Crossing Over - Anna Kendall [88]
They all glared at me now. I knew I had not much time. The one with broken teeth said, “She went inland, of course. Where else should one like her keeper go? She went toward Soulvine Moor, toward Hygryll. But you—”
I cried, interrupting him, “Oh, thank you! You see, I—” I knocked my pile of coins to the floor, dove under the table after it, and pulled a hair in my nose as hard as I could. When I rose again, staggering and without the coins, my eyes watered, my face had gone red, and I was sneezing violently. “Oh . . . oh, I’m afraid I . . . Help me, please, my lady fled her estate because of the plague there and my brother. . . . Help us. ...”
The men froze. The innkeeper breathed, “Plague!” Then all three scuttled away from me.
“Help ...” I collapsed against the table.
One man drew his sword. The other said sharply, “No! Don’t go near him!”
“The coins—”
“Leave them, you idiot!”
All three left the inn, striding out into the night.
I went upstairs, collected Maggie, and we slipped away, making camp a few miles down the road in a deep thicket. First, however, I took food from the inn and another old, patched, but still serviceable blanket. It would be cold going over the mountains to Soulvine Moor.
Where my mother had died. Where Cecilia had fled, in the company of . . . whom? Where I might, at last, find the truth of both my past and my future.
24
“WE CANNOT GO to Soulvine Moor,” Maggie said. “We cannot.”
Morning, and Maggie and I faced each other across the embers of our campfire. Last night she had been too frightened to ask me much, but this morning she was herself again. Still afraid—if anything, she was more afraid since I had told her our destination—but since she was also Maggie, her fear led her to fight rather than cower.
I retorted, “At least you said the name. In the palace you would not even utter ‘Soulvine Moor.’ As if the words alone could somehow harm you.”
“Not the words, you idiot! The people who might overhear them!”
That made sense. I had not known then how the palace was riddled with spy holes, with spies, with factions. I knew now. But we were not now in the palace.
“Tell me,” I said. “Tell me what Soulvine Moor is.”
Despite the beautiful morning, she shuddered.
It was a beautiful morning. Overnight, spring had turned to the first taste of summer. Golden light lay on the half-budded trees. Hawthorne leaves unfurled with that tender yellow-green seen only once each year. Birds sang. The woods smelled fresh and expectant, spawning life.
She said, “Soulvine Moor is death.”
“No riddles, Maggie. Tell me true. Who lives on Soulvine Moor?”
“The ones who never die.”
“Witches?” I still wasn’t sure what had happened to me at Mother Chilton’s, or what I believed about it.
“No. They burn witches there, as everywhere else. But they also . . . they ...”
“Tell me!”
She shuddered. But no one could say that Maggie did not have courage. “They don’t die, because they take the life from others. They murder them and steal their souls to gain their strength to add to their own. And so they live forever.”
“Nothing lives forever.” I, of all people, had cause to know that! “How do they steal the souls from others?”
“I don’t know. The ceremony is secret, known only to them. There are rumors . . . but no one really knows.”
“Are you sure this is not just a folktale? A story meant to frighten children into being good, like the hawk-man or the monster under the mountain?”
Her temper flared. “How should I know? Do you mean, have I ever gone to Soulvine Moor to find out? I have not, and I am not going there now. If Lady Cecilia is in the Unclaimed Lands, then I will stay with you until you find her, but not afterward. Do you hear me, Roger? Not afterward! I will not stay as a serving woman to Lady Cecilia, as you so charmingly suggested days ago. I would rather live as a scullery maid, a pig tender, even a whore! Do you understand me?”
I was shocked. Maggie, a whore? Even though I knew she didn’t mean it, the words gave me a queer feeling in my heart. It was