CHAPTER SIX #2
“Your magic,” she said, shaking her head.
While they lived, her parents had enough visits from the spellscribes to give her an idea of the limits of the academy’s magic.
Sculpted chins and reshaped eyebrows. Patching up her scraped knees, smoothing her rock-and-stick scarred hands, remaking their wild daughter into a pretty little doll to show off at their parties.
Promising, as a gift, to remake her entire face before putting her on the marriage market.
Anya folded her hands, now forest-scarred, over her hatchet. “It’s nothing to the forest. Like holding a parasol against an avalanche.”
This didn’t seem to impress him, but then, since he’d first laid eyes on her, he had kept his face carefully neutral.
She could see he was used to hiding his expressions behind this look of bland formality.
It was too practiced, too at odds with his sly maneuvering.
It was a nice face: long, elegant, thoughtful, with an aquiline nose and a pointed chin.
The tips of his loose, sand blond hair grazed just below his jaw – an unusual style for a man. Becoming.
“Be that as it may, I have need of the bird, and I need to leave as soon as possible. If you’re only here to talk me out of it, I see no need for further negotiation. I’ll find someone else.”
That was not a suitable option. No one was better than her, but they’d certainly have an advantage with a spellscribe on their side. An advantage she couldn’t afford to lose. “Who’s to say I won’t take my business to someone else?”
At her sudden turn, he pressed his lips together. “I’m willing to split the prize money with you,” he offered. “Down the middle.”
There was a hunger in his eyes, one even his careful blandness couldn’t mask. Though neither of them would see a cent of it, regardless of any bargain they agreed upon, her curiosity got the better of her. “How much?”
“Fifty-thousand gold sovereigns.”
Stunned, her jaw dropped briefly before she clamped her mouth shut again. Twenty-five thousand sovereigns and she wouldn’t need to worry about patching her roof; she could buy a new one. A wood one, with shingles. A new house. Maybe a new pedestal for Goose.
But the phoenix could not leave the forest. That kind of money must remain a dream, for her and him both.
And one look at him, she knew the Lichtenwald would claim him in less than a day. He was arrogant, or mad; a bit of both, she suspected. “Is your life worth twenty-five thousand sovereigns?”
His eyebrows twitched. “I’m well aware of the dangers, and my own ill-suitedness for the venture. You may have ascertained that is why I’m hiring a hunter to see me through.”
“You’ve never been hunting. You’ve never been outside the city.” A guess, but by the offended flick of his cigarette, a correct one. “You’ve never even slept outside a night in your life.”
“If you can’t defend me against a few brigands and bears–”
“Never mind brigands and bears,” she interrupted. “The Lichtenwald is home to torments you couldn’t even dream.”
A small, annoyed huff escaped him. Her quarry was more determined – more stubborn – than she had predicted. So she changed her tack.
“What have you heard of the Lichtenwald?”
“That most avoid it because it’s simply too wild. But there are legends. That it’s vast, and dark, and full of strange magic.”
“Strange magic,” she laughed ironically, her chest tightening, as if creeping vines gripped her ribs.
“In the Lichtenwald, you might find a thief who would cut your purse and then your throat for inconveniencing him. You might stumble into the path of a wild boar and get yourself gored and stomped to death for your presumption. But there are stranger creatures than man or beast. There are flesh-eating worms that will burrow beneath your skin, making tunnels of your veins you cannot cut out for bleeding yourself dry. Footpaths that will lead you in circles, marching endlessly until you wear through the soles of your shoes, then the skin of your feet. Watering holes that appear only when you’re near death with thirst, but whose succor will make you mad and lash you to the creatures who call the forest home, spirits you can’t see who make sport of your suffering.
And,” she added, in another accursed bout of conscience, “others know about the king’s contest. Others seek the phoenix.
Others who would do you the same harm, or worse. ”
Others like Mira of the Mire.
Her mouth was suddenly very dry. She pulled her hatchet close and swallowed.
“Yes, it is vast and yes, it is dark, and one misstep could kill you. But you can count every step and know every stone, every path, every tree with a lover’s attention, and still run afoul of that strange magic, and it will change you in ways you cannot countenance. ”
She caught her breath and looked up at him. His pale face was solemn. For a moment, they regarded each other.
