Flight From Blithmore (38 page)

All
that was left was the guard with the shoulder injury—the man who had intended
to rob Maggie of her most precious possession. He lay on the ground, clutching
his chest and moaning in pain. Ruther heard a wet, wheezing sound each time the
man breathed. That was all he heard. Everything else blurred into the
background.

Ruther
advanced on him with a face of stone. His mind still hadn’t recovered from the
soul-piercing sounds of Maggie and Isabelle’s screams. His sword was red and
dripping to the hilt, but he did not bother with it. What happened when Ruther
reached that last guard was never mentioned again. When he finished, and Maggie
was safe, Ruther knelt down on the ground and wept as he cleaned his sword on
the grass.

Forty-Four
-

Picking Up the Pieces

Maggie’s
body quaked,
and she was unable to clear her mind of the terror that
had gripped her while the soldiers held her down. Ruther held her to his chest
and she clung to him. The grass around her was wet with blood. She noticed more
spots of red on her dress and arms. It was so quiet now; the yelling had
stopped, and all the guards had left or been carried away.

When
the trembling lessened, Ruther helped her to her feet.

“They
took Isabelle and Henry,” he said as they walked toward the carriage. In his
voice, she heard the remnants of his rage.

Maggie
breathed deeply, trying to gather her wits about her. Tears dripped down her
face, and she wiped them away repeatedly. Her embarrassment at running from the
battle burned in her chest. She had always seen herself as a woman of strength
and courage, but not anymore.

“Oh
no,” Ruther exclaimed as he ran in front of Maggie over the edge of the hill
and out of her sight.

Maggie
followed as quickly as she could, but her legs were sore and tired. Her arms
were no different, but when she saw James’ body at the bottom of the hill,
dusty and bruised, her fatigue vanished. And when she saw Henry’s body only
yards away, an eerie numbness crept into her limbs.

“Henry!”
she cried as she shook him. “Henry! Answer me, Henry!”

Henry
did not answer her. His eyes had a glazed appearance and his chest rose and
fell only faintly.

“He’s
badly hurt,” Ruther said. “Look at his arm.”

Blood
drenched the shoulder of his shirt and ran down the left side of his face.

“What
do we do?” Maggie asked.

“We
need to get out of here as soon as possible,” Ruther said. “They may come
back.”

“Why?”

“Because
they didn’t get Henry like they thought and they’ll realize it soon enough.”

“I
don’t understand.”

“Neither
do I. I’ll put James and Henry into the carriage if you’ll round up the
horses.”

“See
to their wounds,” Maggie said. Her voice had more force than she intended, but
Ruther didn’t seem to care.

She
found two horses grazing in the valley: Quicken and Sissy. She walked them back
to the carriage and kept searching. The others took more time. The spare horse
had gone over the south hill, and Ghost was staked to the ground, west of the
tree. When she’d gathered them all, she watched from behind as Ruther tended to
James and Henry’s wounds.

“I—I
thought they had taken him,” she said with a shaky voice. “I heard them
yelling—they said they got him.”

“They
thought they did,” Ruther said and gave her a meaningful look. “Where’s
Brandol?”

No
sooner had he asked the question then she understood his expression.

Her
hand flew to her mouth. “No!”

“Yes,
and if that’s the case, we’ve got to move. It won’t take long for Brandol to
correct their mistake.”

Maggie
helped Ruther wash Henry’s wound. The cut was deep, but not so bad that it
couldn’t be cleaned. In one of her packs she kept fresh bandages and healing
herbs. Ruther crushed several of these and mixed them in cold water to form a
mush that he spread in the wound. The source of the bleeding on Henry’s head
turned out to be from no more than a long, shallow cut. Henry was lucky. Once
she knew he would be alright, her thoughts went back to Brandol and Isabelle.

“How
are we going to rescue them?” she asked.

“What
is this?” Ruther asked, holding up a brown pouch.

“That’s
Henry’s,” she answered. “Where did you find it?”

“Tucked
inside his shirt,” he said as he fumbled with it to get it open. “How come I’ve
never seen this before?”

“Don’t
open it!” she said, startling Ruther.

He
stared at the pouch inquisitively. She took it from him and put it back in
Henry’s shirt. “I’ve only seen it once before—I found it while playing under my
father’s bed. When I showed it to my father, he gave me the worst whipping of
my life. Then he told me that it belonged to Henry, and I had no business
looking in it.”

