The Invisible Ring (32 page)

Thera took a last sip of whiskey and handed the bottle to Blaed. “I’ve decided I’d like to settle in Dena Nehele and take you up on your offer to finish my training with your mother, if she’ll have me. So I have a strong interest in the land’s future and the Queen who will rule there. Besides, I’m not going to raise my children in a Territory that stands in Hayll’s shadow.”

Blaed paled, then gulped some whiskey. “W-whose children?”

“Probably yours.” Thera snapped. “Unless you annoy me too much.”

Blaed took another gulp of whiskey. As he linked his fingers with Thera’s, he gave them all a silly grin. “We’re really not slaves?”

Lia wrapped her arms around her stomach, bit her lower lip, and shook her head.

Blaed’s grin got sillier when he looked at Jared. “Is there a Priestess in this village of yours?”

“What?” Thera yelped.

Jared coughed politely. “There used to be. I’m sure she’d be pleased to officiate over a handfast.”

“Wait a minute!” Thera growled, tugging futilely to free her hand. “I haven’t agreed to—”

“Excuse me,” Lia said in a strangled voice. “I have to find a bush.” She flung the door open and tumbled out of the wagon.

“I’d better—” Jared began.

“
Stay
,” Thera said.

Tomas was right. She
did
get a look in her eyes that could singe a man’s ball hairs.

“Sorry,” Jared muttered as he bolted out the door.

Thera’s shout was muffled by the wagon door banging shut.

Ignoring a stab of envy, Jared corked the whiskey bottle and vanished it.

And realized he was missing a witch.

A quick probe of the surrounding area was rewarded by an annoyed mental jab.

A minute later, Lia emerged from behind the bushes, less than pleased to see him.

He matched her stride and waited.

“We’ll go to Ranon’s Wood,” Lia said quietly.

“Fine.” Jared replied politely.

He knew that would be her decision—not because of the help they’d find there, but because it was his home. If she’d realized it was that close, she probably would have headed there a lot sooner.

Getting her charges home. Getting one more to safety before her luck ran out. She’d focus on that until they reached Ranon’s Wood.

Too late, she’d realize her error.

Jared smiled in anticipation. It was going to be such fun watching Lia try to dodge around his father’s code of honor.

Barely dawn. Barely light enough to see. Didn’t matter.

Krelis drove his knife into the straw man that hung from the whipping posts. He didn’t strike between the ribs and into the heart for a fast kill, but in the belly, in the guts. Over and over again.

The straw man swung back and forth with each blow. Back and forth.

Over and over and over.

There was nothing wrong with his plan.
Nothing
.

Except that bitch-Queen had tricked him from the very beginning.

Except the High Priestess was becoming impatient.

That wasn’t good. It wasn’t
safe
.

But it wasn’t his fault that Gray-Jeweled bitch had tricked him. It wasn’t his fault that the side scheme Dorothea had arranged with another Black Widow had ruined a good ambush. It wasn’t his fault that his relatives regarded his mother as the family whore, an accommodation when a more socially powerful male deigned to visit them. It wasn’t his fault that the damn man who had sired him couldn’t keep his mouth shut, couldn’t accept that all of
Terreille
was slowly changing, not just the lousy little Province he lived in.

It wasn ‘t his fault.

Stab stab stab.

“Lord Krelis.”

And now he had to deal with that aristo bastard Maryk who must resent every breath he took because Maryk now had to yield to him when, just six months ago, Maryk had been giving him orders.

“Lord Krelis.”

Breathing hard, Krelis stepped away from the straw man and stared at his second-in-command.

Something slithered in the depths of Maryk’s eyes as he regarded the figure tied to the whipping posts.

“He was a difficult slave,” Maryk said carefully, lifting his voice at the end to make it almost a question.

Puzzled. Krelis looked at the straw man.

He saw the blood. Smelled the bowel. And couldn’t remember the exact moment he’d exchanged the straw practice figure for a living man.

“I’ll take care of it,” Maryk said quietly. “Get cleaned up.”

Krelis dropped the knife and walked away, stumbling a little now that the fury was gone. Stumbling a little, and feeling more than a little sick, because the something in Maryk’s eyes was pity.

