The Invisible Ring

Brock’s lips curled into a sneer. “Hayll didn’t want her killed by a newly purchased slave because it would make all the other witches nervous about going to Raej to buy their pretty toys.I wasn’t going to have a Queen’s blood onmy hands.”

Jared felt a weight settling in his chest. “Who was Garth before Dorothea did that to him?”

“The Province Queen’s Master of the Guard. A leader. Men trusted him, listened to him. Even our father always listened to him,” Brock added bitterly.

“Garth’s yourbrother ?”

“My older brother. Always stronger. Always better at everything. After the High Priestess broke him back to his Birthright Purple Dusk and sealed him up inside himself, he wasn’t stronger or better anymore, was he? No one was going to listen tohim anymore, were they? But they still didn’t listen to me, either.” Brock looked at Jared with eyes full of hatred. “The others would have listened to me ifyou hadn’t been there.I would have been the dominant male in the group if it hadn’t been foryou . She would have trusted me.”

Jared studied Brock. How could the strong man he’d known on the journey become this whining boy? “The link with Garth,” Jared said slowly. “It not only hid your true nature, it also helped you act as Garth would have acted, say what he would have said.”

Brock nodded, his mouth curving in a sly, nasty smile. “I’m the one who thought of that after the Priestess put the compulsion spells around me that would make sure the Gray Lady bought me. Being brothers, it was easy to make a link that would meld our psychic scents so that the bitch-Queen couldn’t separate one from the other. I even made him place the first couple of buttons, since no one paid any attention to the mind-damaged male. But he started fighting me, defying me. After a while, all I could do was keep enough of the link so that I wouldn’t be discovered.”

Hold it back, Jared told himself.Leash it. Save this rage for the fight ahead . “You brought them to Ranon’s Wood. You brought these carrion-eaters from Hayll down on my people.”

“If she’d been captured at the ambush like she was supposed to, we wouldn’t have come to your precious village at all. If anyone brought them here, it wasyou .”

“Get out of here,” Jared said too quietly. “Get away from my people. You belong with those Hayllian bastards.”

Brock pouted. “If I’d known she was going to give usreal freedom, it would have been different.”

“Get out.”

The pout twisted back to nastiness. “You’re going to die, Jared. All of you are going to die, and all the words in the Realm aren’t going to change that.” Brock bared his teeth in a smile. “Maybe once the High Priestess is done playing with Lia, they’ll let me have her for a while. I’d like to take a long, hard ride between her thighs.”

Jared clenched his fists and his teeth.

Hold it back. Keep it leashed. Striking out now would bring the Hayllians in faster, and Thera and Lia needed as much time as they could get to prepare this Queen’s gamble.

Looking a little disappointed at getting no reaction from Jared, Brock raised his hand in a mocking salute. Then he flinched and put a hand to his head.

“Have to answer,” he mumbled. “Have to ... summoned.” He turned and continued down the road to the landing place at a fast walk.

By the time Jared got back to the tavern, Thayne had taken the children away—but Garth had returned.

Blaed and Talon held Randolf back while the guard snarled threats and obscenities at the large man standing on one side of the room.

“Damn you. Jared,” Randolf shouted. “Tell them to let me go. Let me get rid of the bastard before he does any more harm.”

“He’s already gone.” Jared said fiercely. “It was Brock, Randolf. All the time, it was Brock. His Queen sold him into slavery.He sold himself to Hayll.” Weary, Jared rubbed his hands over his face. “You had the wrong man, but you were also right—Hayll’s petis tainted.”

Looking past Jared, Randolf studied Garth as if seeing him for the first time. ‘“He was a guard.”

A fierce intelligence filled Garth’s pale blue eyes. A huge fist thumped the large chest. “Mmmaster.”

“He was a Master of the Guard.” Jared said.

Randolf swore, but there was pain, not violence, in the words. “To do that to a Master . . .” he said softly.

“Let’s not waste time,” Jared said. “We’ve got to help Lia and Thera plan a defense against—”

“Jared—” Talon warned.

Before Jared could turn, Garth’s hand landed on his shoulder hard enough to make his knees buckle.

“Lllisten to Queen,” Garth said, giving Jared a little shake. “Queen sssmart. Confuses mmmales.”

“Confusing us is helpful?” Talon asked dryly.

Garth waved his other hand. Blaed prudently ducked.

