Chapter 36 Desperation
Rolan ran to the barn and flung open the doors, then fell backward as Apple reared in his face, whinnying.
“Whoa! Easy, boy!” Rolan grabbed the horse’s halter and soothed him, then jumped aside as Supper went trotting out. So that’s where he’d been.
There was no time for saddle or reins. Rolan clambered onto Apple’s bare back and clicked his tongue. The gelding cantered out of the barn, his great hooves thundering over the ground.
“This way!” Rolan shouted, tugging the horse’s mane.
Apple broke into a full-blown gallop, nearly sending Rolan toppling over his haunches. But Rolan hung on to his mane, gripping the horse’s smooth sides with his legs.
The path to Crisanth flowed beneath them, the miles flashing by.
Rain began to fall, the hard-packed dirt turning to mud.
Flecks of it flung up by Apple’s hooves spattered over Rolan’s face.
He clenched his teeth and leaned lower, urging Apple to even greater speed.
As if he could sense the boy’s need, the horse stretched his strides to full length.
The wind slashed Rolan’s cheeks like needles.
They flew through the city gates before the guards could even attempt to shut them, then clattered over the slick cobblestones in Verity Square.
The rain had the small benefit of clearing the way, with most people seeking shelter in the downpour.
Rolan wiped his wet hair from his eyes and leaned back, slowing Apple from his mad gallop for fear the horse would break his leg on the narrow city streets.
He navigated the horse through the maze of the city, intent on his destination.
“There, boy,” Rolan murmured when they reached it, tugging the horse’s mane. He was sliding down even before Apple’s hooves had stopped trotting.
Running up to the door, he began banging as hard as he could. “Open up! Open up now!”
The door swung open, and Hedge, one of his father’s friends, blinked at him. Rolan knew Hedge well. He specialized in kidnapping children and holding them for ransom, which was why, Rolan guessed, he’d been left behind on guard duty.
“Rolan?” Hedge gawped at him.
“Hi, Hedge. Meet Apple.”
Rolan stepped aside as Apple spun and lashed out with a hoof, sending Hedge flying backward to collide with the opposite wall. He slid to the ground, unconscious.
Rolan rushed in after him, sliding to his knees in front of Anaya.
“Rolan!” she gasped as he lowered her gag. “They’re after Luc! They—”
“I know!” he said. “Stop squirming so I can untie you! We don’t have much time.”
He’d known all along where they were holding Anaya, of course.
Cabbot’s trick with the sack and the winding route hadn’t fooled Rolan.
He knew very well what the empty warehouses by the river looked like, and he’d even guessed which one they’d dragged him to just by the odor.
This one reeked of the river clams that used to be stored here, until a flood ruined the place.
As soon as her ropes were free, Anaya jumped up. “What’s happening?”
“We need to get Evaine. Fast. Come with me!”
Racing back outside into the sheeting rain, Rolan climbed back onto Apple and held out his hand. Anaya hesitated.
“I’ve never…”
“Time to learn!” Taking her by the wrist, he hauled her up behind him.
“Truth, Rolan,” she gasped, wrapping her arms around him to steady herself. “You’ve put on some muscle.”
Rolan cursed the circumstances of the day, which made it almost impossible for him to bask in the utter euphoria of that comment.
“Hold on tight,” he said.
Apple seemed to show no signs of tiring as he cantered up the road, responding to Rolan’s slightest signals. What people they did pass cried out and stumbled clear of the horse’s mighty hooves.
When they reached the apothecary, Rolan turned to Anaya.
“Apple can only carry two,” he said.
“It’s fine. I’ll get her. Wait here.”
But she didn’t need to. The door was already opening, and Evaine stepped out.
“Anaya! I’ve been looking everywhere for—” Her voice stilled as she took in Rolan’s expression. “What happened?”
Rolan tried to explain, but all the words and exhaustion and fear tangled in his throat and he gave only a broken sob.
“I’ll get my bag,” said Evaine. “Wait there.”
Moments later she stepped out again, a heavy satchel on her shoulder.
“Stay here,” she said to Anaya, catching her as she slid off the horse. “Lock the doors.”
Anaya nodded, shrinking into the doorway and giving a soft wave.
“Home, boy,” Rolan whispered to Apple once Evaine was seated behind him. Her arm wrapped around his shoulders while the other secured her bag.
