Page 59 of The Huntsman's Heart
“This time of year is crucial for the farmers. They must be allowed to sow the crops unmolested by monsters. It is our job to protect them. I have drawn up two lists. You will work in a rosterto keep watch and to scout the woods until I return.” I hand the list to Wilhelm, my most experienced hunter. “Keep them in line. Let no man travel through the woods alone.”
As I ride across the bridge and out of town, there’s a commotion in the square. Guards haul a woman and tie her to a wooden stake. There’s shouting. Rather than stop to help, I spur Tharrok on, worried until I reassure myself no one has spotted the princess. Perhaps the commotion will be the opportunity we need to get her inside the walls unnoticed.
Alaric
Back in the woods, I curse myself for every time I told her she was walking too loudly. Every moment she spent watching me move through the woods, obviously paying more attention than I gave her credit for. How has she disappeared so thoroughly?
I’m anxious, mind running over where she might have gone and who might have seen her. If the queen gets even a hint that the princess isn’t dead, she will have me in her chamber spilling all my secrets and ruining everything in a moment.
I’m unsettled. At first it seems mere nerves over what is at stake, then I realize there’s more to it. A thick fog of magic that leaves my senses overwrought. Melantha? It’s been a long time since she tried a spell so powerful, unhappy with the drain of vitality it caused.
The aura is not right for the queen. This magic is no mere deception. This is something darker. Something dead.
Well at least now I’ve worked out where the princess is. All I need do to find her is trace the source of the dark magic. There could be nothing else powerful enough in the area to cast such a magic. The very air throbs with it like a hundred dead and wizened hearts beating at once with a dry crackle.
Wheeling Tharrok around, I head back toward the walls of Thornvale, keeping to the trees as long as possible, taking a route that will hopefully mean I encounter no peasant or hunter. The watch I set will be out any time, and I must avoid them seeing me returning toward the town.
Luckily, I don’t have to travel very much further before I find her.
Tharrok nearly tramples her crumpled body as we hurry through the undergrowth, avoiding the worn path, crashing through thickets of brambles and holly. It is only because the first spring buds have yet to form on branches that she’s visibleat all, collapsed beneath a large tree. At least she should not have been spotted.
I think at first she’s hiding, but she makes no move to dodge my horse’s hooves, and when I jump from the saddle and bend to check she doesn’t stir. She’s cold and still, which tells me nothing. There’s no heartbeat to search for. I don’t waste my time.
I check her chest though, just to see if somehow the heart has been stolen from where I placed it, but the flesh is whole, only the light tracing of the last scar she’ll ever receive there to indicate.
I shake her gently. “Princess?”
There’s no response. Her eyelids flutter, though, and her lips move for a fraction of a second.
It is enough. A sign she’s in there, even if she won’t respond. The heavy magic still hangs around us and though I sense it, there’s nothing I can do to break the spell. It’s as if she’s clinging to the thread of power, and in doing so, she’s slipped out of consciousness.
We can’t be found here and I can’t take her into Thornvale like this, even if I wanted to. With her heart still inside her body, she’s vulnerable in a way that I am not. There’s nothing for it but to lift her and sling her over Tharrok’s back once again, moving deeper into the woods.
I look over my shoulder constantly, but we’re not followed. The thick web of magic clings to her, stretching to extend further and further, until I fear it will never break.
I shake her, call her name as loudly as I dare.
Nothing.
She won’t respond.
It’s not my voice she wants, though, is it? Pulling the stone heart pendant from beneath her chemise I clutch it in my hand. I would love to tear it from her neck and toss it into the shrub, butit would be futile. She’ll never be soft with me the way she is with them. What we have borders on hatred. There’s nothing tender about it.
If anyone can wake her now, it’s her gargoyles. That sits in my belly like sour wine, but I need her awake. I need her returned to me. So in some twisted parody of our previous journey I steer Tharrok away from Thornvale and on toward the castle ruins. Last time I cursed her stubbornness. I resented the way she fought me at every turn. This time I wish she would scream or fight me.
She would hate being slung over the saddle like a piece of meat, so I lift her in my arms and tuck her against my chest, loosening the strap she uses to fasten her sword hilt across her back to slip over my head and keep her steady. Her head lolls against my shoulder as Tharrok walks on.
“What did you do?” I whisper, frustrated, but there’s no answer.
We were so close to a plan. Closer than I’ve been in many years to a solution. I guarantee this is something she brought on herself because she wouldn’t just wait in the place I told her to.
I don’t know what I’m more frustrated at—the fact I’m about to lose my chance to end my suffering or the fact I might have already lost her.
The stubborn princess woke things in me I thought were long dead. Buried.
Not just sexual desire, though gods know she rouses that in me. She rouses anger, jealousy, and worst of all, hope. Hope that I’m going to have to relearn how to live without if I can’t recover her.
Why won’t the magic recede? What has she done?
