The Crown of Stones: Magic-Price (35 page)

“I can’t sleep.”

Reaching up she kissed right between my shoulder blades. Her warm breath drifted over my bare skin. “I didn’t say anything about sleep.”

Hands coming around, she grabbed my wrists. Her grip was strangely tight.

“You think this is really necessary?” Jarryd said.

Malaq sounded surprised. “Five seconds ago you were ready to throttle him.”

“It’s not his fault.”

“He stabbed you in the leg, Kane. Next time it might be somewhere a little more vital. I’m tying his hands and that’s it.”

“Let’s go back to bed.” Still holding my wrists, she pulled me across the room.

“You don’t understand. I need to wake up.”

“You are awake, silly.”

I looked at her. The morning light hit her face. Her dark skin seemed almost transparent. “No. I’m not.”

THIRTY THREE

T
he world was flying by in shades of brown. Flailing hands grabbed at me as I slid, caught in a hail of stone and dirt, and a tangle of arms and legs that weren’t all mine.

I got a brief, inverted glimpse of the vertical drop I was plummeting down, then—
wham
! Something hard and flat stole my breath, and my momentum.

Coughing and groaning, I picked my face up. I squinted though the dust, trying to make out who was beside me. “Jarryd?”

“What the hell was that?” His boots kicked pebbles in my face as he hauled himself unsteadily to his feet. “Are you trying to break both our necks?” he shouted, “or just mine? You goddamn, stupid….”

Jarryd went on. I didn’t interrupt. I’d fallen halfway down the side of a mountain. I was winded and choking, my throat was dry, my body sore. I hurt too bad to squabble.

Eventually, Jarryd paused in his tirade to wipe a residue of blood and dirt from his lips. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered, throwing an irritated glance up at the rise. Our empty horses were at the edge of it. Alongside them, peering down, was Malaq; no doubt glad to be monitoring our ensuring battle from a safe distance. “At least you’re awake,” Jarryd said, raking a hand over his tousled braid, ruffling the dust. “Maybe we can actually reach Kabri now…if you don’t kill me before we get there.”

“Gods, but you’ve grown surly.”

His patience stripped, Jarryd lunged at me. “And just how the fuck else do you expect me to be, Ian? With you pale as death and raving like a mad man.” Backing off, he looked me over. Something he saw made the tempest in his eyes die down and distress settled into the dirty lines on his face. “Do you remember anything?”

“Some.” I stared at my bound hands. My right wrist bore a splint and a bandage that extended near up to my elbow. The stones Sienn gave me were wrapped around it, but my braces with the knives were gone, as well as both my swords. “Malaq was right to tie me,” I said then, my eyes moving to the dressing on Jarryd’s right leg. Having slipped out of position in our fall, the stitching had come loose from a recent stab wound and dirt clung to the torn, wet edges. “I didn’t know it was you,” I said.

“It’s fine.” Jarryd gave his usual half-shrug. Taking the dagger from his boot, he bent down and cut me free. As soon as the rope snapped my splinted wrist began to ache.

Rubbing at it gingerly, I scanned the surrounding area. “How far have we come?” Tilting my head back, I looked at the sky. It was clear and bright, but I remembered rain.

I remembered…

I drew in a sharp breath. Surreal images and sounds assaulted me. Random illusions surfaced, piling in, one on top of the other.

Her cries, the beatings, Draken’s proud face; I recalled it all, swiftly and vividly.

How she felt under me, alive and warm—next to me, bloody and screaming.

Frantically, I whispered, “Not real, not real, not real,” struggling to convince myself that I hadn’t been at the mercy of Draken’s men. I hadn’t been in the girl’s arms.

Dreams. They’re just dreams.

But the conjured nightmares only pushed deeper, blending and overlapping. Repeating. Penetrating. Until pain and nausea doubled me over and whatever was in my stomach, came violently up and out onto the ground. Thankfully, it wasn’t much.

Breathless, shivering despite the warm sun, I wiped my mouth on my sleeve. I looked down at my trembling hands and expected them to be red
with blood. They were brown with dirt.
Idiot,
I scolded myself.
It’s a spell. It’s not real.

She doesn’t love me.

Because I let her die. I always let her die.

“Ian!” Jarryd called. “Are you hearing me?”