“Well?“ Jared asked when Blaed met him where the main road forked with a stony track.

Blaed patted the sweating mare’s neck, then lengthened the reins to give her a chance to stretch her back.

“I didn’t see any sign of riders passing down that track,” Blaed said cautiously, “but it’s stony ground.” Then he took a deep breath and huffed it out. “Hell’s fire, Jared, I’m not a trained guard. I can handle a knife, and I know how to fight with Craft, but I could have looked at something obvious and not known it. The track does seem to run straight north. It’s wide enough to accommodate the wagon, although there’s a stretch that looks like it was cut out of the rock. No maneuvering room there.”

“So once we’re in that stretch, we’re committed to going forward.”

Blaed nodded.

Jared rubbed his thumb over the saddle horn. “Anything else?”

“There’s a large nest of viper rats among the boulders. I didn’t see them, but I heard them.”

Jared smiled grimly. “If we lock the boys in the wagon, we just might avoid having one of them get bit.”

Blaed waited. “Well?”

Jared looked back up the road he’d spent the past hour scouting, probing.

“I found signs of a large group of riders having come this way recently. A day ago. Maybe two. But I didn’t find them.”

Blaed rubbed his neck. “A Red probe can cover a lot of ground.”

“And a Black Widow can spin a web that would defeat that probe.”

An uncomfortable silence settled between them.

The four of them had gathered inside the wagon late last night. During the talking and planning, a lot of things had been revealed.

Lia had told Thera and Blaed the reasons the “Gray Lady” had gone to Raej one last time. She’d told them about the wrongness she had felt and about the warning note that had sent them fleeing cross-country.

But she didn’t tell them why she hadn’t been able to buy passage on a second Coach.

Then Thera had told the three of them about the tangled webs she’d created for the wagon.

Jared still wasn’t sure if he’d have felt easier if he’d known about Thera’s precaution earlier, but that kind of skill in a witch not fully trained had served as a sharp reminder of why Black Widows, with their ability to ensnare or deceive a person’s mind, were so dangerous.

She’d called it a mirroring web. A fairly simple tangled web. When triggered by a psychic probe, the web returned a message more subtle than a thought or a feeling. The probe would touch the web and deliver a simple message:
Nothing there
.

While they were still at the inn Lia had brought them to after leaving Raej, Thera had embedded four of those tangled webs into the wood of the wagon

—one on each side. She couldn’t—or wouldn’t—say why she’d done it. But Jared suspected she’d been covering her own tracks, just in case her sire had somehow been able to trace her to the slave auction. It didn’t really matter who she’d originally created those webs to hide, the result was the same: How many times during their journey had someone probed for them after finding one of those brass buttons and found “nothing there”?

And had he really seen evidence of an abandoned camp when he’d scouted the road an hour ago, or could those men have been hiding nearby in the land’s many dips and hollows, shielded by a similar kind of tangled web?

Jared broke the silence first. “The road loops, then heads north.”

Blaed nodded slowly, looking at the track that forked with the road. “The track’s a shortcut then. If marauders blocked both ends, we’d be trapped on it.” He closed his eyes. “Jared, the Winds cross that track right near the stretch of boulders.”

Jared swore fiercely. While it was customary to use the official landing places—and it was certainly safer since there wasn’t the risk of dropping from the Webs onto precarious ground—the Blood could catch the Winds or drop from them anywhere along the way. Which meant they could have unwelcome company without any warning.

If they abandoned the wagon and horses, he could put a Red shield around all of them and they could ride the Winds the rest of the way to Ranon’s Wood. Even shielded, riding that dark a Web would be an uncomfortable ride for the lighter-Jeweled among them—and a desperate one for Cathryn, Tomas, and Garth, who couldn’t ride
any
of the Winds without the protection of a Coach.

If they did it, it would have to be the Red Wind. A lighter Web would be easier on the others. It would also increase the risk of having enemies riding the Wind with them.

But all it would take was one Red-Jeweled marauder unleashing enough power to break his shield and the others would have no time to drop from the Wind before their minds were torn apart by the power in the Red Web.

“I know,” Blaed said quietly. “I did think of it. I also considered letting everyone capable of it ride the Wind of their Jewels.”

