Stolen Songbird

CHAPTER 26

CéCILE

I was running out of time. I dug my fingers into the fabric, my heart hammering as the moments ticked by. Tristan was moving many times faster than I had, and I was all but certain he was leading his father’s soldiers towards me.

My skin brushed against a sharp edge, and I gleefully extracted the knife, sticking it between my teeth for safekeeping. “Flint, flint, where are you?” I hummed under my breath, trying to combat my panic. He was closer.

My fingernails grated across a stone stuck between two ribs, and I quickly pried it out, not allowing my mind to linger on how it became lodged there. Tristan wasn’t far now. If I didn’t get a source of light soon, he’d catch me.

I needed to find the lantern. Wary of the knife’s sharp edge, I tentatively struck the two together. Nothing. “Quit being a ninny,” I scolded myself, and smacked the two firmly together. A spark flew. I repeated the process, but the quick spark wasn’t enough to help me locate the lantern. I’d have to do it by feel.

Clutching my precious objects, I continued my search. When my hand closed over the slim metal handle of the lantern, I very nearly crowed with delight. But I was too late. I heard the sound of boots, and then light blossomed from overhead.

“Cécile?”

I froze, the sound of Tristan’s voice eliciting an unfortunate mix of emotion in my heart.

“Cécile? Where are you?”

My silence was only delaying the inevitable. “Here.” My tight throat restricted the word to a croak. Coughing, I cleared it and called again. “I’m here.”

“Are you hurt?”

I shook my head and then realized he couldn’t see me. “No.”

“I’m coming down.”

With a recklessness I would never have dared, he scampered down the slick rocks and stopped on a ledge above me. He was alone. Brilliant light filled the chamber, and I looked around and saw in an instant that if my light hadn’t broken, my passage out of the slime would have been easy. I stared at the open passage that led to freedom and struggled with my emotions. I should feel disappointment, devastation even. I had been so close. If I’d been better prepared, or bolder, I might be breathing open air. But part of me – a part that made me cringe – was glad that he had come.

A soft snort of annoyance caught my attention and I looked up. Tristan had his arms crossed and was glaring at me.

“Is it because you’re a human or because you’re a girl?”

“Is what because?” I retorted, infected by his irritation.

“Your blasted kaleidoscope of emotion!” he snapped. “One minute you’re happy, the next you are sad. Then angry. Then ashamed. Every hour I’m forced to run the gamut of every emotion that ever existed and never know the cause of a single one of them.”

I crossed my arms and scowled.

Tristan threw up his hands in exasperation. “I don’t even know whether you want me to rescue you from this mess or to leave you here in the dark.”

“Please,” I snapped. “You aren’t here to rescue me – you’re here to stop my escape. And besides, I don’t need any help from you.”

“Oh?” His eyebrows rose along with his anger. “So I take it you are wallowing around in sluag shit because you enjoy the smell so much? And you thought it would be more entertaining to navigate the labyrinth in the dark? Perhaps,” he whispered angrily, “we should stuff your ears with wool and tie one arm behind your back to make it truly entertaining for you!”

I held up the products of my search triumphantly. “See?”

“Yes, I do see,” he snapped. “I see a broken lantern that has leaked oil everywhere and a fool of a girl about to set off sparks in the midst of it.”

I looked down, only now seeing the rainbow of oil slicking across the pool of offal. “Then I suppose we should both be glad you finally decided to stop me,” I said, not bothering to hide the bitterness in my voice.

Hurt stung through my mind, and I looked up at him in surprise.

“You think I’m here to save my own skin, don’t you?” he demanded in a loud whisper. He looked away from me and shook his head.

I let the broken lantern slip from my fingers. “Why else?” I asked. “Duty?” I flung the word at him.

His eyes snapped back to meet mine. “To hell with duty. I came for you – I came because I was afraid you weren’t going to make it. I came because I couldn’t stand the thought of something happening to you.”

A soft gasp filled my ears and I dimly realized it had come from my lips. This was not what I had expected. And even though I didn’t know entirely why, I knew his statement changed everything.

