The Invisible Ring (29 page)

“Whom do you trust among us?” Jared asked suddenly.

“Besides Lia? Thera. Thayne because we grew up together. You.”

Jared hesitated but had to ask. “Do you trust Thera because you’re attracted to her or because you truly believe she’s not a danger?”

“Oh, she’s a danger,” Blaed replied, “but not to Lia.” He paused, then chose his words as if he were picking his way over rough ground. “Even when they were both trying to deceive everyone with those illusion spells, I think they recognized something in each other, something that made them friends despite the deception. Hell’s fire, Jared. Right from the start, they quarreled like friends who just couldn’t see eye to eye. So, yes, I trust Thera. Besides, I think she’s the kind of witch Dorothea would see as a rival, not a tool.”

Jared thought that over and, reluctantly, had to agree. “What about the children? Do you trust them?”

Blaed shook his head. “Too vulnerable. Useful as a weapon against us, though, unless you can hold Lia down during an attack.”

“Damn.”

“What’s in our favor is that Dorothea’s pet has to be in a constant cold sweat by now.”

“Why?” Jared asked, curious.

Blaed made that amused snort. “Jared, do you know where we’re making camp tonight?”

Jared thought about it for a moment and huffed. “No.” Then he started to sweat. He
didn’t
know. Lia wandered off the main roads for no reason he could figure out, sometimes wandered off the roads altogether for a little while whenever the terrain permitted. Always heading north or northwest, true, but this was rolling countryside, sufficiently wooded to provide plenty of hiding places for a pedlar’s wagon and a small group of people. If a man didn’t know where to look for her . . .

He’d assumed he’d be able to catch up to them if he left for a few hours.

He’d assumed he’d be able to
find
them.

“Have we got any spare rope?” Jared asked.

“We’ve got the leads we were using for the saddle horses. Why?”

“I’m thinking of tying one end around Lia’s waist and the other end around mine.”

Blaed chuckled. “Better make sure it’s long enough for her to go into the bushes by herself.”

“Maybe,” Jared growled.

Blaed’s laughter stopped almost before it began. The roan mare snorted and danced as his hands tightened on the reins. Something predatory flickered in his eyes.

Jared started probing, searching. “What’s wrong?”

“Thayne,” Blaed said through gritted teeth. “He says Thera and Lia are snapping at each other. Everyone’s uneasy.”

“
Damn
!” Jared dug his heels into the gelding’s sides a second after Blaed kicked the mare into a full gallop.

*Blaed,* Jared said a minute later as they charged up the hill and swept past an anxious-looking Thayne. *We’ve got two lead ropes.*

Blaed bared his teeth. *That suits me just fine.*

Yes, Jared thought as he and Blaed dismounted and strode toward the quarreling women. That would suit both of them just fine.

Jared picked up a fist-sized rock and threw it as hard as he could. The midday meal he’d eaten an hour ago felt as hard as that rock in his stomach.

Even the honey pear, ripened to perfection, had tasted bitter.

Fool. Thrice-times fool!

What was he doing here? He could have been with his family now. He could have talked to Reyna. He could have been
home
instead of walking along another of these excuses for a road.

He could have been in his mother’s house again and, if she’d been willing to forgive him, could have felt her arms around him, easing the hurts and worries like she used to do when he was a boy. Mother Night, how he’d missed being held by Reyna.

He threw another rock.

Lia hadn’t expected him to come back. He’d seen it in her eyes before she could hide it. She’d expected him to grab the chance of a little distance, catch the Winds, and disappear.

That’s
why she had given him all those marks.
That’s
why she had intended to send him alone.

What would she have done when he didn’t return? Ride into the village herself to buy whatever she could with the remaining marks?

Had Thera guessed? Was that why she’d insisted on Blaed going with him? So that Blaed could return with the gelding and supplies?

Well, if Lia was going to let one male slip the leash, why not all of them?

They wouldn’t assume it was because he outranked her. Any man who had worn a Ring of Obedience knew how well it could control a darker-Jeweled male. Or would they assume he’d been able to slip the leash because he wore the Invisible Ring?

