Bloodstone (39 page)

Morning came, warmed into noon. The forest was bright with the fresh verdancy of spring. Teres's spirit soared bright and airy as she rode beneath the trees. There was a warm, clean taste to the breeze, so that she reveled in the freshness of the season, like some reawakened woodsprite.

The sun had started its decline when her quest was achieved. With an eerie sense of pilgrimage, she dismounted and approached the contorted stone circle where once she had parted from Kane. Memories came back ever stronger and softened her eyes in recollection. Strange, how moments of happiness were as haunting as the remembrance of terror. An insistent curiosity led her back to the spot where these two emotions had merged.

She walked about with wide and searching eyes. Beneath her foot sounded the soft crunch of last year's leaves, dissolving into the rocky soil. Here he would have come...

Suddenly she stooped, caught up the dully glinting object half buried in the leaf-strewn stone pocket, where a reviling hand had slung it.

"Bright Ommen! I knew it!" Teres cried with a glad laugh.

She rolled the bloodstone ring about on her palm. Its gem was lifeless now, its weight that of an empty shell. The white metal seemed pitted and distorted, the bloodstone opaque and shot through with a thousand cracks, as if it had been exposed to some unendurable heat, to some intolerable stress. When she closed her fist upon it, the bloodstone ring crumbled like ancient bone.