She pulled her hands away, clenching them at her side. “That was you?” Her eyes were hard as she glared at the witch.
It still took Rane by surprise, the way she defended him. It warmed something inside him he’d thought too cold to revive.
Ylana cocked her head. “I won’t be chastised by a baby like you, Kayla of Gaynor. But,” she bent and picked up the dried herbs Sooty had knocked from her hands, “it won’t happen again.”
Rane watched as she slipped the gem into the pocket of her dress, and suddenly wished he hadn’t given it to her. It was his link to Soren, if he couldn’t find him any other way.
Ylana pushed past Sooty and walked around them, disappearing into the last of the twilight as she went back into her house. Sooty curled up where she sat, as if that had been her plan all along. She started cleaning herself.
“Was it a mistake, coming here?” Kayla’s fingers touched his wrist delicately.
He shook his head, slipped his knife into his boot and took her hand. “She told me things about the gem. Things that make me think Soren isn’t as good as dead. And I would never have known that if we hadn’t come back.”
“Oh!” Kayla’s eyes shone with sudden tears. “That is good news.”
He hadn’t had someone who shared his joys and triumphs in a long time. Soren had, once, before their father died, but not since then. It was heady to have that again. To feel Kayla’s fingers tighten against his.
It made what he needed to say next even harder.
“I’m going to leave you to train with her, if she agrees to take you. Go off on my own. Things will be easier between you and her if I’m not here. Something about me sets her off. I told her I’ll go spy on the sorcerers. And now I know there’s a chance Soren could be in a sorcerer’s stronghold, I’m even more anxious to see what they’re up to.”
“What did she say to that?”
Rane hefted the bucket. “Not much.” He started walking back to their camp, tugging her along.
The fire had almost died so he set the bucket down and went back for some logs.
As he put them on the fire, the flames flared and he watched the way the light bathed Kayla in a warm glow, catching the auburn strands in her dark hair. “When I saw your face after the tournament in Gaynor, the moment you realized I had tricked you into helping me and that I wasn’t after your hand but the golden apple, I made a promise to myself. That I would take the golden apple to Jasper in exchange for Soren, and after that, whatever Soren did, whatever happened, he was on his own. I wasn’t going to rescue him again. The price was too high.”
She crouched down, looking at him across the dancing flames. “The price hurt at the time. But Rane, if you could have seen what Jasper was doing to him, you wouldn’t say that. It was worth any price, any hurt feelings I may have had, to get him out. He was in complete darkness. Starved, with no water or even a bed to lie on. They’d chained him up against the wall. Whatever you had to do to free him was the right thing.”
“Whatever I have to do this time might be to ask Ylana if I can touch the gem. Transport myself to wherever Soren has gone.” He’d been thinking it since Ylana had put the gem into her pocket. But he’d made a vow, and Kayla would have to agree, would have to be behind his decision, if he was going to do it.
She lifted haunted eyes to his. “I don’t want you to do that. It isn’t safe for you.”
“And your breaking into Jasper’s stronghold to save him was?” He still couldn’t believe she had done that. Had gone right into his enemy’s territory and whisked his brother out from under Jasper and Nuen’s noses.
She shook her head. “I knew what I was getting in to. I could see where I was going. You won’t have any idea where you’ll end up. It could be another place like Eric’s dungeon, or someplace even worse.”
He sighed, poked at the fire with a stick. “I know, but it would be the fastest way to find him.”
“Or the fastest way to get killed, for no good reason. It’s been two days since he disappeared. He could be anywhere by now.”
He gave a slow nod. But he knew if he hadn’t had Kayla, he would have done it without hesitation.
“I might be coming with you, if Ylana refuses to teach me.”
Rane stood and looked across at Ylana’s closed front door. “She’ll help you. She’s just drawing it out to punish you.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Because when she did hurt me, she was barely trying. And when she told you she would never hurt me again, it cost her. I think she actually meant it.”
CHAPTER TEN
SOOTY HAD JOINED them sometime in the night, curling up behind Kayla and shuffling closer. When she woke, uneasy and with the feeling of being watched, she found herself sandwiched between her giant cat and Rane.
She looked up, straight into Ylana’s eyes.
Heart thumping at the banked rage she glimpsed there, she wiggled her way out, hands already sparking, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw a ball of wild magic edge from between the trees into the clearing, pulled by her need for power.
Ylana glanced at it, dismissed it, and beckoned her toward her cottage.
Kayla followed, looking back over her shoulder at Rane.
He was still fast asleep, and she frowned and slowed her steps. He usually sensed her every move, and he always woke at the smallest sound.
His sleep couldn’t be natural. She stopped, turned back, and then started at the feel of a hand on her arm.
“I have done him no harm. I gave my word, remember? He will wake when our business is done.”
She looked at the hand gripping her, the skin brown with sun, wrinkled. She raised her eyes to Ylana’s clear hazel gaze, and gave a nod. “Then let’s get our business done quickly.”
She stepped into the cottage, and saw Ylana had swept it clean and that all the windows were open. There was a kettle boiling merrily over the fire, and waving at a seat in invitation, Ylana went to it and poured the water into a fat, squat teapot.
