Warrior Witch: Malediction Trilogy Book Three Page 28

  “Compulsion?” Marc asked, his voice strained. “Roland’s oath is a weak method of control – it might be that you can overcome it for a time.”

  The very idea was overwhelming. I’d compelled a handful of people simultaneously, but it took an incredible amount of focus on each individual, and I’d never been able to sustain it for long. “I don’t think I can,” I said, explaining why.

  Grim silence filled the tower as we all came to terms with the idea that we might not be able to do anything. That the survival of those people was entirely dependent on whether Tristan persevered.

  “What about a song?” Sabine asked, and when I raised both eyebrows in askance, she added, “I saw your mother, I mean Anushka, do it at the masque. So did Tristan. When she sang, it seemed as though everyone was in a trance. No one moved – they barely seemed to breathe.”

  But that had been Anushka, a witch who’d been honing her craft for five centuries. What she had been capable of and what I was capable of were two very different things. Still, the idea resonated with me, and the more I thought about how it might work, the more I believed it was possible. To focus on the song as sort of a spell. Not to compel, but to… mesmerize?

  “It won’t hurt to try,” Sabine said, squeezing my hand.

  I nodded slowly. “Marc, could you amplify my voice enough that everyone could hear without stopping what you’re doing?” I had no intention of sacrificing those at sea to save those outside the wall.

  “Yes,” he said, then tapped a gloved finger against his chin. “We’ll have to muffle the ears of any human we don’t want affected, half-bloods, too.”

  “Marie might still have rowan, which would work just as well. I’ll go find her,” Sabine said, helping me up before she departed.

  My gaze went to the open sea. “I won’t be able to do this forever, Marc. What is it that we can hope to accomplish?”

  “I’ll go out and help as many injured as I can,” Gran said before he could respond. “I’ll see if Sabine can get me the materials I need.”

  “Speak to Lady Marie,” Marc said. “She’ll be able to help you faster. Tell her I sent you. And find Joss – she could be of use.”

  It was only the two of us and the dog left on the tower. “Marc?” I asked again.

  In a rare move, he pulled his hood back, revealing his disfigurement in its entirety. It struck me then that if I removed the iron from him, he wouldn’t have to look like that anymore. That is, if he didn’t want to. Part of me was certain that even given the chance, he’d remain the same.

  “We’ll be buying time for Tristan,” he said. “That’s all.”

  “And if he falls?” Even saying it hurt; as did the idea that there would be more for me to do if he did.

  Marc was quiet, and I swore I could hear the screams of those outside the walls. “We can run,” he said. “Take those who matter to us and get far away, regroup, then try again another day. Or not.”

  His eyes met mine, straight on, without a flinch. I wasn’t sure if he’d ever done that before. What had changed?

  “Or we fight,” he said. “To the bitter end. Try to rally Trollus against Roland and Angoulême. Roland isn’t invincible and Angoulême isn’t infallible. There are more ways to end them than pure strength of magic alone.”

  “You’d make a good ruler,” I said, having thought it for a long time but never voiced it.

  “Maybe during times of peace,” he said. “But to effect change, to rally people to risk everything, that requires a more ambitious and charismatic individual than I’ll ever be. Either way, I hope we’ll never have to find out.” Then he waited, because I hadn’t answered his question.

  “We fight,” I said. “Until the bitter end.”

  Sabine returned to the tower top. “Tips says they’re ready,” she said. “The half-bloods have blocked their ears with magic, and Fred’s men still had their rowan from the night of the masque.” She went to stand next to Marc, and it was not lost on me that she stood near enough to him that their elbows brushed. It made me wonder if Marc was ready, or even capable, of moving on from Pénélope, or if Sabine was pining for a young man who had nothing left to give. Either way, it was not my place to interfere, and given we might all be marching toward the end, what would be the point?

  Sabine handed me a skin of warm lemon water, and I drank deeply, then ran through a series of exercises to warm up my neglected voice. She started to stuff her ears with wool, but Marc turned from his task and gently pushed her hands down. “Better not to take chances with you.”