The ropes of power that wrapped around me were blissfully warm as they lifted me out of the slime and settled me on the ledge next to Tristan, holding me steady until I had regained my balance. I looked down at the place where I’d almost met my end. The pool was murky and faintly green, but beneath the floating skeleton and scraps of fabric, there lay a carpet of glittering gold. “It’s Luc.” I gestured below. “My purchase price.”

Tristan scowled. “Then he got what he deserved. The labyrinth always kills the greedy ones eventually.”

“No one deserves this,” I whispered, imagining what it would be like to be paralyzed and have the flesh stripped from your body. A shiver ran down my spine, and I wrapped my sodden cloak around me.

“He lied to you. He stole you from your family. He sold you with no more regard than a trader sells a side of beef.” Tristan’s hands balled up, and my own teeth clenched from the fury emanating from him. “If any man deserved to die, it was him.”

I regarded the bones that had once been Luc, finding it hard to hate a dead man, no matter what he had done. Besides, there was another side to the bargain. “And you purchased me, with as much regard as a nobleman buying a side of beef.”

“I did not!” His silver eyes locked with mine and I shivered at the intensity in them. “I fought this arrangement at every turn. I’ve told you that.”

“He gave you the choice. I was there.” My lip trembled. “I heard you agree to me with my own ears. But the whole time, you wanted it to be her, didn’t you?”

Tristan sighed and the heat left his eyes. He wiped a weary hand across his face and looked down at the glittering pool of gold. “Anaïs and I are only friends.”

“Oh,” I said, my voice weak.

“We have never been anything more and we never will be,” Tristan continued, “but we pretend we are in order to give me the time and privacy I need to meet with my followers.”

“Oh,” I repeated. “I thought that maybe before I came that you and her…” I trailed off as he shook his head. “Did you ever consider it?” I asked, my mind having a difficult time coming to terms with what he was telling me.

Tristan frowned. “Do you really want to go down that path?”

“No,” I said quickly, pressing the heel of my hand to my forehead. “Anaïs is a sympathizer?”

“Not precisely,” Tristan said. “But I trust her implicitly, so that isn’t so much the issue. Her father, Angoulême, is head of those who wish to keep troll bloodlines pure. He wants to ban all human-troll interactions, ban any human from stepping foot within Trollus, and to conduct all trade at the mouth of the River Road. He also wants to purge the city of anyone with less than pure blood. He’s suspected my leanings for a long time, and this isn’t the first time he’s tried to use Anaïs against me.”

His lips clenched together in a bitter smile, and I could feel his hatred of the Duke sear through my mind. A hatred I was beginning to share.

“To make matters worse, he has my younger brother as his ward.” Tristan swallowed hard. “Roland is… insane. Violently so. And Angoulême has directed his violent predilections towards his cause.”

“Why did your father let Angoulême have him?” I asked, bewildered.

“Originally, it was part of a… a contract that he was negotiating. An alliance. But ultimately, I think it was because he didn’t want him to turn out like me,” Tristan said quietly. “So he placed him in a home where neither my aunt nor I are welcome.”

“Anaïs’ home,” I said.

Tristan nodded. “Which is why I know some of his plans. Angoulême thinks he can control Roland and that he can get rid of me and put my brother on the throne of Trollus. And if he were to succeed he, Angoulême, would be king in all but name.”

“So, why don’t you tell your father about Angoulême’s plot?” I demanded.

Tristan shook his head. “Because I don’t have proof. And neither does he, so we exist in a sort of stalemate. Or at least we did,” he added weakly.

I felt sick. “I played right into his hand, didn’t I? If I hated you, like I was supposed to, I wouldn’t have cared about Anaïs. I reacted just as he suspected I would. I’ve put everything at risk.”

Tristan grimaced. “Yes, but it isn’t your fault. It’s mine. I should have told you everything when I had the chance. I thought you’d be safer if I kept you in the dark. But I was wrong.”

But I hadn’t been in the dark. I had known that Angoulême wanted Tristan dead, and yet still I had let myself believe him.

Tristan interrupted my thoughts. “It doesn’t matter anymore. We are here now and very near the limits of the rock fall. I’ll take you the rest of the way out.” He hesitated and then added, “If that is what you want.”