“What is it about Rane that enrages you?” Kayla hesitated, not completely ready to lower herself into a seat and make herself more vulnerable.
Ylana hesitated. “You shouldn’t be with him. You are a witch, and at your age, you should have severed your ties to men.”
Kayla gripped the back of the chair. “Rane is the only man I’ve ever had a tie to. And you know wild magic works differently. It doesn’t bind me to it like earth magic binds you, leaving no room for anything else.”
Ylana lifted the pot, swirled the water in it around a few times. “That makes it suspicious. How can you trust something that has no connection to you?”
“I have a connection to it. I can sense where it is, and it even tries to communicate with me, sometimes. But it doesn’t shoulder out every other feeling I have.” When Ylana had told her of the tight-woven bond between witches and earth magic, a connection that allowed the witch no other relationship, she had been relieved her father or mother had bespelled her as a child, had blocked her access to earth magic, and kept her from becoming lost to them.
“How can you concentrate, if you have too many loyalties?” Ylana poured the tea.
“Perhaps it helps you, in that everything is either black or white, but it sounds a lonely path.” At last she took a seat.
Ylana handed her a mug and then sat down herself. “Alone doesn’t mean lonely. And no witch can live too near another for too long. We don’t like interference, even from each other.”
“In that way, you’re like sorcerers.” Kayla picked up her mug and sniffed at the brew.
Ylana pursed her lips at that, chose not to respond. “Your fascination with De’Villier, and his with you, will lead to no good.”
Kayla set her mug down, untouched. “I can’t think why.”
“Because you are an earth magic witch. A strong one. Whatever was done to you to stop you calling earth magic should be reversed.”
Kayla shook her head and stood
. “I made it clear to you before. I don’t want to call earth magic. I don’t want to be pulled in by it. I have too many responsibilities to my people, and I won’t give up Rane.”
They stared at each other. Ylana glanced behind her, her face changing from stubborn determination to anger, and Kayla turned too, saw the wild magic hovering just outside the window.
“I don’t know why you’re angry. I could feel you drawing earth magic. Your hands are sparking.” Her own hands were sparking again, too, and she drew them into fists.
“I have a link to earth magic. When I’m angry, when I need power, it comes to me instinctively.”
“I didn’t call the wild magic consciously, either.” She dropped her hands. Sat down again. “Is it so hard to understand that I would want a different way? And that the way I use wild magic is not so different from using earth magic?”
Ylana sank down into her chair, too. Rubbed her forehead. “I’ve been an earth magic witch for so long, it’s hard for me to see a different way. But if I was young, and had the chance to work magic with no drain on my energy, no tight grip on my soul . . . the best of sky and earth magic.” She gave a deep sigh, as if finding a measure of peace. “Perhaps my reservations are based on resentment.”
They were silent a moment, and then Kayla lifted her mug to her lips.
“No.”
The mug was ripped from her hands by a blast of air, and shattered on the floor.
Kayla looked at the pieces, at the pool of dark liquid, then up at Ylana.
“The tea in the mug was the first step to stripping you of the enchantment your parents cast on you. The first step to turning you back into an earth magic witch.”
Kayla got slowly to her feet.
“I won’t try that again.” Ylana waved a hand, and the pieces tumbled together in a neat heap. “I will respect your wish to remain as you are.”
“Why would you even think to take such a step when you knew I was opposed to it? This is my life, it’s for me to decide.” Her stomach roiled with the thought of what she might have swallowed, and she drew a deep breath to steady herself.
In the last month her father, Eric, even Rane, had made the decision to choose something for her. She had never expected it of Ylana.
“You regret coming, now.” Ylana bowed her head, hands flat along the top of her thighs. “I am sorry.” She raised her head. “I’m too deep in earth magic, these days. Too old. I started thinking I knew better than you what you need. But that’s sorcerer talk, isn’t it? The very thing I hate.”
Kayla turned, looking out the door at where Rane and Sooty still slept. “Lift your spell on them. I should have known if you had honest intentions you wouldn’t have needed to keep them out of this.”
The witch sighed behind her. “It is done. They will wake naturally when they’re ready.”
Kayla turned. “How can I trust you again?”
Ylana rose, poured more water into the kettle and set it back on the fire, took another tea pot off the shelf and spooned tea into it. “Why did you trust me in the first place? Why did you think I would help you when you had stolen from me and enchanted me?”
“I was hoping you were different from Eric. That you could put what happened between us aside, especially as I came back and apologized, undid what I had done, returned what we took. I thought I saw that in you before I stole the gem. You started explaining how you used earth magic to me. It was your advice that helped me enchant you.” She had staked her and Rane’s time and safety on her sense that the witches, or at least this witch, would not act purely in self-interest. That she could put aside any hurt feelings for the benefit of everyone.
Ylana paused, with the kettle in her hand. “I told you before it was too late, didn’t I, before you’d taken even a sip? Would Eric have done that if it was in his interests to keep quiet?”
Kayla shook her head. “No. He wouldn’t.” She sat back down. Rubbed her forehead.
“Then you have your answer.”
