Dain continued cutting where Wilhem had left off. After quartering the kill they started back to camp, each dragging a section of hide rolled full of meat. A length of leg bone made a handle. Mantal would have to make due without the other bones and most of the hide.
The load was heavy. Dain had to draw on the Light to move his half. He wasn’t sure how Wilhem managed his own, but the merc matched his pace. There was a depth of hidden strength in the man, one he hadn’t suspected. Wilhem’s mind may have gone down the river, but his body still functioned extraordinarily well.
The Tyberon hunters stood gathered around a small fire, empty-handed again, when he and Wilhem stumbled in.
“A half-mile that way,” Dain spoke to a hunter and pointed with his hammer. “There’re two more wraps of meat you can bring. Or you might get lucky and find another bison.”
Though heavy, the meat looked pitifully small next to the lizard. Using Wilhem’s knife, Dain carved off a dozen thick ribeyes and left what remained in front of Mantal. For her, it looked less than a mouthful.
“Guess no one’s on the menu tonight,” Dain muttered to Wilhem. The mercenary stood at his shoulder but gave no response. “Take these steaks over to Nicola. I’ll carry a few over to the Tyberons.”
One of the returned hunters accepted the food and mumbled in thanks. Dain turned to go.
“She’s going to betray you, Jensen is, you know.” It was Unsha who spoke. “Come with us. You could join my people. With your skills we could rise high together.”
Dain paused. He started to reply but then realized he didn’t want to speak with the sorceress. He hadn’t since healing Mantal. He wanted to tell her she was wrong, to tell her that there need not be bloodshed. But to what end? Unsha would never believe him. She wanted him to be a weapon against her people’s enemies.
He walked to Nicola’s campfire. While he ate he thought on what had been said. He studied Nicola and Jensen’s faces in the flickering orange firelight. He knew their secret. The secret of all Pyre Riders. But they wouldn’t kill him over such a small thing, he had to believe that. He had helped Nicola survive, healed her, kept her safe, and then aided in the escape. But despite all that he didn’t trust them, not wholly. Unsha’s words ate away at him like the infection that had plagued the great lizard.
Tomorrow they would part ways. Peacefully, he hoped, but violently he was almost sure. The grassland’s edge hadn’t been in sight when they’d stopped today, but the green sea had receded some. It reached well short of Mantal’s knees now. The Tyber River and freedom were there, just beyond the horizon.
Dain finished eating and moved off alone, separate from both little camps. He gathered a few armfuls of grass into a bundle and tied a leather strap around them to make a crude pillow. He used an old blessing on his own aura, a simple one his mother had taught him, to drive of any small animals or insects that might bother him. Nicola usually kept them away with her own skills, but tonight he didn’t want to sleep near the others.
He had just eased into a comfortable position when Nicola approached. She stood with her arms at her sides, staring at him. She opened her mouth to speak, paused, and a frustrated look crossed her face. She closed her mouth and turned to go.
“We never did find where the gems come from,” Dain said. “The Magentites. Other than the pit, I never saw any mines, and Unsha said the Tyberon cities were all alike, fourteen shells of Sheckel’s lost children.”
Nicola stopped. She looked toward the resting Mantal, then turned to Dain again.
“Once a year, just before breeding time, all the tegu head west to the grassland’s edge. There’s an ancient range of weathered mountains there, and at their base are loose stones of all shapes and sizes.” She paused for several moments before continuing. “The Tegu swallow them. They act as millstones to grind up their food. That’s where the Tyberons get the Magentites.”
“So there’s a pile of Magentite at the grassland’s western edge?”
Nicola shook her head.
“No. The stones are quite ordinary, at first. But something in the tegu gradually changes them into Magentite. That’s why the gems are smooth and polished. And that’s why the Tyberons have a festival. Mantal would have been killed at the festival’s end and cut open for the gems she carries. There are dozens inside her.”
Inside her? We’ve spent the last few days riding on a fortune, Dain thought.
If what Nicola said was true, then there was enough Magentite inside Mantal to buy two dozen estates like he’d been dreaming of. He looked at the long rows of curved teeth, the shiny black claws, the whiplike tail.
“With so many gems, why don’t the Tyberons just destroy the forts themselves? With a single gem like the one we saw powering that pump in the field one caster could easily smash a fort.”
“They can’t,” Nicola smiled. “The Tyberons can’t cast, not truly. With so much power available they’ve lost the ability to cast stronger spells.” She nodded toward Unsha’s camp. “It takes a large Magentite to get even their strongest of casters up to mine or my mother’s abilities. They could never overpower the forts.”
It made sense. Spellcasting was like using a muscle. If the Tyberon casters weren’t used to using that muscle, they would be much weaker than they needed to be in order to cast with the stones properly. Like a man who rides in carriages all day instead of walking, Dain thought, his legs become weak and almost useless.
“I…I just wanted to thank you. For the healing, for keeping me together,” Nicola said, changing the subject abruptly.
“You’re welcome,” Dain said. “Seeing as we were tied together and I didn’t have much choice.” He smiled at her. Nicola gave a small smile back.
