Huntress, Black Dawn, Witchlight (27 page)

“That guy has been alive more than five hundred years,” Maggie said slowly, looking down the path where Hunter Redfern had disappeared.

“Yeah. And, yeah, everybody says how much he looks like the old king. Or the other way around, you know.”

Delos sure thinks he looks like him, Maggie thought. She’d seen the way Hunter handled Delos, guiding him as expertly as Delos had guided his horse. Delos was
used
to obeying somebody who looked and sounded just like Hunter Redfern.

Then she frowned. “But—how come
he
isn’t king?”

“Oh…” Jeanne sighed and ducked under a spray of fir needles that was tangled in her hair. She looked impatient and uneasy. “He’s from the Outside, okay? He’s only been here a couple of weeks. All the slaves say that he didn’t even know about this place before that.”

“He didn’t know…”

“Look. This is the way I heard it from the old slaves, okay? Hunter Redfern had a son named Chervil when he was really young. And when Chervil was, like, our age, they had some big argument and got estranged. And then Chervil ran off with his friends, and that left Hunter Redfern without an heir. And Hunter Redfern never knew that where the kid went was
here.
” Jeanne gestured around the valley. “To start his own little kingdom of Night People. But
then somehow Hunter found out, so he came to visit. And that’s why he’s here.”

She finished and stretched her shoulders, looking down the tree-ramp speculatively. P.J. sat quietly, glancing from Jeanne to Maggie. Cady just breathed.

Maggie chewed her lip, not satisfied yet. “He’s here just to visit? That’s all?”

“I’m a slave. You think I asked him personally?”

“I think you
know.
”

Jeanne stared at her a moment, then glanced at P.J. Her look was almost sullen, but Maggie understood.

“Jeanne, she’s been through hell already. Whatever it is, she can take it. Right, kiddo?”

P.J. twisted her plaid cap in a complete circle and settled it more firmly on her head. “Right,” she said flatly.

“So tell us,” Maggie said. “What’s Hunter Redfern doing here?”

“I
think,” Jeanne said, “that he’s here to get Delos to close the Dark Kingdom out. Shut up the castle and come join him Outside. And, incidentally, of course, kill all the slaves.”

Maggie stared. “Kill them all?”

“Well, it makes sense. Nobody would need them anymore.”

“And that’s why you were escaping now,” Maggie said slowly.

Jeanne gave her a quick, startled glance. “You’re really not as stupid as you seem at first sight, you know?”

“Gee, thanks.” Maggie shifted on her branch. A minute ago she’d been thinking how good it would feel to get away from the twigs poking her. Now she suddenly wanted to stay here forever, hiding. She had a
very
bad feeling.

“So why,” she said, forming her thoughts slowly, “does Hunter Redfern want to do this right now?”

“What do
you
think? Really, Maggie, what do you know about all this?”

Four Wild Powers,
Maggie thought, hearing Delos’s old teacher’s voice in her mind.
Who will be needed at the millennium, to save the world—or to destroy it.

“I know that something’s happening at the millennium, and that Delos is a Wild Power, and that the Wild Powers are supposed to do something—”

“Save the world,” Jeanne said in a clipped voice. “Except that that’s not what the Night People want. They figure there’s going to be some huge catastrophe that’ll wipe out most of the humans—and then
they
can take over. And that’s why Hunter Redfern’s here. He wants the Wild Powers on his side instead of on the humans’. He wants them to help destroy the human world instead of saving it. And it looks like he’s just about convinced Delos.”

Maggie let out a shaky breath and leaned her head against a branch. It was just like what Delos had told her—except that Jeanne was an uninterested party. She still wanted not to believe it, but she had a terrible sinking feeling. In fact, she had a strange feeling of
weight,
as if something awful was trying to settle on her shoulders.

“The millennium really means the end of the world,” she said.

“Yeah. Our world, anyway.”

Maggie glanced at P.J., who was swinging her thin legs over the edge of a branch. “You still okay?”

P.J. nodded. She looked frightened, but not unbearably so. She kept her eyes on Maggie’s face trustingly.

“And do
you
still want to go to the castle?” Jeanne said, watching Maggie just as closely. “Hunter Redfern is a very bad guy to mess with. And I hate to tell you, but your friend Prince Delos is out for our blood just like the rest of them.”

“No, I don’t still
want
to go,” Maggie said briefly. Her head went down and she gave Jeanne a brooding look under her eyelashes. “But I have to, anyway. I’ve got even more reasons now.”

“Such as?”

Maggie held up a finger. “One, I’ve got to get help for Cady.” She glanced at the motionless figure clinging trancelike to the fir’s trunk, then held up another finger. “Two, I have to find out what happened to my brother.” Another finger. “And, three, I have to get those slaves free before Hunter Redfern has them all killed.”