  Sabine touched the side of her face, and I knew she was feeling the warm press of magic protecting her from my spell.

  Turning so they wouldn’t see the tears burning in my eyes, I took a deep breath, and then I sang. I chose a lullaby my mother – my real mother, not Anushka – had sung to me when I was a little girl, focusing my will into the lyrics and their sentiment. Be calm.

  My voice filtered away from the tower and was caught with the threads of Marc’s magic, which carried it out across the city, over the wall, and into the fields and hills beyond.

  Be still.

  Power filtered up from the earth, through the stones of the castle, and into my feet. Wind soared in from the sea, carrying mist that tasted like salt on my lips. The magic felt pure, wiping away the tarnish of the blood magic I’d used, the troll magic I’d stolen, and making me feel clean. It was a gift.

  The horde of islanders outside the walls lost its erratic, desperate violence. People stopped pushing, stopped fighting, their arms falling limply to their sides as they listened.

  “It’s working,” Marc said. “Don’t stop.”

  So I sang, repeating the lullaby like a soothing mantra, watching as my people sat down in the snow and the mud; and though it was too distant for me to see their faces, I knew they were transfixed. Mesmerized. There was motion amongst them now, Fred’s men, my gran, and whomever else they’d chosen to help, moving amongst the horde, pulling out the injured and doing what they could to help them.

  But it was not sustainable. Exhaustion was tugging at my limbs, and my lungs burned, the melody beginning to rasp in my throat. Hurry, Tristan, I silently pleaded.

  The bridge blinked out.

  I screamed, despite myself. Screamed, because hundreds of innocents were about to drown, were about to die. Men and women who’d done nothing to deserve this fate. Children who’d never had a chance to live.

  Then skiffs were rising out of the water and moving toward land. Fingers of magic beyond number plucking people out of the surf and bringing them to safety.

  Melusina swooped over our heads. “It’s Trollus. The magic’s coming from Trollus,” Chris shouted. “There’s hundreds of trolls on the beach bringing them in.”

  Martin, I thought, knowing that was where the librarian must have gone for help. And that so many had been willing to give it meant I hadn’t been wrong to break the curse. They deserved their freedom, and right now, they were proving it.

  “Can you see Tristan?” Marc shouted, and Chris shook his head. “They’re on the beach, but she won’t go close to them. I’ll try again.”

  Then it happened.

  I felt the air ripple, then everything rocked with a thunderous boom. My song faltered, and I struggled to keep focus, seeing the horde stir. The air pulsed again, but instead of a boom, it sounded like a thousand mirrors shattering.

  Then I was falling.

  Tristan was falling.

  Marc’s hands were reaching for me, catching me, but it didn’t matter. “No,” I whispered, but his magic was still tangled in my voice and the word rippled across Trianon. “Please, no.”

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Tristan

  My magic skated over the sea, stretching in a long strip beneath Roland’s bridge, reaching both ends just before his magic vanished and the whole mess of humans and skiffs dropped on my flimsy replacement. There’d been no time to brace it against the sea floor, and the weight jerked
me to my knees, dragging me forward and sending Damia’s, the Dowager Duchesse d’Angoulême’s, head rolling off into the brush.

  I skidded on hands and knees toward the surf, my wrists trembling as I tried to find enough leverage to keep those thousands of people from plunging to their deaths. An icy wave struck me in the face, but I managed to turn and stop my slide with my heels, edging backwards as I sank a series of pillars into the ocean depths to hold the bridge up.

  But it wasn’t enough.

  Water hammered the length of it, the strength of the sea dragging my bridge back and forth, waves cresting to push at the skiffs, forcing me to grab them with fingers of magic to keep them in place. But for all my efforts, there were overturned craft in the water. It wouldn’t be long until bodies washed up on the shore.

  And Roland was coming.

