The coat Pritkin had given me was lying nearby, where I had dropped it alongside the pack when we stopped to rest. But I had no time to search for the right bullets. The short Fey realized that I had stopped shooting and grabbed for me. I flattened the rowan charm against his forehead, pushing it into his skin as hard as I could. The flesh around it immediately turned black and start smoking, giving off a smell exactly like a burning campfire.
He tore away from me, clutching his head and screaming. I don't know whether he would have tried again, because the pixie suddenly appeared and, despite the fact that he was momentarily incapacitated, slapped him with the flat of her sword. The blow must have been more forceful than it looked, because he went sailing into the forest until he was stopped by an overhanging limb. He hit the ground hard, unconscious or worse. I didn't wait to find out, my only thought to get to Mac.
Huge hands descended on me at the same time that a scream reverberated through the forest. I looked down the path in time to see a root as large as a small tree erupt from the scarred ground right under Mac's feet. Time seemed to stop-I couldn't even feel my heart beating anymore-and then everything suddenly sped up. The root ripped out of the ground, piercing Mac through the center of his back. "No," I breathed, but no one heard, no one cared. Mac's body strained upward until his spine left the grass completely, his fingers digging into the hard-packed dirt, then the root burst out of his torso in a great gush of blood.
The pixie nodded once to the guards and they released me. I shot down the path, but Mac was already limp by the time I reached him, sightless eyes staring up without recognition. "Mac," I shook the unresponsive body gently. "Mac, please…”
Unresisting, his head lolled to the side just as a shower of gold hit the dark ground. My blood ran cold when I realized what had happened. Mac's wards had solidified and fallen away, leaving the skin between the unmoving leaves as pink and unmarked as a newborn's. I picked up one of the small shapes with a shaking hand. It was the tiny lizard, frozen in midleap. Next to my knee was a snake as long as my arm, uncurled from its usual place around his neck. And beside his ruined chest lay an eagle the size of my hand.
I stared at them numbly, knowing what it meant that his wards had deserted him, but not willing to let my brain shape the word. A deafening din rose up from the assembled spectators, but I didn't even look up at the screeching and howling. Until the roots came back.
If I had thought there were a lot before, I was instantly reminded how many are needed to feed even a small tree. They were suddenly everywhere, shooting out of the forest, erupting from the ground, diving from the underbrush. A few paused to leech Mac's blood from the spreading puddle that had almost covered the path, but most dove for him like hungry sharks. The flailing mass flogged my body like bark-covered whips, while the earth around Mac boiled with activity. Dozens of roots wrapped around him, binding him, as thick as a shroud. Then a huge knotted specimen slammed into my stomach, driving the air out of my lungs. I fell to my knees, and when I looked again, Mac had disappeared. The only sign that anything had happened was the golden wards that stuck up here and there out of the churned-up dirt.
The pixie said something to the lumbering giant standing behind her. He would have made a couple dozen of her, but he moved at her command without question. His bulk coming towards me down the path was the last thing I saw before the world went black and I realized that I'd been stuffed into a sack. I remember being slung over someone's back; then my brain shut down completely and I fell into darkness.
I awoke in a cold sweat, gasping for air, my heart hammering in my side. I stared into absolute blackness in dry-mouthed terror. I was sure something was about to grab me and that it would all start again. But minutes passed and nothing happened, and I couldn't hear any breaths except my own labored ones. My chest hurt as though I'd run for miles and I wanted nothing more than to curl around the pain until it vanished, but I couldn't afford the luxury. I had to find out where I was, had to know what had happened.
By feel I discovered that I was on a crudely made cot in a stone cell, naked, with only a short, scratchy wool blanket as a covering. I guess the tank top hadn't been worth saving. I was thick-headed, bleary-eyed and trembling with the memory of what had almost happened. I examined myself, but other than being bruised, grubby and severely shaken, I seemed to be okay, although the welts the roots had given me throbbed in time with the eagle's claw mark on my hand, making it feel like my rapid heartbeat was echoing throughout my body.
More than anything, I wanted a bath. I groped around until I found a large bucket of water that had been left by the door along with a sponge, a bar of homemade soap and a towel. The floor was bare except for a little straw that had leaked from a tear in the mattress, and there was a drain in the center of the slightly sloping stones. I threw off the blanket and scrubbed my skin until it was raw in places and I couldn't smell anything but the sharp tang of the soap.
I tipped the rest of the water over my head, but despite all my efforts I didn't feel clean. I toweled off, trying not to think about Mac, but it was impossible. The Fey must have gathered up his charms and brought them along, because they were in a pile on the end of the cot, recognizable by their shapes, but cold and lifeless under my hands. I wondered if they were supposed to be some kind of message- a reminder of how helpless our best magic was here. If so, I didn't need it.
I still felt disoriented and could not quite believe what I'd just seen. But the image was seared onto my eyes. I could hear Mac's last scream, see his fingers clawing at the ground, seeking a weapon he didn't have because he'd given his only Fey charm to me.
And I'd lost it.
I tried to summon my power again, but although I could feel it like a great wave beating against a seawall, it couldn't quite reach me. Maybe there was a way of compensating for the dampening effect but if so I couldn't figure it out. Now that my eyes had adjusted, I could see a faint light outlining the cell's door, so dim that when I blinked it disappeared. As far as escape went, it didn't help, and there wasn't a lot of inspiration in the bare cell. Other than the cot, there was no furniture, and except for the heavy, locked door and a high, barred window, there was no way out. I wrapped the blanket around me in lieu of clothes and dragged the cot over a few feet, wincing at the sound it made on the stones. When I clambered on top, I could just reach the windowsill, but when I felt around with my fingertips, I found only dust and what felt like a dead spider. No moon or stars were visible, but by feel I discovered that the bars were metal and as big around as my wrist.
I sat back down on the cot and wrapped my arms around me to keep from shivering in the chill night air. Bathing and checking out escape possibilities had given my brain something to do, but now it kept trying to go back to the horror in the forest. The more I tried not to think about Mac, the more the other images crowded my mind. I could smell the awful breath in my face, see the hunger in their expressions and feel that decayed mass squirming between my legs, seeking, thrusting, invading.
Despite my efforts, I was shivering anyway, so much that my teeth started to chatter. I used anger to push away the panic, to let me draw a deep breath, to let me think. I was alone and defenseless, and I hated it. Fear was an old companion, familiar in its way, but this wasn't fear. What I was feeling went beyond words, a bone-deep chill and a certainty that, even if I survived, I would never feel secure again.