Part 26 (1/2)

And so, when she stepped out of the window onto the rope ladder and heard a strange bleating on the ground below - and listened, and heard a yip, and recognised Blotchy, who sounded as if he were in some kind of pain - it was not intelligence that led her to climb down toward Blotchy, rather than up to her rooms and the safety of her guards. It was dumb bleariness that sent her downward, a dull, dumb need to make sure the dog was all right.

The sleet had turned to a light snowfall, and the grounds of the green house glowed, and Blotchy was not all right. He lay on the green house path, crying, his two front legs flopping and broken.

And his feeling contained more than pain. He was afraid, and he was trying to push himself by his back legs toward the tree, the enormous tree in the side yard.

This was not right. Something was very wrong here, something eerie and bewildering. Fire searched the darkness wildly, stretched her mind into the green house. Her grandmother was sleeping inside. So were a number of guards, which was all wrong, for the green house night guards were not meant to sleep.

And then Fire cried out in distress, for under the tree she felt Hanna, awake, and too cold, and not alone, someone with her, someone angry who was hurting her, and making her angry, and frightening her.

Fire stumbled, ran toward the tree, reaching desperately for the mind of the person hurting Hanna, to stop him. Help me Help me, she thought to the guards up in her room. Help Hanna. Help Hanna.

A sense of the foggy-minded archer flashed across her consciousness. Something sharp stung her chest.

Her mind went black.

PART THREE.

A Graceling

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX.

SHE WOKE TO the screeching of a raptor monster, and human voices raised in alarm. The floor was lurching and creaking. A carriage, cold and wet.

'It's her blood,' yelled a familiar voice. 'The raptors smell her blood. Wash her, cover her, I don't care how, just do it-'

Men and raptors still screaming, a struggle above her. Water pouring onto her face, choking her, someone wiping at her nose, the pain so blinding that her mind spun around her and whirled her into darkness. Hanna? Hanna, are you- Hanna? Hanna, are you-

SHE WOKE AGAIN, still crying out to Hanna, as if her mind had suspended itself in mid-cry waiting for her consciousness to return. Are you there, Hanna? Are you there? Are you there, Hanna? Are you there?

No response came to her, no feeling of the child anywhere she could reach.

Her arm was trapped crookedly under her torso, her neck stiff and twisted, her face throbbing, and cold, cold cold was everywhere. was everywhere.

There were men in this carriage. She scrabbled among their minds for one who might be kind, who might bring her a blanket. Six men, stupid, bubbling with fog, one of them the archer with a habit of killing his friends. And the boy was here, too, the red-eyed, pale boy who made the fog, with the unreachable mind and the voice that hurt her brain. Hadn't Archer gone after this boy and this archer? Archer? Archer? Are you anywhere? Archer? Archer? Are you anywhere?

The floor tilted, and she became colder and wetter, and understood that she lay in a puddle of water that s.h.i.+fted and rocked with the floor. Everywhere she could hear the slap of water. And there were large creatures under the carriage. She could feel them.

They were fish.

This carriage was a boat.

I'm being stolen away, she thought wonderingly, in a boat. But I can't be. I need to go back to the palace, I need to watch Lady Murgda. The war. Brigan. Brigan needs me! I've got to get out of this boat!

A man near her gasped something. He was rowing, he was exhausted, he was complaining of blistered hands.

'You're not tired,' the boy said tonelessly. 'Your hands don't hurt. Rowing is fun.' He sounded bored as he said it, and thoroughly unconvincing, but Fire could feel the men experience a collective surge of enthusiasm. The creaking sound, which she recognised now as oars in oarlocks, increased its pace.

He was powerful, and she was weak. She needed to steal his foggy men away from him. But could she, while numb with pain and cold, and confusion?

The fish. She must reach for the fish lumbering enormously beneath her and urge them to the surface to capsize the boat.

A fish threw its back against the boat's underside. The men yelled, pitching sideways, dropping oars. Another hard blow, men falling and cursing, and then the boy's horrible voice.

'Jod,' he said. 'Shoot her again. She's awake and this is her doing.'

Something sharp p.r.i.c.ked her thigh. And it was well enough, she thought as she slipped into blackness. It wouldn't solve anything to drown them if she drowned too.

SHE WOKE, AND groped for the mind of the rower nearest the boy. She stabbed at the fog she found there, and took hold. She compelled the man to stand, drop his oar, and punch the boy in the face.

The boy's scream was terrible, scratching like claws across her brain.

'Shoot her, Jod,' he gasped. 'No, her her. Shoot the monster b.i.t.c.h.'

Of course, she thought to herself as the dart pierced her skin. It's the archer I need control of. I'm not thinking. They've muddied my mind so I can't think.

The boy was crying, his breath shaking with fury and pain, as she slid away.

THE NEXTTIME she woke it was to the feeling she was being dragged agonisingly back into life. Her body screamed with pain, hunger, sickness. A long time, she thought. They've been poisoning me for a long time. Too long this time.

Someone was feeding her some kind of meal cake, mushed up and dripping like a porridge. She choked on it.

'She's stirring,' the boy said. 'Shoot her again.'

This time Fire grabbed at the archer, stabbed at his fog, tried to get him to aim his darts at the boy instead of her. The sound of a struggle followed, and then the boy's screaming voice.

'I'm your protector, you fool! I'm the one who takes care of you! She's the one you want to shoot!'

A p.r.i.c.k on her arm.

Darkness.