Red Hood's Revenge (38 page)

“Zestan promised you freedom,” Danielle guessed. “That’s how she controls you. Night has passed, but you remain.”

“She has given us the freedom of the moon,” the hunter said. “To carry its light. Soon we will once again ride when and where we choose.”

“Where you choose?” Danielle repeated. “You ride where Zestan sends you, doing her bidding. Instead of being bound to the darkness, you would be slaves to a fairy master, hunting her prey.”

He lowered his bow. “You offer us a better bargain? You wouldn’t be the first to beg for your lives.”

“Not to beg. To give you a choice.” Danielle stepped closer, trying to reach past the fairy curse and speak to whatever trace of mortality remained. “You weren’t always like this. You used to be free to roam the world. Wild and unfettered, serving no one. Now you run and fight and die at Zestan’s whim.”

“If you get the chance, ask where they came from,” Snow said eagerly. “Scholars have spent centuries trying to trace the origin of the Wild Hunt, but nobody knows for certain. If you could learn which country they—”

Danielle glared, and she fell silent. “You wear the shapes you had in life. Some part of you remembers that life.”

“Those days are past.” The huntsman nocked an arrow, each movement slow and deliberate. “The man I used to be is long forgotten from this world. All that remains is the consequence of his foolish pride.”

“That’s not true,” Danielle said. “The pride also remains. I see it when I look into your eyes. You could regain that pride again. Run free, answering to neither man nor fairy. Tall and free and proud.”

“You have courage, though your words cannot change what we are,” the hunter said. “Perhaps Zestan will allow you to join us.”

Danielle blinked. “I’m sorry, but what makes you think I was talking to you?”

The hunter hesitated, confusion crinkling his brow.

Remember and be free!
Danielle stepped forward, reaching toward the horse and silently urging with all of her strength.
Go!

The horse turned and leaped away, nearly spilling the rider. Horse and hunter alike vanished into flaming shadow. The rest of the Hunt followed, disappearing into the moonlight.

Snow whistled. “Zestan is going to be so mad at you.”

Danielle wiped her palms on her clothes. Her heart drummed in her chest. “Is the Wild Hunt known for holding grudges?”

“I’ll strengthen the wards when we get home,” Snow promised.

“We still have to get past the ghosts.”

Snow was shaking her head. “They’re gone too.”

“How?” Danielle spun.

Snow pointed toward the walls. “I’m not sure. I can feel a handful scattered throughout the palace, but I think Zestan sent the rest into the desert. She might have noticed our reinforcements gathering.”

In which case everyone Muhazil and Lakhim sent to help would be riding into an ambush. Danielle grabbed Snow’s hand and pulled her through the garden.

 

Roudette was dying.

If not for the magic of her cape, she might have already succumbed, but there were limits even to the cape’s strength. Blood stuck her shirt to her skin. The arrow in her side scraped her ribs with every breath. The sounds of her body filled her ears: the pounding of her blood, the gritted gasps, the muffled cries of pain. Zestan and Naghesh were distant presences, their voices rising and falling like the waves of the ocean.

This whole place stank of death and fairies. Roudette could smell them all. Zestan’s ghost slaves. The Wild Hunt, little better than ghosts themselves. And Roudette herself, soon to follow her grandmother.

Roudette clenched her jaws as Naghesh rolled her over. The troll’s thick fingers pushed Roudette’s hair out of her face, tracing the lines of her face. “ ’Twas a potent curse that created the Wild Hunt. It will take time to prepare her.”

“We may not have as much time as we expected.” Zestan’s wings snapped out, startling Roudette into alertness. Zestan circled Talia. “Your little army is not unexpected. I sent my ghosts to patrol the desert the moment Naghesh captured you. But you found a way to sneak your friends into the palace, haven’t you? Who among them has the strength to banish my hunters? Was it the witch? She must be powerful indeed.”

“How?” Roudette croaked. No magic known to man could turn away the Wild Hunt, and the hunters feared nothing, not even death. Roudette had spent her life fighting the fey, striking the Wild Hunt when they crossed paths. Never had she accomplished anything save to kill the occasional hunter. Yet if Zestan was telling the truth, Snow and Danielle had sent the entire Hunt away. Roudette had underestimated them.

