“Thank you, Excellencies.” The young man inclined his head in a gesture of mock gratitude. “You won’t regret listening to what I have to tell you, I promise.”
“First tell us your name,” Pan demanded.
“I am called Bonnasaint,” the other answered immediately.
“From Glensk Wood?”
“Same as you. But I do not live in the village. I live on the far eastern edge, away from other people. You wouldn’t have seen me before.”
“Why shouldn’t we take you to Arborlon, Bonnasaint?” Prue asked him. “Why would you be in danger there?”
“What you should be asking yourselves,” the other answered, “is why you would be in danger.”
“And are you going to give us the answer?”
He nodded. “I was hired by the Queen, Isoeld Severine, to kill her husband. It was
done under circumstances that made it appear that the Princess had killed her own father. That way the Queen could ascend the throne and the Princess could be locked away. If you take me back and she finds out, she will not chance that I might say something. She will have me killed. If you were her, wouldn’t you?”
Pan guessed he would. He guessed there wasn’t much he wouldn’t do if he had arranged and carried out a murder of this sort.
“What about us?” Prue asked him. “Why do you keep saying we’re not safe, either?”
“The Queen will take no chances. Once she discovers it was you who brought me back, she will wonder how much you know. She will not want to take the risk that I told you anything.”
He paused, letting the words sink in. Panterra and Prue looked at each other. Though neither spoke, they were both thinking the same thing.
Bonnasaint said it aloud. “She will have you killed, too.”
AFTER LOSING THE GIRL HE HAD PURSUED THROUGH the fortress ruins, the demon disguised as a ragpicker had reemerged and turned east toward the mountains from which the now deceased Grosha claimed she had come. He had dismissed the Trolls he’d pressed into his service, sending them back to wherever it was they had come from, bearing the corpse of their unfortunate leader. The demon felt no regrets about killing the latter; in fact, he imagined he had done any number of other humans a great favor.
Other than his father, who was undoubtedly blinded by paternal love or perhaps something less noble, there were few who would miss such a creature. A few weeks’
time, and hardly anyone would even remember who he was.
But the girl—now, there was someone who deserved further consideration.
The demon was still trying to decide what had occurred at the fortress when he had chased her down and brought her to bay. There shouldn’t have been any escape for her; she should have been his to do with as he wanted. Yet someone or something more powerful than he had come to her assistance and spirited her away. Why? Why would anyone bother with this girl? What did she have to offer that mattered so much?
Of course, there was her relationship with the man who bore the black staff. She was important to him, even if she claimed otherwise. Nor was he dead, as she also claimed.
That was just a ploy to throw him off, and a bad one at that. He would have known if the bearer of the staff were dead; he would have sensed it in the same way he had sensed the other’s presence all those weeks ago when he had first come looking for him.
No, the bearer was alive, and the girl knew where he was.
But he didn’t think it was the bearer who had saved her. Possession of one of the Word’s talismans created a formidable opponent, but it did not invest the user with magic capable of transporting another human from one place to another. No human whom he had ever encountered or even heard about possessed magic that strong. Not even the legends told of anyone with that sort of power. This was something else, he believed. This was a Faerie creature, an ancient one in service to the Word.
Yet why had it bothered with this girl?
He thought about it at length as he walked away from the fortress toward the mountains, climbed the foothills to the lower slopes and then the slopes toward places where he would likely find passage through to whatever valleys lay beyond. He considered the possibilities, but nothing helpful suggested itself. The problem was that he didn’t know enough to make an educated guess. There was a background to all of this to which he was not privy. Not yet, anyway. That would change once he found the girl again.
And he would find her. He would find her as surely as the sun rose at the beginning and set at the end of the day. He would find her as surely as he would find the bearer of the black staff. However long it took, whatever he had to do to make it happen, he would find them both.