The Invisible Ring (The Black Jewels #4)(72)
Author: Anne Bishop

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.

He hadn’t found the Red-Jeweled person who had guided him there when he’d probed the inn on his arrival. That’s why he was still standing on the landing place, even though he knew Lia’s life was trickling away with every minute he hesitated.

Decide, he thought.Decide before she takes a breath and then doesn’t take another .

Jared raked his hands through his hair and brushed at his clothes. He smiled grimly. He doubted the owner or the customers were dressed much better, so at least he wasn’t going to look out of place.

All right. He’d rent a room where he could safely tuck Lia while he tried to find someone with the healing skills to help her. Failing that, he’d use the healing skills he had. Failing that . . .

Jared straightened his shoulders. He wouldn’t fail. No matter what he had to do, he wasnot going to just sit back and watch her die.

He added an aural shield and a psychic shield to the sight and protective shields already around Lia so that the others wouldn’t detect her psychic scent or hear any sounds she might make. The shields would make her completely invisible to anyone who wore less than the Red. Even another Red would only pick up a faint outline.

Jared took a deep breath. As he breathed out, he wrapped psychic threads around himself and Lia that sent out a feeling of danger and violence. With his Red Jewel hanging in plain sight, those projected feelings should be enough to keep everyone at a distance. All his efforts to prevent anyone from knowing she was there wouldn’t be worth anything if someone bumped into her.