The Multitude, стр. 72
The matrons dragged Maynya forward. She dug her feet into the ground and struggled to stay rooted to the spot, her temples pulsing and heart pounding in sync with the flute. The king’s dark-haired, forever frowning sister glared at her. Orelea. A sadistic woman who’d earned the name Lady Sting among those slaves who’d gotten in the way of her whip.
Maynya looked away, only to fall under the spell of a tall stranger’s eyes, the vigorous older man she’d noticed outside the tent. He nodded.
As the wind gusted stronger against the tent, a surge of strength boiled up inside of her, stoked by a fire blasting from her very soul.
At the altar, the king raised his arm to plunge his knife into the heart of the purest woman she’d ever met.
The soldier closed in on him from behind, his own arm raised.
But he stopped and gaped at an impossible transformation.
Maynya shuddered. She couldn’t have caused what just happened, could she?
During a few eye-blinks of time, feeling like an hour but perhaps lasting no more than a second, Albus had turned to stone, inch by whitening inch. First his head, then an arm, then the other. His torso, his legs.
A powerful gust ripped the canvas overhead, dislodging a timber and sending it swinging down in an arc toward a man turned into a statue. But not stone after all. The pillar of salt that had once been King Albus exploded into a cloud of white dust as the heavy wooden beam struck it down.
Shouts and screams rose throughout the tent.
“By all the gods!”
“This is sorcery!”
Pandemonium took hold. The torn canvas flapped wildly, women shrieked, men yelled. Then the wind stilled as suddenly as it had erupted.
“Maynya’s a witch!” Orelea’s shriek rang across the broken tent. “She killed Albus with her black magic!”
“No, I—” The hollow echo of Maynya’s voice cut off her words mid-sentence. Everything had stopped. The people stood frozen, their faces locked into expressions of fear, anger, panic. Stone-cold silence hung in the air.
She wrestled her arms away from the no-longer-clenching hands of the matrons. She swung around. Those behind her stood as motionless as those in front. What had happened? A scream welled inside of her and blasted its way out, echoing across the stillness of the broken tent.
Sudden motion silenced her, the tall stranger in action. He navigated around frozen guests and rushed toward the altar, glancing over his shoulder to shout at her. “Get out! Run while my spell lasts.”
She hurried after him. “Is she… Will she be…”
The man bent to the task of sawing Abelia’s bindings open with a knife. “Is this woman someone to you?”
“Yes.”
“She fainted. I’m sure she’ll be fine.” He hefted the slave over his broad shoulder. “You’re Maynya, yes?”
She nodded.
The stranger thrust something into her hands. “An angel named Gabriella has you fixed in her sights. Best stay clear of her.”
“Why? My people worship the ground she walks on.”
“She’s a schemer.”
Maynya’s temples had stopped throbbing, but her ears rang. She ignored the crumpled papers he’d given her and motioned to the soldier, the man one who’d somehow stirred her heart but now stood frozen with the others, his knife poised for the kill, his eyes staring at the fallen king with icy contempt. “I need to help this man!”
“Run, I tell you!” The stranger turned away and carried the girl toward a torn-open side of the tent with great strides.
“Wait! Help me free the brides.”
“What? You heard the woman. These people will tear you limb from limb when my spell ends.”
“But you have the power to stop them. You turned the king to salt!”
The man swung toward the small pile of white salt near the altar. Most had scattered in the wind. “Don’t play games with me. I’ve never seen the devil’s power glow so fiercely in anyone’s eyes as I did in yours when all hell broke loose.”
“No, I’m not a… I didn’t—”
He stepped out of the tent.
“At least tell me your name.”
He slowed again but kept his back to her. “Henry Stoddard.”
“Be kind to Abelia, Henry Stoddard. She’s a saint.”
“All of you women are, except when you’re sinners. Damsels in distress, indeed.” The man loped away in the direction of Sanctimonia. “I’ll rescue this one,” he shouted. “You save yourself.”
Despite the stranger’s urgent tone, his spell showed no sign of breaking. Everyone remained frozen in the positions they’d assumed when the miracle occurred, the myriad of expressions in their faces ranging from anger to fear to wonder and even hope in the case of the bridal-pool women. Those standing closest to the fallen king had been dusted white as if by a flurry of granular snow.
Quintus stood among the others.
She prayed he wasn’t dead.
CHAPTER 31
Running from a bad situation
Henry hurried the unconscious woman beyond the ruins of the great tent. He didn’t trust his powers of hypnosis in Gabriella’s strange parallel world. Yes, almost everyone seemed to react to his spell as intended, freezing in place like statues. Yet Maynya hadn’t.
Why?
He slowed, gasping for breath, and waited for his heart to stop pounding. How had he gotten the notion in his head an old man might play the gallant knight? He should have given the message to Maynya and taken off alone.
Once in the woods, he set the woman down and knelt beside her. “Wake up.”
Her eyelids fluttered.
He shook her shoulders. “You’re free. Wake up and be on your way.”
The woman opened her eyes—beautiful green eyes. She clutched his arm and babbled in Latin.
Henry eased out of her grip and stood. “I’m rusty. Don’t you speak English? The other one did.”
The woman said something unintelligible again, tried to stand, but collapsed down to her knees. She moved the back of her hand across her forehead as if fighting a migraine. In doing so, she revealed the tattoo of a butterfly on the underside of her wrist.
“They picked