“You’d let Thera ride alone?”

“No. Even if I
was
willing, she wouldn’t ride the Winds alone. Between them, she and Lia would gather up the children and Garth.”

“Taking all the same risks with none of the strength to back them.”

“So we stay and take the risks overland.”

Jared rubbed his forehead, trying to quiet the headache that was starting to bloom. “So we stay.”

“Serving in a First Circle’s not easy, is it?” Blaed said dryly. He shifted in the saddle. “A trained guard would know how to defend against an ambush.”

“A trained guard would know how to create one, too,” Jared countered.

The headache was pounding in time with his heart. “You’re sure about Thayne?”

“I’m sure about Thayne. And we all agreed that, while a child could be misled enough to drop the buttons for someone to find, none of them is old enough or strong enough to handle a connection with the spells tangling up Garth.”

“That narrows our choices, doesn’t it?” Jared sighed. “Does taking an innocent life get balanced somehow by destroying an enemy? I couldn’t sleep last night, so I kept asking myself what my father would do if he were here.”

“Did you get an answer?”

Jared snorted. “No. Not from him anyway. But I know what my mother’s answer would be. Then again, she’s a Healer, and Healers feel quite strongly about life.”

“So do some Queens,” Blaed replied.

Jared shortened the gelding’s reins. “Yes, may the Darkness help us, so do some Queens.”

Jared climbed among the tumbled boulders, looking for a place that would give him a little privacy. After a minute, he found a spot cupped by surrounding boulders that rose a little higher than a man’s waist. Anyone who noticed him would think he’d just climbed up to take a look around. In fact—he unfastened his trousers and grinned at the wet rock in front of him

—someone had already found this place.

The grin faded. As he took care of business, he studied the people gathered around the wagon.

Hell’s fire, why had the back axle broken now? Was it an accident caused by the stress of traveling over rough ground or a deliberate act to delay them in the worst possible section of this track?

As Jared straightened his clothes and turned to climb down, he caught a glint of metal among the rocks.

His heart slammed into his throat as he stared at the brass button.

Then a prickle between his shoulder blades made him look up.

The dust cloud coming down the road made no sense— until he realized a sight shield hiding horses and riders hadn’t been extended far enough to cover the sign of their passing.

Looking in the other direction, he saw another dust cloud rapidly approaching the wagon.

*Blaed!*
Jared roared. *It’s a trap!*

Blaed didn’t turn, didn’t answer. For a moment, Jared wondered if he’d been wrong to trust the Warlord Prince. Then Blaed ran to the front of the wagon while the others scattered among the boulders.

Taking one deep breath to steady his hard-pounding heart, Jared turned south again, raised his hand, and created a Red shield that spanned the road, extending it upward until a rider wouldn’t be able to unleash his power without hitting the shield.

The sound of boots scrambling on stone came from behind him.

Whirling, Jared saw the three marauders just before one of them unleashed a bolt of Purple Dusk power directly at him.

Throwing a Red shield around himself, he flung himself to one side, gritting his teeth as the boulder that had been behind him exploded. Chunks of rock hit his shield hard enough to make him feel the blow.

Before the marauders could strike again, he unleashed the Red in two short bursts. The first blast shattered the marauders’ shields. The second tore through their bodies.

Jared scrambled through the boulders, reaching the road at the same time the marauders reached the Red shield. It sizzled as they unleashed their Jewels against it.

They’d come on foot. A good move, Jared realized as he extended the shield so that it formed a barrier along the top of the boulders on either side of the road. A few dead horses would have made an effective barricade.

Jared started backing away, extending the Red shields as he moved toward the wagon.

Strikes against the side shield pulled his attention away from the men in the road. As he turned to strengthen that side, he saw a dozen more marauders suddenly appear.

Not only had they come down the road from both directions, the bastards were dropping down from the Winds!

The next few minutes passed in lightning-fast images. The wagon exploded when blasts of power struck it from two sides. A ball of witchfire set what was left on fire. A horse screamed. A man roared. More and more marauders gathered a few feet behind the Red shields, unleashing their Jewels against it, forcing him to draw more and more of his own strength into maintaining and extending the shields as he continued to creep back toward the wagon.