by Joy Nash
A knot formed in her gut.
Across the fog, a steep hill climbed lazily into the sky, carrying a city of gray stone. An enormous monolith in the shape of a shining black pyramid capped the peak. What the—?
A ray of light glinted off the fantastic structure, sending a flash of light across the valley. The knot in Gina’s stomach tightened.
She locked her knees to keep from falling, panic clawing at her lungs. To her left, rolling hills and thick forests stretched to a distant horizon. No highways, no housing developments, no shopping malls. A wide expanse of ocean lay to the right, but Gina knew she wasn’t at the Jersey shore.
She had to be dreaming. Or hallucinating.
Or dead.
Because the scene before her didn’t—couldn’t—exist.
* * * * *
A woman?
Derrin frowned. A woman was not at all what he had expected to emerge from the brilliant strands of light.
True, the web binding the edges of the world held unimaginable power, but Derrin had never considered the possibility another world—other beings—existed beyond it. He shook his head. This woman’s appearance boded ill, of that he was certain.
He touched the shadow crystal hanging from a chain about his neck, sinking his mind into the gem as he did so. The crystal, the most powerful one he’d ever created, nestled in a cage of pure silver. He’d called forth the stone’s power before following High Wizard Balek’s apprentice from the city, but that had been in the hour before dawn, when the forest had been dark. Now, with a single thought, Derrin deepened the protection, wrapping his crystal’s shadow around his body like a cloak. Confident he would not be detected, he stepped into the light of the rising sun.
He circled Maator, all the while keeping his eyes trained on the woman from beyond the web. She was staring across the valley at Katrinth, Galena’s proud capital city, her dark eyes wide with disbelief.
Her face paled, accentuating her fine, high cheekbones. A long tangle of dark hair hung down her back. Her aspect seemed unremarkable enough, though her dress was scandalous by Galenan standards. Her breasts were all but spilling from her gown.
Her fingers fisted into her torn skirt. Tiny bits of glass edged the dark fabric. Those were unremarkable, but a magnificent pink crystal nestled in her cleavage. Derrin’s breath hissed through his teeth. He had never seen a crystal the color of the pale sea roses. Was she a sorceress? Had Balek summoned her because of it?
Maator spoke to the woman, but Derrin was not near enough to make out his words. The sorceress tore her gaze from the city to stare at the apprentice. She appeared dazed, and more than a little unsteady. Her mouth opened, as if to reply to Maator’s remark, but no answer emerged. Instead, her eyes fluttered closed and her knees buckled.
Maator sprung forward and caught her before she hit the ground. Straightening, he shifted his burden in his arms and extracted a silver prism from the pouch at his belt. A shadow crystal, not unlike Derrin’s own. The stone flared and the two figures faded. Shadowed, but not completely.
Derrin would be a poor wizard indeed if he could be thwarted by an apprentice’s defenses.
He allowed his vision to blur. Within seconds, he detected the slight disturbance in the air currents that indicated his quarry had started the descent to the city. He closed in swiftly. The path led into the scattering fog along the river road.
He passed a scattering of half-timbered cottages and entered the city through the market gate. The broad, unpaved plaza beyond was alive with shouts and good-natured haggling. At the far end of the square, fishermen were already unloading the morning catch onto the docks.
Maator avoided the bulk of the activity, skirting the vendors’ stalls and slipping into the fetid warren of crude dwellings that marked the Lower City. Derrin ducked into a gloomy alley after him, sidestepping a pile of excrement where a derelict lay wheezing. Open pustules covered the man’s skin. His matted beard crawled with insects.
Another victim of the Madness.
The guards stationed at the gates to the Upper City did not stir as Derrin trailed Maator through the wide archway. Here, the paved streets were wide and straight, the graystone mansions large and well-appointed. As always, their sedate façades seem to frown on Derrin’s passing.
Maator’s footsteps didn’t slow. He carried the limp body of the sorceress through the steep streets, climbing ever higher. Entering the High Plaza in the shadow of the Lords’ Citadel, he skirted the elaborate façade of the Temple of Lotark and the sweeping main stairway of the Wizards’ Stronghold. He entered the Stronghold through a seldom-used entrance on a side wall of the pyramid.
