Stepsister(103)

The roar that rose then was the sound of a hurricane, a tidal wave, an earthquake. It rolled on, an awesome force that nothing could stop. The soldiers were mesmerized by Isabelle. They would have marched into the depths of hell and fought the devil himself had she asked them to.

“For king, and queen, and country!” Isabelle shouted.

She touched her heels to Nero. He reared, hooves battering the sky, then lunged forward, bolting for the stone wall and the field beyond. Her lieutenants rode after her. Her soldiers followed.

Isabelle rode tall in her saddle. Her color was high, her eyes were flashing.

She was fearsome.

She was strong.

She was beautiful.





One Hundred and Twenty-Five


The moon had faded. The stars had all winked out.

Tanaquill’s work was done.

She watched, a half smile on her lips, as Felix, with his dagger, and Hugo, with an ax he pulled from a chopping block, followed the troops, determined to fight with them.

Ella and Tavi clambered back into the cart and started down the drive to what was left of their stables. Tavi planned to stow the cart there, put Martin in the pasture, and hide in the chicken coop with Ella until it was safe to come out.

As the wagon trundled off, two figures emerged from behind the ruins of the mansion. One was an elderly woman, dressed all in black; the other a young man in a blue frock coat and suede breeches.

“She did it. I had my doubts,” Tanaquill said as the two figures approached her. “The girl is brave. Far braver than she knows.”

“I’ve come for the map. It’s mine,” said Fate. “You must return it to me.”

“You should give it to me. I won the wager,” said Chance.

Tanaquill faced the crone. “Isabelle’s life will no longer be mapped out by you.” She turned her green eyes on Chance. “Nor will it be altered by you,” she said. “Her life is a wide-open landscape now, and if she survives the day, she will make her own path through it.”

As Tanaquill spoke these words, she pulled Isabelle’s map from the folds of her cloak. She tossed it high into the air and whispered a spell. The map dissolved into a fine, shimmering dust and was carried away on the breeze.

Fate and Chance watched it disappear, then turned to the fairy queen, full of protests. But she was gone. They saw a flash of red as a fox leapt over a stone wall. Their gaze followed her as she loped through the fields and over the hills. She stopped at the edge of the Wildwood to glance back at them once, then vanished into the trees.

There is magic in this sad, hard world. A magic stronger than fate, stronger than chance. And it is seen in the unlikeliest of places.

By a hearth at night, as a girl leaves a bit of cheese for a hungry mouse.

In a slaughter yard, as the old and infirm, the weak and discarded, are made to matter more than money.

In a poor carpenter’s small attic room, where three sisters learned that the price of forgiveness is forgiving.

And now, on a battlefield, as a mere girl tries to turn the red tide of war.

It is the magic of a frail and fallible creature, one capable of both unspeakable cruelty and immense kindness. It lives inside every human being ready to redeem us. To transform us. To save us. If we can only find the courage to listen to it.

It is the magic of the human heart.





One Hundred and Twenty-Six


The scout brought good news.

The wall of blackbriar rising up from the river, thick and impenetrable, was still there.

“Good,” Isabelle said quietly. “That walls off the southern edge of Volkmar’s camp and blocks any chance of escape up the mountain into the Wildwood.”

As she spoke, she sketched a diagram of the Hollow in the dirt with a stick. Her lieutenants stood clustered around her, watching as she drew the camp, hidden in the hollow’s centre.

“We need to surround the other three sides and block off all escape routes,” she continued, drawing an arc from one edge of the blackbriar wall to the other and enclosing the camp within it. “Divide the troops in two. One half goes to the west, the other to the east. They meet here, where we are now,” she said, tapping her stick at the diagram’s northernmost point. “Be quick. Be silent. Send the signal as soon as you’re in place. Go.”

Isabelle had brought her troops out of Saint-Michel, around the Wildwood, and down a long, rutted road to the border of the Devil’s Hollow. They had marched double time the whole way, but the sun was rising now, and they no longer had darkness as their ally. Isabelle had maintained what she hoped was about a two-mile distance between her troops and Volkmar’s camp, to keep them from being seen or heard, but she knew the chances of their being spotted increased with every moment that passed.

If that happened, she would lose the asset of surprise. She believed that her troops outnumbered Volkmar’s, but Malleval had shown her what the enemy was capable of. Isabelle knew she would need every advantage she could get. Until the signal came, she would be on tenterhooks.

The lieutenants rode to their troops and gave their orders in low, urgent voices. Immediately the soldiers disappeared among the trees. They were made of wood. They were creatures of the forest, and as they moved into place, they became one with it again, making no more noise than a branch creaking in the wind, or leaves whispering in the breeze.