I opened my mouth, planning to say that I would like that very much indeed, but the words wouldn’t come out. He was giving me the choice. Here he had the opportunity to be rid of me for good and he was letting me choose what I wanted to do.

“Won’t you be in a great deal of trouble if you don’t bring me back?”

“Very likely. But that’s my problem, not yours.”

The thought of anything happening to him terrified me, and knowing that it would be because of my actions made me ill. If only I’d thought things through, if only I’d trusted him and waited, in less than a year Tristan would have been king and I’d be free to go. Of course, he should have trusted me, too.

“You must decide, Cécile. My father’s soldiers will catch up to us soon enough, and your moment to flee will have passed. After this, another chance will not be forthcoming.”

Decide, decide. I closed my eyes and tried to muster up the courage to lay my cards on the table. I was afraid if I told him how I really felt that he would laugh at me; that maybe all these apparent confessions were part of a cruel game that I wasn’t clever enough to discern. But I couldn’t leave without knowing. I couldn’t spend the rest of my life with his emotions hovering in the back of my mind without knowing why he was giving me this choice. Always wondering if maybe, just maybe, he had wanted me to stay.

I could feel his anticipation thick upon my mind, but that didn’t help me know what answer he wanted.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked.

He shook his head. “This is your decision.”

“I know.” I dug my fingernails into the rock. “But before I make it, I need to know how you feel. About me.”

His eyes met mine and I trembled at the intensity of his expression. “Don’t you know?”

I shook my head.

From his pocket, he pulled out a necklace and handed it to me. It was my mother’s pendant. “You didn’t do it.”

Tristan shook his head. “You asked what was better, closure or hope… And I think hope is better.” His eyes grew distant. “Forcing your family to believe you were dead felt like admitting defeat – like we were conceding before the battle any hope they might see you again. I just couldn’t do it.”

I blinked back tears. “Are they still looking for me… or do they think…”

“Not every day; but as often as they can, they still search the hills. They haven’t given up on you.”

“Thank you,” I whispered. Lifting the necklace, I watched the pendant turn, reflecting Tristan’s light in little sparks. “You kept it in your pocket the whole time, then?”

“My hoarding tendencies manifest themselves in strange ways. It was the only thing that was yours.” He smiled – not one of his false ones that didn’t reach his eyes, but one that lit up my heart. “I noticed you wearing it when you arrived, and again that first night you sang. I watched you standing in the glass gardens, and I thought you were the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. A flame in the long dark night.”

“I’m not…” I started to argue, but stopped. Tristan couldn’t lie. Reaching up, he fastened the pendant around my neck. The gold was warm.

“Most people would have given up a long time ago – just curled up in a corner and waited to die, but you’ve lived every day. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone so tenaciously optimistic.” Carefully, as if he feared I might still swat his hand away, he reached out and brushed a slimy lock of hair away from my face. “I want you to stay, Cécile, but I’m afraid staying will only bring you misery.”

My knees were trembling so badly that I had to reach out and rest a hand on his shoulder lest I topple off the edge and ruin the moment. I understood now why trolls bound themselves to each other, despite the risks it carried. To feel so much myself and have him feel the same – it was like drowning, only I had no desire to seek the surface. Tristan’s hands circled my waist and I willingly let him pull me closer, lost in the moment. Then something over my shoulder caught his attention.

I saw his eyes widen in shock just before his light winked out.

Sluag.

Tristan jerked me round to the far side of him and pushed me backwards along the ledge, but it was too late. Something slammed into him and he fell backwards, knocking both of us off the ledge and into the pool below. The impact of hitting the slime knocked the wind out of me with a wicked slap that made every inch of me scream in pain. Out of range of the creature’s ability to nullify magic, Tristan’s light flickered back into existence long enough for me to see the white bulk of the sluag squeeze out from behind a rock and slide down the incline towards us.

BAROOOM!

“Cécile!”