Derrin waited a few moments before following Maator into the home of the Wizards’ Hierarchy. He turned the corner leading to Balek’s chambers as a door thudded shut.
He approached it and listened. Maator and his mentor were speaking, their voices muted by the thick wooden barrier. Derrin slid a clear stone disc from the pouch at his belt and set it aglow with a silent command.
“Is she the one, Master?” Maator asked.
Derrin peered into his scrying stone and watched as the apprentice lowered the unconscious woman onto a bench. Her torn dress fell open, exposing one shapely thigh. Balek advanced, the sash of the Upper House of Wizards blood-red against the black of his tunic. A faceted crystal, tinged with gold, nestled in the high wizard’s upturned palm. Power shimmered around it.
Revulsion tightened Derrin’s gut. He’d touched the unholy gem Balek called the webstone only once. He wasn’t eager to repeat the experience.
Balek brushed the crystal against the woman’s forehead and whispered a single word. Her spine arched.
The high wizard leaned forward. “Yes,” he whispered. “She is the one.” He passed his hand over the woman’s face, causing her to gasp.
Derrin swore under his breath. Balek had linked the woman’s mind to the webstone.
It was not a union her psyche would survive.
He withdrew and waited, shadowed in an alcove by the stairs, all the while watching the scene in Balek’s chamber in the scrying stone. He saw Maator carry the woman to a rear chamber, then returned to the workroom. After what seemed an interminable time, Balek left to join the High Wizards’ Council.
Derrin eased from his hiding place. Wrapped in the dark cloak of his shadow crystal, he entered Balek’s suite through a rear portal. Within moments, he had transferred the woman to his own chamber. She rolled to her side on his bed and curled into a ball, moaning. Already, the webstone’s power seeped through her mind. Could the link be broken?
Derrin knew of only one person—other than Balek—who could tell him, but the journey to her door was long.
The woman groaned and tore at the bedcovers. Derrin knelt at her side, frowning, his gaze fixed on the crystal between her breasts. Was she a sorceress? If so, Balek risked much to summon her. A woman’s magic was as potent as it was unpredictable. The Hierarchy had banned females from the practice of wizardry for just that reason. Yet Balek had sought this woman since before the winter snows.
A sorceress from a world beyond the web would be a deadly weapon in the high wizard’s hands. There was no telling what ill forces she could unleash on Galena.
He should kill her. Now.
His hands stole to her throat. His fingers touched her skin, felt the pulse beating just below the surface. Warm. Alive. His gaze dropped to her breasts, round and firm and all but bare.
He hesitated. By all appearances, the sorceress wasn’t in league with Balek by choice. If Derrin could question her, the answers she provided might shed some light on the high wizard’s motives. Yet as long as her mind remained ensnared, she could tell him nothing.
He snatched his hands from her throat, his decision made. Swiftly, he gathered the few supplies he would need for a journey into the northern wilderness. Zahta would surely know how to free the woman’s mind.
Derrin only hoped after all these years, his grandmother would not tu
rn him away.
* * * * *
Gina’s head felt like it had been cracked open from the inside. A dirty yellow haze scattered her thoughts and about a million little hammers pounded on her temple. But it wasn’t until she opened her eyes that she realized she had much bigger problems than a morning-after headache.
Like, where the hell was she?
She was propped upright against a rough wall, sharp stone biting into her spine. Tight cords chafed her ankles, sending shocks of pain up her legs. The scents of smoke and earth mingled with the musk of her own sweat. She twisted her arms, but her wrists were bound in front of her and the knot held fast.
The skirt of her gown was in shreds, the quartz crystal that had decorated the neckline gone. The bodice was torn, exposing her simple white bra. It was the skimpiest one she had, thanks to the low-cut of the costume, but at least it was something. Thank God she had ignored Mikala’s advice and worn it.
