The Liar's Key (The Red Queen's War 2)
Page 49
Kara lit a lantern. Speaking in the old tongue of the north, she dipped the needle into the sea, then ran it through the flame. She spoke my name in the mix. More than once. It sounded well upon her lips.
“When the needle is blooded you must taste it. Then whatever is to be revealed will come.”
“I’ve tasted my blood before. It didn’t tell me much.” I must have swallowed a gallon of the stuff when Astrid punched me. Once my nose starts bleeding it never wants to stop.
“This will be different.” Again that smile. “Hold out your hand.”
So I did. I wasn’t sure how deep the needle would prick but I steeled myself. Squealing like a little girl probably wouldn’t help me in my new quest to bed her.
Kara took my hand, fingers probing, as if to find the ideal spot. I sat still, content to have her hold my hand, feeling a heat build between us.
“Now . . .” She circled the needle over my palm as if searching.
“Ow! Dear God! Sweet Jesu! The bitch stabbed me!” I yanked my hand away, transfixed by the needle that Kara had driven entirely through it in one smooth motion. “Jesu!” Six inches of crimson-beaded steel protruded from the back of my hand.
“Quick! Taste it. The longer you delay the further back the memories!” Kara grabbed my wrist and tried to steer the hand toward my mouth.
“You fucking stabbed me!” I couldn’t quite believe it. Blackness crowded my vision and I felt faint with shock. Curiously there wasn’t much pain.
“Help me with him.” Kara glanced at Snorri and used both hands on my wrist. The bloody needle lurched toward my face. Damned if I was letting her do it though. She’d stab the thing through my mouth given half a chance! I pushed back. “Stop fighting me, Jalan. There’s not much time.”
Snorri lent his strength to the task and a moment later the needle wiped the complaint off my tongue. Kara pulled the steel free then. That’s when it started to hurt—as the needle grated across the small bones in my palm.
“Concentrate now, Jalan! This bit is important.” She clamped my face between her treacherous stabby hands. She probably said some other stuff after that, but by then I’d fainted clean away.
• • •
I’m flying. Or I’m the sky. These things are equal. The day is ending and far below me the land folds, falls, and rises. The mountains still catch the sun, forests sweep out in shadow, rivers run, or dawdle, each according to their nature, but all bound for the sea. The ocean lies distant, crinkled with the dying light.
• • •
Lower.
• • •
The country below runs from plains, green with growing, toward arid hills, stone crested. Trails of smoke lace the air like threads, twisted by the wind. Fields lie blackened where the fire has consumed them. A wood, acres wide, stands ablaze.
• • •
Lower.
• • •
A castle sprawls across a high ridge, commanding views into two valleys that run toward the garden lands. A huge castle, its outer wall thick as a house, taller than trees, punctuated by seven round towers. Enclosed within this perimeter, a small town in stone and Builder-brick, then a second wall, yards thick and higher than the first, and within that, barracks, armouries, a well-house, and a keep tower. The keep I recognize—or think I do. It reminds me of the Ameroth Tower that stands on the edge of the Scorpions, a range of hills straddling the region where Red March, Slov, and Florence meet. I visited the tower once. I must have been ten. Father had sent Martus to be squired to Lord Marsden who keeps his household there. Darin and I tagged along as part of our education. The tower had been the tallest building I’d ever seen. It still is. A work of the Builders. An ugly rectangular structure, fashioned from poured stone, without windows or ornament. I recall that it had been surrounded by rubble and the village lay a mile off, the locals too fearful of ghosts to dwell any closer. Darin and I had ridden the surrounding hills, being still young enough to explore and play. I remember that the rocks thereabouts sported peculiar scorch marks. Geometric patterns fractured into them in ways I couldn’t explain.
• • •
Lower.
• • •
An army stands camped about the castle, arrayed for siege. An army so numerous that the tents of the different units colour the ground like crops in great fields. The horses for their cavalry are corralled in herds thousands strong. Forests have been felled to build the machinery that waits at the foremost edge of the host. Rocks are piled beside each in pyramids ten, twenty, thirty feet high. The throwing arms of trebuchet, catapults and mangols are drawn back, loaded, ready to unleash.