Dagger's Sleep, page 18
part #1 of Beyond the Tales Series
But she couldn’t leave either. Where could she go? Her guards were gone. Isi, her best friend, was captured, possibly hurt or even killed. And there was nothing Rosanna could do. Not alone as she was now.
Nor could she leave Daemyn like this. Seeing that he had a proper burial was the one thing she could do.
She reached for the arrow shaft sticking from Daemyn’s chest. Even knowing he was dead, she couldn’t just rip the arrow free. She peered over him. The arrow had gone all the way through him, its tip protruding, bloody, from his back.
Gripping the shaft with two hands, she strained to snap it. The sturdy shaft refused to break, not with the lack of leverage she could put on it with most of the shaft inside Daemyn’s chest. Gritting her teeth, she put a last burst of strength into her fingers.
The shaft snapped. She pulled the fletched end out first, then eased the broadhead out of his back.
With the dagger he pressed into her hands before confronting the Tuckawassee, she sawed through the ropes binding his hands behind him. When the rope fell away, his arms flopped limply apart.
She sucked in a breath, her stomach churning. A second wound marred Daemyn’s lower back. Major Beshko had shoved the arrow all the way through before tearing it from him.
Her breathing hitched, choking, gasping. She stumbled to her feet, staggered a few steps, and braced herself against a tree. She couldn’t do this. The blood. His torn body. She couldn’t see him like this.
Did she have a choice? She couldn’t help anyone. Could she walk away from the one thing she was capable of doing to honor her friends?
With a deep breath, she returned to Daemyn’s body and touched his eyelid, dragging it closed over his staring eye. She hurriedly closed his other eye too.
With the arrow gone and his eyes closed, he looked like he was sleeping instead of dead. Yet, his chest remained still, and that empty sense about him still shivered across her skin.
She couldn’t leave him here in the pool of his blood. Scavengers would pick his body to nothing. He deserved better than that.
Grasping under his arms, Rosanna leaned all her weight backwards to move him up the steep slope of the creek’s bank. Her hands, her feet, were slick with his blood. Her back and shoulders ached with his weight. Sweat dampened her shirt and hair as she dragged him inch by inch.
Finally, she managed to lay him in a hollow at the base of a boulder about fifteen feet above the creek where she would be able to pile rocks on him to bury him.
She sank to her knees, unable to make herself fetch that first stone. Once she placed it on him, he would truly be gone. She would be alone on this journey that still didn’t feel hers.
She’d gone this far for Daemyn, not for some legendary prince asleep in his castle. She’d gone for the man who had never questioned her ability to paddle a canoe or navigate a rough section of rapids. A man who struggled under a weight she didn’t always understand.
She couldn’t do this. Not alone. Yet she couldn’t go back.
Tears pricked her eyes even as she fought to hold the pain inside. “I can’t do this without you, Daemyn. You seemed to think I had a gift or talent or something special, but I don’t. I’m useless.”
“Rosanna.”
The voice was quiet, but resonant. Rosanna glanced at Daemyn’s body, still lifeless before her.
But there, a few feet higher on the slope in front of her sat a stranger. Yet something about him felt like he was someone she should know or already knew. He dressed in simple clothes, and his voice didn’t have the accent of the Tuckawassee. In a way, it held all accents and dialects, as if all languages were known by him.
She swiped at her face, trying to erase some of the tears. “Who are you?”
“You know who I am. Before the mountains were, I am. Before the rivers, I am. I am he who chose you for this purpose before you were born.”
A breeze drifted through the gorge and ran soothing fingers over the tear stains on Rosanna’s face.
And Rosanna knew this stranger. He was the Highest Prince, the son of the Lord of Fae and Men. Now that she looked closer, she could see the golden circlet on his head. A wonder she hadn’t noticed it before with the way the gold glinted far brighter than with a mere reflection of the afternoon sun.
“I’m sorry. I can’t do this.” Rosanna shook her head and scraped at the dried blood on her hands. “I’m useless. I don’t know why you chose me. I wasn’t even given a gift when I was born.”
