The Lost Endeavour Page 12

  “Trying to discredit him?” Ende asked softly, leaning forward.

  Thom scowled, straightened and turned back for the throne. “How long will you stay, old friend?”

  “I’m not sure. But I see I am needed more than I realised when I set out for the capital.”

  “Where have you been?” Thom asked, sitting down and wrapping a hand around the armrest as though taking ownership of the chair. For that was all it was, unless someone else sat upon it. In Ende’s visions of Ana and the crown, she didn’t sit down. She stood before it. He would need to take another look.

  Chapter 18

  Dray stood outside the chief’s dwelling and watched the dark forest around him. The king had called him in, but he couldn’t face further discussion of the day—of what had happened to Ana, where she had come from, and where she might have returned to. Belle kept looking at him as though he was as different as Ana appeared to be.

  “Do we know who we can trust?” Belle asked in a loud whisper, and he was tempted to turn and let her know just what he could hear.

  “He saved her,” Ed returned in the same hoarse voice. “She trusts him.”

  “Does she?” the girl continued. “She didn’t try to step up to him.”

  “She was facing a monster,” Ed said more clearly.

  Dray grimaced. She would have found a way to greet him, no matter what they were facing, he thought. She had hung back in the same way he had. Did she avoid him for a reason? Was she guilty of something, or had she been so connected to him that she could read his dreams?

  He blew out a long breath. She was a girl, one he had been called to protect. And he would protect her no matter what. The idea that he wanted anything more from her was uncomfortable. He was sure it stemmed from a need to be near her. That was all it was. For in the dreams, she held him tight. They stood together. That was all they needed. But the feel of her body against his and his hands over the silky material caused his face to flush again. She had run her fingers over his skin, her hand too confident beneath his shirt.

  He blew out another frustrated breath.

  “Dray?”

  He turned then as the king appeared in the doorway.

  “Do you see something?”

  “No,” Dray murmured, turning back to look over the world around them. Had he missed something? He was far more distracted than he should be. He had managed to look after her and stay alert previously. Now he couldn’t even stay alert.

  “I thought you called out.”

  He grumbled something under his breath, and the king watched him for a moment longer before turning back to the room. Then he surprised Dray by stepping out and into the night with him.

  “Are you worried?”

  “About the beast?”

  “About Ana,” the king said, his eyes focused on the night beyond the light of the doorway. Their shadows stretched away until they disappeared into the night.

  “There aren’t any lights,” Dray said, looking around the village.

  “They don’t feel the need. They can feel the forest and what is around them.”

  Dray nodded.

  “Ana,” the king prompted.

  “She is not what she was.”

  “No, she’s not. But we always knew she wasn’t a maid.”

  “I wonder if she sees herself differently,” Dray mused.

  “She certainly spoke differently. I couldn’t understand half of what she said.”

  “What do you want to do?” Dray asked seriously, turning to the king. He certainly seemed to hold himself as one now, although Dray could still see the scared and grubby boy who had stood in the cottage in the mountains.

  “I think I have to return. But how and with whom, I don’t know.”

  “You want an army.”

  “I want to keep the peace if I can.”

  Dray shook his head. “I doubt you will take the crown back without bloodshed.”

  Now it was the boy’s turn to sigh. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  “None of us do,” Dray admitted. “We started this by following a maid certain you should be King, with a dragon who feared her and has since disappeared. You have one old soldier, one old man and a girl probably brighter than the rest of us put together.”

  “Thank you,” Belle said, “but I don’t think you are as old as you pretend.”

  “I am not pretending. I have seen far more years than you.”

  “Why didn’t you talk to Ana?” she pressed again.

  He shook his head, walking away from the door and into the dark, glancing over his shoulder. The girl stood in the light; the boy stood down a step and watched him walk away. Although Dray was sure he could stop and they wouldn’t even know he was there.

  He didn’t want to explain himself to the girl, because he couldn’t. The woman who had appeared before them, calm and confident and powerful, was not the Ana he had lost in the mountains. And he didn’t know how to get her back.

  Standing in the doorway to the hut, Dray did not want to go in, nor did he want to sleep. He didn’t know what he might dream of, and he didn’t want to face her again. Not after he had struggled today. Although, he had stepped up when he’d needed to.

  Something shimmered in the moonlight. He thought it part of the magic that protected them, but the world beyond was dark. He didn’t know if that creature was still out there, nor if her words were enough to keep it from consuming him. Yet he was tempted to push his way through the barrier and explore the world beyond.

  What else might the mage and the regent send after them? He took a step and placed his hand out towards the shimmering barrier. They had to see the boy as a threat. They must have thought the only way to stop him was to destroy him. Had they attempted to discredit him within the capital? Were the people worried, or had they come to accept that he was gone?

