The Invisible Ring

“You shielded the horses,” Jared said. Seeing the sorrow and pain in Thayne’s eyes, Jared glanced at the wagon. He quickly looked away from the remains of the other horse. “How badly are you hurt?”

Thayne tried to smile. “I’ll live.”

Blaed walked down the road toward them, moving so carefully Jared’s body ached in sympathy.

Do my eyes look that haunted? Jared wondered.

“I killed them,” Blaed said, his voice trailing away.

Jared understood what wasn’t being said. To protect Thera and Lia, Blaed had made the choice to step onto that private battlefield inside himself and wholly embrace the violent nature of a Warlord Prince. What Jared had needed Randolf’s instruction to do, Blaed had done instinctively—and had been no more prepared for the results of that kind of killing than Jared had been.

Before Jared could think of something to say to Blaed, Thera suddenly appeared, staggering from exhaustion and sobbing uncontrollably. Thin to begin with, she now had the gaunt, dried-husk look of a witch who had channeled too much power through her body.

“Lia?” she said plaintively, a desperate look in her eyes.

No answer.

When Blaed moved toward her, she stumbled away from him, holding her arms out for balance.

“Lia!” Thera looked around frantically.

Ice coated Jared’s spine. Wherewas Lia? Was she too hurt to answer?

“LIA!” Staggering over to the boulders, Thera tried to climb. Her body shook with the effort. Sobbing hysterically, she sank to the ground. “LIIIAA!”

Jared turned toward the boulders, opening his inner barriers as he searched for Lia’s psychic scent, probed for some trace of a Green Jewel.

He found nothing.

“LIA!” Jared shouted.

He scrambled through the boulders, slipped on torn-apart bodies, barely aware of them except to feel relief that they were male.

A groan to his left made him tense, crouch.

A male hand wearing a Purple Dusk ring appeared above a boulder, found a handhold.

Jared pointed his Red-Jeweled ring toward the man rising behind the boulder and waited.

Brock stared at Jared, blood streaming down his face.

“Did they take her?” Brock asked hoarsely.

Jared didn’t answer.

“Is the Lady safe? Is the boy all right?” Brock’s blue eyes begged for an answer.

“What happened?” Jared asked. Somewhere in the rocks behind him, he heard Thera calling for Lia.

Brock licked his lips. He coughed and spat out blood. “Too many of the bastards. One group came at me. While I was trying to hold them, a couple of them circled around. Eryk was trying to shield Tomas, but he only wears the Yellow. They broke through his shield. Tossed him aside and grabbed Tomas. Next thing I know, they’re standing up on that rock over there”—Brock jerked his chin toward a flat boulder a few yards away—“yelling if she didn’t give herself to them, they’d throw the boy to his death. I told her—Itold her to stay down, stay hidden. Told her I’d get Tomas. Made it this far when my shields broke and they were on me. Last thing I saw before I went down was Lady Lia running toward that boulder and Garth swinging that damn broken axle like a club.”

Brock spat again and then said in a bewildered voice, “She was shielding that broken bastard. And there was some kind of Craft wrapped around that axle. They couldn’t touch him. and he was smashing through skulls like they were ripe tomatoes. Why did she do it, Jared? Why did she shield a male who’s already half-dead? Why did she risk herself for a half-Blood?”

There are no pawns.

Jared didn’t answer. There was something he’d forgotten. Something important. But how, in the name of Hell, was a man supposed to think with that damn pounding?

A woman screaming in rage.

A man roaring a battle cry.

A child screaming in terror.

Then he remembered the other danger that lived among the boulders.

Jared ran to the flat-topped boulder and climbed up it as fast as he could.

He saw Garth first.

The big man stood at the edge of the large nest of viper rats, pounding, pounding, pounding the faintly squeaking bodies into pulp. Tears ran down his face, and each breath came out as a sob.

Jared looked to the right and saw Lia crawling away from the nest, dragging Tomas with her.

Jared slid down the boulder, landing hard on his hands and knees. “Lia!” When she didn’t respond, he crawled after her and grabbed her foot. “Lia!”

She didn’t answer him, didn’t notice him. With one arm wrapped around Tomas’s chest, she kept trying to crawl away from the nest.

Jared leaned forward to grab the back of her coat, lost his balance, and fell on top of her.

She still tried to crawl.

“Lia!” Thera cried.

Jared rolled off Lia and looked up.

Blaed and Thera stumbled toward him.

“Let go, Lia,” Thera gasped, dropping to her knees beside the now-still body. When she couldn’t pry Lia’s fingers open, she used Craft to rip Tomas’s tunic around the clenched hand.