“Hayll. All mmmales out there. Confuse mmmales here. Confuse mmmales there.” Garth gave them all a deadly smile. “Confuse Brock always. Sssmart Queen. You lllisten.”

Giving Jared a friendly whump on the back that tumbled him into Talon and Randolf, Garth left the room.

“Well,” Talon said after a moment, “he’s got a point.

It’s damn hard to block someone’s moves if you can’t figure out how she thinks.“

“Yes,” Jared replied thoughtfully. Something Brock had said about links and psychic scents and Jewels kept teasing him, but its significance stayed just out of reach. “Let’s find out a little more about this Queen’s gamble our Ladies are planning.”

“Even if it confuses us?” Blaed said with a hint of a smile.

Something. Something. “Especially if it confuses us.”

Chapter Thirty

Krelis leaned back against the table, crossed his feet at the ankles, and studied the surly man before him. “You disappointed me, Brock. You didn’t live up to your side of the bargain.”

“I did,” Brock replied belligerently. “I did what I agreed to do. Wasn’tmy fault there were problems that evenyou didn’t anticipate.”

Krelis crossed his arms to keep his hand away from his knife. “What kind of problems?”

When Brock took a step toward Krelis, two Opal-Jeweled Hayllian guards grabbed his arms and hauled him back.

Brock struggled uselessly for a moment.

Krelis caught a whiff of fear and found himself aroused by it. “What kind of problems?”

“A broken Black Widow who wasn’t broken,” Brock said, pouting. “A Warlord Prince who’d disguised what he was until we were well into the journey. Garth still having brains enough to figure out what the buttons were for and picking them up after I’d left them for the marauders to find. That damn Red-Jeweled nonman deciding to play Queen’s stud. You can’t blame me for any of that.”

“Perhaps not,” Krelis said. “But the fact is your inability to perform your task greatly inconvenienced the High Priestess—and there are penalties for inconveniencing the High Priestess of Hayll.”

“I did my part,” Brock insisted, trying to shake off the guards. “You’ve got the little bitch-Queen now.”

Krelis looked at the other four guards who had quietly entered the room. At his nod, the guards restraining Brock tightened their hold.

“But the inconvenience, Brock.” Krelis shook his head. “Some compensation has to be made for the inconvenience.” Smiling, he withdrew the large white feather from his leather vest and unsheathed his knife. “I have one more small task for you, and then our bargain will be complete.”

Chapter Thirty-one

“We’re going to build a psychic web,” Lia said in a voice that had all emotion washed out of it.

Jared glanced at the other men crowded into the tavern’s back room. Blank faces. Confused eyes. Talon rubbed the back of his neck and frowned at the chalk circle Lia had drawn on the table. Blaed looked at the ceiling, his eyes filled with wry humor.

Since Garth was the only one nodding as if that statement made sense, Jared wondered if he’d feel less confused if he banged his head against the table a few times.

Then he looked at Lia, and the trickle of amusement faded.

The Queen and the Black Widow who sat across from each other were suddenly strangers to him, filled with a wild unknown. There was something dangerous about the way they sat so still, so quiet.

“Jared, since you wear the darkest Jewel, you’re going to be the web’s focal point,” Lia said.

Great. Wonderful.Mother Night .

Jared shifted uneasily. “What’s it supposed to do?”

“It will give the weakest of you the protection of the strongest,” Thera said in that voice that made all the men shiver. “Through the strands of the web, all of you will be connected. A strike against any one of you will be absorbed by all of you. The Red Jewel will feed the web and keep it strong.”

“It sounds fine as a defense,” Talon said, “but Jared won’t be able to hold it long if they start unleashing their own Jewels.”

“They want Lia alive,” Thera said, staring at the circle drawn on the table. “They won’t risk a full attack until they have her.”

“Even if they do nothing, he still can’t hold it forever,” Talon argued. “And they’re not going to get bored and just go home.”

“Ten minutes,” Lia said. “Once the signal’s given, he only has to hold it for ten minutes.”

Only.

Jared wanted to laugh, but he was very afraid it would come out sounding hysterical. Didn’t they realize how many Hayllians were surrounding Ranon’s Wood?

Thera slashed a look in his direction—as if she’d heard the laughter. “You held Red shields against the marauders for that long.”

“There weren’t as many of them,” Jared said testily.