“Just because a Fae wasn’t sent to declare your gift doesn’t mean I never gave you one.” The Prince’s voice didn’t waver from its quiet, compassionate tone. “I give many gifts, and it is often the gifts that can’t be seen that are the greatest of all.”
“I don’t understand.” Rosanna shivered, but the breeze wrapped her with warm tendrils. “Will you please tell me my gift?”
“You have been given many gifts, but first among them is the gift to hear.” The Prince’s smile warmed her to the depths of her soul. “Now, listen.”
It was a command, but the sort of command it was a privilege to obey.
Rosanna closed her eyes and listened.
At first, nothing in the breeze’s gentle breaths, the trees’ constant rustling sounded any different than the hundreds of times she’d stepped into Tallahatchia’s mountains.
Then, a pure note soared, not with the suddenness of a song beginning, but with the continued flow of a song already long begun.
More notes joined the first, swooping, soaring, ringing in a purity not found in any flute or mouth pipe. The chorus swelled with many voices in notes unknown to human ears.
The trees. The trees were singing.
The stalwart oaks boomed in low, bass tones with all the grandeur of their mighty branches. The maples rang with husky voices as weathered as their gnarled trunks. The willows and birches swished and swooped in whispery breaths. The sycamores belted out a harmony as old as their heartwood. And above them all, the glistening, crystal notes of the beech trees—those elegant, silver queens of the wood—filled the mountains with a song so pure, so enduring, it shattered the sky above to pour into the realm beyond.
More voices bubbled with laughing joy—the rivers adding their part to the song.
A deep hum as old as time itself thrummed through the earth beneath Rosanna’s fingers. The mountains themselves singing their ancient song.
The words the trees and mountains sang was the language of things beyond, a tongue few knew to utter. Still, the truth of the words, a taste of their meaning, beat in Rosanna’s chest. Worthy. Holy. Majesty.
This was the song she’d longed to hear all her life, as if a piece of it had lodged in her chest from before she was born.
But this was more beautiful than she could’ve dreamed, for the trees, the rivers, the mountains, they didn’t sing for her. Or themselves. They sang for the Highest Prince sitting near her, for the Highest King on his throne, for the Breath of all breezes that gave life in the beginning.
“It’s . . .” Rosanna couldn’t think of a word to describe the wonder. Beautiful fell short. Magnificent wasn’t grand enough.
“Listen.” The Prince commanded again.
Rosanna strained her ears harder, trying to sink deeper into the song.
The voices of the trees rose in pitch until they were a painful wail. The beeches keened in purest agony. The mountain’s rumble broke, weeping as one forsaken. The rivers themselves were the tears of the mountains flowing down their faces in a torrent of unending sorrow.
Pain. Corruption. Death.
The keening pierced Rosanna’s chest. She pressed her hands over her ears, but she couldn’t block out the screaming, wailing trees.
This was the curse her ancestor had unleashed upon the innocent mountains, the guileless trees. The weight of that guilt burdened her still, that worst of all crimes still unpunished.
Even now, she couldn’t undo what had been done. She could do nothing but carry that guilt as the mountains wept for the beauty that had once been, the trees cried for justice for the wrong done to them, and the rivers ran with the torment they suffered because of mankind’s original folly.
And the curse was dark and cold within her. She didn’t need another curse to be placed on her as a sign to hear the darkness resonating from her own heart.
Rosanna covered her face and wept along with the mountains. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry this can’t be undone.”
When she glanced up, the Prince’s eyes also shone with tears, as if the agony of the song wailing around them pained him even more deeply than it did her.
“Listen.” He commanded for a third time.
She didn’t want to strain her ears to hear more of this pain. But she squeezed her eyes shut and listened anyway.
A single, quavering voice rose above the keening. Still pained. Still tormented. But rising with a new strength that couldn’t be snuffed out by all the darkness of the jangled song around it.