Tristan dragged me backwards, but Luc’s skeleton tangled in my skirts, holding me in place. The light went out and the soft bulk of the creature collided with me, driving me beneath the surface of the pool. Sharp pieces of gold dug into my back and the slimy body of the sluag pressed against my face, holding me down. I pummeled my fists against it, but they sunk deep into the monster’s soft form with little effect. My lungs burned, and panic flooded my veins. Snatching up a piece of bone, I jammed it into the creature’s soft hide.

The sluag shrieked and squirmed its bulk off me. Grasping hands caught hold of my cloak, helping me struggle upwards and pulling me back as I gasped in breaths of precious air. Tristan’s light flickered faintly, growing in strength as we struggled out of the sluag’s range. I kept my eyes fixed on it, watching it squirm its way onto a rocky perch where it sat, whip-like tongue flickering in and out. It had no more eyes or face than a garden slug, but I swore it watched us with the amused expression of a cat watching a mouse.

“Hurry, Cécile!” Tristan had me by the hand and was dragging me through the tunnels, but I kept my head turned back, watching the sluag as we rounded a corner. “Why isn’t it attacking? What’s it waiting for?”

“For me to die.”

My head snapped back around and only then did I see the blood running down his hand, dripping onto the ground. “No,” I whispered, and every inch of me grew cold as I remembered Élise’s words: their venom is deadly – even to one of us. “You can’t die.”

“It can’t be helped,” he said. “There is nothing that can be done.” I could see the tightness in his face, feel the fear and anguish in his heart, but I knew he’d never admit any of it. Anger at his fatalism drove away my terror. Trolls did little to help their injured, leaving it up to fate to determine whether the victim lived or died. But I wasn’t a troll. I’d seen village wise women pull men back from the brink of death with herb-lore. More importantly, I’d seen my father save one of our neighbors from a viper bite that would surely have killed him untreated.

“Stop,” I said, pulling Tristan to a halt.

“Have you lost your mind?” Tristan hissed.

I pulled up his sleeve, exposing the puncture wound. It was small, but already the skin around it was inflamed. Tearing a strip of fabric from my cloak, I tightly bound his arm beneath his elbow. “It’s just like a snake-bite,” I whispered. “Just like a snake-bite.” Taking a deep breath, I raised his arm to my mouth and sucked on it hard like I’d seen my father do. The faintly metallic taste of blood filled my mouth, but it was foul with the bitterness of poison.

Tristan jerked his arm away, horror on his face. “Do you want to die too?”

I spat the noxious mixture onto the ground and gripped his arm again. “This is how it’s done. It’s just like a snakebite.” I repeated the process until all I could taste was blood, but still the inflammation grew. “Knife,” I ordered. He pulled one from his boot and handed it to me.

“This will hurt,” I warned, and then made a series of cuts around the wound and left it to bleed freely. Tristan didn’t flinch, but I could feel that he was in more pain than the knife cuts warranted. “You need to stay still now,” I said. “Wait for them to find us.”

On the tail of my words came the soft swish, swish from the tunnel behind us. The sluag was on the move, tracking its injured prey.

“I don’t think that’s advisable,” Tristan said, and he pressed the palm of his hand against his forehead.

I felt his dizziness and pain like it was my own and rested a hand against the wet rock to keep my balance. “Perhaps not.”

“We need to move,” Tristan responded, refusing to look at me. “There isn’t much time.”

It did not take long for me to discover how Tristan had moved with such speed through the labyrinth. Magic flooded out ahead of us as we ran, making the uneven tunnels smooth as a marble corridor and springy as a grassy meadow. Where I had had to climb up and down piled boulders, he created glowing platforms that bridged the gaps. Even the spots where I had to drop to my hands and knees were made easier by the free-floating orbs that lit our path. He did not pause or even glance at the path markers, his knowledge of these tunnels ingrained through years of exploration, or perhaps by some knowledge innate to his kind. But Tristan was right: we did not have much time.

The venom was in his blood, coursing through his veins, and slowly, but surely, numbing his senses. He stumbled with greater frequency and his breath came in great heaving gasps whereas I was barely winded. And I could feel the haze in his mind, the growing confusion. He slowed to a walk, which quickly became a stagger. Then, to my horror, he fell to his knees.

