“Forgive me,” he said softly, choking down more bile. “But I do hope this is only temporary.”
With more violence than he knew he possessed, he snapped the robin’s neck.
Gingerly, he set the fragile corpse upon a bed of moss.
In the halls of Sangfeder, it was said – and since it was said, believed – that to use another’s blood would render a spell inert. Drunken dormitory tests proved the claim substantially enough.
But Sy knew it was not entirely true; for it was not with his blood, nor the blood of the Master Scribe who wrote it, that the mark on his palm was inscribed.
With a deep breath, he clicked free the needle of his pen. He pricked the needle into the dying man’s heart, where the blood still ran bright and wet, and filled the chamber. Claude’s shallow breath quickened, sounding wet; but he did not awaken or stir.
Once Sy had the dust, he mixed it with pure water from his kit, then rubbed the spell all over the robin’s cold breast. He watched the mixture sink and disappear into the unmoving red feathers.
For a long moment, nothing happened. Then, Claude’s wet breath rattled, then stopped completely.
Sy fell back, sinking into the dirt. He put his head in his hands. He rubbed his aching forehead, trying not to think about what he had just done; and worse, that it had been for nothing.
But then, he heard a strange sound. Like scratching, but wet. At the base of the tree.
Alarmed, he peered through his fingers at Claude’s corpse. Then, heart racing, dropped his hands. Claude’s chest was moving, but not with breath. With –clawing. Sy shuffled backward, away from the corpse. As he watched, the movement shifted, a bulging that crept up Claude’s esophagus, then into his throat. Into his mouth, his cheeks ready to burst. His clenched jaw creaked as his teeth parted.
A bird, red and dripping, crawled out of his mouth. A robin.
Sy watched it stretch its bloody wings, splattering drops of congealing blood upon the grass. It flew away.
As he watched it disappear into the darkening sky, he knew, with certainty, what he must do.
He spent the remainder of the evening cleaning his pen. Water from a clear, mossy stream; the last of the alcohol from his kit; water again. He needed it to be spotless. He had one chance to get this right.
Once the sun had set, he gathered his things. He turned to the midsummer night sky. The solstice was approaching.
He pulled the feather from his pocket, held it aloft.
“You want me to have it, don’t you?” he asked the feather; then the leaves. “You’ve been guiding me to it all along.”
The leaves did not answer, as he knew they wouldn’t.
“I don’t know why,” he said. Then, with a pang, “I think I know why.”
The forest would not take him the last step, would not show him that path. But he didn’t need it to; he knew how to find it. By following the one person who could.
Though it pained him, he summoned that feeling, that connection – the communion – they had shared. Not only in the grotto, but from the moment he’d met her; the moment, after all the years training himself not to reach for it, to not even look, he’d let himself seize onto hope.
He plucked the feeling; pummeled it like a crushed fruit in his hand. He must crush it, every last drop, down to the stone pit, or it would hold him back. He could not let it hold him back.
Something flickered in the corner of his eye. A color tattooed on his heart. Green as the sea. Crescent moons, darting, daring.
He stuck the feather, crushed, back into his pocket.
He followed her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Pheasants of the wood kept themselves scarce. Canny creatures, woodland pheasants – almost a different animal to their half-domesticated country cousins. Preferred solitude. Kept their own company. They understood that the greatest prize of all was safety, and that true safety could lie only in remaining sharp. Self-reliant. Solitary.
The phoenix was even more cunning. It was the only one of its kind. It had to be.
But, magic or no, the phoenix was prey. Any prey, however cunning, could be outmatched by a canny hunter.
