Crossing Over - Anna Kendall [77]
They nodded, listening carefully, anxious to miss nothing that might save them. My stomach clenched, but I went on. “Wrap the five thorns—and they must be five perfect thorns, not blemished—in a bit of cloth and wear it around your neck. The thorns will not hurt you in this place”—truer words were never spoken, since nothing could hurt them in this place—“but once out of Witchland, they will impart a little of the witch-power to each of you. This have I learned by stealth, and as a result of my own ensorcellment.”
Lucius nodded. “I will tell the captain. Thank you, boy. We are in your debt.”
“Then you can help me now. I seek a messenger from Queen Isabelle, who married our Prince Rupert. The messenger was . . . was witched here. He will be a small man, a rider, dressed in yellow. He may be under the same spell as Queen Eleanor. Have you seen him?”
Both soldiers shook their heads. They thanked me again, and I watched as they walked on the surface of the water back across the swift river. Then I set out to find the messenger in yellow.
It was hopeless. The land had become so much more difficult to walk across, let alone to scan. Boulders, thorn scrub, groves of trees thicker than before, and somehow menacing. Beneath my feet, the ground rumbled. I scrambled away from the riverbank and toward the north, the direction of Queen Isabelle’s queendom, frantically searching. I looked for a long time, becoming dirty and exhausted. Although even if he were here, I didn’t see how I could find the messenger.
Instead, a dead Blue found me. He jumped out from behind a boulder several yards away. Unlike the other Blues I had seen here, he had lost the discipline of soldiers. His eyes were crazed and wild. He shouted something incoherent. Thinking himself in Witchland had unsettled his wits, perhaps never strong to begin with. Or perhaps dying had deranged him. He carried what he must have brought with him, seized from the enemy in battle: a gun.
He shrieked again, raised the thing, and fired at me.
Something hard and hot—so hot!—struck my left arm, sending me falling backward against the rocks. The sky gave a great crack! of lightning. I screamed; the pain was pure agony, searing my flesh like flames.
And then I lay on the stone roof of the tower, it was night, and I had other questions to torment me. I already knew I could be hurt in the country of the Dead, by the Dead. But what would happen to me if I were killed there? Would I return to my body in the land of the living, or would I lapse into the unknowing tranquility of the Dead?
Now I had not one but two places where I could die.
The pain continued. It was too dark to see my arm, but when I made myself flex it, I could tell that the bones were not broken. This was a flesh wound only, but I had seen men die of flesh wounds that turned black and rancid. And the pain did not diminish, burning like acid along skin and nerves.
Cradling my left arm in my right, I forced myself to my feet. Where was the queen, her guard, anyone at all? How much time had passed? My eyes adjusted to the night, and I peered over the parapet. Most, although not all, of the courtyards were dark. So was most, but not all, of the narrow ring of the tent city. Above, the stars shone brightly, without a moon. Summer had barely begun; the night air was cold and sharp.
I tried the trapdoor that led from the tower roof. It was bolted from below.
Something must be happening in the palace, something that had drawn the queen away from the tower. She had forgotten me before, but never while I was on a mission for her to the country of the Dead. What if she had been murdered, as she had murdered her mother? What if no one came to the tower before morning? The courtyard was many stories below, too far to jump. I didn