Kayla heard Rane groan as he woke and stretched out, heard the loud purr of Sooty as she rubbed up against him. Her heart leaped at the thought of him, strong and beautiful.
He had made a choice for her, too. Had left her here in this very clearing and gone off to do something they should have done together, all in the name of protecting her. Doing what was right for her.
Rane had apologized for that, and she had accepted it. She could do the same for Ylana.
She stood, walked to the door and watched her betrothed pull himself to a crouch beside his bedroll, look across at her with desire, concern and love in his eyes, and she smiled at him. A long, slow smile.
He returned it.
“Rane is leaving today?” The witch couldn’t quite hide the bite in her voice.
Kayla nodded.
“Then say your goodbyes, kiss your kisses, and then we begin.”
* * *
They did more than kiss.
Down by the stream, on a rock dappled with morning sunshine and warm to the touch, Kayla stretched out and smiled at her lover.
“That was . . . unexpected.”
Rane grinned at her, running a hand down her naked body to her waist. “Unexpected?”
She laughed. “No, I suppose not. I didn’t think we’d have the time or the privacy, but I should have known you’d find a way.”
“Always.” He bent and kissed her, but the heat of the sun burning her arm reminded her that time was passing, and the longer Rane lingered, the more chance he’d still be in the Great Forest by nightfall.
It didn’t hold the same danger to him it had before, but there were still creatures created by wild magic that roamed. And most of them were deadly.
She sighed and reached for her shirt, and he caught her arm, twisting it so he could see her inner wrist.
Every time she used wild magic the mark of it registered on her skin, a spiral of circles starting at the bottom and climbing upward.
Rane stroked the marks with his fingertip, kissed the skin and then let her go.
His expression said he didn’t know how to feel about this claim wild magic had on her.
She tugged her shirt over her head. “Where will you go first?”
“Harness is the closest, but we know Soren can’t be there, because Travis and his men were caught up in the gem’s blast when they stole it from me, and if they’d ended back at Jasper’s you would have heard something about it when you broke in there to rescue him.” He pulled on his own clothes in quick, efficient movements. “I’ll try the other two sorcerers Ylana thinks are working up to a war with Eric and each other. There’s Gerald of Halakan and Andrei Wolfsblood from Phon. I’ll head for Phon first.” He abandoned his boots to lean over and nuzzle her as she arched her neck to tie her hair.
“Be careful.” She wound her hair tight and turned, pushing up on her knees. “You don’t have your moonstone anymore.”
He gave a nod. “Just promise me the same.” He finished putting on his boots, stood and offered her a hand up. “I don’t trust Ylana.”
Kayla let herself be pulled to her feet. “I trust her to keep her word. And that’s more that we can say of anyone else, so far.”
He gave a reluctant nod. “That’s the only reason I’m leaving you alone with her. That and the fact that I enrage her. She’s not as safe for you while I’m around, stirring her up.”
“I think her problem is you and Soren trade in wild magic items and she doesn’t think they should be bought and sold.”
Rane shrugged. “Perhaps. But it’s personal, too. She thought I was a sorcerer’s spy, and she still has to get over the hatred she built up for me now she knows that it isn’t true.” He drew her close, and she let herself rest her cheek on his shoulder. The sun warmed her hair, the stream gurgled and babbled at their feet, and the wind stirred, warm and fragrant around them.
It was difficult to remember that a war was brewing and her kingdom was already in the grip of a madman like Eric the Bold,
her own father at his mercy.
“Ylana would like nothing more than to bind you to earth magic, just like she’s bound. And if she does . . . Don’t let her pull you away from me.” His arms tightened around her, and Kayla laid a hand over his heart.
“I won’t let her do that.” She thought of what had almost happened earlier. “She’s promised me she won’t.”
“Then I hope she really can be trusted on her word.”
Kayla gripped his shirt. “I came back because I want to believe the witches can be better than the sorcerers. But if Ylana betrays us, I’ll rain down wild magic on all of them.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SOREN AND MIRABELLE
She had never been more grateful for her father’s single attempt at giving her a normal childhood than now. Typical for her father, it had been completely wrong, but she had loved it anyway, the huge tree-house that was completely invisible from the ground, wound around one of the tallest trees in the safe part of Halakan forest and magical in every way.
She had known when he’d presented it to her, in his distracted, half-present way, that she couldn’t share it with any of her friends in the village.
It was too much, too clear an example of the fearful power her father wielded. It would have made her more different, rather than less, but she could never regret it.
It would allow her and Soren a few hours of safety while they slept.
Both of them had heard the sound of the horn from the stronghold, the shouts of men, barely five minutes after they had taken the path, and knew William had discovered she was missing.
It was only a matter of time before his men came searching for her in the forest, as deep as they dared.
The tree wasn’t deep enough, at least half a mile from the border with the Great Forest, but she trusted they would never be found here.
Miri walked up to the tree, thick across as ten men standing shoulder to shoulder, and laid her hand over what looked like a knot in the wood. Steps flipped out from the trunk, as if they’d simply been folded back flush with the bark. They spiraled up into the thick greenery overhead, and Miri started up, leaving Soren to follow.
The Silver Pear (The Dark Forest Book 2) Page 7