AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Marlowe answered for him. “Power,” he whispered, appearing dazzled.
“You need to proclaim a reign title, Cassie,” Tomas said. “Your rule doesn’t officially begin until then. Lady Phemonoe was named after the first of the line. You can take the same title if you wish or choose another.”
Pritkin had come back to life and was striding across the room, looking outraged. “Herophile,” I said quickly, the name from my vision coming automatically. I looked nervously at Tomas. “Is that okay?” Pritkin’s hand, which had been reaching for me, stopped and dropped to his side.
“Where’s the golem?” I asked Billy, keeping an eye on the mage. He had the look of an atheist who’d just had a visit from God: stunned, disbelieving and faintly ill.
“You don’t want to know,” Billy answered, staring fixedly at the portal, his throat working nervously.
“What do you mean?”
The king answered for him. It was hard to believe that, for a moment, I’d actually forgotten someone that large. “He was given to my steward as a gift. He very generously loaned him to me.”
“They turned him loose a couple of hours ago,” Billy said. “They’re going to give him another hour, then go after him. Something about training their hunting dogs.”
“What?” I was horrified. “But he could be killed!”
“Technically, he isn’t alive,” Billy pointed out, “so he can’t die.”
“He may not have been alive before, but he is now!” I looked around for support but didn’t find any. Marlowe had moved up beside Pritkin, looking worried. Billy was staring at the swirls of color inside the portal and biting his lip, and I doubted the golem’s fate was uppermost in his mind. “We can’t leave him!”
“Of course,” the king murmured, a sound as loud as anyone else’s bellow, “you could save him, if you like.”
I had a very bad feeling about this. “How would I do that?”
The king smiled, showing teeth the size of golf balls. “By making a trade.”
“Careful, Cass,” Billy muttered. “He wants something from you, but he wouldn’t tell us what.”
“Quiet, remnant!” The king thundered. “Keep your tongue behind your teeth, or someone may cut it out!” Then, as quick as a flash, his mood changed and he smiled angelically. “ ’Tis only a book, lady, a trifling matter.”
“Their destination is next,” the pixie warned.
Pritkin suddenly come back to life. “Where is Mac?”
I stared at him blankly, and then it hit. Oh, my God. No one had told him.
The pixie answered before I could begin to think of a reply. “The forest demanded a sacrifice before it would let us through. It went for the girl, but the mage offered himself instead.”
I transferred my stare to her. She must have seen Mac deliberately do something to draw attention to himself. He had understood—the forest wouldn’t let me go, wouldn’t stop attacking us, until it had a sacrifice.
So he gave it one.
Tomas squeezed my shoulder in silent sympathy, but I hardly felt it. There had been no blood on the ground when we left. The earth had absorbed it, had absorbed him. The wards I’d stuffed in my pocket suddenly felt like bricks.
Pritkin had looked confused at the pixie’s offhand comment, but whatever he saw on my face was explanation enough. Comprehension flooded his eyes. “You planned this,” he said in a strangely dead voice. “You tricked us into rescuing that . . . thing, so you could complete the ritual. The geis made any other candidate impossible.”
“I didn’t plan anything,”
I said. I wanted to tell him how horribly sorry I was, to say something worthy of Mac, but my brain didn’t seem to be working.
“About the book,” the king rumbled.
I looked up at him, confused. “What book?”
His face contorted slightly and I realized that he was trying to look innocent. It didn’t appear to be an expression he employed very often, judging by the result. “The Codex Merlini.”
“What?” The name meant nothing to me, but Pritkin jerked violently.