  Get up, I ordered myself, staggering to my feet. I could feel the weight on the Trianon end lightening; the familiar brush of Marc’s magic as he lifted the skiffs off the bridge. But he wasn’t moving quickly enough. Not even close.

  I couldn’t run. If Roland got between me and the bridge, it would be child’s play for him to cut the flows holding it up. This was where I would make my stand.

  It wasn’t long before my brother stepped out of the trees, Angoulême at his side. Roland’s eyes looked dead, but the Duke’s were full of fury. He knelt next to his mother’s body and touched her cheek, and any thought I might’ve had that he’d set her up to die was chased away.

  “If Cécile survives your death, I’m going to find her and make her wish she hadn’t,” he hissed, rising to his feet. He shoved Roland hard between the shoulders. “Kill him and take the crown. Make yourself King of Trollus and ruler of the Isle of Light.”

  The words acted like a trigger, delight washing across my brother’s face. Then he attacked.

  The first blow made my shield shudder; the second radiated through my limbs, making my body ache. I couldn’t do both, couldn’t hold all those lives out of the water while holding back my brother. One more, I told myself, one more, and you’ll have done all you can.

  The impact sent me staggering, and the magic behind me collapsed. I swore I could hear the screams of the drowning over the pounding of the waves.

  Roland laughed, and magic whirled toward me like a storm. I braced, putting all the might I had at my disposal into a counterblow. The strength that had held up Forsaken Mountain. That had quelled my enemies. That had allowed me to walk through fire and ice unscathed.

  It was not enough.

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Cécile

  Hands were on me, Sabine’s and Marc’s, trying to hold me steady, but I pushed them away and fell against the wall, my fingernails digging into the stone. Drawing in a deep breath, I tried to sing, but it came out raspy and jarring. Snatching up the water skin, I guzzled the contents even as the horde began to shift and move, many of the people climbing to their feet, the injured struggling against those trying to help them.

  I began the lullaby again, but the magic was faulty and impure, the islanders not reverting to that blissful calm, but swaying and twitching with collective unease.

  “Is he dead?” Marc demanded, his hand gripping my arm hard enough to leave bruises.

  I shook my head, tears falling from my face with the motion.

  “Hurt or unconscious?”

  I nodded, but those terms didn’t encapsulate all of what I was feeling. Unconscious, hurt, and… drained.

  “Shit!” He was across the tower to the door in an instant. “Get all of ours back inside the wall,” he ordered the half-blood messenger Tips had left behind. “Now. Hurry.” Then he set off a series of lights, which were answered by flashing on the wall.

  Chris swooped over top of us. “I saw Roland,” he shouted. “He’s sitting alone in a field. But I couldn’t find Tristan.”

  Bile burned in my throat, and I tried and failed to tune him out.

  “And we’ve got more trouble coming our way,” he shouted as Melusina circled. “Dozens of Angoulême’s followers are coming this way, fast.”

  “How do you know they’re his?” Marc asked. “They could be from Trollus.”

  “Because I recognize the troll leading them,” Chris replied. “It’s Comtesse Báthory. They’ll be here in a half-hour, tops.”

  So much for Roland killing her.

  The dragon landed on the tower, and Chris climbed off. “You need to find him,” Marc said. “Go and look.”

  “I don’t know how,” my friend said, his eyes welling up. “The water is full of bodies.”

  I felt sick, but the song kept flowing.

  “Victoria and Vincent will be out there as well; look to them for help,” Marc said.

  “I’ll try,” Chris said, then he inexplicably snatched Souris up and stuffed him in his coat before leaping onto the dragon’s back.

  Lights flickered in a pattern on the wall. “Everyone’s inside,” Marc said, then his hands fell on my shoulders. “Stop singing.”

  I stiffened, risking my focus to turn and look at him.

  “Better they think Tristan’s dead,” he said. “And if he was, you wouldn’t have the focus for magic.”

  Stopping felt like abandoning all those out there, but I knew he was right. We’d done what we could for them, and now we needed to prepare for the attack. I let the song trail off, turning to the center of the tower so I wouldn’t have to witness the reemergence of their madness. Then I took a deep breath. “We need to go down to the wall and see what we can do to prepare.”