Confused, I looked at him through a curtain of sweat and dust-coated hair. He looked back, just as puzzled, and we watched each other like that for a moment, with me shaking, and him shaking his head like he had no idea what to do with me.

Malaq interrupted. “Are you two going to stay down there all day?” he shouted.

“A rope might speed things along,” Jarryd yelled back. He sat down next to me. “You’ve been unconscious for twelve days.”

“Twelve?” I swallowed. It felt longer. “There was a Langorian. A physician?”

Jarryd nodded. “We watched him the whole time. I think he did all he could.” Jarryd slid his knife away. “Malaq was going to let him go, but the bastard came at me.” He reached down and pulled me up. As Jarryd turned away to survey the ridge above us, I ventured across the oblong, rocky shelf that broke our fall and looked over the side. It was an alarmingly long way down.

Inching back, I glanced up. And then back down. I studied the path of our descent and quickly realized that we should have been dead. Somehow, miraculously, we landed in the one and only place on the entire mountainside that would stop our fall. If we’d gone over the cliff at a different angle or a few steps further along the trail, we would have missed the shelf entirely and kept going, all the way to the rocky ravine at the bottom.

I turned around. I felt a deep need to apologize. I’d nearly killed us. But Jarryd wasn’t on the slab anymore. He was on the slope, attempting to climb back up with his bare hands. “You sure that’s a good idea?” I asked him.

“I swallowed half the mountain, Ian. I need a drink and I’m not waiting for Malaq to braid a new rope…or whatever the hell he’s doing up there.” Catching hold of a gnarled root sticking out of the slanted ground, Jarryd yanked on it to make sure it was secure. Sinking the toe of his boot into the dirt, he used the root to pull himself up.

It was a taxing, but efficient climb. Jarryd moved seamlessly from one root or vine to the next, and while I didn’t like it, he was making good progress.

When he was well over halfway to the top, he called down to me. “You aren’t going to tell me what happened, are you? Malaq said you wouldn’t. He also said it shouldn’t bother me if you didn’t.” Jarryd looked back at me over his shoulder. “It bothers me,” he said, and the vine in his grip snapped in half. He teetered backwards. Boots sliding on the loose pebbles, Jarryd quickly threw himself forward and hugged the cliff face. “It’s okay.” He blew out a relieved breath. “I got it.”

“You should come down. Wait for the rope. It doesn’t look stable.”

“No, I can do this. There isn’t a cliff in Kabri I haven’t climbed at least once.” Jarryd shifted position. He reached for another vine. As soon as he touched it, the ground beneath him gave way. He struggled to regain his footing, to clutch onto something like before, but there was suddenly no traction. The roots and vines kept breaking. The terrain kept disintegrating at his touch. Everything Jarryd had used for leverage on the way up was refusing to bear his weight on the way down.

“Hold on!” Rushing forward, I started scampering up the slope. Just as fast, the loose soil carried me back down. I tried again, but it was useless. The entire side of the rise was crumbling and it was taking Jarryd with it.

He slid faster, grabbing in vain at the hill.

Nearer, and I realized he wasn’t even in line with the slab anymore. If I didn’t stop him, the ravine would.

Jarryd tumbled closer. He sped past me. And I jumped.

THIRTY FOUR

T
hrowing myself across the slab, I landed hard enough to hear it crack and caught the cuff of his sleeve in my right hand. My grip was sure. I had him.

But the mountain was coming down on top of me, pelting my legs and back. I was sprawled out on the rim of the narrow, jutting rock, and Jarryd’s body was dangling over empty air, dragging me slowly and steadily across the sandy surface. I needed something to offset the draw of his weight. Or we were both going over.

Eyeing the approaching edge, I extended myself back across the shelf, groping for a niche or a ridge. But I had nothing to grab onto except the other side of the shelf beneath me, and nothing to grab it with but my broken arm.

I stretched. The splint restricted me.

Straining harder, clenching my teeth on the pain, I managed to reach my target. I wrapped my fingers around the edge. I gripped as hard as I could, and we stopped—with an abrupt jolt that sent agony reverberating from my fingertips to my collarbone. Waves rolled up and down my injured arm, and into my hand.

And my grip on the ledge began to slacken.

“No…damn it. Jarryd!” I cried, trying to make him stir. But he just hung silently in my grasp while the spasms worsened.