“You have to
what
?” Jeanne said in a muffled shriek. She almost fell out of the tree.

“I kind of thought you’d react that way. Don’t worry about it. You don’t have to get involved.”

“I was wrong before. You
are
as dumb as you look. And you are totally freaking crazy.”

Yeah, I know, Maggie thought grimly. It’s probably just as well I didn’t mention the fourth reason.

Which was that she had to keep Delos from aiding and
abetting the end of the world. That was the responsibility that had settled on her, and she had no idea why it was hers except that she’d been inside his mind. She
knew
him. She couldn’t just walk away.

If anybody could talk to him about it and convince him not to do it, she could. She had absolutely no doubt about that. So it was her job to try.

And if he was really as evil as Jeanne seemed to think—if it was true that he’d killed Miles…well, then she had a different job.

She had to do whatever was necessary to stop him. Distant and impossible as it seemed, she would have to kill him if that was what it took.

“Come on,” she said to the other girls. “Cady, do you think you can climb down now? And, Jeanne, do you know a way into the castle?”

The moat stank.

Maggie had been glad to find Jeanne knew a way into the castle. That was before she discovered that it involved swimming through stagnant water and climbing up what Jeanne called a garderobe but what was all too obviously the shaft of an old latrine.

“Just kill me, somebody,” Maggie whispered halfway up. She was soaking wet and daubed with unthinkable slime. She couldn’t remember ever being quite this dirty.

The next moment she forgot about it in her worry about Cady. Cady had managed the swim, still doing everything she was told as if she were in a trance. But now she was getting shaky. Maggie wondered seriously whether this sort of activity was helpful to somebody who’d been poisoned.

When they were finally at the top of the shaft, Maggie looked around and saw a small room that seemed to be built directly into the castle wall. Everything was made of dark stone, with a cold and echoing feel to it.

“Don’t make any noise,” Jeanne whispered. She bent close to Maggie, who was helping support Cady. “We need to go down a passage and through the kitchen, okay? It’s all right if slaves see us, but we have to watch out for
them.
”

“We’ve got to get Cady to a healing woman—”

“I know! That’s where I’m trying to take you.” Jeanne clamped a hand on P.J.’s shoulder and steered her into a corridor.

More stone. More echoes. Maggie tried to walk without her shoes squishing or smacking. She was dimly impressed with the castle itself—it was grand and cold and so huge that she felt like an insect making her way through the passage.

After what seemed like an endless walk, they emerged in a small entryway partitioned off by wooden screens. Maggie could hear activity behind the screens and as Jeanne led them stealthily forward, she caught a glimpse of people moving on the other side. They were spreading white tablecloths over long
wooden tables in a room that seemed bigger than Maggie’s entire house.

Another doorway. Another passage. And finally the kitchen, which was full of bustling people. They were stirring huge iron cauldrons and turning meat on spits. The smell of a dozen different kinds of food hit Maggie and made her feel faint. She was so hungry that her knees wobbled and she had to swallow hard.

But even more than hungry, she was scared. They were in plain sight of dozens of people.

“Slaves,” Jeanne said shortly. “They won’t tell on us. Grab a sack to wrap around you and come on. And, P.J., take off that ridiculous hat.”

Slaves, Maggie thought, staring. They were all dressed identically, in loose-fitting pants and tops that were like short tunics. Jeanne was wearing the same thing—it had looked enough like clothes from Outside that Maggie hadn’t really focused on it before. What struck her now was that everybody looked so…un-ironed. There were no sharp creases. And no real color. All the clothes were an indeterminate shade of beige-brown, and all the faces seemed just as dull and faded. They were like drones.

What would it be like to live that way? she wondered as she threw a rough sack around her shoulders to hide the dark blue of her jacket. Without any choice in what you do, and any hope for the future?

It would be terrible, she decided. And it might just drive you crazy.

I wonder if any of them ever…snap?

But she couldn’t look around anymore. Jeanne was hustling through a doorway into the open air. There was a kind of garden here just outside the kitchen, with scraggly fruit trees and what looked like herbs. Then there was a courtyard and finally a row of huts nestled against the high black wall that surrounded the castle.

“This is the really dangerous part,” Jeanne whispered harshly. “It’s the back, but if one of
them
looks out and sees us, we’re in trouble. Keep your head down—and walk like this. Like a slave.” She led them at a shuffling run toward a hut.

This place
is
like a city, Maggie thought. A city inside a wall, with the castle in the middle.

They reached the shack. Jeanne pulled the door open and bustled them inside. Then she shut the door again and sagged.

“I think we actually made it.” She sounded surprised.

Maggie was looking around. The tiny room was dim, but she could see crude furniture and piles of what looked like laundry. “This is it? We’re safe?”