  Dray looked back towards the building he had left the king in. Could they just walk back into the capital? That was where they had been headed when they were waylaid by the forest. Was the forest trying to protect him now, or did it have an agenda of its own? He needed someone to advise him. Someone he could talk to about what was happening, for he had no idea at all. He ran a hand over his face, the fingers finding the scar that wasn’t there, and he turned in frustration to find himself lost in the dark.

  The night sky had disappeared. The forest he was sure pressed on the edges of the village was gone. Large green eyes blinked at him from the darkness, and his hand rested on his sword.

  “What is your plan, little soldier?” a voice asked. It vibrated through him, as though it spoke inside him rather than to him.

  Was this something else the mage had sent?

  It laughed, and he gulped down the rising fear, drawing his sword. Although he doubted it would have much impact on whatever this was before him.

  “I could use you,” the voice whispered, and he shivered.

  “Enough,” Ana’s voice snapped through the fog. The world cleared a little, but the lights were not the same. It was as though he stood somewhere else, somewhere outside the forest.

  The silhouette of a woman moved from the darkness, but she stopped as he maintained his hold on the sword. “I’m sorry,” she murmured.

  “Are you really here?” he asked, lowering the sword.

  “In some sense, but no.”

  He waited, but she didn’t come any closer. “What happened today?” he eventually asked. “What have you become?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, her soft voice sad. He was reminded of her following him through the brush on the mountains and scratching her arms to pieces.

  “Does Ed know?”

  “What I am?” she asked, something catching in her throat. “He struggles with what he is.”

  “I meant that you are here.”

  “I am sorry,” she whispered, and he could hear the tears in her voice. He stepped forward, unsure whether she was herself, what danger she posed now and whom she worked for. As he watched h
er unmoving silhouette, it suddenly seemed too easy for her to have scared away such a beast.

  “Ana,” he said, sliding the sword back into place. But it felt as though she moved further away from him rather than towards him. “Ana?”

  “I know I cannot expect you to trust me. But you will watch over him, won’t you?”

  He nodded, disappointment flowing through him. Had she come all this way to ensure he was doing as he was designed to do? “I am the king’s man.”

  The moon moved from behind a cloud, shining brightly and illuminating her too-slim frame and the tears on her cheeks. He closed the gap between them before he realised what he was doing and wrapped his arms around her. For the first time, he wished he wasn’t wearing the armour, which would be cold on her skin.

  “I won’t let her hurt you,” she whispered.

  “Who is she?” he asked.

  “Me.” She pushed against him and wiped a hand across her cheek. “She is me and I am her.”

  He tried to smile, to reassure her in some way that he trusted her above all others. “Will you talk with me? I miss you.”

  Something shuddered in her chest, as though she was trying to hold in a sob, but as he reached for her again, she was gone.

  Chapter 19

  The mage leaned over his notes, trying to determine what he might be able to do from his workshop to assist the maid in her task, when she appeared before him. He sat back from the book and looked at her, back to the book and then back again.

  “Have you done what you were sent to do?”

  “No. It is not possible.” Her voice was not her own, and yet she looked just as she had any other day standing before him, waiting for instructions.

  “Why is it not possible? Did I not give you the means?”

  “He is protected.”

  “By whom?” the mage asked too loudly.

  “Many,” she said, her features giving nothing away.

  He sucked in an angry breath and stood to look down on her, but she changed before his eyes. Growing taller and darker, the creature before him was one he had not seen for a very long time.

  “The forest keeps him safe.”

  “He is in the Near Forest?”

  The creature bowed its head.

  “Do they help keep him safe?”

  “I do not know. There is another involved.”

  He waited.

  “You created her and sent her to stop me.”

  “Ana?” he asked, stepping back.

  The creature licked its lips in response. The forked tongue was unsettling.

  “She is dead,” the mage insisted, but he already knew that she wasn’t. She had escaped from the cells. He stared at the creature before him. Had he given Ana the skills to allow her to escape?

  “She is royalty,” the creature hissed.

  The mage refocused on the creature before him. What had she managed to do? “She has not…”

  “She is who she is. I must obey her. Yet the child wants her dead even more than you do.”

  “Really?” he asked. “Can she come forward and speak?”

  “We do not wish to.”

  The mage looked over the creature before him, then glanced at the book to the side of the desk.

  “If we return that way, she will be lost.”

  “It is a risk I am willing to take,” the mage said, resting his hand on the worn leather cover.

  “It is not one we are willing to take,” the creature hissed.

  “You must kill the boy.”

  “I have promised my queen.” The creature remained unmoving before him.

  “What of your promise to me? I gave you the child to bring you to our world.”

  “We thank you,” it hissed, then disappeared.

  The mage thumped the desk. There must be a way around this impediment; he just had to find it. The creature’s words confirmed that Ana had survived, and he assumed she must be in the forest with the king. That was disappointing, if they had been reunited, although it would surprise him if she had made it that far. He sat slowly at the desk, his hands resting on the book he had been reading. If Ana’s magic had awoken, she might be far more powerful than he had anticipated. His first images of her when he had met her at the Seat of Sheer Rock returned. Darkness and blood surrounded him. And the boy ripping the crown from his uncle’s dying hand. She would be the cause of such action; he had seen her as the darkness that closed in around them. He should have watched over her more closely to ensure she died. He wouldn’t make the same mistake again.

