Page 94 of A Sorceress Comes to Call
Falada rose to his feet and turned deeper into the woods, taking off at a lurching gallop. Her balance started to slip and she grabbed instinctively for his mane. One hand caught hair. The other gripped a rucked flap of skin and then her fingers were plunging into something cold and sticky and she looked down and she had grabbed the edge of his wound and this time there was no muffling her scream.
Ohgodohgodohgod
She started to slide sideways, but Falada had always been preternaturally sensitive and he moved with her, keeping her upright. Then he was off again, his muscles heaving but his ribs unnaturally still. Of course, he isn’t breathing, she thought, and then wondered if he had only ever been pretending to breathe.
Leaves slapped her face as he wound through the trees. A normal horse running through the woods could have injured its rider any number of ways—scraped her off on a tree trunk or run her into a low-hanging branch, say. Falada could not hurt her, but he clearly had no orders about making her uncomfortable. A twig landed like a lash across her cheek and she could not even see in the darkness to duck.
Her first instinct was to flatten herself along the horse’s neck, but that did not bear thinking about. She gripped what was left of his mane with one hand and kept the other in front of her face. All her bravado about leading Falada away from Evermore House was exposed as foolishness. She was not leading him anywhere. I have no reins. And where would I put a bit and bridle, even if I did?
Did he ever really need to obey me, or was he just pretending all along?
No. She took a deep breath and fixed her gaze straight ahead. No, I can’t think like that. The important thing is that we’re going away, so he won’t hurt any more people.
It lasted hours. It lasted years. On some level, Cordelia knew that it could not have been that long, for it was still full dark. Falada broke from the trees, into countryside she did not know, and when she looked up, the moon was still high overhead, a thin crescent smile sharp enough to draw blood.
On another, more fundamental level, it was eternity. She could not feel her feet. Her back throbbed from sitting upright without benefit of saddle or stirrups. Her fingers were numb with cold and at least once she looked down and saw that she was gripping the edge of Falada’s open wound again and all she could feel was vague disgust.
This is nothing, she thought dully. This will go on for days, maybe weeks. However long it takes us to reach my mother in the north. I wonder if he’ll let me off to sleep, or wait until I collapse?
They met no other people. Presumably Falada was avoiding them. She saw houses in the distance sometimes, clustered in little villages, but no people. And what would I do if I saw one? Call for help?
A dog came out of some unseen farmstead and began barking at them, high and panicky. Falada swerved toward it and it tucked tail and ran. Cordelia envied it bitterly for having a hole somewhere to hide.
The moon was most of the way down the sky when Falada swerved into another little copse of trees. Cordelia bowed her head against the onslaught of leaves, and then it stopped.
The familiar stood still under her. The world seemed to rock and sway in her head, but it too stopped moving.
Is he letting me rest? Cordelia thought, feeling a gratitude so piteous and nauseating that she moaned in protest.
A moment later, the flaccid stump of neck in front of her shuddered, as if he sought to turn his head.
“Cordelia,” her mother said, from the shadows. “I might have known.”
CHAPTER 34
“What a busy little bee you’ve been,” her mother said. Her tone was light and her smile was amused and her eyes were as frozen as a glacier’s heart. Cordelia recognized that combination. It had never been directed at her before.
“You’re supposed to be up north,” she said. She had thought that she was too exhausted to feel anything, but it seemed that terror was quite an effective antidote after all. “How… how are you…?”
“Silly child. Did you think I wouldn’t come as soon as I felt the spells on Falada start to break?” Evangeline shook her head. She pointed to the ground and snapped her fingers. “Down.”
As if I’m that dog that ran away, thought Cordelia, sliding off Falada’s back. Her mother’s scent reached her nose, sharp and dry and green. Her legs buckled immediately and she fell to her hands and knees in last year’s leaves. Which I might as well be, for all the courage I’m showing.
And what good would courage do you? she answered herself. Particularly now?
“Those damnable ships don’t leave when you want them to,” her mother said musingly. “Tides are the same, no matter how willing the captain is to please.” She scowled at Falada, running a fingertip along the ragged edge of the wound. “Stupid beast, letting them do this to you. I’ll have to build you a whole new body now. Ugh.”
Cordelia found that it was easier to simply stay on the ground. She fell over on her side.
A boot nudged her ribs. “As for you…” Her mother’s lips compressed into a flat line, even as her voice stayed light and conversational. “I suppose you thought you could strip a few spells off him, replace them, and take him from me? Make him your familiar instead?”
Cordelia blinked at her mother in astonishment. “W-what…?”
“It wouldn’t have worked. The spells that go into a familiar are layered like an onion. You’re luckier than you know.” She laughed. “It’s why I didn’t let him anywhere near the church when we had the wedding. Even if it only took off the outer layers, it would have been inconvenient. Mind you, the layer for obedience to me is right at the center. If you’d gotten that far, he wouldn’t be answerable to anyone at all. If you were very lucky, you might have gone too far and unsummoned him completely, but more likely he’d simply kill everyone. Of course, he wouldn’t have looked much like a horse by then, so who knows what people would think had happened?”
Cordelia licked cracked lips. “He… he already killed someone…”
“Only one? My, you have been lucky, then.” She slapped the familiar’s flank. “Not lucky enough, though. I don’t suppose it was the Squire’s fool sister?”
