The Dreaming Hunt (39 page)

“Ahh, Kadir. You are returned to us at long last.”

At the thin rasp, he turned to face the elderly leader of his order, a small man shrunken with age, like a raisin, but with bright, black eyes still. “High Proctor Albinus, I am overjoyed to find you in good health upon my return. How do you fare?”

“I am well, considering the indignities old age heaps upon a soul. Have you any news to report?”

“I have word that our missing charge has landed in the Heart. The White Heart, to be exact.”

Albinus absorbed that news for a moment and then began to chuckle. “Ahh, spirited this one is. Like her mother. One cannot help but like her.”

“Like her?” Elfonse squawked. “She's completely out of control. The child must be brought to heel immediately. If Kadir cannot do it, I and mine certainly will.”

Kadir retorted, “The Royal Order of the Sun will likely have something to say about that. Draw their wrath and that will be the end of us all.”

Elfonse shrugged. “We'll take the girl without them finding out who did it, then. Once we have her here under lock and key, they cannot touch us.”

Kadir scowled. He had an inkling the form Elfonse's bringing to heel would take. The man would drain Raina's magic from her until he killed her permanently and callously stored her magic for the day of great awakening. He started hotly, “You and yours shall not lay hands on her while I yet breathe—”

“Let us discuss this later,” Albinus intervened mildly. “We ignore our guest.”

Kadir was in no mood to make nice, and he glared at Elfonse. At length, he calmed himself enough to ask his mentor somewhat more temperately, “High Proctor, I do not understand our visitor's reason for being here.”

“His spirit is … interesting. And furthermore, he seeks advice from us based on our special expertise regarding the bonds between spirits and physical form.”

“In return for what?” Kadir demanded bluntly.

Albinus pursed his lips, whether in disapproval or amusement, Kadir could neither tell nor give a care. “It is our purpose to learn all we can so we may share our knowledge with those in need.”

No, it wasn't. They had never shared anything they'd learned with outsiders, not in the entirety of their existence. Why, then, did Albinus break the ancient tradition for this jann?

Creating a debt of gratitude, mayhap. Who was this jann that a favor owed by him was worth risking exposure of the entire order? Kadir studied the man's inscrutable features closely. To his credit, the jann remained unruffled under Kadir's open scrutiny. A man of substance. Education. Self-possessed and clearly accustomed to being in charge. A leader of some kind. Was he an undercover Imperial agent?

“Where do you come from, sir?” Kadir asked the jann.

“I have no home. I have, however, spent the last few years wandering about observing and learning the lay of the land. Which is how I chanced upon the name of this order and searched it out. I have come to believe that we could be of mutual benefit to each other.”

Kadir harrumphed into his robe's collar. He'd long suspected that the high proctor kept secrets from the rest of them, but this went too far. Albinus had finally fallen off his rocking chair. The question now was, would he let Elfonse take the entire order down to ruin?

*   *   *

Will lurched fully awake, whipping his dagger out from under his pillow as a hand closed over his mouth.

“Gently,” a female voice whispered. “Wake your friends. You must go, and now.”

He blinked up at a beautiful young woman he'd definitely never met before. He would not have forgotten that face.

“Who are you?”

“A friend. And you and your companions need to leave now. Wake up that one”—she nodded in the direction of Rynn—“and I'll go wake your female friends.”

Will noticed that Eben was already awake and getting dressed grimly. He apparently believed the girl's warning. “Wait. What's going on?”

“Prepare to leave in silence and haste,” she hissed. “And hurry.” The girl slipped out the hallway door before he could question her any further.

Will swung his feet to the cold floor and jammed his feet into his boots as quietly as he could. He crept over to Rynn, who roused at a touch, took one look at him, and commenced dressing. They moved about in the deep shadows cast by the sluggish embers of the fire, dressing and arming themselves as quietly as they could.

He cracked open the hallway door and peeked out. Empty. He slipped across the hall to the girls' room and eased the door open. A sharp claw hooked under his chin before his nose even cleared the doorframe.