“No, I guess you didn’t. But you also didn’t have to be nice about it. Most men would have taken advantage of the situation.” Her face reddened a shade closer to her hair color.
“Guess I’m not most men.”
“You are not.”
Without another word, Nicola turned on her heels and left, heading in the direction of her mother’s camp.
Dain covered his eyes with a strip of cloth and slept.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Dain thought he was the first to wake. He lay still for a moment, enjoying the day’s last red-orange rays and feeling the oncoming evening’s coolness in the breeze. After a time, he decided he should get moving. If trouble came today he wanted to be wide awake for it. He doubted either side would allow him to sleep. Rising for a drink, he glanced over at the Tyberons’ camp and froze.
It wasn’t there. Unsha, her hunters, and their camp were gone. Sometime in the day, while he and the other mercenaries slept, they’d slipped off into the grasses.
He recalled the sorceress’s final words of warning. Could she truly have been so afraid? He had believed she was manipulating him for her own ends, a weapon to use against her city’s enemies. But what if she were right?
As if answering his unspoken question, Jensen awoke. The Pyre Rider looked at once to the empty camp and yelled.
“Up! Wake up. All of you wake up.” She booted Wilhem in the ribs and threw her pack at Nicola. “They’ve gone and we have to go after them.”
Nicola jumped to her feet. Wilhem rose in that mechanical way of his. All three scrambled to gather their precious few items.
Dain had no intention of being left behind and followed suit, grabbing his things and hoisting himself atop Mantal. He wanted to ask why they were chasing their fellow prisoners, especially given that there was no need for them any longer. But from the tegu’s back they could see the grassland’s edge, and he thought better of it.
The trail stood plain enough. The grass was flattened in a narrow line. It pointed which way they’d gone and led straight for the river. Jensen goaded Mantal into a scrambling run toward it.
> Dain clung tight to his rough spike as the beast’s frantic movements rattled his teeth. He felt the hammering of Mantal’s racing heart through the soles of his boots.
With the lizard’s every step the tall grasses grew shorter, and within an hour they stood no more than a foot high. From atop her back Dain saw a pulsing ribbon of frothing blue ahead. The river.
It wasn’t the Tyber. But he’d heard that in the grasslands all rivers eventually joined the Tyber. And it was a large tributary, deep enough to hide the bottom, though less than half the great river’s width. If they followed it there would eventually be a fort.
The trail faded as they grew closer, and Dain dismounted at the water’s edge. Wilhem joined him. He saw where the Tyberons had entered the water, but the fading light was too low for him to find anywhere they could have left it.
Maybe they swam to the other side?
“Nothing,” he said to the others. “I see where they overturned a rock here…the mossy side is submerged beneath the water, but nothing else.”
“Allow me to give you some more light,” Jensen said from behind him.
You know they mean to kill us, Unsha’s voice echoed in his head. We know their little secret.
Dain threw himself to the side as the flames arced past. It was close. Her aim hadn’t been off by much. The spell singed the hair from one of his arms—he could smell it. The blast landed in the water and hot steam roiled around him. His eyes burned and his clothing soaked in the steam. A second blast flew by, but the steam masked him and he took shelter behind a mottled boulder, one of many, and in the dark Jensen couldn’t see him.
“Come on out now. This can only end one way, and we can wait all night,” Jensen taunted.
Dain remained silent. Of Nicola he saw and heard nothing. Was she party to this as well or had her mother removed her from play?
Part of him refused to believe after all they had been through together that she could turn on him. He had saved her life. Held her together when her body and mind almost shattered to pieces. She couldn’t be complicit in this.
He leaned down, closer to the water, and reached a hand out along the river bottom. In dodging the blast, he’d lost his hammer and chisels—the only things he carried that even resembled weapons.
He needed an escape; there was little chance of him fighting his way out of this. His options were limited. He could move into the deeper water, but a few yards downstream the rocky bottom churned the river into rapids. He was likely to smash himself to pieces. He could try sneaking past or around and into the grasslands, but come morning his trail would stick out like a sore thumb and Mantal would easily run him down. He had no desire to end up a fresh morsel for the tegu.
How to break free?
Flames interrupted his thoughts. They soared in a continuous column, lighting the sky. Too late, he realized the boulder’s shadow no longer covered him. Jensen lowered the flames and he felt their lash.
Dain plunged underwater, just avoiding the worst of the blast. He heard bubbles of steam, saw the fire’s light overhead. If he came up for air now he’d be roasted. He felt like a hardboiled egg. While submerged, he looked for another refuge. There had to be a bigger boulder. The light above helped him spot one, twenty feet downriver. Lungs burning, he swam for it.
Putting the boulder between himself and Jensen, he eased his head above the waterline and drew breath.
How could she have so much power? The time in the quarry had left Nicola weak, he was sure of it. Neither Rider should have been able to cast this strongly. Not until they recovered more fully.
Magentite. They must have picked up a gem or two while no one was looking.
“I think you got him, mother,” he heard Nicola call. His chest clenched.
“Where’s the body, then? It should float, and we would have either seen or smelled it.”