  * * *

  Marc had raced ahead to warn Fred and his men of what was coming. Sabine and I followed on horseback, her clinging to my waist as we raced through the empty streets. Windows and doors were boarded shut, but there was no missing the fearful eyes peering through the cracks or the tension singing through all of Trianon. They knew what was coming.

  On the wall, it was even worse. The half-bloods were arrayed at equal intervals, holding up their piece of the patchwork barrier, but their faces were drawn, hands resting against the stone for balance, a few even on their knees as if the effort of standing was beyond them. The expressions of the human soldiers were even worse. Some sat staring blankly at nothing; others wept openly; more still were muttering prayers for divine protection which were barely audible over the cries of the horde below.

  I glanced through an arrow slit, and immediately wished I had not. “Let us in, let us in,” they screamed when they caught sight of my face, a mass of them surging forward with renewed effort. Clawing, grasping, pushing, and shoving – not a one of them seemed without injury, and the ground at the base of the wall was drenched with blood and bodies. Had that hour of respite done them any good, or had I only prolonged their anguish?

  Turning away, I hurried to where Marc stood. Fred and Joss kneeling at his feet, in my brother’s arms a still, silver-haired form. “No,” I shrieked, sprinting toward them. “Gran!”

  But even as I fell to my knees, I knew it was too late.

  “We were out there helping the children.” I looked up and saw Lady Marie standing next to Marc. I hadn’t recognized her in the plain homespun she wore, her hair pulled back in a tight braid. “She was healing those who needed it, and I was giving a sleeping draught to them so they wouldn’t rejoin the mob when your spell broke and…” Her voice cracked. “She had just finished healing a little girl, and she collapsed. There was nothing I could do.”

  A sob tore out of my chest, and I staggered over to an arrow slit and looked out. Sure enough, beyond the horde lay a long row of small forms, their faces still with the peace of sleep. “Bring them in,” I choked out, refusing to see them trampled or injured when the battle began. Refusing for my gran’s last act to be a waste.

  No one moved.

  “Bring them in,” I screamed.

  Marc nodded, and I watched as tender ropes of magic wrapped around the children, lifting them over the madness made of their parents and relatives, a
nd deposited them gently on the ground inside the dubious safety of the wall. He turned to Sabine, but she was already moving. “I’ll get them somewhere safe,” she said.

  “I have more of the potion,” Marie said, touching my shoulder. “If you’ll let me bring more of the children in, I can give it to them and treat their injuries.”

  She was asking my permission, I realized. Like I was the ruler instead of her. “Do it.”

  Nodding once, she turned and called, “Zoé!”

  The half-blood girl who had once been my maid appeared, and the two hurried around the bend in the wall, their heads together as they conferred.

  I gently kissed my gran’s forehead, pulled her cloak over her face, and then I said, “How do you think this is going to go?”

  “They know I’m in here,” Marc replied, staring out over the hills and fields as though he could see our enemy coming. “They know hundreds of half-bloods, many of whom possess a fair amount of power, are in here.” His jaw flexed. “Angoulême built this army for a reason – I believe they’ll disguise themselves and join the horde, break down sections of the wall and get inside the city hidden within the flow of humans. After that…” He shook his head.

  “But you’d be able to pick them out of a crowd, wouldn’t you?” Fred asked. “Feel their power, or however that works?”

  “Yes,” Marc said. “But they’ll be hemmed in by civilians on all sides. Attacking them without harming dozens of innocents would be next to impossible. And even if that was a sacrifice we were willing to make, we don’t have the power to fight them all.”

  “Can we get word to Trollus?” I asked, wishing there was a way for me to contact Martin. “The trolls there helped those on the water – maybe they’d be willing to help here.”

  “We can send a half-blood,” Marc replied. “But even if they’d be willing, I’m not sure they’d make it in time.”