The Poison of Woedenwoud Read online

  “Drake won’t be happy to hear that,” Dreskin said softly behind her. “We can’t leave this blasted darkness behind until she wakes up.”

  Ling knew all of this already. She’d written it in the book yesterday and the day before that. She’d read it this morning just as she had yesterday morning and the morning before that. Always the same, day after day. Until Fern healed enough to wake, they couldn’t risk moving any farther away from the magic of Marique. The farther they went, the weaker she’d get, something they could not risk in her already weakened state. But the longer they lingered here, the more Ling would have to rehash her life to an audience of two. On bad days, an audience of four. The days Celene and Amalya were there were always much, much worse.

  “Doesn’t matter. We still have no plan. Not even an idea of a plan.” It was a jab. Dreskin was all about plans. He spoke about them constantly according to what she’d written in the grimoire. His frustration at not having one grew daily. She was angling for a fight, but he didn’t take the bait.

  “You did an amazing job keeping those things away from her, Ling. She’ll be fine, just like Alyssum will be. It’ll just take time. You know, in a way those damn things saved you. There were so many of them we could hear them squealing for miles. We just followed the noise.”

  She suppressed the urge to tell him to shut up. He’d said more or less the same thing yesterday. And the day before that, too.

  Drake was hunched over the table when Ling pushed open the door and walked in. A map sprawled across the wide and flat surface in front of her, pinned down at the corners by plates holding half-eaten sandwiches and cups with the blackened remains of coffee at their bottoms. The table took up most of the room, the shelves behind it loaded with additional maps and other scrolls and books. A small bed with a pile of tangled sheets heaped on it was pushed against one wall, a narrow sink—a luxury on a ship like this—took up the other, all of it made of the same silvered wood of the cabin she’d woke up in hours before.

  A tray sat forgotten on the mussed bed, but steam rising from the pot and a full bowl of honey was evidence of recent delivery. Ling moved across the room and poured herself a cup of coffee before collapsing into a chair near the table. She slurped noisily at the black liquid, irritated at being there and wanting everyone to know it.

  Drake’s face was blotchy red. She’d been crying again, though she was perfectly composed now. For the thousandth time Ling wondered if part of the reason for their lingering so close to Marique was due less to Fern’s injuries and more to Drake’s hope Alyssum would come to them. Drake worked hard to hide it, but it was obvious she feared deeply for Alyssum’s safety and would almost certainly prefer be at her lover’s side. What it must cost her to stay here, to remain committed to the task before them despite its uncertain outcome, Ling could hardly fathom. But Drake would not forsake her role in this. Not even for Alyssum.

  As strange as it seemed to Ling, Drake fought for something else altogether: for magic, for the survival of the Mari, maybe for the survival of everything. Drake did what she did for the wellbeing of people she may never know, and that motivation was incomprehensible to Ling.

  “Walk me through it again,” Drake ordered.

  Ling sighed, not bothering to hide her exasperation. “I’ve already told you everything.”

  “Then tell me again.”

  Ling took a deep, calming breath. She’d written in the grimoire that she’d liked Drake from the first time she’d seen her, but right now Ling wanted to choke her. “There is nothing more to tell. He wasn’t there. I felt my way along every inch of every wall in that place. I looked beneath everything that could be lifted, behind every tapestry. There was nothing. He was gone and he left nothing behind.”

  “Not that. Tell me about Meuse.”

  Drake had tried this line of questioning before too. “About Grag, you mean. I’ve already told you everything I know about him, everything I’ve heard.”

  Drake remained hunched over the map, but lifted her eyes to stare at Ling. “Look, we can’t leave here until we know where to go. We are safe for now, but believe me when I say that won’t last forever, even in this blasted place. And once we leave the Darkling Sea, we can’t just drift around out there while we try to figure it out. We need a plan, and to devise a plan I need to know what we’re doing out here, and that has to be buried somewhere in your damned memory, either directly or indirectly through that book. So I don’t care how irritated you are, how bored you are, or how sad you are. Tell me the fucking story again!” Drake’s voice had risen as she’d spoken, and she slammed her palm down on the tabletop hard enough to rattle the dishes.

  Ling felt her own anger flash in kind. “I don’t know! Alyssum is the one who wants to seal the breach. Alyssum is the one that was there when the damned thing started; she’s the one that studied it. If you want to know ask her!”

  Drake’s red face paled and she deflated where she stood. It reminded Ling of how her father had slumped the last time she’d seen him, as if the last bone holding his body upright had vanished, leaving just a fleshy suit behind. The room was silent for a long while.

  “I’m sorry,” Ling finally said, angry that she even felt the need to apologize despite knowing she’d crossed a line. “It’s hard…remembering everything, talking about it. I just…I don’t know what part I play in all of this. I can store power somehow. I think. And all I know about my creation is that it took the lives of two innocent kids and the consciousness of Evelyn to make it happen. All for a curse upon my family for refusing to take some amulet.”

  “What sort of amulet?” Dreskin took over the questioning. Drake stared down at the map, body locked in place with tension.