The horse burst forward.
The ride out of the city felt impossibly long. The rain fell so hard now he could barely see where they were going, but he trusted the horse to find the way and let his eyes shut. Not all the water on his cheeks was rain.
“How bad is he hurt?” Evaine asked in his ear, her voice barely audible over the roar of the rainstorm.
“I—I don’t know. I left before…”
“I see.” She rode easily, as if she’d grown up with horses. He’d never really heard about Evaine’s background, but somehow the idea didn’t surprise him.
“It was my pa,” he confessed. “I messed everything up, Evaine. It’s all my fault.”
“Hush, Rolan. Do not blame yourself. I know Luc would not.”
If he’s even alive, Rolan thought. He was trying hard not to consider the worst, but the possibility loomed heavier than the rainclouds above.
Apple could not gallop over the thickening mud, and they had to go at a frustratingly slow trot. Rolan held on grimly but suspected it was Evaine holding him up now, more than the other way around.
“I feared it was Rabb’s crew who took Anaya,” she said. “And that it had something to do with this conspiracy against Luc.”
“You know about the conspiracy?”
“I know there are bad men stirring up trouble, as there always have been and always will be. As there will always be men like Luc in their way.”
The rain began to slacken, but the road was still a ruin of mud. Apple had slowed to a brisk walk, picking his way over the treacherous ground.
“Luc has secrets too,” Rolan said hollowly.
Evaine was silent for the next mile.
“I know you went back to him,” she said at last, “and I know you returned a short time later. I kept my distance because you seemed like you needed time to work things out.”
She waited, perhaps hoping he would fill in the silence with the story of his break with Luc. But he didn’t. He couldn’t speak of it, not now. It all felt so silly and foolish, now that Luc’s life hung in the balance.
“Whatever happened between you,” Evaine said finally, “it did not cause your father to move against Luc. His actions are his to bear and his alone. You are not him, and you are not responsible for him.”
“I led them to his door!” Rolan cried. “They were going to hurt Anaya if I didn’t!”
She turned his chin with a finger so that he was forced to meet the startling green of her eyes. “Anaya is safe because of you, Rolan. You did what you had to do to protect her, and you did well. Do you hear me?”
“But Luc—”
“Will be as he will be. Now, come. Help me.”
Rolan turned his head and started. They’d reached the house without him noticing.
He jumped down and ran to the door. The ground around it was churned by many footprints, and the house was silent. His father and his cohort were gone, then. They might have passed them in the downpour and never even seen them.
The door was ajar, and Rolan reached to push it open, but found he couldn’t. His heart pounded in his throat. He was too afraid of what he might find inside. Better to linger here, in the rain, where at least there was still hope…
“I’ll go in first,” Evaine said. “And Rolan… take these. Keep watch, and pray you will not need them.”
Reaching into her satchel, she took out Rolan’s aleth-marked daggers, the ones she’d taken from him the day she and Anaya had found him unconscious by the river. He took them with a wordless nod, feeling numb. Then Evaine stepped around him and into the house.
Rolan rested his head against the doorframe, gripping his daggers against his chest, tears leaking from the corners of his eyes.
He felt a wet muzzle nudge his hand, and with a soft cry, he crouched down to wrap his arms around Supper’s neck.
The goat stood still and let Rolan cry into his coarse fur.
A few minutes later, he felt a hand on his shoulder.
“He’s alive, Rolan.”
Rolan lifted his face, eyes wide. “W-what?”
But Evaine was not smiling. Her eyes held glimmering sorrow, tears of her own gathering on her lashes.
“He doesn’t have long. Come, speak with him.”
Breathing shakily, Rolan went inside and slowly approached Luc’s bed. The Arcanist lay perfectly still, one hand on his chest, the other dangling down the side of the bed. He had a fresh bandage on his chest, but it was already dark with blood.
“Rolan.” The name was little more than a sigh on Luc’s lips.
“I’m here,” Rolan whispered. Stepping closer, he made himself look fully into Luc’s face.
The Arcanist’s eyes were narrow, tired slits. They glowed softly blue with Arcana, but his usual spark was gone from them. His skin was sunken and pale where it did not glow with blue light, and Evaine had laid a cold cloth on his head to combat his fever.