Which was the point, damn it!
He wore a Ring
. So it wasn’t the Ring of Obedience. She’d placed a Ring on him, and even if his body couldn’t feel it, his heart did—and that Ring got heavier with every step he took away from a fast journey to Ranon’s Wood.

But it wasn’t the Invisible Ring that held him back. The fact that she had expected him to escape was proof enough that she didn’t intend to use it to control him. What really kept him here was the debt he owed Lia—his strength on the journey in exchange for the freedom she’d purchased.

And, damn her, she had hurt him. The witches who had owned and used his body had never been able to hurt him as deeply as she had.

He watched Blaed canter toward him. He must have fallen so far behind someone had started to worry. Not Lady Ardelia, of course.

He liked Blaed, but he wished it had been Brock who had come looking, a man closer to his own age. Then again, despite pleasure slaves being at the top of the slave hierarchy, most other slaves seemed to think that once a man was used in bed he couldn’t remember what the word “honor” meant, let alone live by it.

Maybe Lia thought the same thing.

Well, he’d take whatever company he could get. He was tired of sulking by himself.

Thera swung down from behind Blaed.

Jared swore under his breath.

Blaed wheeled the roan mare and cantered back to the wagon.

Thera fell in step beside Jared. “Want some company?”

“No.” He lengthened his stride.

“Too bad.” Since she wasn’t tall enough to throw her arm over his shoulders, she settled for wrapping both arms around one of his, forcing him either to slow down or drag her.

He slowed down. Reluctantly. “Let go.”

She ignored the snarled order. “Being an only child, I don’t have any firsthand experience, but it’s been my observation that one of the duties and privileges of a younger sister is to be a ripe boil on her older brother’s backside.”

“Well, you certainly qualify for that,” Jared growled. “Though you should keep in mind that the way to get rid of a boil is to lance it.”

They walked in silence for a few minutes.

“What went wrong in the village, Jared?”

Jared looked at the cool eyes watching him so intently. Then he looked away. “Nothing went wrong in the village. We left to get some supplies. We came back.”

Thera tucked some stray hairs back into her braid. “Lia was glad to see you.”

“Of course she was.”

Thera nodded as if something finally made sense. “I don’t think Brock or Randolf would have come back.”

Which had nothing to do with anything. Lia should have known
he
would come back. Damn her.

Thera waited a minute; then, when he didn’t say anything, asked, “What do you think will happen once we get to Dena Nehele?”

Jared clenched his teeth. Damn damn damn.

“Lia’s asked me several times, privately, if I had finished my formal training. Each time, when I told her that I hadn’t, she mentioned that her mother was a Sapphire-Jeweled Black Widow who would be very pleased to have a Green-Jeweled apprentice or journeymaid.”

“Mother Night,” Jared muttered.

“Only a cruel person would say that to a slave—unless the slave was never intended to be a slave. Don’t you think?”

Jared bit his tongue.

Thera nodded as if he’d answered. “That’s what I thought, too. You know what else I think? I think she had a reason for the choices she made in Raej, that she chose each of us because she felt she had something to offer us.

Except you.”

Stung, Jared stopped walking. “She has something to offer anyone with the sense to see it.”

“That’s what Blaed said.”

“Blaed’s a fool.”

Thera bristled. “He is not!”

“You said he was. This morning.”

“That was this morn—”

Jared sucked air when Thera’s hands clamped on his arm.

“Listen,” she said, cocking her head.

A rhythmic pounding. Off to their right. Out of sight.

He probed cautiously, recoiling when he brushed against a slimy psychic scent. “It’s Garth.”

Thera released him and started walking toward the sound.

Swearing, Jared grabbed the back of her coat. “Stay here.”

She turned icy green eyes on him. “You can come with me.”

Keeping a firm grip on her coat, Jared muttered, “Blaed and I are going to have a little talk about tethers.”

Thera made a sound a feral dog would envy.

They found Garth, his large hand filled with a stone that he was using to pound something he’d placed on a flat rock. His teeth were bared. His face was contorted. He grunted with each impact as he pounded, pounded, pounded.

“Garth,” Jared called, approaching warily. “Garth!”

Garth stared at Jared with blue eyes filled with a killing rage.