Ruther
didn’t press the subject. Once they were satisfied with Henry and James’
conditions, they closed the carriage door. He seemed determined not to look
directly at Maggie more than necessary, and she knew why.

“Alright,
then,” he said, staring to the east and then back west. “We’re leaving. Leaving
Blithmore.”

“Wait,”
Maggie said, “we can’t leave. How are we going to help them?”

Ruther
pointed northwest and asked, “Help them?” He shook his head. “
Them
?”
When he turned back to face her, he still could not meet her gaze. “We’re not.”

“We
can’t abandon them,” she argued.

“Do
you have a brilliant plan to share with me? Do you know where they are or how
we’re going to leave your brother and James to sneak into a camp full of guards
and free them? Do you know how to do all that?”

Maggie
gasped for air, fighting away her emotions. “I don’t know. I hoped you would.”

“It’s
impossible, Maggie. If it weren’t, I’d do something. We can’t help them today,
but we can help James and Henry. We can care for them, and together, the four
of us, we can do something. We can figure something out once we’re out of this
country and safe in Pappalon.”

Maggie
nodded and wiped her eyes. She wished he would look at her, but she was also
glad he didn’t.

“Sorry
for yelling at you,” he added as he climbed onto Ghost’s saddle. When he was
seated, he said, “No, I take that back. I’m not sorry. Why didn’t you believe
me, Maggie? You’ve known me more than ten years, and you thought I’d steal from
you? Steal your necklace?”

Maggie
had no answer. Now it was she who could not meet Ruther’s eyes. “Do—do you have
everything ready?”

“Yes.”

“Then
we should go.”

They
rode in silence toward the pass. Ruther and Ghost were ahead of her, probably
so he would not have to see her. She tried to imagine the day when she might
return to Blithmore, but it didn’t seem possible. Right now, it seemed she
would be forever traveling from city to city, town to town, and country to
country. She would become an eternal wanderer. The wind died down to a light
breeze. Normally, she enjoyed its gentle coolness on her face, but nothing
comforted her now.

Maggie
had been a girl of about six when Ruther showed up on the Vestin’s doorstep
with his uncle begging Mr. Vestin to take him on as an apprentice. Like any
girl would have done when a gangly, red-haired boy with a southern accent moved
in, she took a strong liking to him. Whenever Ruther’s manners and bad habits
set Mrs. Vestin on edge, she aired her frustrations to Maggie.

“That
Ruther has a terrible influence on Henry, and if it weren’t for simple charity
. . . ” she’d complain. Other times she would say, “Maggie, you deserve the
best gentleman out there. If he’s anything like Ruther, you run the other way.”

For
a while, her mother’s nagging only made Maggie fancy Ruther more, but time took
its toll. Maggie grew to see her mother’s reasoning and eventually despised
everything about Ruther; yet even Mrs. Vestin would have been appalled at how
Maggie had cast her lot with James in the vote. She’d been absolutely certain
Ruther had taken the gold, the same way she was certain he wasn’t fit to be
Henry’s friend. She thought she had seen the last of him. Instead he had
returned to save her life. No wonder Ruther didn’t want to look at her. She
didn’t want to look at herself, either.

They
traveled the last miles to the Iron Forest without conversation. It had been
weeks since Maggie thought of the legends Wilson had told them. Too many other
incidents had shoved any fears of the pass out of her mind. Now, as they
reached the lone path cutting through the dark and eerie forest canopy, her
memory recalled them quite vividly.

The
entrance to the Iron Pass was not inviting. It reminded her of the eye of a
needle. Low branches from tall trees hung over the path. It was darker and
smaller than she had imagined. The dirt road was so narrow that no more than
four men could walk side by side on it. The sparse grass of the valley floor
ended in a perfect line where the dirt path began winding its way through the
woods. Maggie thought this odd since the path was so rarely traveled.

“Don’t
draw your weapons and don’t leave the trail,” she said, repeating the advice
Wilson had given them. For all she knew, this could be the end of their
journey. They might not ever live to see the other side of the forest. A whole
army had disappeared inside the confines of this mysterious forest, yet she and
Ruther were going to plunge in without hesitation. She envied Henry and James,
but at the same time, she wished they were well enough to ride with them and
protect her.

