pack.
“Kitto!” Harp said, kneeling by the boy’s body. “He’s not moving!”
Liel crouched beside Harp and laid her hand against Kitto’s cheek. “I can feel a heartbeat,” she told him. “But something else is wrong.”
Harp turned Kitto on his side to drain the water out of his mouth. But even then the boy didn’t move.
“He’s breathing!” Harp exclaimed. He could see a shallow movement beneath the boy’s tattered shirt. “Why isn’t he moving?”
Liel placed her hands on Kitto’s chest and closed her eyes. A faint white glow appeared around her fingertips, but after a moment, she pulled away with a pained expression on her face.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I can’t heal him inside. Whatever is blocking my magic… I can’t do it.” “Please,” Harp begged.
“It’s some kind of curse, Harp,” said Liel, reaching down and untangling Kitto’s foot from the backpack. “It isn’t a natural injury.”
“Then break the curse!”
“I can’t, Harp. At least not in the presence of the Torque.”
“Maybe Majida could help him,” Harp lifted Kitto off the ground as if he were a small child. “We can get him to the Domain, and she’ll heal him.”
“What about the Torque?” Boult asked. “We’ve drained the water; Tresco can walk in here and take it.”
“I don’t care about the damn Torque!” Harp snapped. “We need someone who can help Kitto. And if Majida can do it, then I’m going to find her.”
“Wait!” Verran pulled a vial of red liquid from under his tunic. “I can do it. I can do it with this.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
3 Flamerule, the Year of the Ageless One (1479 DR) Chult
'What is that?” Harp asked curiously.
“You can’t do magic in here,” Liel stated flatly.
“How powerful are you?” Boult demanded loudly.
All three had spoken at the same time, and Verran looked from one face to the next as if trying to decide whom he should answer first. Then he stared at the wet floor, looking very much like a schoolboy who had been caught doing mischief.
“It’s all right. We just don’t understand.” Liel assured him. She peered at the vial clutched in his fist. She could see the ornate golden stopper, but his fingers concealed the rest of the vial.
“It’s just something about the place.” Verran’s voice trembled. “I can feel the old magic.”
“What do you mean?” Liel asked!
“It’s revealing itself to me, just the way it did when I brought down the barrier in the tunnel. It’s revealing how to use it.”
“You know what these creatures were capable of doing,” Boult sputtered. “You’re channeling dark magic. What you’re sensing is death.”
“In death comes rebirth, you know that,” Verran protested.
Boult glared at him. “Is that what your father said? Because that’s how evil mages like to justify brutalizing the innocent.”
“I can break the curse!” Verran insisted. “I can see how to do it in my head!”
“You’re not listening to him, are you?” Boult asked Harp, who had gently laid Kitto back down on the tile floor,
“It takes incredible power to work any magic inside the palace.” Liel told Harp. “And the curse is the product of ancient, potent magic.”
“I couldn’t do it by myself.” Verran held up the vial. “But I can with an elixir.”
“We don’t even know what kind of curse it is,” Liel said, brushing a lock of wet hair off Kitto’s forehead. “We need more information, Harp.”
“Enough!” Harp snarled. “Verran, will he be alive? Truly alive?”
“He will be,” Verran assured him. “He’ll be Kitto again. Just like he was.”
“He doesn’t know that!” Boult fumed. “It could be a trick! Or he’s being misled by whatever is giving him access to his power.”
“I don’t think we can trust…” Liel began.
“Bring him back,” Harp interrupted.
“There will be a price, Harp,” Liel said. “There always is.”
“I don’t care,” Harp said roughly.
“We don’t know where Verran’s power is coming from,” Boult said. “We don’t want Kitto to be used that way.”
“So Kitto died for what… to drain a pool of water?” Harp leaped up and squared off with Boult. Harp’s hands were balled into fists, and his body was rigid with anger. Liel had never seen Harp so furious. Even Boult looked surprised, but he didn’t back away.
“Is that all his life is going to amount to? I took him off the Marderward to die in Hisari? For nothing?”
“He’s not dead!” Boult shouted.
“He might as well be!” Harp shouted back.
“We’ll get the Torque.” Liel quickly moved between them. She laid her hands against Harp’s chest and gently moved him away from Boult. “We’ll save Ysabel from Cardew. We’ll stop Tresco from overthrowing the Queen. And we’ll find a way to help Kitto.”
“Do it, Verran,” Harp ordered. His gaze swung from Boult to Liel. “Kitto would die to save any of you. And he would do it without hesitation.”
Liel let her hands drop to her sides. Harp was going to do whatever he could to help Kitto, and she wasn’t going to convince him that there was a safer way. Even if she could stop him, she wasn’t sure that she wanted to. Beside her, Boult shook his head in disgust but said nothing more. Verran crouched beside Kitto’s limp body. He loosened the vial’s golden stopper and tipped a drop of the red liquid onto his palm.
“Is that blood?” Boult asked, staring down Verran’s hand.
“Quiet,” Verran commanded. He smeared the blood across Kitto’s blue lips and began chanting in guttural, hissing sounds. If they were words, then none of the others had heard them before. The blood pooled on Kitto’s lips in unnatural droplets and then abruptly seeped into his skin.
Angry red lines branched out across his face, traveling down his neck and to his heart. Verran pulled open Kitto’s shirt to reveal his chest. He poured another drop of the elixir on his hand and slammed his open palm onto the skin above Kitto’s heart.
When Verran struck the boy so violently, Liel cried out. The spell she was witnessing was so different than her own healing, which drew on memories of old-growth forests and windswept cliffs, the warm dens of small creatures, and the infinite beauty of life’s detail. Verran’s spell was the antithesis of that. Here was life’s bloodletting, murder in reverse. It called upon every catacomb, every ream of twisted flesh, and every layer of humiliation. That healing could come from such a place made no sense.
Verran jerked his hand away, leaving a bloody handprint on Kitto’s chest. Again, the elixir pooled unnaturally on top of the skin, only it took the shape of a bloody, clawed hand. The clawed fingers rose off Kitto’s chest and plunged deep into his skin. Kitto arched off the floor as the blood-hand clenched around his heart. Still chanting, Verran slammed his fist onto the blood-hand, sending red droplets across Kitto’s body and onto the legs of the people standing nearby. The blood-hand evaporated into the air, and Kitto jerked upright, his head thrown back. His arms were up in a defensive posture, and his eyes rolled into his head.
“Kitto!” Harp said, dropping to the ground beside the boy.
But Kitto’s arms shot out from his side, and his body jerked in seizure. Harp placed his hands behind the boy’s head to keep him from slamming his skull into the tiles.
“Grab his legs,” Harp shouted. But before anyone could move, Kitto became quiet and still. He opened his
