:Winnie,: he said, his eyes wide in the darkness. :They took Winnie.:
* * *
• • •
Still shaken, Nwah stepped gingerly to the edge of the firepit. Embers warmed her as she shook the taste of dry peat from her maw.
She was as confused as she was startled.
Her senses were up, though, her hackles engaged in full.
The woods around her tingled with the nighttime, and now that her blood was pumping, her body seemed to be stronger.
The ley line was stronger too.
It seemed to taunt her from a distance.
Something about that bothered her. She wished her magic was something more than instinctive. She wished she understood it better. But her learning was self-taught, her gains all based on trial and error. The gap in her understanding made her unhappy.
:Did you hear me?: Kade said. :They took Winnie.:
:I heard you. Are you all right?:
:I’ll be fine. Just bruises and a cut. We’ve got to go back to Tau.:
:No, we don’t,: Nwah replied.
:Yes, we do. They were obviously here on orders from her father. I should have known better. I should have gotten us farther away.:
:Those men weren’t from Tau, nor were they simple raiders.:
:What do you mean?:
:They wore a sigil: She imagined the crossed swords and boar’s head, and opened her link to Kade. :That’s not Tau’s livery.:
:You’re right. It’s not.:
He looked at her then, his expression carrying a deep sense of betrayal.
:You let it happen,: he said. :You sent the pack away because you had your magic. But you didn’t do anything to stop them.:
:I wouldn’t do that,: Nwah said.
:Really?:
Nwah began to answer, but stopped.
That’s what had bothered her about the ley line.
She had been able to touch it before she dozed off—had, in fact, used the line’s power to scan the area before leaving Kade and Winnie to whatever bedtime activities they were going to engage in. But when the marauders came the connection was dead. Or, if not quite dead, it was at least distant and cold.
Now it was firm again.
It took only the barest of her thoughts to bring its presence to fill her.
The ache in her shoulders as magic filled her made her feel worse.
:I wouldn’t set Winnie up like that, Kade.: she finally replied. :You know that’s true. But your question has me wondering how I missed sensing them. Even more, it has me wondering why I can’t feel them now.:
Kade’s expression fell. :We have to get her back.:
:You’re not listening.:
Kade turned away, and even in the dark Nwah’s vision was good enough to see muscles bunching in his neck.
Nwah wanted to explain, but she’d been with him long enough to know better. Now was not the time to engage in conversation about the meaning of a dead ley line. Waiting was annoying, yes, but he was human and therefore so much more complex than a kyree, or at least so much easier to enrage with the wrong word at the wrong time. Everything was so personal with him.
:I know you don’t like Winnie, but I can’t believe you’re being so petty around her. I saw how you were with Maakdal, after all.:
Insect call rose in the time she waited before replying.
:I recognized the sigil,: she finally said.
Kade turned to her. :Why didn’t you say that in the first place?:
She bit back a sarcastic response.
:Tell me what it is, then,: he said, coming quickly to the firepit, then kneeling beside her, his eyes again wide, his forehead beading with sweat that smelled like brine.
:The markings are from a barony somewhere nearby. I saw it long before you and I ever met—on a traveling trunk Rayn had with her. She said it was from a place she lived in for several years.:
Rayn, a female warrior from Oris, was the first human Nwah had been pair-linked with. She had been murdered, though, killed defending a friend against bandits in the Pelagirs. The rending of that link had been so traumatic that Nwah had nearly despaired herself to death. Kade’s healing was all that had saved her.
After these years together, Nwah and Kade had traveled to the land of Oris as a pilgrimage of sorts, specifically so she could visit Rayn’s homeland.
She remembered Rayn’s trunk, saw its worn and weathered sides of wood that smelled of liniment from the inside. The workings were cast-iron that squeaked when they opened.
:Can you find this place?: he said.
The loss in his voice cut through her.
Almost as if by itself, magic from the ley line flooded her heart.
Maakdal’s presence in the distance was strong, but the swirled jumble of Kade’s confusion and fear was stronger.
He was frantic, his anger a churning ball of fire. He was bitter, too. He wanted Winnie back, but Nwah couldn’t tell if that desire was from pure longing, or because of the humiliation he felt at his failure to protect her.
She didn’t like seeing him this way.
Nwah stretched herself into the line of power with a revitalized sense of purpose. A current of magic crashed over her as if she werea rock at the bottom of a waterfall. Her pelt tingled all the way to her tail, which she thumped across her flank. She stood steady, then drew a lungful of fresh air as she reached through the woods, feeling living creatures as if they were each a part of her—a dozing woodchuck, an owl perched on its branch, deer and ferrets foraging, the massive elk to the eastern way. And, in the valley below not so far away, Maakdal and his pack of kyree.
Maakdal’s maleness was overpowering as he stood against the backdrop of the moon. The outline of his dark shoulders made her proud in a tribal way that she realized should have always existed within her, but had not.
She belonged with him in a way she didn’t with Kade.
:Have you seen this?: she spoke to Maakdal through her magic, showing him the crossed swords and boar sigil.