Ruther
stopped at where the grass ended and dirt began. “Are you ready?” When he spoke
to her, he didn’t look back. His voice carried none of its friendly
familiarity.

Maggie
was not ready. She was scared. She was ashamed. She was lonely.

Ruther
turned around when she didn’t answer. By then she had lost all control of her
emotions. Her body convulsed and she hid her tears behind her hands. She felt
strangely justified doing this in front of Ruther because he’d done it in front
of her not more than an hour ago as he’d cleaned his sword. It had been an
intimate moment and now it was gone, replaced with bitterness and ill memories.

“Are
you ready?” he repeated more gently.

Maggie
wiped her eyes and nose again. Her skin was sore from all the wiping she’d been
doing. “No.” Her voice came out husky and hoarse. “I’m not.”

“Why
not?”

Her
eyes met his for the first time since the vote on the hill. He looked away and
then back again.

“Why
not, Maggie?”

She
wanted no sympathy, so she forced the tears to stop. Ruther continued to watch
as she composed herself and sat up in the driver’s seat. They needed bravery in
the Iron Pass, not tears. It had to be now or she would never do it.

“Ruther,
I am—I am so very sorry. Will you please try to forgive me?”

Forty-Five
-

Torn Asunder

An
Elite Guard
carried Isabelle away from the battlefield by slinging her
over the back of his horse where she watched the hills pass by from a view much
too close to the ground. As they rode, she kicked, punched, bit, and squirmed
to free herself from his hands. She used all the strength she had, but no
matter how desperately she fought, the grip of the guard held strong.

When
they arrived at the camp of the Elite Guards, several men rushed forward to
secure her. These men handled her as though she were a giant pail of golden
water that might spill at any moment. The instant her feet touched the ground,
she broke through their grip and ran. She made it perhaps five steps when
massive hands grabbed around her arms and pulled her back.

She
screamed and fought, showing no restraint. Her throat burned, but she didn’t
care. She knew if her cries reached Henry, he would come and rescue her. It was
impossible these men could drag her away from everyone she knew and loved. She
knew this as well as she knew her own name. These men would not make it out of
the country with her, so she screamed anything that came to mind, and the
guards let her.

They
dragged her by her arms until they came to a cage. When she saw it, she
protested, “No! Don’t put me in there! I won’t go in a cage!”

The
men put her in anyway. As they did so, she realized how gently they handled
her, as if they feared hurting her. She redoubled her efforts against them. If
they were afraid to hurt her, it would not matter if she hurt them. She pulled
on their hair, gouged their skin, and did anything else she could to make it
difficult for them to close the cage door. Finally it shut with her inside,
though it had taken more time than the Guards wanted. She continued to scream,
ignoring the fiery agony building in her throat.

Guards
inserted two large poles through the bars of the cage so it could be carried by
four men.

“No,
you won’t!” Isabelle shouted at them. Then she laid on her back and kicked at
the poles, spinning them so the men lost their grips. Several times they
dropped the cage. The bars of the cage slammed into her, bruising her, but she
blocked the pain. All she had to do was delay them. The men were frustrated
that they could do nothing to retaliate. Isabelle took no satisfaction in this;
she only let their anger fuel her.

After
one particularly nasty fall, she caught a glance at another cage being carried
in similar fashion. She could not see who was in it, but she already knew. They
had Henry. The Emperor wanted her and him both. He had promised Henry he would
kill him . . . or worse. She shouted his name again and again, but Henry didn’t
respond. How badly had they hurt him?

“Let
us go!” she screamed at the guards. “We haven’t done anything to anyone. I
won’t be a slave. The Emperor wants me for a slave. Let us go!”

Her
protests fell on deaf ears. At the west end of the camp, three carriages waited.
These three were of a different design than the carriage Henry had built. They
were light, built for swift traveling on roads, not paths. One carriage was
open at the rear and waiting for her.

Isabelle
supplicated them that they not do this, not steal her life away. She pleaded
with them to think of their own daughters and wives. “What would you do if I
were one of them?” she asked, but the doors shut on her and the carriage set
off.