Jared hesitated, then stepped closer because he’d caught a glimpse of something shiny. “What are you doing?”

Garth’s mouth kept working, but no words came out. With an anguished bellow, he threw down the stone and ran away from them.

Jared took another step toward the rock.

“Jared, be careful,” Thera said.

Shiny brass buttons, mashed and useless, with pieces broken off.

Buttons.

And something else. Something in the buttons he could almost sense.

“Jared . . .”

He heard the sharpness, the intensity in Thera’s voice.

Careful. Careful.

With a delicate psychic tendril, he probed one of the buttons.

It happened too fast. One moment there was only that psychic sliminess.

Then a psychic fog shot out of the buttons and rapidly changed into thick, sticky strands full of tiny hooks.

It looked like a badly woven net, Jared thought as it came down over his mind. The tiny hooks dug into his inner barriers, securing the strand.

Another strand touched. More hooks dug in.

More strands. More hooks.

It surrounded him in seconds and immediately started to constrict. If it sealed his inner barriers, it would lock him inside himself.

Like Garth.

And then he knew what it was.

He poured the strength of the Red into his inner barriers, poured everything he had into his inner defenses.

It was a tangled web. The kind of web Black Widows used for their dreams and visions. The kind they used to entangle a mind and draw it into a living nightmare.

He struck out desperately, but the power only got through the shrinking spaces between the strands. Fed by his own strength, the strands in the tangled web swelled like fat slugs.

Panicked, he tried again and again.

*No, Jared! Don’t attack it! Don’t feed it!* Thera’s voice sounded like ice-coated fire.

Trembling, he obeyed.

Was this how Garth had felt? Had he done the same thing, unwittingly aiding in his own destruction?

*Hold your inner barriers, Jared,* Thera said. *I know how to get rid of this.*

She didn’t sound as confident as her words, but since he didn’t see another choice, he again obeyed. His body was shaking, but he felt distanced from it, unconnected. If he tried to raise his arm, how long would it take his body to receive the message—if it received it at all?

Without warning, a psychic knife came whistling down— a long, sleek blade, its edge glowing with icy Green fire.

It hit his inner barriers with enough force to make him gasp. It struck again and again, slicing through the sticky strands, charring the severed ends.

As sections of the tangled web fell away from him, little balls of psychic fire struck them, burning them to ash.

He endured the blows as Thera’s Green knife continued to hack at the tangled web.

Finally, enough had been cut away for him to be aware of something outside himself. Something that sounded like a roll of thunder, like the roar of a waterfall.

Like the sound of power gathering before it was unleashed.

*Leave it, Thera!* Jared shouted. *Get away from here!*

The Green knife paused.

*Mother Night,* Thera whispered, swiftly breaking contact with him.

Jared shook his head to clear it. His connection to his body still felt sluggish. Strands of the tangled web were clinging to his inner barriers, making him feel tainted, but he was no longer imprisoned.

Hands grabbed him. He stumbled.

“Jared!” Thera shouted. “There must have been another spell in those buttons. I can’t tell how strong it is. I don’t know if we can shield against it.

We have to run.”

His legs just wouldn’t obey him. “Go,” he said. “I can’t run.”

Swearing, Thera tugged him away from the rock, toward the road. “Damn you to the bowels of Hell, you stupid man. RUN!”

She gave him a vicious clout. He couldn’t tell if it was physical or psychic, but it got his legs moving until he was running away from the rock, running up the road.

Feet pounded behind him. Two horses galloped toward him.

Seeing them burned away the last of the sluggishness.

He ran faster.

How dare she ride toward danger? How dare she risk herself? When they got out of here, he’d show her the sharp edge of his temper. Just see if he didn’t.

*Blaed!* Jared roared. *Protect Lia! Shield Lia!*

*Get down!* Thera yelled. *GET DOWN!*

He saw Blaed sweep Lia out of the gelding’s saddle, pull her to the ground, and cover her.

He tasted bitter jealousy that he was still too scrambled to use Craft, that he wasn’t the one shielding her, protecting her.

Thera knocked his legs out from under him. He went down hard, then tried to shake her off when she landed on his back. Wrapping her arms around his head, she buried her face against his neck, and enclosed them both in a Green shield.