My nerves were jumping and seizing. I couldn’t stop my fingers from opening.

I let go and we started sliding.

Grinding my jaw down to nothing, forcing my throbbing hand to bend and grab on, I dug into the rock. Fire consumed my entire arm as I clutched the side of the ledge with everything I had. It still wasn’t enough. My hand was torn. I couldn’t get any more out of my damaged wrist, and I didn’t have it in me to pull Jarryd up one handed.

I was done.

“Malaq!” I shouted. There was no response. “Goddamn it!’

Straining, I pulled at Jarryd again and the heavy cloth of his tunic began to rip. I heaved harder and the rip widened. My grip weakened.

There was a way. One conscious roll of the dice I didn’t want to make.

It’ll work. It has to.

The skin on my palm shredded further. Jarryd’s lifeless body pulled on me.

I did it before
, I thought.
And Malaq lived.

I stared down at Jarryd. “So will you.” Determined, I took in the aura of the citrine and wished for a boost of strength. With the same intensity, I clung to the obsidian inside me and commanded it to protect Jarryd. I ordered the spell to leave him alone, to gather what it needed from the trees, the animals in the brush or the birds in the sky. I prayed for it to feed on anything but his life.

A burst of pleasure, then a shot of energy, coursed through me. Strength bled down through my wounded arm into my fingers. All at once my grip held and we came to another jerking halt that hurt like hell.

Bearing down, able to clutch the side of the overhang with purpose now, I started hauling myself back from the edge as I pulled Jarryd up. Stupidly, I hadn’t thought to dull the pain. So by the time I got half of him on the shelf with me, my shoulders and back muscles were raging. My left arm felt like it was being pulled off. My right was completely wrecked. At some point, the splint had snapped and red was spreading out across the bandage.

Ignoring it, I burrowed my fingers into him. “Jarryd, swing your other arm up.” Getting no reply, I got angry. “Jarryd, you son of a bitch, you’re not dead. You’re not fucking dead, do you hear me?” I yanked harder. “If you don’t wake up, I swear by the gods that I’m going to throw you down in that fucking ravine and tell Neela you ran off with some fat, Kaelish, dung hauler’s one-eyed daughter!”

After a moment of silence, he moaned. Tilting his head back, Jarryd struggled to open his heavy lids. “Dung hauler?” He mustered a faint, breathless chuckle. “That’s the best you can do?”

“Fool,” I grunted. “Thinking you can climb the side of a mountain like a goat.”

Wetting his dusty lips, he threw his other arm up, grabbed on and started crawling over me. He reached the slab and flopped down on his back with a breathless, “Thanks.”

I peeled my hand off the shelf and rolled over. “Don’t mention it.”

A pile of rope hit the ledge between us. “Sorry for the delay,” Malaq hollered. “I had to lash all three of ours together for it to reach!”

“Will it hold?” I shouted back.

“Of course it’ll hold,” he answered crisply. “I tied them, didn’t I?”

Jarryd grunted. “Smug bastard.”

I took hold of the rope and yanked. “It’s good. You first.”

Moving like a man three times his age, Jarryd got up. He tied the end around his waist, braced his legs against the slope, and letting Malaq’s horse do most of the work, walked his way back up to the top.

When the rope landed next to me a second time, I stared at it. I couldn’t climb. I was shaking too badly from a debilitating assortment of relief, fatigue, pain, and a deep persistent panic. I was grateful that Jarryd was alive. But the fact that he was, that my spell didn’t drain him, was just another example of how strange and unpredictable my magic had become. I didn’t know what was happening to me.

Jem said I wouldn’t until it was too late. He said the shard’s aura had merged with me.

If I took it off, our connection and whatever it was doing to me, might stop.

Only, taking it off was exactly what Jem wanted me to do.

Disheartened, I leaned back against the slope. I stared across the expanse at the heavily forested mountains on the other side and tried to quell my uneasy mind. Blazing afternoon sun beat down on the adjacent green summit. The treetops were bathed in a layer of shimmering light.

I took a slow, deep breath and watched a flock of birds circle the peak, dancing in the wind.

It was a stunning view. But for the large section of trees that had gone black.

No clouds were in the sky to make shadows. I couldn’t see any rocky outcroppings or caves. There was simply a wide swath of dark trees directly across from my position.
Dark or dead,
I wondered.