  That might be why the cloak and magic he had kept had not been able to find her—not that it was not strong enough or he had used it up, but because he had been searching for the wrong magic.

  He shook his head. That didn’t make sense. He’d known what she was the moment he saw her. A vessel as her mother had been, one with a connection that needed only for the magic to find her. And it had. He didn’t know what had woken it, for she didn’t know herself. Or did she?

  He made his way through the piles of books and shelves that formed pathways through the workroom until he came to the dish upturned on the floor. The green cloak, faded from his use of it, spilled across the floor. It had remained just where it had landed when he’d upended the bowl in his frustration.

  He squatted down over the cloak, lifted it to his nose and closed his eyes. He had a similar sense, although his magic would never be as strong as Ana’s, nor as her mother’s. He could call upon the world beyond the veil, but he would never be able to work with it as closely as the women could. The little girls he had found almost had a similar ability, yet they weren’t able to clearly sense the magic or use it. For these women, it possessed them.

  He breathed in again. Magic filled his senses, but where it came from or from whom he could no longer detect. He had initially felt her in the power that surrounded the cloth, but it was long gone. He dropped it and kicked the upturned bowl across the space. It bounced loudly from a bookshelf, causing it to wobble and several bottles to fall and smash. Their voices called in pain before they disappeared.

  Ana had heard them, the voices of the other. Those children had no such skill, and yet he had been able to use them. Perhaps he could find another child with which to find her. If the creature he had released from beyond would not deal with her, he would find a way to destroy Ana. His little maid had wished her dead, and the idea caused a small smirk to lift one corner of his mouth upward. She was worthy of the gift he had given her.

  He had threatened to separate the creature from his little one. Perhaps he could do the same for Ana. It would not matter if one of them survived the separation or not, for it would be enough to solve the problem.

  Whatever magic lived in her had not come from a book but been gifted at birth. He would need to find another way to cleave them, he thought as he allowed the cloak to fall back to the floor.

  ֍

  “What is the plan?” Forest asked, finding Ende in the courtyard. Some people moved around them, but not many, and no one paid them any attention. Or at least he hoped that was the case, and not that he was being watched. Could someone have worked out that he had helped the girl? The idea that she was a witch returned, that she was something darker than a mage. She had kept the return of her magic hidden from him, from all of them, and the idea made him nervous. His daughter continually sought her out, despite his warnings, and he was scared of what the woman might do to her.

  The man before him stared but said nothing, a single eyebrow raised to the sky.

  “Do you have a plan?” Forest asked again.

  “Do I need one?”

  “Ende!” he cried, allowing the frustration to boil over.

  Ende held up his hands in defence and smiled, his perfect teeth distracting the sword master for a moment. “You are so easy to tease.”

  “Is that why you are here? To cause more havoc and run?” Forest barely regretted the words, for he knew they needed to work together, but the hurt that fla
shed across Ende’s face was a surprise. “The king,” he prompted to divert attention from his own words.

  “I don’t know,” Ende admitted with a shrug, looking around the courtyard. “I wasn’t really thinking when I returned. I didn’t know…”

  The sword master found himself looking around then, worried that his daughter might be nearby. He knew why the man had returned. He had discovered that the child had survived. Although he hadn’t known she wasn’t Barric’s daughter until Salima had spoken of how she had found a fire within and used it to help Ana escape.

  He only hoped no one else within the castle had Ana’s skills and could determine the truth as well. “Where is Ana?” he wondered aloud, then glanced around again to be sure no one was near.

  “Resting,” Ende said softly, looking back towards the tower. “It took far more from her than she would admit.”

  “I saw her for myself,” Forest growled. He didn’t need Ende to tell him anything about the woman. He had no idea what had occurred, but it was enough that if she had not returned amongst friends it might have been the end of her. If a friend was what he was to her.

  “Emotionally as well as physically, it seems. She continues to murmur in her sleep.”

  Forest looked seriously at the tall man before him, wondering what he might be keeping from him.

  “I can’t see. Whatever it was that has woken her magic will not let me.”

  “You think she is dangerous.”

  “One of them is.” Ende looked back again to the tower.

  “Is Salima with her?”

  Ende nodded. “But she will not harm her.”

  Forest wasn’t sure if he should believe this man or determine it for himself. As invested as Ende was, Salima was still his daughter. “The king,” the sword master prompted again.

  “I don’t know what the boy should do, or what we can do for him.”

  “We could help him,” Forest implored.

  “How? Kill the uncle, help raise an army against his own family and people?”

  “He is the king. That man will have him killed if we can’t find a way to get him here.”