He broke her gaze and lit another cigarette. “I must confess, I did not realize the extent of the danger. You paint a vivid picture.”
His amber eyes again met hers. Her fingers flexed around the hilt of her hatchet. He was not made of straw; she saw that much clearly.
What held him together? What invisible hands plucked at it?
He sighed heavily and made a dismissive gesture with his cigarette. “As I suspected, then, you are not the hunter I seek.”
Indignant, she started to form a reply, but suddenly she felt oddly and keenly aware of her vines, like noticing a stray hair on the back of her neck, but in her blood, in her gut, in her soul. The wizard noticed her strange look and frowned at her.
Slow and creeping as snakes, the thorns clawed around her bones.
They tightened.
His face went white as she let out a small cry and bent over, nearly dropping her hatchet.
“Are you alright?” she heard him say, but she couldn’t answer.
It wasn’t like before; it was painful. Tightening, wrenching, stretching, shrinking, all things at once.
Unseen pieces of her body changing, rearranging, becoming strange to her.
And another pain, a subtler one, that one she’d noticed in the cart on the way there. A fear; a lurking beast she could never see.
Hovering.
As it passed, she regained her senses. There was something wet on her cheeks; she wiped it off. Tears; only tears.
The wizard was crouched before her. His cigarette had been replaced with a gold and glass pen; the sleeve of his left arm was rolled up. She noted the inside of his arm, ugly and bruised, his purple veins visible. His eyes, dark with worry, fixed on her. One of his gloved hands on hers.
“What ails me cannot be fixed with one of your spells,” she said roughly, pushing his hand away. His frown was skeptical, but he rose and let her be.
Mira’s curse was born of a magic far wilder than a spellscribe could possibly fathom.
Forest magic, ancient and impassive. The spell of gravity, the spell of entropy, of symmetry, of heat.
Anya had glimpsed that magic as it entered her; knew it now, in her own deepest places.
It could not be touched by lines on a page. Would that it could.
And then what would she do? Help this spellscribe claim his prize, then give her half right back to him to fix her? Take the phoenix from the forest, hand the king a magic stronger even than Mira’s? Not fucking likely.
And where would she go if she did? She could not return to her house, to Johanna’s house, all that Anya had left of her, in the wood.
Not with the witch still alive. Anya could hunt, could kill any beast, but she could not kill the witch; could not even step near her manor gates without risking a worse fate than the one now laid before her.
And unless she got her prize, the witch would not let Anya live unpunished.
Nothing could break her curse but blooding the phoenix with Mira’s enchanted arrow.
Anya knew that as deep as she knew where her own fingers were; part of the curse, or years of proximity to the Lichtenwald’s magic, or some stranger thing, but she knew: if she wanted to keep her body, to keep her life, she must bind the phoenix to Mira.
For the first time, she feared she could not do this alone.
The spellscribe could not stop the wild magic ravaging her body, but he could heal a twisted ankle, or mend a finger burnt by boiling water spilling from its pot.
She’d rarely been injured on a hunt, but the prospect seemed more likely by the hour.
Particularly if she dropped into a spell of pain in the middle of the Lichtenwald.
And, if need be, he could protect her from other scribes – or serve as bait against them.
Conscience be damned. Clearly, this wizard was determined anyway.
“How soon can you leave?” she asked.
The skeptical wrinkle in his forehead deepened at her sudden change of heart. “Just one minute. You can’t come into my home, mysterious and terrifying, and then not even let me ask your qualifications.”
“I’m the best there is,” she said with certainty.
“Ask any farmer, any tanner on the wood’s edge.
I have all the best pelts, the best meat, and I’m the only one they’ll turn to when they need a hunter’s gun.
I’m the only one who can catch it and I’m the only one mad enough to drag you along with me.
And you’re running out of time.” As am I.
“If you don’t want me, I’ll find someone who does. ”
She watched him make some silent calculation. “Tomorrow, I suppose.”
“Good.” She rose, hefting her hatchet. “Be ready to leave by midday. We need to find it before word spreads farther. And the less time spent that deep in the Lichtenwald, the better.”
“Well–”
“What?” she snapped.
“The sun’s gone down.”
“And?”
“Have you anywhere to stay tonight?” At her scowl, he quickly amended, “I can recommend a good hotel nearby. I can pay for you.”
Her look of displeasure spoke for her.