just above her heart. She felt colder than she had the last time I touched her, but other than that, her hair, and the thin white nightgown she now wore, nothing seemed to have changed.

Albion returned and set a pile of clothes on the bed. Pants, a belt, a shirt. He also brought a plate of sandwiches. When he left again I changed and dressed quickly, and examined Rowan’s hair. Definitely a magical change. A minor thing compared to the rest of her troubles, but I wondered what she’d think of that when she woke. My human eyes picked up things I hadn’t noticed before. Hollows under her eyes, the paleness of her skin, the shine of whatever Emalda had put on her lips to keep them from drying out. These people were doing what they could for her, but I doubted Rowan could stay like this for much longer. I brushed my fingers over one oddly-colored eyebrow. She didn’t move. Her face was a perfect mask.