Rosanna didn’t have to understand the speech of trees and earth to know the word of which this voice sang, for an answering song beat inside her own chest.
Hope.
Hope for the Promised Cursebreaker who would end the curse and restore all beauty.
This was the hope she was meant to be in her own humble and stumbling way to point to the greater Hope still coming.
So far, she’d journeyed for herself or for Daemyn. But from now on, she would journey for the Cursebreaker.
Weeks ago, she’d asked Daemyn why he undertook such a task for a prince he’d never met. Back then, she hadn’t understood when Daemyn had said he didn’t do it for the high prince. Of course, he didn’t. He labored for the Highest Prince of above all princes.
As must she. For it was truly the only reason to do anything.
She looked to the Prince. “What would you have me do?”
“If I asked, would you go on alone?”
Rosanna glanced down at Daemyn’s body. If the Prince told her to go, she’d have to leave. Immediately. Without giving Daemyn the burial he deserved. Or trying to help Isi. No looking back.
How could she hesitate when the Prince for whom the trees sang asked her to go?
The breeze touched strands of her hair, and Rosanna drew in a deep breath of it. This was her gift, small as it was. She’d been given the gift to hear.
She would hear, and she would obey. “Yes. Whatever you ask, whenever you ask, however you ask, I will go.”
“Then so be it.”
Rosanna braced herself. He would tell her to go now. She must not look back.
“Take up your canteen and fill it in the creek yonder.”
An odd request, but Rosanna fetched her canteen from where she’d left it in the nook where she’d hidden, strode to the creek, and dipped the canteen in, holding it under until it was full.
She returned, knelt, and held out the canteen.
The Prince gestured to Daemyn’s body. “Do not fear. He but sleeps, and it is time for him to wake. I have more work yet for him to do.”
He slept? Rosanna pressed her hand against Daemyn’s wrist. His skin was already too cold for there to be life, his pulse gone. No, Daemyn was dead. “I don’t understand.”
She looked up, but the Prince was gone. She glanced around, but she was alone with Daemyn’s lifeless body. Even the trees had stopped their singing—or rather, she had stopped listening—and the loss of the song sunk deep into her chest.
What was she supposed to do now?
She had a canteen of water in her hand and a man in the deep sleep of death who had to wake. There was only one thing to do, something she’d done many times to wake Berend. She upended the canteen and dumped the water on Daemyn’s face.
He didn’t bolt upright like Berend did when splashed with cold water. Not even a flinch or wince. The water ran down his face as if he were nothing more than a dead rock shedding water after a rain.
Surely, he would wake. The Prince had spoken it.
She rested her hand on his chest a few inches away from the gaping wound where the arrow had transfixed his heart.
The breeze stirred the dead leaves around them and brushed across the back of Rosanna’s fingers.
Beneath her hand, Daemyn’s chest rose and fell with a breath.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Rosanna
ROSANNA PRESSED A HAND to Daemyn’s neck. Though light and fluttery, a pulse now pounded there.
A pulse. Life. Hope.
With his heart once again pumping, blood started seeping from his wounds, though not as much as Rosanna might have expected considering one wound had torn open his heart.
While he probably hadn’t been given life again to bleed out moments later, losing more blood wouldn’t help things either. Rosanna scrambled to find something to staunch the bleeding. Since they’d abandoned all their spare clothes and medical supplies with their packs, all they had were the clothes on their backs.
After hacking a section of the buckskin off the bottom of his shirt, she pressed it against the wounds in his stomach and chest. Not that the buckskin would do much for soaking up blood, but the pressure would help, wouldn’t it?
Daemyn groaned, his head moving back and forth as if he was trying to shake himself awake.
She pressed one hand to his forehead. “Lie still. I think you were dead for a few minutes there.”
“Wouldn’t . . . be the first time.” Daemyn’s mouth barely moved.
Now wasn’t the time to ask for details, though she could guess some of it. He had earned the name Cursed One from the river pirates for a reason, and she didn’t think it was because the river pirates had missed with their arrows.