She
continued to shout, though each time she spoke, her voice sounded more like an
old woman’s screech. Over and over again she begged the driver to release her,
entreating upon every sympathy of a man’s heart she could think of. Finally,
after an unknown amount of time and pain, her voice failed and her tears fell
silently.

Darkness
fell but the carriage did not stop until late in the night. Isabelle refused to
let her body rest. She could tell by the sounds when the horses and drivers
changed. The doors in the carriage’s rear opened briefly only to let in a sack
of water for her. Isabelle picked it up, examined it with her hands for
anything useful, and then dashed it against the bars of the cage.

Her
first night in the carriage was torture. The air was cold and her enclosure too
small. Besides being unable to stand or stretch out, her body ached for food,
water, and sleep, but she denied herself all of these things. When the sun
rose, she tried her voice again, but found she was still unable to scream
properly. This did not stop her from trying. Again they brought her water and
food, and again she threw it back at them. While they cleaned the messes she
made, she begged the guards to release her.

Her
thoughts constantly went to Henry. The times the carriage stopped and the doors
opened, she saw an identical carriage behind hers. Sometimes she called his
name, but he never answered. Her silent prayers for help turned to him,
beseeching the Almighty to spare and heal Henry so they could escape together.

Isabelle’s
behavior remained the same. She rejected food, took little water, slept rarely,
and screamed whenever she found strength. On the third day of this, the doors
flung open, poles were inserted into her cage, and she was carried out with the
same care already shown. Isabelle cried out, but her voice was nothing more than
a frog’s croak, and her body was too weak to fight back.

She
did not know where in Blithmore she was, but they took her into a large tent
and set her down on the floor. A man in a decorated Neverak uniform waited for
her. He appeared neither friendly nor antagonizing. He unlocked her cage and
opened her door. Isabelle had the sense to know that she could try to escape,
but her limbs had no strength. The guards removed her from the cage and sat her
on a chair opposite this man. It sapped most of her energy just to sit upright
and stare.

“You
are excused,” he told the other soldiers. He was an older man. His brown and
gray hair was cut short and his face was remarkably smooth. None of this
impressed Isabelle. His deep, wood-brown eyes looked down on her. After the
guards left the tent, the man in charge turned to her and said, “You are free
to leave. Go.”

He
watched as she tried to stand, only to fall on her knees in front of him.

“You
can’t escape because you haven’t eaten,” he said. “If you don’t start eating,
you will die. What good will that do you?”

Isabelle
barely shook her head and began to cry weakly.

“You
would die rather than serve the Emperor. I understand.”

“Help
me, please,” she whispered as loud as she could. Her eyes looked straight into
the brown eyes of this somehow important man. For a moment he seemed affected
by her pathetic state and sincere plea, but the sympathy quickly vanished,
replaced with resolve.

“I
can’t do that, Isabelle.” He spoke tenderly, but with no smile on his face. “I
can only ask you to eat. Take care of yourself so that Henry does not come to
harm.”

“The
Emperor . . . ” she tried to say, “ . . . kill him.”

The
man closed his eyes. “That may well be, but as long as you live, you have
hope.”

“Why?”
she asked.

“No
more discussion now, Isabelle.” The man clapped his hands, and two soldiers
outside the tent brought in a tray of food that smelled and looked exquisite.
The man watched her with an emotionless expression. “Eat.”

Isabelle
swallowed a few bites and soon felt sick. She touched nothing else, but the man
appeared satisfied. “From now on you will be allowed to walk around every time
we stop the carriage. If you try to escape you will lose that privilege for the
remainder of the day. If you do not eat your food, Henry will be lashed ten
times for every meal you skip and twenty for every water skin you break.”

Tears
threatened to fall again, though Isabelle did not want to cry any more in front
of this man. His cruelty was the worst. He knew her situation perfectly, even
sympathized with her, but did nothing to help. She was placed again in the cage
with a new water skin and taken back into the carriage. Then the journey
continued.

For
Henry’s well being, she ate. Every day, always at different times, she tried to
escape. She never got more than a few feet except for one time when the guard
lost his grip on her arm and she stumbled over to Henry’s cage. They tried to
pull her away from it, but she gripped the bars tightly and shouted his name.
To her great shock, the man who looked up at her wasn’t Henry. It was Brandol.
The rest of her words strangled in her throat and she stared at him. The guards
did not share the same reverence for Brandol’s comfort as hers. His face was a
bruised, swollen mess, covered in filth and dried blood. He sat up when she
came to his cage, his fingers brushed hers, but he said nothing.