  Dreskin stood beside Drake, arms crossed on his chest, legs wide. He studied Ling with an even gaze. She felt the flames inside of her flare up under its touch. Her father used to look at her that way when she’d done something stupid or terrible. It had always made her immediately regret whatever she had done to cause it, but Dreskin’s use of it now just infuriated her. He was the one who should feel ashamed, he and Drake, for putting her through this once again, for bringing that woman on board this ship, for practically gifting her to Fariss.

  She shoved the anger down deep, as deep as she could get it. She felt exposed, like a bug, legs and wings pinned sprawled out on the table, while everyone inspected every painful moment of her life. Every private agony lay naked for everyone to see and to question. She clenched her teeth so tightly they ached.

  “A purple one. An amethyst.”

  “An amethyst. Tovenveran,” Dreskin said, as he or Drake had said over and over again over the last endless number of days.

  Ling stared into her coffee, watching the dark liquid swirl as she moved the cup in tight circles. No one knew anything; no one had any idea where to go next, how to stay safe. The only thing they knew was that they’d never survive a direct conflict with the warlocks. Avoiding them was their only option, but no one was certain how to do that either.

  “Why do you think it was a curse?”

  Drake’s voice was subdued now, withdrawn, but Ling straightened in surprise. That was a new question. And a shocking one. How could it possibly be anything but a curse? Ling stared at Drake with her mouth hanging open, unable to even muster a response.

  “Look, I know you’ve endured some terrible things, Ling, and I know it’s hard for you to learn about them every morning when you read the grimoire, and then relive them when we ask you about them. But we need your help in this. Please…how do you know it was a curse? What if it was something else?”

  “You don’t know what you’re asking, Drake. You’ve no idea…” Ling swallowed the words she’d been about to say. Instead she focused on her mother, on Fariss, and directed her anger toward them instead of Drake and Dreskin. When she felt her emotions stabilize she began again. “Because everyone knows—”

  “Everyone knows what?” Dreskin leaned forward, planting both hands on th
e map. “What do they know? No offense, but your people don’t know much when it comes to magic. Of course they would believe it a curse. But would Grag?”

  Ling wanted to send a barbed retort back at him, but he had a point. She’d grown up in the one place in the entire world without magic. Her people knew nothing of it, and because of that they feared and hated it. How could they possibly see her creation as anything other than a curse? But that didn’t mean Grag would have seen it that way.

  “He tried to give the amulet away. Witch said he’d tried to give it to everyone, anyone who walked by or that he encountered. He didn’t care who he gave it to, he just didn’t want it. No one knew why. When everyone refused him, he created me as punishment for their refusal, and fled Meuse for destinations unknown.”

  “What if it wasn’t punishment at all? What if he were trying to hide something?” Dreskin said.

  “Or perhaps it was self-preservation,” said Drake.

  “What do you mean?” Ling forgot her anger, forgot all her frustration. She’d never considered she might be something other than a curse. She was a product of the world she’d grown up in, that Evelyn had grown up in. With a flash she realized how limited she’d been in her thinking all this time. She was physically far away from Brielle, from Meuse, from their backwards ways. But those backwards ways were still right there inside of her.

  “Ling,” Drake straightened from her hunched study of the map and knelt in front of her. “You said you think you can store magic. Why do you think that?”

  “I existed for five years in Meuse before Witch gave me this book. For five years, I woke up every day thinking it was the first day of summer. Believing I was Evelyn, that my parents loved me, that my friends were still my friends, and that my life was still my life. In all that time this curse—or whatever it is—never faded, never weakened. There’s no magic in Meuse for it to draw from.” Not like here where it floats on the air like schor pollen in spring. “For it to last that long it had to somehow replenish itself.”

  All the blood drained from Drake’s face. “Like their stones.” She stood up and paced around the room, both hands resting on her hips, her bare feet silent on the smooth wood floor.

  “I don’t understand,” Ling said. “What do you mean, self-preservation? That makes no sense. And what stones?”

  “Those stones you see the warlocks with. They are called navire.” Dreskin dropped his arms from where they’d been crossed on his chest and moved to the bed and the fresh food that rested there. He scooped honey onto a piece of thick black bread and moved back to the map. “They are a special sort of stone. Always small, like what you see the warlocks wearing in their ears or chins. They can hold a store of magic that the user can call on to augment what they have around them. To sort of boost whatever it is they’re trying to do. Or to carry magic with them when they visit Brielle.”

  “They are always small, like jewelry,” Drake repeated, looking up at Ling.

  “But the amulet Grag had was not small,” Ling said. “Witch said it was larger than a man’s fist.”

  “And it also probably didn’t contain a small amount of magic either. Magic comes at a cost,” Drake said. “Wielding something that powerful would have required Grag to pay dearly every time he used it.”

  Silence settled on the room. Ling could hardly believe what she was hearing.

  “He didn’t want it because the price was too steep for him to pay. When he couldn’t give it away, he must have drained it. That would have been his only option.” Dreskin took another bite of his bread, still studying the map.

  “Leaving it just an empty stone, an amethyst just like any other,” said Drake.