Rosanna refilled the canteen and pressed it to his mouth. “Can you manage a few sips?”
He did but turned his face away after a few swallows, coughing. He cracked his eyes open. “You didn’t stay hidden.”
“No, but I waited until the Tuckawassee were well gone.” She gripped the canteen tighter. “They captured Isi, thinking they have the princess.”
Daemyn arms moved and his head lifted as if he was trying to sit up. He sucked in a sharp breath and flopped back to the ground with a moan, a hand pressed to the wound in his chest.
Rosanna rested a hand on his shoulder. “Unable to die or not, you won’t be going anywhere for a while.”
“Can’t . . . stay. The Tuckawassee might be back.” Daemyn’s breathing grew more ragged, as if the pain of his wounds had returned after the numbness of death wore off. “Can you . . . get to the convergence . . . by yourself?”
It was the second time she had been asked to go on alone. It wasn’t something she could refuse. She swallowed. “I think so. But I don’t want to leave you here. You need help.”
Daemyn had his eyes squeezed shut. “Get help. Come back for me.”
All right, she could do that. “I’ll go.”
Daemyn gripped her arm. “It’s southeast of here. There’ll be a friend.”
“All right.” She set the canteen within his reach and propped his head up with a few handfuls of leaves. The convergence of the Nanahootchie and Tuckawassee was only a couple of hours away. Daemyn would need water more than she would. She also took the time to track down his hardwood staff where it had fallen on the creek’s bank.
With a single backward glance, she set off alone into the woods, keeping the sun behind her right shoulder.
She could do this, right? Find her way by herself through the woods. As long as she never strayed too far from the Tuckawassee River, she wouldn’t get lost.
The forest stretched into the vast mountains. She glanced about as she walked. What if she stumbled across a bear or a wolf? Or worse, one of the rare black panthers that wandered this far north from the swamps of the nations to the south.
She gripped Daemyn’s dagger tightly, though it would do her little good if she came across a dangerous man or beast.
Something large crashed through the undergrowth ahead of her. She froze, clutching the dagger.
A white tail flashed in the woods before she lost sight of the deer over a rise.
Just a deer. Nothing to get all spooked over.
She kept walking, up and down mountain ridges, passing small waterfalls as she navigated over and through small creeks on their way to the Tuckawassee River.
A few times she spotted a log cabin or two at a distance. She skirted around those. Here in Tuckawassee, they would be enemies rather than friends.
The sun sank lower behind her, casting long shadows between the trees around her. Sunset and darkness came fast in the deep woods.
Her stomach rumbled, and her mouth dried. Her feet and legs ached with the miles she’d walked and run that day.
But Daemyn lay badly wounded back in that hollow. What if the Tuckawassee returned to find him and kill him again? Or a pack of wolves came to the scent of so much bloodshed?
And what about Captain Degotaga, Isi, and the others? Had they been captured—or worse, killed—by the Tuckawassee? She couldn’t let herself imagine Isi lying there, shirt bloodied, eyes empty, as Daemyn had been.
The forest appeared bathed in gray now. She veered to the right, going down the crest of the gorge, until the Tuckawassee River came in sight. The Nanahootchie couldn’t be that much farther ahead. It was too big to cross accidentally.
A piercing yip rose into the sky in the distance, joined by a chorus of other barking howls. Coyotes. A long way off yet, but the sound still chilled her skin and had her casting about looking for eyes in the gloom around her.
Every fallen log and rotting stump appeared as black shapes in the indistinct forest. She jumped at every sound and imagined movement.
There, barely visible ahead in the fading light, a stream dumped into the Tuckawassee from the north. The water roiled where the two collided.
Rosanna hurried down the slope of the gorge as best she could in the gray haze of almost night. Trees appeared in front of her as if suddenly planted there.
She glanced around. She couldn’t see any one in the dim haze. Was she the only person here? What if the person supposed to help had left to set up camp elsewhere for the night?