So Nicola was part of this, too. One question answered, then—the one he’d least wanted an answer for. Unsha had been right. They had probably planned this from the first night of their escape. Perhaps even before.
“Help me cast overhead and get more light. Then we’ll see him.”
A second jet of flame sprang to life to Dain’s left. The shadow retreated around the boulder, but he had learned his lesson. With only his face exposed, he could remain hidden.
“He’s gone or dead, I tell you. No one could have survived that.”
“You’ve grown soft, child. The law of the Hycropolis is clear. We have a duty to our ancestors and an obligation to our descendants. No one who knows can be spared.”
“What about Unsha? What about the entire Tyberon city? They all know.”
“The Tyberons are isolated. They are unlikely to talk, and soon enough they will all be dealt with. When we get back I’ll send word and a thousand Riders will scorch their way across this land. It’s been done before. The Esterians will either pay us for it or we’ll collect the Magentite.”
Murder an entire city, an entire people…The thought horrified Dain. He couldn’t begin to imagine the scale of destruction.
He had to escape. At the moment that was all he could focus on.
Downriver he spotted another boulder. A large one. If he could reach it and not overshoot, there was a long stretch of calm water. He could use it to cross over to the opposite shore and then flee north, toward where the Tyber had to be. Sooner or later there had to be a fort.
He’d just pushed off into the current when an iron grip snagged him at the shoulder. At first, he thought one of the man-eating whiskerfish was trying to eat him. He’d escaped the Tyberons, avoided the Riders, and hadn’t been eaten by Mantal only to be taken by a damned fish? He almost laughed, but then he felt himself being dragged shoreward.
He looked over his shoulder. A hammer of a fist held him. Wilhem…he’d forgotten about the big merc. But why bother dragging him shoreward? They wouldn’t let Wilhem live, either. He too would burn. Whatever the reason, the merc’s grip was beyond strong and the water was growing shallower.
Dain fought to free himself before Jensen and Nicola could see him. He grabbed a rock and swung for the big man’s wrist, trying to break his hold.
The first swing missed. The second did not. Dain heard Wilhem’s wrist snap, the bone cracked. The merc didn’t scream, didn’t slacken his grip, didn’t even look down to acknowledge the damage. He held Dain fast and dragged him up onto the shore like the evening’s catch.
What kind of man is he? One who can’t feel pain at all?
“Ahh here’s Wilhem and our lost companion,” Jensen said. She must have seen the incredulous look on his face. She answered his unspoken question.
“He is not a man, not anymore. Hasn’t been for months now. Wilhem grew despondent, felt guilty over surviving Balerion’s death, so I burned him from the inside out. Now he’s a husk of fire. Obedient, loyal, a perfect companion in every way. You will understand soon enough. We held off on you only because the process will end your ability to cast.”
It all clicked into place then, to Dain’s horror; the dead eyes, the mechanical movements, the lack of speech.
“Nicola. Do as I showed you.”
“Mother…” There was pain in Nicola’s voice, and hesitation. “I don’t want to.”
“You must. No one can know. For a thousand years the secret has been safe, and we must keep it. You must keep it.”
“Don’t do this, Nicola,” Dain said, trying to make eye contact with the girl.
The small figure approached. Dain struggled against Wilhem’s grip anew. Man or husk, he was impossibly strong.
“I must. She is my mother. You heard her.” Tears ran down Nicola’s cheeks.
Dain felt down through the river mud. He drew on the Light. Wilhem held him at arm’s length, out of reach, but Nicola knelt directl
y before him, flames dancing above her fingertips as they reached for him.
“Please Nicola, please don’t do this,” Dain begged her. Merciful Creator, don’t let this happen. Don’t let it happen. Don’t…
“You kept me alive, kept me sane, kept me safe. I don’t want to, but you heard her. The will of the Hycropolis is supreme.”
“You don’t have to. You have a choice. This doesn’t have to end like this.”
Nicola turned and looked back at her mother. Jensen nodded. Nicola turned back. Her fingers brushed Dain’s temple.
“Dain, I am sorry. I love you.”
Dain’s own fingers tightened. His arm moved. The rock exploded into Nicola’s skull dead center, and Light flashed outward briefly. She fell.
Dain tried to rise, tried to run for the water and at least a chance of escape, but Wilhem’s iron grip remained.
Frozen in place, Jensen started to wail, and then to shriek. She lifted her hands, and white-hot lances of fire rolled over Dain, squeezing his already flickering spellshield like a vise. He whipped himself past his grief and drew deep on the Light, pushing everything he had into his shield. The pressure on his shoulder lessened and then Wilhem’s grip fell slack completely.
Squinting, Dain saw the big merc melt away into a smoky pillar of gray ash. Without warning, the flames died. Dain readied his spellshield for another surge, rose to his feet, and took a step back. He knew that he couldn’t stand long against the Rider’s spells. He searched his pocket for the small Magentite Unsha had given him but it eluded his fingers.
“You killed her. You killed her and now you burn,” Jensen rasped. Her face was twisted in fury. She raised her hands once more.
Dain readied himself. The river was too far away. He knew he’d never make it.
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