Crossing Over - Anna Kendall [76]
I did not know where I was.
I stood among huge boulders, an outcrop such as I had never seen anywhere near Glory. Among the boulders grew scrub bushes, leafless and misshapen things that sent out twisted twigs from twisted stems. I blundered into one. Its sharp thorns pricked my already bloody palm. The ground shook under my feet and the dark sky raced with clouds. My gut twisted. I had caused this devastation.
Noise came from my left. Careful to avoid the thorny bushes, I picked my way among the boulders until I emerged onto the plain beside the river, but a plain changed and misshapen as the bushes. Rocks were strewn everywhere, some small enough to kick, some as big as I was. More of the scrub bushes spiked the ground, which rumbled under my feet. Amid this chaos the Dead sat or lay in their usual oblivion—but not all of them.
The noise came from two sources. The river ran more swiftly now, breaking and swirling against new rocks, sending up spray and sound. But most of the noise came from across the river. Blue soldiers, hundreds of them, dead in the recent battle with the savage warriors. The Blues were being drilled by their captains. They marched, shouted, brandished swords, stamped their boots. None of them acted even remotely as if he was Dead. One of them caught sight of me across the water. He cupped his hand to shout across the river.
“Witched fool! What news, boy?”
I could not have answered to save my life. When I stood, dumb as one of the inexplicable boulders, he yelled even louder. “What news?”
When I still did not answer, the soldier and the man next to him stepped onto the river and walked across its surface to the other side.
Dizziness took me and everything swirled and swooped. When I could see again, one of them had hold of my arm.
“His wits are returning, Lucius,” his friend said. “Boy, ye be all right?”
“Of course he not be all right, he’s witched, you idiot!”
“No worse than us, stuck here in Witchland. . . . Fool? Ye be all right?”
“Y-yes.” Their boots were not even wet.
Lucius said, “What news, then? Does the whore-queen still hold the palace?”
“Y-yes.” I fought to master myself. “But Lord Solek—”
Lucius let loose with a string of violent oaths. I had not heard such language since Hartah. “The savage holds the palace for her?”
“Yes.” The truth was too complicated to explain, even if I had wanted to.
Lucius shook my arm, not gently. “What, then? How do we escape from Witchland? Have you nothing good to tell us?”
“Leave off, Lucius,” his friend said. “Don’t shake the fool like that. He’s on our side. He tried to get the young witch’s amulet for us, remember?”
Cat Starling. What had happened to her after I left? I said, “Have you taken the amulet from her since I was last witched here?”
“No one has so much as seen her. Is that what will send us back—the amulet?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “But the . . . the witch-queen keeps me close, and I hope to learn how to undo my own ensorcellment, and so yours. I work for that night and day. Meanwhile ...” I tried to fake a sob, and discovered it was not fake. There are many kinds of witching.
“Don’t cry, fool,” Lucius said with disgust. “You’re nearly a man.”
“He’s not crying—are you, boy? What can we do mean-times? We drill, you see, to prepare for the battle. When we go back, that savage will not beat us, no matter how many fire-sticks he brings against us, nor how the witch-queen deforms Witchland to frighten us. We will defeat her and her savages. We fight for The Queendom.”
They all believed still that they were in Witchland, all the Blues whom Lord Solek’s army had killed. I had said so to the first ones, who told the others as they arrived, and so none at all believed that he was dead.
The second soldier grew impatient. “I asked you, fool, what can we do to aid our own freedom from Witchland?”
“You can . . . you can continue to prepare for battle.” They expected more from me. Lucius’s eyes darkened with anger.