She fought a fierce urge to vomit. She’d been kidnapped. By whom? The memory of a black pyramid floated at the edges of her mind. The last thing she remembered was looking across a valley at a city that couldn’t possibly have been real. Someone had been there—a harmless-looking blond kid. After that, her memories disintegrated into sensation.
A yellow haze choking her brain. Movement. Struggle. A jarring ride, as if she’d been thrown on the back of a horse. She thought she’d screamed, fought, but she couldn’t be quite certain, as if she’d been…
Drugged. Someone must have slipped something into her drink at the Wizards’ Ball.
She peered into the dim light at her prison, a small room enclosed by a ring of primitive masonry. A ceiling of wooden ribs arched overhead. An animal skin draped the single doorway. Faint illumination dropped from a hole in the center of the roof onto a heap of smoldering ashes. The scene wavered, bringing a fresh rush of nausea. Whatever she had ingested, it hadn’t completely worn off.
Whoever had given it to her was sure to show up soon. She twisted sideways and eyed a sharp protrusion on the stone wall. Ignoring her lurching stomach, she hooked the rope binding her wrists over it and began to saw.
Movement outside the doorway. Muffled voices. “No,” a man said. His tone held a note of anger.
A woman answered. “My son, you alone have the power. There is no one else.” Her voice faded. Gina renewed her assault on the rope, but all too soon the drape at the door lifted.
Her time had run out.
She turned to see a figure silhouetted against a rectangle of light. Not the blond kid from the forest. A man.
He was costumed in black—tunic, breeches and boots. He approached with quick strides, his dark hair grazing his shoulders as he walked.
“Who are you?” she blurted out. “Why did you bring me here?”
In lieu of an answer, the man dropped to one knee and touched Gina’s face. Heat flashed across her skin.
An open gash slanted across his right cheekbone. If not for that imperfection, and the rigid cast of his features, Gina might have thought him handsome. As it was, the cold, gray mist of his eyes sent her heart pounding for an entirely different reason.
She fought another surge of vertigo. “Do you want money? Take me home and I’ll get it.”
“Are you a sorceress?”
“What?” The words were unfamiliar, as if he spoke in a foreign language, yet his meaning was clear. No doubt another effect of whatever drug she’d been given.
His hand came forward. She shrank back, against the stone, but he merely flicked a strand of hair from her eyes and drew back, watching her.
“Are you a sorceress?” he asked again.
“I was a sorceress at the Ball, yes. Are you one of The Wizards? Is this some kind of role-playing game?”
Disbelief flitted across his face. “Game? I assure you, Mistress. This is no game.”
The room lurched again. “I don’t remember seeing you at the Ball. When did you give me the drug?”
“Drug?”
“Cut the bull and tell me what the hell is going on,” Gina snapped. The yellow haze in her mind blazed hotly and a blinding surge of anger eclipsed her fear. She swung at him, her bound fists glancing off his shoulder. He caught her forearm. She twisted out of his grasp and fell on her side. The room spun faster than before.
The man rose over her. She bucked, trying to jam her knees into his groin. He dodged her awkward attack and leaned close, trapping her gaze in his, then sprang up with the grace of a cat to crouch at her side.
Gina tried to move. Her body refused to obey, though her captor was not restraining her in any way. The hazy yellow cloud in her mind dulled and thickened. Her breath heaved as he leaned forward, filling her vision.
His mind touched hers. A gentle probe at first, then a more persistent, intimate stroke.
No. This couldn’t be happening.
Open.
The command, heard in the deepest recesses of her brain, was not a distinct syllable. Had it truly come from the man’s mind? Impossible. It was an illusion, an effect of the drug.
Yet it felt so real. He called again, more urgently this time, and for a fleeting moment Gina wanted nothing so much as to let him in.
“Please,” the man said aloud, his voice tight. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
Open.
In the space of a heartbeat, she obeyed.
Chapter Two
The dark stranger surged into Gina’s mind. He tore through her psyche like a plundering thief, searching, touching every private place. The yellow fog scattered in his wake, leaving Gina acutely aware of each stroke of his invasion. Time lost its meaning. Did a moment pass, or an hour? Impossible to tell. She knew only his raw strength as he drove into her center.