“Prepare a fairy ring,” said Zestan. “I don’t know what they’ve done, but we may need to use Sleeping Beauty sooner than planned.”

With that the peri swept from the room, shadows peeling from the wall to cloak her in darkness. Naghesh dragged Roudette into the center of the library. She kicked an old table aside, clearing space for her fairy ring. She set her staff against the wall and picked up a book. Half the yellowed pages fell like leaves. With a touch of her finger, she set the book alight and held it as green fire enveloped the pages.

“That should work.” She dropped the book and stamped out the flames, then began collecting others, laying them out in a circle. She had only set out half of the ring when she straightened, her warty face compressing into a scowl. “Who’s there?”

Roudette spotted them at the same time as Naghesh: two lizards the color of sand, about the length of her arm, crawling along the wall.

“How kind of Zestan to send me a snack.” Naghesh reached for one, but a spark leaped from the lizard to her fingertips. She jumped back, sucking her fingers.

The lizards dropped to the ground, bodies shifting and growing. “Why do trolls always try to eat us?” Snow asked as the scales of her face melted away. “Are we really that tasty?”

Danielle drew her sword and attacked in a single motion, slicing upward and nearly catching Naghesh’s chin with her blade.

“You’re the ones, eh?” Naghesh lunged for her staff, but Danielle was faster, swinging her sword against the staff hard enough to crack the wood. A steel snowflake sank into Naghesh’s shoulder.

She grunted and pulled the snowflake loose. Dark blood dripped down her arm. “Very well, then,” she muttered.

Roudette tried to warn them, but she couldn’t form the words. Talia attacked Snow from behind, unleashing a flurry of punches too fast for Roudette to follow. Roudette doubted Snow even knew what had happened. Talia backed away, allowing Snow to slump to the ground.

“Talia, it’s us,” Danielle said.

“Magnificent, isn’t she?” Naghesh asked, stepping back to allow Talia to reach Danielle. “As close to fairy as any human has ever come.”

Danielle kept her sword pointed at Talia, who circled to one side.

Roudette closed her eyes.
Grandmother give me strength.
She reached around her leg. The tip of the hunter’s arrow was sticky with Roudette’s blood. She tried to pull it free, but it refused to move. That left only one option.

She unfastened her cape and yanked it over the arrow in her side. Every movement left her dizzy with pain, but she managed to pull it around so the fur faced outward. She grabbed the edges and tugged the cape tight, trying to trigger its magic.

She reached up to draw the hood over her head, and her body began to change. She screamed as her bones ground against the wood of the hunter’s arrows.

Naghesh hauled her upright and ripped the cape away in the middle of her transformation. The pain nearly made her pass out as her body slipped back into its normal shape.

Naghesh tore the cape free, wrenching the arrow in Roudette’s side. “Zestan wanted to keep this. Me, I think we’d be better off dropping it into the deepest ocean.” She bundled the cape into a ball and tossed it aside, out of Roudette’s reach. She dropped Roudette to the ground.

Behind her, Talia had slipped past Danielle’s guard. Danielle’s sword clinked as it hit the floor. Danielle did her best to evade Talia, backing away and trying to keep tables and shelves between herself and Talia. Without her weapon, she wouldn’t last long.

Roudette clutched the arrow in her leg. She hadn’t completed the change to wolf form, but it had been enough. As her body shrank and shifted, it had bent the arrows with it. Without the wolf’s strength, they probably would have just torn through her body. Thanks to her grandmother’s gift, she had felt one of the arrows snap within her.

Roudette slid the point and shaft free. Naghesh had turned her attention back to Talia, and why not? Roudette was all but dead, and Naghesh had taken away her cape. What possible threat could she pose?

With a feral smile, Roudette slammed the broken arrow into the back of Naghesh’s knee. The troll screamed and swung a fist the size of a tree stump, but Roudette fell back, allowing the blow to pass over her head.

“Kill her!” Naghesh shouted.

Talia obeyed at once, turning away from Danielle and walking toward Roudette. Talia had picked up Danielle’s sword, but she didn’t bother to use it. In Roudette’s current state, even a crippled child could have beaten her.

Talia pressed a heel against Roudette’s throat. A good choice. A single kick would finish Roudette off, or she could just bear down, letting her weight crush Roudette’s windpipe.

