Queen of Kings - Maria Dahvana Headley [134]
She stumbled, scraping her withered hands on the stones. She was not supposed to be this misshapen thing, this hag, half covered in sweet skin, half covered in scales and darkness. Hecate had been so close. She had felt her coming.
She turned her face, the part of it that still existed as human, toward the moonlight, moaning. The wind would not offer her a respite, though. It raged against her broken cheek, threw sand into her one, bloodied eye.
She snarled, clawing at the wind. Nothing she did eased it, though she could see, outside of her vicinity, still air. The trees stood calm in the darkness. Only about Chrysate was there this bitter thing.
She screamed with fury, chanting curses, chanting spells, tearing at the air itself, but nothing kept the wind from whistling around her, shrill and violent. Nothing kept the wind from spinning her in wrong directions. Nothing kept the wind from surging into her lungs, filling her with dusty air and her own spells, blown backward into her mouth.
She could hear horses in the streets, pursuing her, perhaps, but she could not tell where they were. She could hear howling dogs, but she could not find them. They would protect her. They were the creatures of her mistress. But they howled, and they howled, and finally, Chrysate realized that there were no dogs. The sound she heard was the wind mocking her.
As she raised her hand to fight off the tornado, she noticed her finger. Naked. Her ring was gone. She’d left it on the hand of the queen’s daughter.
Chrysate concealed herself in a doorway, shielding herself from the wind. The moon was high in the sky now, a pointed crescent, each edge sharp and wounding. It did not heal her. A tear slid down her cheek, scalding as it went, and she tasted the sour salt of it.
She watched the wind pass by, and she waited until it had gone. She listened for the footsteps of legionaries patrolling for her, and waited until they had moved on. Then she began to move again, whispering spells of concealment and searching for a dark and secret place to hide herself more effectively.
She thought, muttering to herself frantically.
She could still accomplish what she had planned. It would be bloody, and it would be difficult, but it was still possible.
15
A grippa woke, bound in a bright room. It was full daylight, and the elderly priest was sitting opposite him.
“Water?” he asked, and Agrippa laughed. His throat was swollen and so sore that he could not imagine swallowing, let alone swallowing a drink provided by the very man who’d poisoned him.
“Where are my men?” he croaked.
“They live,” the priest said. “We do not kill our guests, unlike the men of the emperor’s armies.”
“Why did you poison me? I did nothing to wound you.”
“You did not?” the priest asked. He ran his finger over his throat. The scratch was already healing. “One does not steal from Apollo. We are guards, and this is our lifelong task. Perhaps you do not understand that there is a reason for our devotion. I would not have thought Augustus’s general was a fool.”
“You guard something precious,” Agrippa said.
“We guard something lethal,” the priest informed him. “It kills. It has always killed, and yet it still exists. We keep it safe from the world.”
“It’s true, then,” Agrippa said. “The arrows are here.”
“Everything is true,” the priest informed him. “Once a story is told, it becomes true. Every unlikely tale, every tale of wonders, has something real at its core.”
“I need them. There is an enemy greater than any Rome has known,” said Agrippa, shifting painfully in his bonds. Though he’d fought for years, he’d never before been captured.
“So you say,” said the priest. “Just as anyone would, to gain possession of the arrows. They are too dangerous to use.”
“It is too dangerous not to use them,” Agrippa countered. “We fight an immortal, and there is no other way to kill her. We fight to save the world from a monster.”
The priest looked at Agrippa and grimaced.
“And what monster will you create in using them? No one has ever used Hercules