Poison Study (16 page)

  There had been no barking to alert me; it must be the other team. I had been so worried about the dogs that I had forgotten about the smaller team. Too cocky, I thought. I deserved to be caught early.

  I waited for them to order me down, but they remained quiet. Looking below, I searched the forest but couldn’t locate them. Maybe they hadn’t seen me after all. After a bit of rustling, two men emerged from the dense underbrush. They, too, wore green and brown camouflage, although their snug overalls and face paint were more professional than my glued-together ensemble.

  “Stupid idea, coming east. She’s probably at the southern border by now,” Rough Voice grumbled to his partner.

  “That’s what the dog boys figured, even though the hounds lost her scent,” said the second man.

  I smiled. I’d outsmarted the dogs. At least I had managed to accomplish that much.

  “I don’t know if I follow the logic of going east,” Rough Voice said.

  The other man sighed. “You’re not supposed to follow the logic. The Captain ordered us east; we go east. He seems to think she’ll head deeper into MD-5. Familiar territory for her.”

  “Well, what if she doesn’t come back? Another stupid idea, using the food taster,” Rough Voice complained. “She’s a criminal.”

  “That’s not our concern. That’s Valek’s problem. I’m sure if she got away he would take care of her.”

  I wondered if Valek was listening. We both knew he wouldn’t need to hunt me down; all he had to do was wait the poison out. I found the conversation helpful, especially the fact that it wasn’t common knowledge that I’d been poisoned.

  “Let’s go. We’re supposed to rendezvous with the Captain at the lake. Oh, and try to keep the noise down. You sound like a panicked moose crashing through the woods,” the smarter man chided.

  “Oh yeah. Like you could hear me over your specially trained ‘woodland-animal footsteps,’” Rough Voice countered. “It was like listening to two deer humping each other.”

  The men laughed and in a wink disappeared into the underbrush, one on each side of the path. I strained to hear them moving but couldn’t tell if they were gone. I waited until I couldn’t bear the inactivity. The men had decided my next move. The lake was to the east. Climbing through the trees, I headed south.

  As I worked my way along, an odd, creepy feeling burrowed its way into my mind. Somehow I became convinced that the men I had seen on the path were following me, hunting me. An uncontrollable urge to move fast pushed on me like a strong hand on the back of my neck, propelling me forward. When I couldn’t stand it any longer, I threw all precautions of keeping hidden and quiet aside. I dropped to the ground and bolted.

  When I burst into a small clearing in the trees, I stopped. The overpowering feeling of panic had disappeared. My sides stitched with pain. Dropping my pack, I collapsed onto the ground, gasping for breath. I cursed myself for such panicky behavior.

  “Nice outfit,” a familiar voice said. Dread and fear gave me the energy to jump to my feet.

  No one in sight. Yet. I ripped open my backpack and pulled the knife. My heart performed somersaults in my chest. I turned in slow circles as I scanned the forest, searching for the voice of death.

Chapter Fifteen

  L aughter surrounded me. “Your weapon won’t do you any good. I could easily convince you that it was your heart you want to plunge that knife into instead of mine.”

  I spotted her across the clearing. Clad in a loose, green camouflage shirt cinched tight at the waist and identical colored pants, the southern magician lounged against a tree with her arms crossed in front of her, her posture casual.

  Expecting the southern magician’s goons to attack me from the forest, I kept the knife out in front of me, turning in circles.

  “Relax,” the magician said. “We’re alone.”

  I stopped circling but retained a firm grip on my weapon. “Why should I trust you? Last time we met, you ordered me killed. Even supplied that handy little strap.” The sudden realization that she hadn’t needed her thugs at all leaped into my mind. I began reciting poison names in my head.

  The magician laughed like someone amused by a small child. “That won’t help you. The only reason reciting worked at the festival was because Valek was there.”

  She stepped closer. I waved the knife in a threatening gesture.

  “Yelena, relax. I projected into your mind to guide you here. If I wanted you dead, I would have pushed you from the trees. Accidents are less trouble than murders in Ixia. A fact you’re well aware of.”

  I ignored her jibe. “Why didn’t I have an ‘accident’ at the festival? Or at another time?”

  “I need to be close to you. It takes a lot of energy to kill someone; I’d rather use mundane methods if possible. The festival was the first time I could get close to you without Valek nearby, or so I thought.” She shook her head in frustration.

  “Why didn’t you kill Valek with your magic at the festival?” I asked. “Then I would have been easy prey.”

  “Magic doesn’t work on Valek. He’s resistant to its effects.”

  Before I could ask for more information, she hurried on. “I don’t have time to explain everything. Valek will be here soon so I’ll make this brief. Yelena, I’m here to make you an offer.”

  I remembered my last offer, to be the food taster or to be executed. “What could you possibly offer me? I have a job, color-coordinated uniforms and a boss to die for. What more could I need?”

  “Asylum in Sitia,” she said, her tone tight. “So you can learn to control and use your power.”

  “Power?” The word squeaked out of my mouth before I could stop it. “What power?”

  “Oh, come on! How could you not know? You’ve used it at least twice at the castle.”

  My mind whirled. She was talking about my survival instinct. That strange buzzing that possessed me whenever my life was in serious jeopardy. My body numbed with dread. I felt as if she had just told me I had a terminal disease.

  “I was working undercover nearby when I was overcome by your screaming, raw power. Once I was able to pinpoint the source to Commander Ambrose’s food taster, I knew a rescue effort to smuggle you south would be impossible. You’re either with Valek, or he’s been one step behind you. Even now, I’m taking an extraordinary risk. But it’s too dangerous to have a wild magician in the north. It’s amazing you lasted this long without being discovered. The only choice left was termination. A task that proved more difficult than I’d first imagined. But not impossible.”