“Nowhere is safe,” Jeanne said sharply. “But we can get some slave clothes for you here, and we can rest. And I’ll go get the healing woman,” she added as Maggie opened her mouth.

While she was gone, Maggie turned to Cady and P.J. They
were both shivering. She made Cady lie down and had P.J. help her go through one of the piles of laundry.

“Get your wet things off,” Maggie said. She pulled off her own hightops and shrugged out of her sodden jacket. Then she knelt to get Cady’s shoes off. The blind girl was lying motionless on a thin pallet, and didn’t respond to Maggie’s touch. Maggie was worried about her.

Behind her, the door opened and Jeanne came in with two people. One was a gaunt and handsome woman, with dark hair pulled untidily back and an apron over her tunic and pants. The other was a young girl who looked frightened.

“This is Laundress.” The way Jeanne said it, it was clearly a proper name. “She’s a healer, and the girl’s her helper.”

Relief washed through Maggie. “This is Cady,” she said. And then, since nobody moved and Cady couldn’t speak for herself, she went on, “She’s from Outside, and she was poisoned by the slave traders. I’m not sure how long ago that was—at least a couple of days. She’s been running a high fever and most of the time she’s just sort of sleepwalking—”

“What is this?” The gaunt woman took a step toward Cady, but her expression was anything but welcoming. Then she turned on Jeanne angrily, “How could you bring this—thing—in here?”

Maggie froze where she was by Cady’s feet. “What are you talking about? She’s sick—”

“She’s one of them!” The woman’s eyes were burning darkly
at Jeanne. “And don’t tell me you didn’t notice. It’s perfectly plain!”

“
What’s
perfectly plain?” Maggie’s fists were clenched. “Jeanne, what’s she talking about?”

The woman’s burning eyes turned on her. “This girl is a witch.”

Maggie went still.

Part of her was amazed and disbelieving. A witch? Like Sylvia? A Night Person?

Cady wasn’t at all like that. She wasn’t evil. She was
normal,
a nice, ordinary, gentle girl. She
couldn’t
be anything supernatural….

But another part of Maggie wasn’t even startled. It was saying that at some deep level she had known all along.

Her mind was bringing up pictures. Cady in the hollow tree, when she and Maggie were hiding from Bern and Gavin. Cady’s lips moving—and Gavin saying
I can’t feel them at all.

The hound today had said the same thing.
I can’t follow their life force anymore.

She was blocking them from sensing us, Maggie thought. And she was the one who told us to climb the tree. She’s blind, but she can see things.

It’s true.

She turned slowly to look at the girl lying on the pallet.

Cady was almost perfectly still, her breathing barely lifting her chest. Her hair was coiled around her head like damp
snakes, her face was smudged and dirty, her lashes spiky on her cheeks. But somehow she hadn’t lost any of her serene beauty. It remained untouched, whatever happened to her body.

I don’t care, Maggie thought. She may be a witch, but she’s not like Sylvia. I
know
she’s not evil.

She turned back to Laundress, and spoke carefully and deliberately.

“Look, I understand that you don’t like witches. But this girl has been with us for two days, and all she’s done is help us. And, I mean, look at her!” Maggie lost her reasonable tone. “They were bringing her here as a slave! She wasn’t getting any special treatment. She’s not on their side!”

“Too bad for her,” Laundress said. Her voice was flat and…plain. The voice of a woman who saw things in black and white and didn’t like arguments.

And who knew how to back up her beliefs. One big gaunt hand went beneath her apron, into a hidden pocket. When it came out again, it was gripping a kitchen knife.

“Wait a minute,” Jeanne said.

Laundress didn’t look at her. “Friends of witches are no friends of ours,” she said in her plain, heavy way. “And that includes you.”

With one motion, Jeanne wheeled away from her and into a fighting stance. “You’re right. I knew what she was. I hated her, too, at first. But it’s like Maggie told you. She’s not going to hurt us!”

“I’m not going to miss a chance to kill one of
them,
” Laundress said. “And if you try to stop me, you’ll be sorry.”

Maggie’s heart was pounding. She looked back and forth from the tall woman, who was holding the knife menacingly, to Jeanne, who was crouched with her teeth bared and her eyes narrowed. They were ready to fight.

Maggie found herself in the middle of the room, in a triangle formed by Cady and Jeanne and the knife. She was too angry to be frightened.

“You
put that down,
” she said to Laundress fiercely, forgetting that she was speaking to an adult. “You’re not going to do anything with that. How can you even try?”

Vaguely, she noticed movement behind the woman. The frightened young girl who hadn’t said anything so far was stepping forward. She was staring at Maggie, pointing at Maggie. Her eyes and mouth were wide open, but her voice was an indrawn breath.

“The Deliverer!”

Maggie hardly heard the gasped words. She was rushing on. “If you people don’t stick together, what kind of chance do you have? How can you ever get free—”