“Tristan!” I swung his uninjured arm around my shoulder and tried to pull him to his feet, but he pushed me aside. His normally hot skin was cold and clammy to the touch, and his hand trembled in mine.

“Here.” He beckoned to the orb of light and it floated close to us. “Take it,” he said.

“I can’t!” I said, but at the sight of his pained expression, I reached out and sunk my fingers into the warm power. To my amazement, it didn’t flow away as it usually did, but maintained its form and followed my hand.

“Take it and go,” he whispered, slumping against me.

I eased him down so that he lay with his head on my lap. “I’m not leaving you to be eaten by a giant slug,” I said, hoping the false confidence in my voice would overpower the fear he must have known I felt.

“You have to go. The sluag will not stop until it finds us.”

“Let it come.”

“Cécile!” I could hear the frustration in his voice, weak as it was. “There is no sense in you staying. No one survives a sluag sting for long – I’m going to die. You need to get out of the labyrinth, past the barrier of the curse, and as far away as you can run. The distance will make it hurt less for you when my light goes out.”

A sob tore its way out of my throat. “Marc will find us before the sluag.”

“Even worse.” Tristan’s voice was barely audible now. “You will serve no purpose with me gone. My father will have you killed, and he won’t be as quick about it as the sluag.” He groaned in pain and a tear rolled down my filthy cheek. “Take the light and try to get out while you still can.”

“I’m not leaving you for that thing to eat while you’re still alive,” I whispered. “If it costs me my life, then so be it.”

“Stubborn until the end…” He sighed softly. “Stay until I’m dead then, but promise me when it’s over, you’ll find a way out. Promise me you’ll live.”

Feeling his panic and fear was hard enough, but seeing it written in hard lines across his face was even worse. His militant self-control was slipping, and I could see the true magnitude of his terror. And still he was thinking of me.

“No,” I said. “I won’t promise anything, because that would mean giving up. You won’t die, you won’t die.”

For a moment, Tristan’s fear turned to anger. “This wasn’t how it was supposed to go!”

“Then don’t let it end this way.” Never before had I felt such a pure sense of helplessness. Why couldn’t I have the power to help him, to make Tristan well again?

“Cécile!” He writhed in pain, his grip grinding the bones in my hand together. I closed my eyes and images of the sluag assaulted me. I would be powerless to stop it. It would sting me and then turn on Tristan. My mind recoiled at the thought of me lying there, paralyzed by venom, but still conscious enough to watch the monster strip the flesh from his face.

“No,” I whispered. “I won’t let it happen.” Pushing up his sleeve, I examined the cuts I had made. Not only had they not healed over with the preternatural speed at which trolls usually healed, they were bleeding profusely. I pressed my hand against them, trying to slow the flow, but crimson liquid seeped through my fingers and coated my hands.

Troll blood… blood magic.

Hands shaking, I tried to remember Anushka’s incantations, muttering the half-remembered phrases. But nothing happened.

“Please work!” Desperately, I called upon every ounce of will I had and used it to pull the foreign power filling the blood seeping from his veins. “Live, live, live,” I chanted. A wind rose, whistling through the tunnels. Every sound grew sharper and everything near me clearer to the eye. “Stop bleeding,” I shouted, and beneath my hands, I watched in amazement as Tristan’s wounds ceased to bleed and sealed over, leaving pale white scars in their place. My breath caught. “Tristan?”

His eyes remained closed. The seething pulse of his pain and delirium remained. The healed wounds were meaningless – I had done nothing to stop the progress of the venom. Desperately, I pulled power from all around me: from the rocks beneath my knees; the stagnant air in my lungs; and the water dripping down onto my face. I felt full, flush, but it was all for naught, because the power refused to acknowledge Tristan. He did not belong to this world.

A racking sob tore through me – for a moment, it had seemed I had all the power in the world at my fingertips. But I could not help him, so it meant nothing. I was powerless.

Gently, I rested the ball of light on his chest, hopeful that the magic would warm him as it did me. I saw it then. Like blight on a grapevine, the silver leaves tattooed across my fingers were tarnishing at their edges.

Tristan was dying.