  “Not like any other,” Dreskin said, glancing up at the two of them. “We need to close that breach. It’s the only thing that matters in all of this. All our efforts have failed so far. But with the ability to store magic like that…”

  He didn’t need to finish his sentence; the flash in Drake’s eyes showed she’d followed his train of thought easily. “If we can get enough magic together in one place, maybe it will be enough to close it,” Drake finished.

  Dreskin leaned close to the map before plunking his finger on a specific spot on the page.

  Drake and Ling moved to the map and leaned close. He pointed to an area Ling had heard of but never visited. A place she’d always longed to see but never thought she would. The White Mountains of Vosh.

  Chapter Three

  Ling stared at Dreskin and Drake, her head spinning as all the facts of her life settled back into a new shape once again. She placed a hand on the tabletop, steadying herself against it. She studied Dreskin’s finger, still resting on Vosh, and willed the world to stop spinning around her.

  It had never been about her or her parents at all. She had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. It hadn’t been a curse, just the desperate act of a desperate man trying to ease the weight of his own burdens. Ling wasn’t sure if this new reality was better or worse. She could at least hate someone for it before. Now it all felt so…random.

  Grag had still stolen Evelyn’s life away and killed River and Dom. It was his fault she existed and Evelyn was frozen in an eternal sleep, his fault she was here on this boat with these people instead of snug in her own bed about to wake up to her normal life as Evelyn. But she found it much harder to hate him when she imagined her creation as an act of desperation rather than a deliberate curse. Particularly if, in doing so, he’d revealed the key to closing the breach that was allowing all the magic to leach out of the world. He’d killed two children, stolen Evelyn’s life away, destroyed her parents, and sent her life spiraling out of control, but he may have inadvertently saved them all.

  And, Ling couldn’t help thinking, he may have provided the means for her end as well. They had to get magic back into the navire for this to work. And it just so happened she had an enormous store of it.

  “But…but they’ve tried that before, right? The warlocks and the Mari tried pooling all of their magic together and dumping it into the breach,” Ling said. She knew precious little about the breach, but she did know this. In the beginning, shortly after Fariss had first created it, they’d all worked together to seal it. That twisting shaft of darkness that encased Shadowhold had come out of that effort, but it had ultimately failed. They’d slowed the loss of magic, but hadn’t stopped it. It was that failure that precipitated the war the Mari and warlocks had been fighting ever since.

  “They did. But they couldn’t close it. The most they could do was scar it over, slow it down. But if we had a large enough input of magic, if we could get one or two or ten of the navire like the one you say Grag had, that would be enough. I never imagined stones like that existed.” Drake’s cheeks were flushed red as she spoke, eyes sparkling with excitement.

  “I don’t think anyone did, Drake. Alyssum certainly never mentioned them,” Dreskin was pacing the length of the cabin, mussing his hair as he spoke. “Fariss still thinks you’re the key to beating the Mari, Ling. He is relentless; he’ll not give up on the search. We need to get to the White Mountains, fast, but we need to keep you safe. Fern too.”

  “We have to assume Fariss knows Ling’s from Brielle,” Drake picked up the thread. “That is the quickest route from here to Vosh, but we’ve got to assume they’ll be watching that coastline,” Drake said. “Everything from Lille up to through the Vosh coast.”

  “He does know,” Ling said, her heart sinking in her chest. “I told him.” She’d told him far more than she should have, but at the time she’d not known what sort of man he was. She’d needed help, and he seemed to give it freely. She knew now just how steep a cost it really had been.

  “That makes our window of opportunity even narrower,” Dreskin said. “We need to move quickly. If they don’t know about the amethyst already they will soon. Fariss will put those pieces together eventually. We need to get to Vosh before he does.”

  Ling felt lightheaded and fuzzy, as if som
eone had scooped out her brains and pushed cotton into her head instead.

  “He’ll go to Meuse, either in the hope that she’ll go home, or to find out what he can about her,” Drake said.

  And the townsfolk will tell him everything when he does, Ling thought. Everyone in Meuse knew her story, and now that she was gone and they had nothing to fear in the telling, tell they would. The thought of Fariss poking about Meuse, questioning her friends, her parents, filled her with an odd mix of dread and excitement. The thought he might find Evelyn was the cause of the dread. Would he realize, then, what she really was? What would he do to her? A shudder shook her body from the outside in, leaving her feeling weak and anxious.

  But, what would he do to her mother, to all those that had so hated her, and would hate him just as much? Would he find cause to harm them in some way? In an odd twist she wondered if Fariss would be the vengeance she wanted so badly to deliver to the people of Meuse.

  She backed away from that thought immediately. As poisoned as she was against her mother and the people of Meuse for what they’d done to her, she couldn’t bring herself to wish Fariss upon them. She wanted them to regret what they had done to her, to realize what monsters they had become, but Fariss…the things he could do would go so far beyond that. Besides, if Fariss put the pieces together, Ling and the others would lose the slim advantage they currently had. The tiniest chance of success they’d managed to cobble together would vanish, and with it, any chance Fern had of living a full life. She would die when magic did.

  “That means we go south,” Drake said. “Around the Brisian Rock to Nantes. From there we can make our way overland to the White Mountains.”