“You're awake, then,” he breathed at Sha'Li, not daring to move with that razor-sharp claw at his throat.

“Aye. Shortly we'll be down,” the lizardman girl whispered.

The party congregated in the common room no more than three minutes after the girl first woke Will. The girl came out of the kitchen, and Eben whispered, “What brings you here, Richelle?”

Will looked back and forth between the two. Eben knew this beauty?

“The same thing that brings you here, I imagine. Looking for Kendrick.”

“Any luck?” Eben asked eagerly.

“Keep your voice down,” Rynn warned.

Richelle nodded. “The paxan is wise. I heard the Imperial soldiers talking about all of you after you went to bed. They're planning to detain the lot of you—except for you, White Heart, and interrogate you as to what you're up to and where you're headed.” She pressed a fat cloth bundle into Eben's hands that looked like food.

She continued, “I have a lead on Kendrick and the one who controls him. They are headed north and fast. They've left Imperial held lands and head into the wilderness.”

“Why?”

“Who knows? To escape the long arm of the Empire, mayhap.” She hesitated and then added in a rush, “Find him, Eb. Bring him home to us. My family owes a debt to the Hyland name; the Lady of Hyland saved my life. For the sake of our old friendships, find him for me. Will you do that?”

“I will do my best.”

“There is one with them who intentionally leaves tracks. They are subtle, but if you hire a decent tracker, you ought to be able to follow the trail fairly easily.”

Eben grinned. “Tarryn. She's an expert tracker and countertracker. I'll bet she's the one laying a trail for us.”

“I'll tell the soldiers you're headed south. Go north with all due haste.” She glanced over at Will. “I heard you mention Adrick earlier. You'll find plenty of help in the northlands if you use his name. Adrick was well liked in those parts.”

It occurred to Will to ask her how she'd heard him speaking earlier, but the urgency of the moment stilled his tongue. Eben seemed to be taking her warning seriously and was already moving toward the door. Rynn lifted the heavy lock bar and took a hard look outside before gesturing the others to follow.

“I'll latch the door behind you,” Richelle whispered. “Travel swiftly and find that which you seek.”

Will murmured a quiet thanks to the girl and followed the others out into the chilly night. He glanced up at the position of the stars. It would be hours yet until dawn. As the initial alarm of the unexpected wake-up wore off, fatigue settled in its place.

Eben led the party past the last few crofters' huts in Shepard's Rest while Sha'Li countertracked for the group. Who'd ever heard of erasing tracks in a village, for stars' sake? The Imperial scouts would undoubtedly be master trackers, though.

The road quickly turned into little more than a one-person-wide cow path. Before long, trees crowded in close upon them, and leaves overhead blocked out the sky.

The party paused to take a short rest while Sha'Li caught up with them.

Will turned to Eben immediately. “Who was that girl?”

“That's Richelle, daughter of the Dupree Slaver's Guildmaster, Kenzarr.”

“The Slaver's Guild?” Rosana exclaimed. “She's Imperial?”

“Kenzarr and Leland Hyland were great friends. Used to go hunting together all the time. They had a falling out some years ago over something that happened to Kendrick and Richelle. Hyland's wife fixed it, but the distance between Hyland and Kenzarr remained. I got the impression that Kenzarr regretted it and wished to repair the chasm between him and Leland. But Richelle was always hanging around the house. She was like a sister to us.”

“So you trust her information?” Will asked. “She won't turn us in to the hunters back there?”

“Why would she? She has nothing against us.”

Rosana snorted. “Nothing except being the daughter of Anton Constantine's closest friend and ally. She's Imperial. And worse, she's Anton's creature. For all we know, he put her up to sending us into a trap. We should do the exact opposite of what she told us to do and with all possible speed.”

Eben frowned. “I've known her most of my life. She's a decent sort. She and her father may be slavers, but they've got honor.”

Sha'Li spoke up. “Honor enough to hang all our lives upon?”

“C'mon,” Eben coaxed. “She owes the House of Hyland. And she gave us a direction to go. It's more than we had before. What can it hurt to see if she's right and we pick up Tarryn's trail?”

