The Invisible Ring bj-4

by Anne Bishop

  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 dista
nced 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.

  The ground shook under him as the area around the flat rock exploded. Small stones and dirt rained down on them.

  Thera pressed against him harder and kept muttering, “Mother Night, Mother Night, Mother Night.”

  Moments later, years later, there was silence.

  Thera rolled off him, quickly stood up, and moved a few feet away.

  Shaken by everything that had happened, Jared moved more slowly. He noticed that Blaed, too, was slow getting to his feet.

  Lia, on the other hand, strode toward Thera, her face tightened by anger. Her gray eyes looked stone hard.

  “You stupid bitch,” Lia shouted. “I’ve been lenient about allowing you to use more than basic Craft, but I did not give you leave to play around with spells you have no training to handle.”

  “Nothing would have happened, Lady, if you hadn’t tried to block it,” Thera shouted back. “If anyone’s to blame for this, it’s you.”

  Jared shook his head, as if that would clear away the confusion. What were they talking about?

  “Who do you think you’re talking to?” Lia shrieked.

  “A sexless bitch, that’s who! If you had any heat between your legs, you wouldn’t be wasting a male like him.” Thera jabbed a finger in Jared’s direction. “You would have ridden him for all he was worth long before now.”

  Lia hissed. “How would you know what a normal woman feels? You’d sheath anything that was willing to get between your thighs!”

  Letting out an outraged howl, Thera threw herself on Lia.

  Jared watched them go down in a tangle of limbs just as he got to his feet. He watched them roll on the ground, hitting, shrieking, scratching, tearing at each other’s clothes and hair.

  Shock locked him in place.

  Witches didn’t fight. At least, not physically. Never physically. Witches fought with words, fought with Craft. But not physically.

  Because something happened to witches when they crossed that line.

  Blood males were fiercely aggressive and might engage in quarrels that ended in blows, but they never completely lost themselves in that kind of fight. Witches did. They became feral, cold-blooded, deadly. They became something even strong males feared because their savagery surpassed anything a male was capable of, and they had no mercy.

  Thera and Lia rolled toward him. The shock cracked, shattered. A leg kicked out and hit him hard, knocking his feet out from under him.

  He fell on top of them. His fear turned into white-hot anger.

  He was only going to separate them, he assured himself as he tried to ram an arm between them. He wasn’t going to attack them, wasn’t going to hurt either one of them— especially because he wasn’t quite sure which body parts went with which woman.

  One of them threw a punch that skimmed the side of his head.

  Snarling, Jared tried to plant his palm on the bottom witch’s chin and give her head a good thump—and then yelled when two sets of teeth clamped down on his hand.

  Hearing another male’s angry roar, Jared rolled, dragging Thera and Lia with him. He realized his mistake a moment later when he opened his mouth to try to draw a breath and inhaled a mouthful of long hair.

  Another roar. A shriek as the weight on top of him suddenly lightened. Blaed yelling, “No, Garth! NO! That’s Lia! THAT’S LIA!”

  One shove got Thera off him. Jared scrambled to his feet.

  Garth held Lia over his head. Blaed stood in front of Garth, but not close enough to help if the big man flung Lia to the ground. Brock and Randolf were a careful distance up the road, breathing hard as if they’d come running to help but now were no longer sure of what to do.

  “Put her down, Garth,” Jared said firmly.

  Garth turned to face him. “P-p-protect!”

  “You did protect Lia. You got her out of the fight.”

  The angry flush that colored Garth’s face slowly changed to bewilderment.

  Jared noticed the fresh blood darkening Garth’s left sleeve.

  Probably something had cut him during the explosion— a sharp stone or even a small branch with enough force behind it to act like an arrow.

  “You did well, Garth,” Jared said, walking toward the big man and hoping he looked far more sure of himself than he felt. “Stopping the fight was good. Prince Blaed and I will handle the rest.”

  He held out his arms.

  Garth hesitated, finally gave a grunt that could have meant anything, then carefully lowered Lia into Jared’s waiting arms. After giving Lia’s shoulder a thumping pat, he started walking up the road toward the wagon.

  “Put me down,” Lia said, squirming.

  Jared tightened his hold on her and bared his teeth. “When the sun shines in Hell.” Hearing a vicious curse, he looked over his shoulder in time to see Blaed haul Thera to her feet. Apparently Blaed’s temper was as sharp and hot as his own, and that pleased him.

  Lia squirmed again, then yipped when his fingers clamped down harder. “I can—”

  “Shut up.” Jared’s temper soared a little higher when he saw Thayne jogging toward them with the saddle horses. With Thayne there, that meant there wasn’t an adult looking after the wagon or the children.

  *It’s all right,* Blaed said on an Opal spear thread. *Eryk and Tomas are holding the team, and
Thayne put a shield around everything. He’ll know if anything touches it before we get there.*

  *Get her to the wagon, Blaed.* He couldn’t even say Thera’s name. She’d saved him, but she also had attacked Lia, and he couldn’t untangle the feelings.

  Blaed had Thera up on the roan mare and was galloping toward the wagon between one curse and the next.

  Jared found his way to the gelding blocked by Brock and Randolf. Randolf was sweating and thoroughly shaken. Brock looked grim.

  “What happened?” Brock asked.

  “Later,” Jared snapped, shoving between them to reach the gelding.

  The trip back to the wagon was too swift to cool his temper or soothe the fear that still jangled his nerves.

  Handing the gelding’s reins to Tomas, Jared pulled Lia out of the saddle. The other three children clustered around the roan mare, watching him. “Stay here,” Jared told them. Not that he thought any of them would be anxious to be in a small, enclosed space with two snarling witches who had just torn into each other. Hell’s fire, he didn’t want to be inside the wagon with them either.

  Ignoring Lia’s muttered protests when he picked her up, Jared marched into the wagon and dumped her on the bench opposite Thera. Blaed stood nearby, blocking any escape through the shutters that opened onto the driving seat, his muscles quivering with the effort of keeping his own anger in check.

  Rubbing his teeth-marked hand, Jared leaned against the door and started putting shields around the wagon—physical shield, psychic shield, aural shield. No one was going to interrupt or overhear this little discussion.

  Blaed gave him a look that said, what do we do now?

  The women weren’t paying any attention to him or Blaed. A good thing, too, since he had no idea what to do next.

  Still breathing hard, Thera dabbed at her lip, then stared at the fresh blood on the back of her hand. “Hell’s fire, Lia, you split my lip.”

  Lia pushed her hair away from her face, and said contritely, “I’m sorry.” She studied all the strands of hair now tangled around her fingers. Her eyes narrowed. “Then again, maybe I’m not. Did you have to rip so much hair out?”

  “Wasn’t deliberate. My arm jerked when someone who didn’t have enough sense to get out of the way fell on us.”