Blaed dragged the boy a few feet. Thera went with him.

Breathing hard, Jared turned Lia onto her back.

Her tunic was so torn, she was almost bare to the waist.

He looked into glazed gray eyes that stared back at him, unseeing.

Numb, Jared saw the smears of blood, the grotesque swelling of the viper rat bites on her jaw and neck, the swelling above her left breast. Aching, he listened as Lia struggled to breathe. Desperate, he tried to remember something,anything , about healing Craft that would save her.

Thera knelt beside him. Tears ran down her face.

“Tomas?” Jared asked.

“We’ll honor him as Blood,” Thera replied.

Jared waited for Thera to do something.

She simply knelt beside him, her hands pressed against her thighs.

“Help her,” Jared said, frightened by Thera’s calm shell.

Thera licked the tears from the corners of her mouth. “I only know a little basic healing, Jared. My knowledge of poisons is limited to what a Black Widow needs to know for herself. There’s too much venom in her. I’m s-sorry. I don’t h-have the s-skill.”

Watching Thera curl in on herself, Jared didn’t realize the pounding had stopped until the broken axle, now slimed with gore, thumped down beside him and a heavy hand squeezed his shoulder hard enough to crack bone.

He looked up at Garth’s tear-stained face.

“Yyyou fffind help,” Garth said, fighting for each word. “Yyyou go. Yyyou take—” He pointed at Lia. “Fffind help. Fffind sssafe place.”

Help. Safe place.

Hope shot through Jared.

Closing his eyes to concentrate, he sent out a summons on a Red spear thread. North, toward Ranon’s Wood. *Belarr!*

He waited a moment, then tried again. *Belarr! I need help!*

No answer.

Even if Belarr was still angry with him, he wouldn’t ignore a call for help.

*Father!*

No answer.

He tried an Opal thread. *Mother! We need a Healer!*

Silence.

Lia’s breathing sounded harsher.

Jared sent out a broad summons at the depth of the Red, letting it spread in an ever-widening circle as far as he could push it. There was the risk that an enemy might answer, but he felt desperate enough to believe any answer was better than none. *Please! I need help!*

Not knowing what else to do, he tried again and again.

Here.

At first, he wasn’t sure he’d been answered.

Here.

Not a communication thread. This was far more subtle. He couldn’t tell whether it was a male or female who had answered him. Couldn’t even tell what direction it had come from.

Here.

It would guide him. He couldn’t have explained why he believed that, but as he felt that coaxing tug, he was sure of it.

Jared opened his eyes and got to his feet.

“Something?” Thera whispered.

The painful hope in Thera’s voice decided him. “A chance,” he said as he picked up Lia.

“She can’t go like that,” Thera said, calling in her dark-green, hooded cloak. “She’ll get cold.”

Jared wasn’t sure Lia could feel anything at this point, but he didn’t argue. He and Blaed held her upright while Thera draped the cloak around her and pulled up the hood.

Jared wrapped his arms around Lia, resting her head against his shoulder. He looked at Blaed. “Get to Ranon’s Wood as fast as you can, any way you can.” He hesitated, hoping it would be true. “We’ll join you there.”

Blaed slipped an arm around Thera’s waist. “May the Darkness embrace you, Jared.”

“And you.”

Here.

Putting a Red shield around Lia, Jared caught the Red Wind and followed the promise of help.

* * *

Had it been a trick after all?

Jared stared at the large, rough-looking traveler’s inn. Somehow, the clean windows and the small flower beds on either side of the brightly painted door made the rambling stone building look rougher, like a sweaty laborer standing next to a woman dressed for an afternoon tea.

Not a sleek or refined place, Jared decided. Definitely not to aristo tastes, but definitely Blood. There was an unmistakable feel to a place where the Blood resided, a psychic residue that was absorbed by wood and stone.

Turning away from the inn, Jared focused his attention on the nearby road that led to a Blood village a couple of miles away. Was that his destination?

Sighing, he reluctantly turned back to the inn. The coaxing tug that had guided him had stopped here. If whoever had answered him was in the village, wouldn’t the tugging have continued? Here, then.

A cautious probe had told him there were twenty people in the inn, three of them women. Maybe one was a Healer.

Jared looked over his shoulder at the faint outline of a cloaked body. He’d taken the precaution of wrapping a Red sight shield around Lia before they’d dropped from the Winds to this landing place, and he’d used Craft to float her so that it wouldn’t be obvious to anyone who might look out a window that he wasn’t alone. For a moment, he listened to her labored breathing, both pained and relieved by the sound.