Maria Snyder - Taste Of Darkness

“He had to be sick. Why else would he be out without his shirt or sword?” Loren asked.

“All right. So he goes outside thinking he’s going to throw up...then what?” Odd asked.

We’d all assumed he collapsed, but... What if he’d realized he was dying? I imagined his thoughts and feelings at that moment, putting myself in his place. He’d promised me he wouldn’t die. But it was inevitable. Yet Kerrick didn’t give up easily.

I gasped. “He headed to a Peace Lily!”

CHAPTER 2

“Of course,” Flea said. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

And I wished I’d figured it out sooner. Sick and dying, Kerrick must have done the only thing he could—head to a Peace Lily. He’d been there when the Lily had saved my life and he’d recently learned about Flea’s survival. A surge of energy coursed through me.

“Could he find a Lily at night?” Odd asked.

“Yeah, he’s a forest mage,” Flea said.

“Loren, where’s the map you used for the search areas?” I pulled out my Lily map, but the sunlight was all but gone.

“I left it with the captain of the watch in case anyone returned and needed to find us,” Loren said.

“Go get it and ask the search teams how much of their areas were covered today. Oh, and see if they encountered any Lilys and where.”

“Got it.” Loren dashed off.

Quain, Flea, and Odd followed me inside the infirmary cave. I knelt next to the fire and spread my map out. The locations of the clusters of Lilys had been marked on it.

Handy, except the markings didn’t indicate if they were Death or Peace Lilys. For once it didn’t matter, because Kerrick also couldn’t tell the difference. He’d head for the closest cluster since the odds were in his favor. A hundred Peace Lilys grew for every Death Lily. However, I still needed to know if the teams had found any Lilys. Since I’d been using the map, I’d discovered it wasn’t 100 percent accurate.

I paused, letting the irony sink in. Death Lily toxin killed my sister and might take Kerrick, but it stopped Tohon’s dead soldiers, and had given me my healing magic. Ironic or warped? Or twisted? How about plain old sad?

Loren arrived with the information I’d requested. We consulted and pinpointed the closest Lily cluster. Half a day southwest. I remembered that group of six Lilys. One had been a Death Lily, and I’d harvested its toxin sacks. More important, five were Peace Lilys.

Standing, I said, “Let’s go.”

Quain exchanged a look with Loren, doing their silent monkey communication that Belen liked to tease them about. Belen. I bit my lip. No. I wasn’t going to think about him right now. If I did, I’d dissolve into a little puddle of goo. And time was too critical right now.

Pushing past Quain, I fetched my knapsack from my sleeping cavern. Kerrick’s clothes remained where I’d tossed them last night. I shoved them into my pack along with his boots. He’d need them; the air turned cold at nights. I wrapped my cloak around my shoulders.

When I returned, Loren and Quain waited for me with their packs. Flea sat by the fire. Two bright red patches spread on his cheeks, and his lips were pressed into a hard line. Odd stood behind him with his arms crossed. Their body language said it all.

“Here.” Loren handed me a few sticks of beef jerky. “You can eat it on the way.”

“Thanks.” I bit into one as we left the cave. A half-moon lit the sky, giving off just enough light for us to see the trail, but not enough to see well. We traveled slower than normal to avoid tripping. Plus we kept searching for Kerrick. He might have collapsed on his way to the Lilys. I touched the greenery from time to time, seeking his magic. My heart, though, wanted action and it raced regardless of our pace.

“I’d rather you had a hot meal before we left, but I rarely get my way,” Loren said.

“You stopped Flea from coming along.”

“Only because Odd threatened to sit on him. Flea said he wasn’t going to speak to me ever again.” Loren shook his head. “I’ve been waiting for Quain to say that for years.”

“Hey!”

I cut in before they could launch into a verbal battle. “You did the right thing, Loren. He needs to rest after yesterday.”

“Yeah, but he doesn’t like to miss out. And I’m with him on this one. I wouldn’t want to be left behind, either.”

“Why is he so tired?” Quain asked in concern. “Is it because of...me?”

“I don’t remember him saving anyone else’s life yesterday,” Loren said.

“I know I owe him one. But what did he do to break the spell? I wasn’t dead. I was just...” Quain glanced at me. “What was I? I didn’t feel anything.”

“You were paused. Neither living nor dead, just suspended. Sepp once explained it as a fake death.”

“And now Tohon’s trapped in this fake death?” Quain asked.

“Yes. And according to Sepp, Belen is, as well. He used that information to try to stop Kerrick from killing him,” I said. Tohon had told me he’d turned Belen into one of his dead soldiers. I didn’t know who to believe, but I knew who I desperately wanted to believe. Either way, Belen had been missing for over a month.

“Estrid and her top staff are also frozen,” Loren added.

“Yeah, but it didn’t matter. No offense, Quain, but Tohon had to be stopped,” I said. “By taking out Sepp, no one would have been able to awaken him, or so we thought at the time. Cellina can’t create more dead soldiers. In the end, by killing Sepp we’d have saved thousands of lives.”

Except Wynn had hit Kerrick with her knife before he could finish Sepp off. Eventually Sepp, Wynn, and Cellina had escaped and Flea had awoken Quain.

“If it makes you feel any better, it was a very painful decision,” I said.

Loren put his hand on his stomach. “Like a bad bout of indigestion.”

“Thanks, I feel all warm inside.” He bumped Loren with his shoulder. “So now that Sepp’s still alive, what does that mean?”

Loren met my gaze. What indeed?

“It depends on Cellina,” I said. “If she likes being in charge, she’ll leave Tohon frozen. If she truly loves him...”

“She’ll come after Avry,” Loren said. “She’s the only one who can heal Tohon.”

Not exactly. Danny’s healing magic had awoken during his adventure with Kerrick in the north. But not many people knew about him. Yet another worry flared. Had Tohon told Cellina about his experiments with the Death Lily toxin? The people who survived being poisoned with the toxin all developed healing powers. Tohon had been injecting it into children, hoping to make healers. Danny and Zila had lived through it, but I’d rescued them. If Tohon had kept it secret, all should be well.

If not... I considered. Danny remained with the northern tribes and Zila stayed with Kerrick’s brother, Izak. Both were in Alga Realm, safe on the other side of the Nine Mountains for now.

“But Avry won’t heal Tohon,” Quain said. “Right? You agreed with Kerrick’s decision to kill Sepp.”

“Right. I won’t.”

“And we all know you can’t be threatened, bullied, coerced, or bribed to heal someone you don’t want to.” Loren smiled.

Quain rubbed his neck. “Yeah, we learned that lesson the hard way.”

“I’d say Kerrick had the most learning to do. Fun times.”

I wouldn’t go so far as to call them fun. However, those days when we’d been all together had been...nice, despite the danger. And now... Grief and sadness filled me. Would I lose everyone I loved before this war ended?

We lapsed into silence. The farther we moved away from the infirmary cave, the greater the chance of encountering an enemy patrol. The night insects buzzed and chirped.

When the sun rose, we stopped for a quick breakfast and continued. In the daylight, the monkeys searched for any signs that Kerrick had passed this way.