Will was annoyed when Rynn interjected, “I sensed urgency and genuine desire to help in her.” It occurred suddenly to Will to wonder what else Rynn could sense in all of them that he was not telling them. Could he see their secrets? Did he know about the Sleeping King? The identity of his father? The fact that an Imperial death sentence lay upon the head of every member of the house of De'Vir?

Eben nodded firmly at Rynn. “Exactly. I trust her. She and Kendrick and I were very close. She would not betray so many years of friendship.”

Before daylight, any hint of a path had disappeared. Only Will's exceptional woodcraft allowed them to make their way forward through the increasingly dense forest thickets on nearly invisible deer trails. But, as Richelle had forecast, Sha'Li started picking up signs of a subtly marked trail. She estimated that it was several days old, but it represented hope, especially to Eben, whose spirits picked up markedly.

Will had grown up in this part of Dupree, and even he was shocked at how quickly all signs of civilization stopped as they headed north first, and then the trail they followed veered west. When they had set out from Shepard's Rest just a few hours ago, they were firmly in an Imperial colony. And suddenly, they were … not. Even the Forest of Thorns had not felt this completely uninhabited.

Some things stayed the same, though. An unknown enemy loomed in front of them, and they were on the run, being chased by Imperial forces. Again. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same.

 

CHAPTER

20

Marikeen rubbed her cheek absently. Sometimes it still stung where the slave mark had been before. It was long gone, but the burn of humiliation lingered.

Speaking of lingering, her nose twitched at the odor of decay permeating the oddly shaped room around her. The walls were all curves and flowing lines with no square corners anywhere. The claustrophobically low ceiling looked like a stone clamshell that pressed down on her uncomfortably as if she were trapped deep underwater and being crushed by the weight of it. The carvings around the oval windows were of fish, eels, urchins, and other more fanciful underwater creatures that she did not recognize. She'd heard someone mention that this place was once a lizardman holding. Given that the structure squatted like a toadstool in the middle of a putrid swamp, she had no trouble believing it.

She looked around at the assembled mages who called themselves the Cabal. As best she could tell, this deeply secretive group was devoted to the idea of learning all it could about magic. An innocent enough mission on the surface of the thing. But she'd sensed from the moment she'd arrived at this magically disguised sanctum that their motives were nowhere near as pure as that. Many forms of magic were forbidden, either by law or taboo, and she suspected this bunch was interested in those magics most of all.

The man who had brought her into this group, Tholin, was not here at today's gathering. But as soon as the human calling himself Richard Layheart spoke to her, the reason for Tholin's absence became clear.

“What can you tell us of Anton's activities, Marikeen?”

Ahh. Tholin was also a Coil member and Anton's creature. She leaned back, considering Layheart's question. Were these people interested more in how much she'd registered while under the influence of one of Anton's infamous love potions, or were they more interested in spying on the former governor? Given Tholin's absence for this conversation, she gathered it was the latter.

“Anton spent much of the time that I was with him in search of rare components for making various alchemical poisons. And, of course, he spoke a fair bit about taking revenge for the slights perpetrated against him by various people he perceives as enemies.”

“What orders did he give to his snake-tattooed associates?” A gypsy man with the brightly glowing hands of a mage asked that one. He'd been introduced to her as Victor Jedrin.

She turned to face him. And here it was. The choice she had thus far avoided. Did she cast her fate in with these powerful mages who had freed her from slavery and could teach her much, or did she hold out hope that her inept brother and his pathetic little band of friends would one day manage to find her and rescue her from whatever miserable path her life took her down?

Given that she'd been missing for months and had not heard a word from Eben or Kendrick, she had to assume they had given up searching for her. And now that Hyland was dead, if she went back to Dupree, she would have no benefactor to shield her from the consequences of her unknown parentage.

She took a long, slow breath. Held it a moment. Then answered, “Anton's last order to his Coil subordinates was to hunt down and bring to him a small party of young adventurers. Anton seems to think this group has stolen something from him. He wants it back before he kills them all.”