  “And now I’m supposed to trust you? Do you think I’d meekly follow you to Sitia like a lamb to the slaughter?”

  “Yelena, if you weren’t playing fugitive, which brought you out of the castle and away from Valek, you’d be dead by now.”

  I wasn’t sure if I believed her. What would she gain by helping me? Why go to all this effort if she had the power to kill me? Something else must be motivating her.

  “You don’t believe me.” She grunted in frustration. “Okay, how about a little demonstration?” She tilted her head to the side and pressed her lips together.

  A searing, hot pain whipped through my mind like lightning. Wrapping my arms and hands around my head, I tried in vain to block the onslaught. Then a fist-size force slammed into my forehead. I jolted backward and fell to the ground. Sprawled on my back, I felt the pain disappear as fast as it had arrived. Through vision blurred with tears, I squinted at the magician. She still stood near the edge of the clearing. She hadn’t touched me, at least not physically. The weight of her mental connection felt like a wool cap encompassing my skull.

  “What the hell was that?” I demanded. “What happened to the singing?” I was dazed by her attack, the air on my body feeling as if it had liquefied, and when I moved to a sitting position the dense air swirled and lapped at my skin.

  “I sang at the festival because I was trying to be kind. This was an effort to convince you that if I wanted you dead, I wouldn’t be wasting my time talking to you now. And I certainly wouldn’t wait until you were in Sitia.” Her head cocked as if she listened to an invisible person whispering in her ear.

  “Valek has dropped all pretense of stealth. He’s traveling fast. Two men pursue him, but the men believe they’re chasing you.” She paused and her mouth settled once again into a hard line as she concentrated. “I can slow the men down, but not Valek.” She focused her faraway gaze on me. “Are you coming with me?”

  I couldn’t speak. The thought that her idea of kindness was singing someone to death had left me quite distracted. I stared at her in complete astonishment.

  “No.” I had to force the word out.

  “What?” It wasn’t the answer she’d expected. “You enjoy being the food taster?”

  “No, I don’t, but I’ll die if I go with you.”

  “You’ll die if you stay.”

  “I’ll take my chances.” I stood, brushed the dirt off my legs and retrieved my knife. The last thing I wanted to do was explain to the magician about the poison in my blood. Why give her another weapon to be used against me? But with her mental link to me, I only had to think about the Butterfly’s Dust and she knew.

  “There are antidotes,” she said.

  “Can you find one before morning?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “No. We would need more time. Our healers would need to understand where the poison is hiding. It could be in your blood, or in your muscles or anywhere, and they would need to know how it kills in order to banish it.”

  When she saw my complete lack of understanding, the magician continued, “The source of our power-what you call magic-is like a blanket surrounding the world. Our minds tap into this source, pulling a slender thread down to enhance our magical abilities, to turn them on. Every person has the latent ability to read minds and influence the physical world without touching it, but they don’t have the ability to connect with the power source.”

  She sighed, looking unhappy. “Yelena, we can’t have your wild power flaring uncontrolled. Without knowing it, you’re pulling power. Instead of a thread, you’re grabbing whole sections and bunching the power blanket around you. As you grow older you will have amassed so much power that it will explode or flame out. This flameout will not only kill you, it will warp and damage the power source itself, ripping a hole in the blanket. We can’t risk a flameout and soon you’ll be untrainable. That is why we have no choice but to terminate you before you reach that point.”

  “How long do I have?” I asked.

  “One year. Maybe a little more if you can control yourself. After that you’ll be beyond our help. And we need you, Yelena. Powerful magicians are scarce in Sitia.”

  My mind raced over my options. Her display of power had convinced me she was more of a threat than I had ever imagined and that I would be a complete idiot to trust her at all. However, if I didn’t go, she’d kill me where I stood.

  So I delayed the inevitable. “Give me a year. A year to find a permanent antidote, to find a way to escape to Sitia. A year free from worrying that you’re plotting my death.”

  She stared deep into my eyes. Her mental touch pressed harder in my mind as she searched for a sign that I might be deceiving her.

  “All right. One year. My pledge to you.” She paused.

  “Go on,” I said. “I know you want to end this meeting with some kind of threat. Maybe a dire warning? Feel free. I’m used to it. I wouldn’t know how to deal with a conversation that didn’t include one.”

  “You put on such a brave front. But I know if I took another step toward you, you’d wet your pants.”

  “With your blood.” I brandished my knife. But I couldn’t keep a straight face; the boast sounded ridiculous even to my own ears. I snickered. She laughed. The release of tension made me giddy, and soon I was laughing and crying.

  The magician then grew sober. Cocking her head again, she listened to her invisible companion. “Valek is close. I must go.”

  “Tell me one more thing.”

  “What?”

  “How did you know I’d be the fugitive? Magic?”

  “No. I have sources of information that I’m unable to reveal.”

  I nodded my understanding. Asking for details had been worth a try.

  “Be careful, Yelena,” she said, vanishing into the forest.

  I realized that I didn’t even know her name.

  “Irys,” she whispered in my mind, and then her mental touch withdrew.

  As I thought about everything she had told me, I realized I had many more questions to ask her, all more important than who had leaked information. Knowing she was gone, though, I suppressed the desire to call after her. Instead, I dropped to the ground.

  With my body shaking, I replaced my knife in the backpack. I pulled out my water bottle and took a long drink, wishing the container was filled with something stronger. Something that would burn my throat on its way down. Something to focus on besides the disjointed and lost feeling that threatened to consume me.

  I needed time to think before Valek and the two men caught up with me. Taking out the rope and grappling hook, I searched once again for a suitable tree and reentered the forest canopy. Moving south, I let the physical effort of climbing keep my body busy while I sorted through all the information the magician had given me.