He was a kyree with no magic, but the ley line was strong. Nwah reached her magic out and felt his thoughts. His eyes grew slitted and cold, and his huge head gave a nod that said yes before leaving to rouse the kyree around him.
Nwah turned to Kade, knowing her kin would be here soon.
:Yes,: she said. :I can find the homelands of that sigil. Or rather, Maakdal can.:
* * *
• • •
Maakdal spoke of the barony as he, Kade, Nwah, and twelve more of the kyree clan struggled to pick their way through the nighttime forest.
The woods were heavy and the land uneven, so the work was difficult even for the kyree. Nwah wondered how Kade, with his limited eyesight managed, then realized he really wasn’t managing at all—he was stumbling and falling at nearly every step, branches and sharp fronds cutting him along the way—but he was constantly healing himself, willing himself to go forward despite the danger and pain.
Nwah tried to focus as Maakdal explained how the barony’s ruling family had come to its post in the earliest and wildest days of the Eastern Empire, and how it had passed its reign down through many generations despite the turmoil around it. :In the elder days they hunted this forest heavily,: Maakdal said. :Hence the wild boar under crossed swords.:
Today its ruler was Baron Xavier Donit, a man of at least seventy.
The baroness had passed years before, so now the baron lived mostly with the aid of his two sons and one daughter—each were said to have ways with magic, as did so many in the Eastern Empire. The days when this land was as deep in magic as the Salten Sea was in water were long past, but Nwah had heard Rayn’s tales. She knew magic was still here for the taking, and the strength of the ley lines that were so prevalent here did nothing to dispel those stories.
This barony was a small la
nd, though, limited in power.
:It remains unconquered only because it’s too inconsequential to matter to anyone else,: Maakdal said.
:Or,: Nwah replied, slipping around the hundredth thicket patch of the night, :because it’s too hard to get to?:
That brought a chuff of laughter from the pack leader. She liked how Maakdal’s voice sounded in the darkness. Deep and comfortable.
Nwah had regained her composure before the pack arrived well enough that his presence didn’t buckle her knees as it had earlier—in fact, the essence of magic she was drawing from the ley lines allowed her to feel the wave of intimidation she was creating within him. Strange, she thought, to feel this kind of influence over another. She was just a kyree from the Pelagirs, wasn’t she? And Maakdal was no cowering pup. The idea that he would yield to her made her anxious in a strange way, and the fact that he was traveling just a stride from her while Kade walked a few paces behind made her feel equally uneasy.
So much was changing.
She glanced at Kade. He was nervous, talking to himself at times, and clearly affected by the loss of Winnie.
:Why would they take her?: he said at one point. :She’s so early in her learning—not powerful at all . . . it must have been a mistake . . . maybe they meant to take me. Someone needed a healer and they came for me. Just got her by accident . . . :
The intensity of his focus on Winnie was intense.
She was about to comment on it, but then stopped short as she thought about the question she had been most avoiding.
Was their link a mistake?
At one point, Nwah was certain this link was everything either of them would need. But now Kade was entranced with Winnie, and if Nwah was honest with herself, she had been admiring Maakdal’s sleek flanks and strong strides as he cut through the woods.
Were Nwah and Kade doomed to break apart?
She had already suffered one fracture. She couldn’t imagine another.
:But, why not just ask me?: Kade continued to ramble. :I would have come straight away. No need for abduction. Unless, of course, they wanted me to do something horrible. Heal a murderer? Bind a thief? Keep a man alive so they could hang him? I’ve heard of that happening.:
It didn’t help that Kade was almost certainly wrong.
If the kidnappers took Winnie, then this was about Winnie.
Was the baron planning to ransom her?
Would Winnie’s father pay? Or maybe even the Monarch of Oris? If so, what was it that made Winnie so valuable?
Normally, she would have been debating these questions with Kade, but Kade didn’t seem to be of a proper frame of mind right now so it seemed better that he not consider this angle.
Kade yammered on.
Nwah ignored him, but she pondered another question: If the Kingdom of Tau would pay a ransom to retrieve a young woman who had left her father behind, what price would Winnie pay in return?
* * *
• • •
Nwah sent an owl ahead to scout.
It returned as daylight was breaking, swooping silently over the treetops and appearing almost as if by magic out of the dusky skies. She took a perch on the thickest branch of a huge birch tree, her motion made dramatic by a cascade of brown and white feathers as she settled.
In the thin light, Nwah could see Klethas Castle in the distance: home to Baron Xavier Donit.
The small manor made of mortared stone nestled on a barely consequential plot of land south of Tau, bordered mostly by the steep side of a valley and a long and winding creek. Despite the earliness of the day, the little tillable land around it was already being worked by farmers. By its scent, the rest would soon be home to cattle and sheep.
Nwah touched the ley line and molded the magic that came to her.
The power was strong here.
She felt a sense of intoxication as it played in her mind.
:Tell me what you saw,: she finally said to the owl.
Behind unblinking eyes, the bird of prey described the situation. When she was finished, the owl shifted her perch and groomed her wing.