Impossible. She clung to the thought. Not real.
No one could enter another person’s mind.
But the probe continued, like a sharp, intimate knife. The intruder sliced through each hidden emotion and cast away the shredded remnants. He thrust deeper, and deeper still, until he touched the innermost essence of her being.
Gina lay still, struggling for breath. The man wasn’t touching her physically, but somehow—somehow—he was in her mind, and the violation was more profound than anything he could have done to her body. She was spread open, completely vulnerable to his will.
And despite her terror, she was responding to him.
A wave of pure erotic flame shot through her, leaving her gasping. She writhed, trying to flee the sensation, but with each sure pulse she felt the unwanted pleasure grow, racing through her veins, pooling in her nipples and her groin. It expanded to the edges of her brain, driving her toward a fate she craved as desperately as she struggled to escape it.
Finally, she snapped. The white heat blazed and exploded, sending a vivid orgasm tearing through her mind and body. Her hips arched and she cried out.
The sound reached her ears as if it had come from very far away. The pulsing force receded, leaving Gina gasping. Dear God, the pleasure had been so intense she’d almost blacked out.
As the aftershocks of the shattering climax rippled through her, Gina’s gaze darted to her kidnapper. He’d not touched her at all during the wild ride, yet he seemed almost as affected by their strange union as she had been. His face had gone pale and his hands were shaking. He bowed his head and pressed his fingers to his forehead, his breath coming in sharp, uneven bursts.
She inched away from him, hindered by the ropes on her wrists and ankles. He stopped her with one hand. A thin-bladed knife appeared in the other. Sheer panic slammed into Gina with suffocating force, but her captor merely sliced her bonds and returned his blade to its sheath.
She sucked a dizzying breath and scrambled away. This time, he let her go.
He pushed to his feet and captured her gaze for one brief instant. His gray eyes flickered with some dark emotion. Shame? Regret? She couldn’t tell.
He turned and ducked under the lintel.
Gina pressed the heel of
her hand against her throbbing temple, only too aware of the humiliating moisture that had collected between her thighs. How could she have found pleasure in whatever it was her captor had done to her?
The last remnant of the dirty yellow fog in her mind evaporated. She tried to stand. A wave of vertigo sent her back to the ground, where she lay still for what seemed like an eternity. When she looked up a second time, the room had stopped spinning. Maybe the drug was wearing off at last.
Her heart was still beating double-time, though. She eased into a sitting position and hugged her knees to her chest. She wasn’t yet ready to stand, but this much, at least, she could manage.
Shame heated her cheeks as the memory of the kidnapper’s mental invasion played through her mind. The drug he’d given her must have contained some kind of aphrodisiac as well as a sedative. It had given her a stunning orgasm without any physical stimulation. What kind of man would have given her such a drug?
Terror clogged her lungs and squeezed her chest like a vise. The dark-haired man hadn’t been acting alone—there had been the kid in the forest and a woman beyond the door. Were there more of them—some kind of sex cult? Would a physical assault follow the mental one she’d endured? Would they ensure her body’s response with more drugs?
Gina shoved the thought from her mind. If she followed the path her imagination was taking, she would become paralyzed with fear just when she needed to stay calm. She had to plot her escape. There was no alternative. She drew a deep breath and focused her energy on taking stock of her prison.
The tiny hut showed no trace of modern civilization. Herbs and baskets hung from the ceiling, wooden bowls and crude utensils occupied one high shelf. A straw mat covered with furs lay against the wall. If this was some fantasy role-playing scene, the players hadn’t skimped on authenticity. Were her kidnappers offshoot members of The Wizards? If so, they had taken their role-playing games to a whole new level.
At that moment, the animal skin at the doorway lifted, admitting an old woman. Creases etched her face, yet she seemed curiously young, as if she had existed since the beginning of the world, unchanged. Narrow braids lay in precise dark rows across her scalp. The ends hung free, secured by tiny wooden beads. She wore a plain animal skin dress and a headband ornamented by a carved stone disk. Simple lines marked the milky-white stone—two rings, linked, with a spear thrust through the place of their joining.