“Cryptic wounds, infection, a dagger to his heart…,” Evaine said behind him. “There are too many things trying to kill him, and I cannot stop them all. He’s drawn in a lot of Arcana to fortify himself, but once it fades…”
“There must be something!” Rolan pleaded. “The chest of relics… he needs more Arcana!”
She put her hand on his shoulder before he could run for the chest. “It will not reverse his wounds, Rolan. I know of no magic that can.”
“I’m sorry, Luc,” Rolan sobbed. He gathered up the Arcanist’s dangling hand and held it to his chest. “I didn’t want to lead them here, but they gave me no choice. I thought maybe you’d be gone, or that—that you’d fight them off. I didn’t know you’d be sick. I didn’t know…”
Letting Luc’s hand fall onto the bed, he covered his face with his hands. Guilt and sorrow gripped his heart and pulled in opposite directions, tearing it right down the middle.
Then, slowly, someone pulled his hands away.
He looked up at Luc, at his hand swallowed by Luc’s much larger one. The Arcana was beginning to fade in the man’s weary eyes. The traces of it running under his skin had already gone mostly dark.
“Do not…,” Luc sighed. “Do not… blame yourself…”
“Evaine said you’d say that,” Rolan half laughed, half sobbed.
“Not… your fault, boy… my boy… my son…”
Rolan frowned. Did Luc think he was talking to Mylas? He thought of the boots he’d flung to the ground, and he felt like the world’s most ungrateful, shameful idiot.
“Tell me what to do,” he begged. “Tell me how to help you!”
Luc only gave a thin, fluttering breath, his hand slipping back to the bedcovers. His eyes shut, the final glow of magic dimming from them, and Rolan watched the faint rise and fall of his chest in disbelief.
This couldn’t be the end.
It just couldn’t.
Luc was a mountain. He was the sky and the forest. He was vast and eternal and untouchable. He couldn’t be brought down by something as pathetic as Cabbot with a rusty knife!
“Luc,” Rolan whispered. “Luc!”
The Arcanist didn’t open his eyes. Rolan watched his chest, willing it to rise. Willing him to breathe.
“Luc!”
“Rolan,” Evaine said quietly.
“Do something, Evaine!” He grabbed her satchel and tore it open, rifling through the pots, bottles, and sachets within. “There has to be something here! There has to—”
“Rolan!” She shook him by the shoulders. “Rolan, stop!”
Pulling him to her, she wrapped her arms around him and held him as he wept.
His sobs welled up and out of him, rattling his ribs, curling up his spine, unmaking him bone by bone.
He clung to Evaine’s sleeves and cried himself hoarse, all the while wondering at his own reaction.
He hated Luc, didn’t he? The man had lied to him. Used him. Rejected him.
But he’d also taught him. Guided him. Opened his eyes and his heart and his imagination, seeing him as no one had ever seen him before. It couldn’t all have been a lie, could it?
“Rolan.” Evaine’s soft voice drifted down like a bird calling from a high wind. “Rolan, look.”
At what? Luc’s body? At the consequences of Rolan’s own stupid cowardice?
“Look,” she urged again.
So he pulled his face away from her shoulder and blinked through a sheen of tears.
A gentle light caught his eye, wafting about in the air. He sucked in a breath and scrubbed his muddy sleeve over his face.
“What is it?” Evaine breathed.
His heart stuttering, Rolan took a step toward the light and held out his hand. The light was coming from a white moth that fluttered to and fro, as gentle as a feather on a breeze. It was no bigger than his palm, its wings delicately transparent.
“It’s a Cryptic,” he said.
The moth fluttered down to Rolan’s open hand and alighted upon his skin, so softly he couldn’t even feel it. Its feathered antennae grazed the pad of his thumb, as if in blessing. It glowed with a silvery-white aura, just like the unicorn he and Luc had spied in the forest not so long ago.
Some precious few Cryptics are born not of shameful secrets, Luc’s voice rumbled in his memory, but noble ones.
Rolan’s heart trembled. His vision blurred with tears.
He felt he should pray to the goddess, but didn’t know what to say.
He didn’t want to give in to hope again, only to have it thrown back in his face.
But it bloomed in him all the same, as fragile as summer’s first rose, beautiful and thorny at the same time.
Evaine frowned at the moth, her eyes still wide. “I’ve never seen one look that way before.”
“I have,” Rolan whispered.
Then he crushed the moth between his hands.