Nwah thanked her, then turned to find both Kade and Maakdal studying the castle, each clearly plotting separate advances.
:She’s not there,: Nwah said. :The owl reports Winnie is being held a distance from the castle.:
Kade grimaced. :That makes no sense.:
:And yet, it’s true.:
Nwah described the shelter, which the owl said was barely large enough to be called a cottage and was built into a limestone crevasse in the valley wall.
Winnie was restrained nearby, each hand lashed to a separate tree.
:I don’t understand,: Kade said. :Why would the baron keep her outside the manor proper?:
:I’m only reporting what the owl said.:
The distrust in Kade’s response bothered her, but to be honest the question was good. If the baron had taken Winnie for ransom, lashing her to trees outside the castle proper seemed a strange way to reap any benefit. It felt more like a blood sacrifice out of a child’s tale than any castle intrigue.
:The clan can distract the guards,: Maakdal said.
Nwah rucked up her shoulder fur to show her pleasure. That he had commanded the full force of his twelve kyree to join them without her asking had barely surprised her, but Maakdal’s unconditional acceptance of her report felt different, more important.
:If they occupy the guards, we would be free to retrieve Winnie,: Kade said to Nwah after she passed him Maakdal’s proposal.
:I can cover our steps,: she said, knowing it wasn’t her steps she was worried about. :Then we would be silent.:
:That’s the plan, then. The kyree draw attention, and we save Winnie.:
She agreed.
Suddenly Kade’s expression changed.
He nodded with sagely depth, his face grim.
:I see it now,: he said to himself. :This is exactly what the baron would do if he wanted me to chase her. He didn’t net me in his raid, so now he’s dangling Winnie before us like a worm to a fish.:
Nwah chuffed, but said nothing.
Perhaps Kade was right after all. Maybe this was all about him.
* * *
• • •
From a position behind a thick clot of brush, the shelter appeared to be just as the owl described, small and built of rocks and thatch. It was perhaps four strides of a grown man deep and an equal length wide, built into the rough crook of a cliff-like face of the valley wall. It had a window and a door, both closed and both showing darkness behind panes of glass.
Though the day had fully broken, the area was shaded by trees. A steady breeze rattled through the upper canopy, and the smell of water came from below. The land around the cottage was a flat mound for some distance before falling again toward a basin wherein a brook gurgled somewhere lower.
There were five guards nearby, each one positioned exactly where the owl said they would be. Nwah felt the kyree nearing each post. The rush of the hunt made her blood surge. The idea of Maakdal leading the pack gave her a strength she didn’t know she had. Kade’s sense of urgency as he crouched beside her served to double that strength.
The plan called for Nwah to scan the area with her ley magic and report problems as they approached the clearing where Winnie had been tied. She didn’t feel anything out of the ordinary, but that didn’t make her feel better.
She wished again that she understood more about what she was doing. The gambit’s dependency on her magic made her uncertainty taste like bile.
The place was silent, though.
Clean.
With her magical tendrils spread, Nwah got a read on the life around her. Once again she felt creatures of the wood stirring, and—even better—she felt the guards. If she could sense the guards, it was reasonable to think she could feel other people�
�and the house itself felt cold and empty to her.
She wondered how much time they had before the baron was due to arrive.
:Everything looks in order,: she said to Kade. :Almost too much in order.:
His face grew even more grim as his gaze went to where Winnie was slumped over, her arms straining against the ropes as she leaned forward on her knees. The green fabric of her nightclothes draped from her shoulders to pool on the dirt below her. Her dark hair, thrown over her forehead, covered much of her face. She was motionless, seemingly sleeping.
:She probably fought all night,: Kade said.
He gripped his hunting knife, an act that brought Nwah memories of times he’d used that knife to aid in healing people they’d met on the road.
She began to warn him again, but he turned to her.
:I understand,: he said. :Maybe this is a trick. Maybe they’re expecting me to come get her. But what they aren’t expecting is you. Just like back in Tau, right? You’re our secret weapon. So follow the plan. Keep my back while I cut her down, and we’ll have Winnie with us in no time.:
Nwah tweaked a whisker but said nothing. Jealousy or not, she owed him this. The power of his conviction was strong.
She gave the clearing one more scan.
:All right,: Nwah said. :It’s time.:
She gave a sharp bark, the signal for her kyree kin, and the forest erupted with yips and crashes. Human voices called out amid the thrashing of leaves and forest underbrush.
Kade was already on the run.
Nwah took off across the grassy mound right behind.
Winnie raised her head, her eyes tired and dull.
Kade grabbed a rope.
As the knife blade bit into cord, Nwah felt a pain like something tearing in her gut. The ley line ripped away from her.
Gasping.
Nearly falling as a blanket of magic seemed to enfold her. Her senses fading.
:Kade!: she tried to yell, but it came out as a strangled yip.
Kade turned, his eyes sharp with surprise.
Where Winnie had been was now only a heavy anvil of iron dangling between two cords, dancing and swaying in discordance, one rope deeply frayed, the other still intact.
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