World Weaver (The Devany Miller Series Book 4) (34 page)

My daughter landed hard in the sand a hundred yards away, the pirate nearby. I attempted to hook closer, but the same force that repelled me on the ship blasted me back here, too. The damned man was keeping me away from her somehow. I would have to run.

I sprinted through the sand, my calves burning. The man grabbed Bethy and then they were running too. They almost made it into the woods when I caught up to them. “Stop! Give me back my daughter!” I put a bubble around them both only to have whatever magic the man commanded shred it.

His smile was vacant. “We meet again, Devany Miller. And again, we have one of your children.” He pulled Bethy close, my daughter’s nose red, her cheeks wet, her brows drawn tight over her eyes. She wasn’t scared, I realized. She was pissed.

“Mom! Kill him!” Her voice held hysteria and anger. Her ordeal had left her feeling ruthless.

My own anger reared. “Let. Her. Go.”

“Your daughter has power. Not as much as you, no, but she will do.” Malice laced each word, but it was the lifeless cant of the man’s gaze that really freaked me out. “Will you join us, Devany Miller?”

“If you let her go and take me.” I lunged toward them and the pirate had a knife to Bethy’s throat before I got five steps.

The Rider said, “You need to turn around and walk into that sea. Then you need to swim. If you touch sand again before we’re gone, I’ll kill her and find another host. Be assured we will eat well tonight if you disobey.”

“Please. Give me my daughter back.”

He drew the knife across Bethy’s throat. A thin red line appeared.

“No! Stop. I’m going. Please.”

“Go then.”

I turned and walked away, each step a burning stab in my stomach. “I’m not abandoning you, Bethy.”

“I know, Mom. I love you.”

“I love you too.” I strained, but didn’t hear another word. I risked a glance back, but they were gone, disappeared into the woods. I took a breath and kept walking, believing everything the damned parasite had said. I walked until I hit the water and then I swam.

A few members of Zephyrinia’s crew hauled me out of the water, shivering and exhausted. I couldn’t speak. The pain was too great for that. I sat and I stared into the woods of Ketwer Island and wondered how the hell I would ever get her back.

***

Zephyrinia sailed low enough to the ground to let a dozen of her crew debark. Her Quarter Master was raving at her, but the captain ignored him. She, Mal, and a few others I recognized joined us on the beach. They bristled with weapons and each carried a pack.

“What are you doing?” My voice was husky. I cleared it, but it didn’t seem to help.

“Going with you to get your daughter back, of course. I said I would help you and I meant it.”

I shook my head. Some of the crew with her looked to be teenagers. No way would I put more people in danger.

“You might as well give in to her,” Mal said. “I tried to absolve her of any responsibility for my well-being once upon a time. I didn’t fare any better than you will now.”

“You’ll probably die,” I said. Any hope I had left had shattered on the ground at the sight of the knife at my daughter’s throat, at the thin line of blood drawn in her skin.

“I doubt that very much.” She studied me. “A shifter.”

“Yeah. You got a problem with it?”

She shook her head. “I might have once upon a time. Come. Daylight’s burning. Let’s hunt that bastard down and show him what the crew of the
Lady Free
can do with a pistol, a sword, and a bit of sailor’s magic.”

Her crew roared and then we were off.

“Why is she doing this?” I asked Krosh as we fell in behind the captain and her crew. My hand was aching again. I’d been disappointed to see that the change from bird to human had not miraculously healed me. My skin was still as black and disgusting as ever under the glove. I managed to forget about it for lengths of time, but that hadn’t made it go away either.

“Mal told me airship captains operate under a strict code of conduct. She told you she’d help you get Bethy back and she’s honor-bound to follow through.”

“We’re not going to get her back.”

He pulled me close. “We will.”

“They’re going to infect her. If they do—” I couldn’t even say the words.

He didn’t answer, because of course he he knew. “We’ll get her back,” he said again.

“You keep saying that.”

“It’s true.”

“You’re a fool. I’m a fool. They’re all fools.”

“Devany,” he said.

“What?” I snapped back.

“Call your Skriven.”

“What good will that do?”

He gave me a look that told me even he had an end to his patience and it was close.

“Right. You’re right. Hold on.” I held onto him as I walked so I wouldn’t trip and fall into a hole—my luck at work—and yanked on the threads spinning outward from my core.

Kali appeared. No Ty.

“It’s okay,” I said as the sailors reacted to the Skriven’s presence. “It’s okay.” I raised my voice to be heard over the muttering crew. “I needed more help,” I said to Zephyrinia.

Revelation was written all over Mal’s face, like he’d seen his long lost sister.

“Devany,” Kali said, looking as vicious as always. “Why do you call me?”

“I’m still hunting my daughter. The Riders have her. And it sounds like there’s a lot of them.”

She quirked a black brow. “Why should I help you?”

“Lots and lots of killing. Souls galore.” Did Riders have souls? I had no idea. “Where’s Tytan?”

Kali’s dark eyes gave nothing away. “I do not know.”

He was probably still with his mother, saying goodbye. “Will you help?”

“I will. I enjoy your adventures and my swords have drunk much blood of late. We are pleased.”

I turned back to Zephyrinia. “All right then. Lead the way.”

“Are you sure you want me in charge of your army?”

“I’m having a hard enough time keeping myself upright. Please.”

She nodded, then whistled. All manner of eyes turned to her. If it made her uncomfortable, she didn’t show it. “Let’s take Devany’s daughter back and end this plague once and for all!”

TWENTY-SEVEN

The going was rough. There weren’t any roads on Ketwer Island and the vegetation was doing its best to cover every bit of the island’s surface in thick knots of green. Vines hung from tall, slender trees that rose impossibly high into the sky. The moment we stepped foot into the jungle—the jungle depicted on the hotel wall in Bayladdy, I now knew—cool capes of shadows draped over us. Looking up, the leaves of the trees had grown like puzzle pieces with a golden space between each tree’s crown to let the sunlight in. Weird how they didn’t want to touch one another.