Brandol
had betrayed Isabelle and her friends at the pass. She recognized the writ of
passage when he pulled it from his shirt and ran, waving it around like a flag
of surrender. During the battle, she hadn’t had time to absorb the impact of
the shock, nor had she thought much about it since. Looking at him now filled
her with so much hate that she was ashamed of herself.

How
had they mistaken Brandol for Henry? Hadn’t Brandol told them who he was?
Whatever the answers were, seeing Brandol caged made her feel stronger. Henry
was free, probably somewhere on her trail.

Brandol
looked back at her with empty, blackened eyes and an expression that erased her
hate and replaced it with pity. The exchange between them lasted only seconds,
and then the guards ripped her away and locked her back in her own cage. After
seeing Brandol, however, her imprisonment did not seem as terrible. Her heart
was lighter and her discomfort decreased. She stopped trying to escape and in
her prayers, she asked God to help Henry find her and to ease Brandol’s
suffering.

Over
the next days, as the carriages rolled north, Isabelle let her mind free her of
the bars surrounding her. Instead of being locked in a small cell, she was back
in Henry’s house being tutored by Mrs. Vestin alongside Henry, James, Maggie,
and Ruther—in that small schoolroom where they learned to read and write.
Isabelle had written Henry her first note using words she’d been taught by his
mother:

Dear
Henry, you smell bad. Take a bath.

Her
mind took her to the hill near the pond where she had laid watching Henry and
Ruther skip rocks. She loved seeing Henry’s face grow serious as he tried to
beat Ruther’s distances. She saw the same expression on him as he learned the
craft of his father at an astonishingly young age, becoming the youngest master
of any trade in Richterton.

Her
mind took her home to the days when a mysterious admirer began putting fresh
flowers on her doorstep each morning. Sometimes she found an accompanying note:

Isabelle,
someone loves you and hopes to see you today.

The
notes never bore a signature, but she had been certain they were from Henry.
However, he tricked her by sending Ruther to put them on her doorstep, and it
was Ruther she’d caught. Ruther tried to hide the truth from her, but she knew
better. She ran over to Henry’s house early that morning, only weeks before his
father and mother passed away from illness. She stormed into the kitchen as if
she was madder than a hive of bees and said, “Henry Vestin, if you don’t kiss
me right now, I’m—”

Before
she finished her sentence, Henry did just that. Her lips tingled and her breath
caught as he kissed her so fiercely they became one soul. At that moment her
life was perfect. She knew then that if her existence was to have its greatest
meaning, Henry Vestin must be included in it.

These
memories carried her far beyond the confines of the bumpy carriage and back to
Henry. Not physically, but in every other way. As they traveled north, the air
grew colder, and the Guards gave Isabelle blankets and warmer clothes, but it
was the thought of being reunited with Henry, someday, somehow, that got her
through that awful journey in the cage inside which she could neither stretch
nor stand.

Then
one day the journey ended. The carriage came to a stop, as it had hundreds of
times before, only this time she heard voices giving orders from a dozen
directions all at once. The poles were brought out and the doors thrown open,
and before Isabelle had really woken from her sleep, they lifted her and placed
her on a horse-drawn cart.

She
had crossed into the borders of Neverak at least a week ago. Reckoning time was
no longer easy. It had not been the grand change she expected. She saw more
pine trees and less colorful vegetation. She heard only voices in the Neverak
accent. The style of homes and dresses were different, but Neverak still had
grass and water and blue sky. The sun still rose and fell.

Then
she saw Neverak Palace. It reminded her more of a towering cathedral than any
castle. Demonic and angelic gargoyles decorated the exterior at almost every
corner. The largest bells she had ever seen hung in the bell tower at least two
hundred feet tall. It had a wide moat surrounding it, though certainly
man-made. She had always heard of castles with moats, but never seen one. With
a thundering boom that startled the horses, the drawbridge crashed down on the
road, giving the guards access to the palace. As Isabelle’s cage drew nearer she
noticed the stone of the palace was odd, too. It appeared brilliant white from
a distance, but as she drew closer, the color dimmed until it was coal black.