Roudette saw a blur of red, and Danielle crashed into Talia, knocking them both to the ground. Danielle clung hard, wrapping Roudette’s cape around Talia’s body.

Talia’s struggles stopped. She rose slowly, one hand holding the cape in place, the other grasping Danielle’s sword.

Naghesh limped back a step. “Kill them both.”

Talia pulled the cape over her other shoulder, brushing her hand over the runes on the hem. “I watched them carry the bodies of my family onto the funeral barge,” Talia said softly. “My parents. My brothers and sister. Everyone I had ever known. Dead, because of your curse.”

“We made you what you are today.” Naghesh’s staff was cracked, but Roudette could smell the power still contained in the wood. It grew into a gold-pointed spear, which Naghesh jabbed at Talia. “We made you great. Just as we will make Arathea great under your rule, Princess. As it was meant to be.”

Talia walked forward. Naghesh jabbed her spear. Talia turned sideways and snatched the shaft. A swing of Danielle’s sword splintered the spear.

Naghesh’s eyes widened. She tried a spell, and the air rippled around Talia, but once again Roudette’s cape protected her from the troll’s magic.

Naghesh attacked again, swinging a fist the size of a club. Talia caught the blow on her forearm and rammed Danielle’s sword through Naghesh’s stomach. She tossed the troll against the wall. Her next swing cut Naghesh’s head from her body.

Roudette smiled. Naghesh had been dead the moment Talia donned the cape. With the strength of the wolf combined with Talia’s speed and grace, few things in this world could stop her.

She wondered whether her family waited for her to join them. Despite everything, a part of her wanted to cling to the lessons of her childhood. To believe that the souls of her grandmother, her parents, and her brother all lived on, that their deaths had been simply another step on their eternal journey. It would be especially good to see Jaun, to finally be able to ask his forgiveness for failing to save him.

A lifetime ago, Roudette’s grandmother had given the wolfskin to her, hoping Roudette could succeed where she herself had failed. Roudette lay back and closed her eyes. “Good hunting, Talia.”

 

The cape was heavier than Talia had expected, particularly the hood, which was lined with the flattened features of the wolf’s head.

She had felt the cape’s power the instant Danielle wrapped it around her body. Naghesh’s magic had been like the clamor of a thousand voices all crying out, filling her mind until she could hear nothing else, until only the voices were real. The cape had brought silence, silence and relief so great she could have wept.

Talia stared at the troll’s headless body. She had killed Naghesh with hardly a thought. “I could get used to this cape.”

She only wished the fight hadn’t been so quick. Naghesh deserved to suffer for what she had done.

“Are you all right?” Danielle asked.

“The cape blocked Naghesh’s magic. Thank you.” Talia turned away from Naghesh. Danielle’s face was bloody, one eye swollen. “What happened—” She frowned. “I did that to you.”

“
Naghesh
did this.” Danielle crouched over Snow, helping her to sit up. Snow didn’t appear as badly battered, but her eyes were shut. She groaned and tried to push Danielle’s hand away.

“Snow?” Talia dropped the sword and knelt beside them. “What did I do to her?”

“Not you. Snow pushed herself too hard,” Danielle said.

“Nonsense,” Snow mumbled. “I pushed just the right amount.”

“I’m sorry.” Talia scooped Snow into her arms. Her weight was nothing. “Where’s Zestan?”

“Probably summoning the Wild Hunt back to the palace.” Danielle retrieved her sword and checked the door. Though she sounded calm, Talia could smell her nervousness. Another side effect of the cape, no doubt. “I sent the Hunt away, but it won’t last long.”

“She knows about the Kha’iida.” Talia frowned, trying to remember. Everything since Naghesh took control of her body was like a dream. Or what she remembered dreams to have been like, at any rate. It had been so long. “We have to get out of this room.”

“The ghosts.” Snow’s eyes twitched, never focusing on any one point. “You have to take them from her.”

Talia stared down at her. “I’ve committed thievery plenty of times, but I’ve never stolen a ghost.”

“You can steal these.” Snow leaned her head against Talia’s shoulder. “You have to reach the Kha’iida. Warn them that Zestan knows. Wait for the proper moment, then turn the ghosts against the Wild Hunt.”