I kept us headed in the right direction by slipping frequently into my Magic Eye to follow my daughter’s life essence. Sometimes it faded so much it made my heart skip a beat. Always it stretched as far into the distance as I could see, always farther than I was.

Zeph and her sailors had machetes that they swung at the undergrowth, cutting a path that seemed to close as we passed through. I marked the trees with a swipe of magic that left a purple bruise on the trunks, feeling like Ariadne with her ball of yarn helping Theseus slay the Minotaur in its labyrinth. In the stories, she gave him the yarn and stayed behind while he risked his life to kill the bull. I liked to think she went with him into the dark and had a hand in the monster’s death.

It wasn’t until we stopped for a break that Zeph, slicked with sweat, her shirt sleeves rolled up, her hair held off her neck, said, “There aren’t any animal sounds.”

Sure enough, once she pointed it out it became eerily obvious. No monkey cries or big cat roars. Not even insects to buzz or hum, chirp or rattle. The only sound was the shushing of the trees, high above, whenever the wind drew her fingers through their branches.

“What does that mean?”

“That the Riders have taken every last living thing and pressed it into service,” Mal said, his voice distant. Was he wondering if he fit in with creatures like the Rider? Monsters that took over minds and destroyed lives? That oppressed every living thing in their grasp?

“How do you know that?” I asked.

His face was grim. “It’s what I would do.”

Silence fell upon us, too, and then we were moving again. After the sailors got tired, Kali and I took the lead for a while. Kali sliced and diced with her swords and I blasted through the vegetation with my magic. It left a crude, steaming hole through the dark green for about thirty, forty feet and I managed a dozen such tunnels before I sat, abruptly, my legs too weak to stand. “Shit.”

“You did too much,” Zeph chastised. She ordered her people to set up camp, which they did with the same efficiency they climbed the ropes and hauled sails on the
Lady Free.
I remained where I was, leaning up against a tree, too tired to move.

Krosh brought me food and drink. I managed to eat some of the tough beef and swallow the tepid water before I was out. It didn’t seem like I’d slept second before he was shaking me awake, helping me to a hammock strung between two sturdy trunks. The netting tipped us together in a tangle of limbs that might have been fun under other circumstances.

As more hammocks went up, as the night’s watch was settled on and the food stores organized, I asked, “Where’s the path?”

“Hmm?”

“That thing disappeared into the jungle with my daughter. It wouldn’t get far hauling her in this mess. So where’s the path?”

He shifted, his warm, strong body rubbing against me. He felt like home, I realized. Safe. Comforting. “Perhaps the Rider has some sort of magic that allows it clear passage through.”

“Maybe.” I hated the thought that it was racing through this tangled mess, my daughter in tow, headed steadily to her doom. Surely it would stop for her, right? Allow her food, drink, and sleep? I bit down into the fleshy part of my hand to keep from screaming, bit until Krosh eased my hand out from between my teeth and wrapped my arm around his waist.

“Tell me a story from your childhood,” he said, his fingers easing tension from my back muscles.

A story from my childhood? There were so many, but none of them outstanding. Finally, I said, “I always loved to climb trees. It drove Mom nuts, because she was sure I’d fall. Dad would sit with me at night, the book he was reading to me laid flat across his chest and he would say, ‘Devany, do you want to give your mother a heart attack?’

“‘No, Dad,’ I said. I just like to listen to the whispers of the trees, and they are so much louder up high.’” I sighed, remembering all the hours I’d spent with my arms wrapped around the thick trunk of the elm that was my particular favorite. “I liked trying out different types of trees. Pine trees were easy, elms were fun because I had to jump to catch the lowest branches, usually, and I’d pretend I was a girl living in a forest without any parents to tell her what to do. Anyway, one day I crawled under the fence that separated our backyard from Mrs. Lidecker’s. She was a crazy cat lady and a witch, too, according to my best friend Jean. Jean would hold her breath going past Mrs. Lidecker’s to get to my house.” I wondered what Jean was up to these days. I hadn’t talked to her since Tom died. She would be someone I’d miss if I moved to Midia.

Krosh was silent, letting me talk, his ministrations easing the stress from my back so I could relax. I said, “There was this beautiful oak I wanted to climb and I knew my mom would skin me if she caught me because it was huge. Taller than our elms for sure. I climbed it, though. Climbed it up to the very top, where the branches thinned and moved in the smallest breezes. It was so amazing. Just beautiful. I pressed my ear against the branch and was waiting for it to tell me secrets when I saw Mrs. Lidecker fall. She was in her bedroom and she twisted wrong and down she went. I was so scared. I slid down the trunk, skinning the insides of my thighs and my palms, nearly impaling myself on a couple branches. I pounded home, told Mom and she called the ambulance.” I sighed. “The only way I could have seen that old lady fall was if I’d been up in the tree Mom had warned me not to climb. Plus, there was the little matter of my raw and bloody hands.”

“So you’ve always been one to run toward danger if it meant saving someone, hm?”

I thought back to that day, to the fever-bright fear in my gut as I skidded down the tree, sure Mrs. Lidecker would die before I found her help, sure I’d fall to my death before my feet touched the ground. “I suppose so.” My eyes slid shut. Before I fell asleep, I whispered, “I love you.”

***

We found the trail the next day after an hour’s worth of hacking through the jungle. It had been there all along, but magic had obfuscated it. It had obviously taken too much time and energy to maintain the cover and the Rider had dropped it in favor of speed.

That both excited and terrified me. Excited, because it meant that we were getting close. Terrified, because the thing was desperate.