The Silver Pear (7 page)

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.”

S
ooty 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.”

T
hey 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.”

S
he 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.

As they went, the stairs snapped back into place and disappeared, and she started to relax as soon as they got deep into the foliage.

She reached the platform, pulled herself up and waited for him.

He looked as tired as she felt, his gaunt face tight and pale. He was simply putting one foot in front of the other, but when he reached the platform he looked up for the first time, and she smiled at his expression.

“Wonderful, isn’t it?”

He nodded, mute, and she opened the door and stood back so he could go in.

He walked slowly, as if he were in a dream, and she liked him all the more for it. Some things were wondrous, and no matter how strange and dark her father could be, that he could produce something this whimsical, this delicate, warmed something in her, softened her thoughts of him.

“Did you make it?” He spun slowly around in the main living room, eyes alight, and she shook her head.

“My father made it for me when I was ten.”

He walked to the window, looked through the cool green of the leaves, stirring and sighing in the light breeze, and leaned against the window frame.

“Come. I’ll show you to a room and we can both sleep a little while William runs around below us, searching.”

He smiled at that, nodded, and followed her up the staircase to the next level.

She let her fingers trail along the smooth wood of the bannister, almost desperate for the softness of a bed, the pull of sleep.

A sleep, she knew, which would be haunted by the knowledge that she had lost the silver pear.

S
oren woke
to the sound of men talking.

He was in a narrow, curved room, his window shaped like the arch of a rainbow, the bed fitted snug against the tree trunk, with a basin, pitcher and small table to the side.

Beneath his cheek the pillow was smooth and cool, and smelled of pine and fresh air. He pushed himself carefully off it, keeping low, and moved quietly to the window. He’d been sure the floorboards beneath his feet would creak, but they didn’t make a sound, and he sent a silent thank you to Mirabelle’s father for making such a solid tree-house for his daughter.

Although the voices had gone, he pushed himself up slowly, leaning against the wall just to the right of the window, and tried to peer down to the forest floor.

He couldn’t see anything but more branches and leaves, but slowly, as he became attuned to his surroundings, he realized the birds had gone quiet. Now, over the creak of branches and the quiet swish of leaves, he heard boots crushing dried leaves, the murmur of conversation again.

He moved to the door, opened it and stepped onto the tiny landing that divided his room from Mirabelle’s.

He didn’t dare risk tapping on her door, so he opened it, finger already on his lips to let her know to be quiet, and saw it wasn’t necessary.

She was crouched beside the window, and had lifted up a tiny trapdoor in the floor. She was peering down, head bent over it, and when he stepped into the room her own finger went to her lips, and then, seeing she’d merely mirrored his own actions, gestured for him to come over.

From the quality of the light streaming in, and the heat, despite their position deep in the cool of the leaves, Soren guessed it wasn’t far past midday. When he bumped shoulders with Mirabelle, and then rubbed heads with her as he looked down through the neat little square in the floor that must extend out beyond the living room beneath them, he saw men making themselves comfortable below, sitting or leaning against the massive tree, and eating their lunch.

They knelt together, listening to the banter and jokes of men who were tired and hungry, and sure they were on a wild goose chase, sure that Mirabelle had been taken off by a sorcerer from the dungeon by magical means. Soren could hear the worry for her in the men’s tone, and suspected if they were found, Mirabelle could talk them into looking the other way.

Eventually Mirabelle closed the flap, pushed herself to her feet, and gestured for him to follow her.

Instead of going back down to the main level, she took him up, and he found himself in a tiny room, an eyrie, with a small hearth, a cauldron for cooking, and a kettle.

“Is it safe to light a fire?” There was tea in a jar, he could see, and food, and he remembered he hadn’t eaten for over a day. He was used to it—Jasper had starved him for weeks—but since he’d been rescued, Kayla had made sure to give him as much as he could eat, and it had awakened his appetite again.

Mirabelle nodded. “There is a long chimney pipe that lets out over the tops of the trees. Even if they do smell smoke, it will be difficult for them to work out where it’s coming from. It may even send them off in another direction to look.” She sighed. “But I don’t have anything to light it with, and I’m afraid to use sky magic, in case the sorcerer’s apprentice is with them. He might sense me.”

Soren pulled Rane’s fire stick from his pocket, touched it to the wood stacked neatly in the grate. The fire lit with a happy crackle and pop.

“Another wild magic item?”

He nodded. “Both it and the moonstone belong to my brother, Rane. I found them in Travis’s bag.”

“He stole them?” She sounded so horrified, he couldn’t help but smile.

“No matter how poorly William treated you, and the men he kept in that dungeon, he has a way to go before he and his men can match up to Jasper of Harness.”

“Nuen of Harness’s brother?” She poured water from a jug into the kettle and hung it from the hook over the fire, then unwrapped bread that smelled as if it had been fresh baked—fragrant and warm.

“Where did you get that?” He ignored the question about Nuen, his eyes on the bread, his mouth watering. He hadn’t been this hungry since the first few days after Jasper started starving him.

“My father again. The bread never gets stale, the butter never goes rank, and the honey is always pure.”

As she spoke, she pulled a clay pot of butter and a jar of honey down, cut a thick slab of the bread and gave him a knife and a plate to help himself.

It was only after his second slice that he could think properly. “Nuen is Jasper’s brother, yes, and together, they’re hoping to bring Eric down. I’d say good luck to Eric, and I hope he wins, except I’ve been in his dungeon as well, and it’s just as foul as Nuen’s, and even though I never thought I’d say this, Eric is worse, worse by far, than Nuen when it comes to cruelty.”

She was quiet for a moment, chewing on the crusty bread, one hip against the table. The kettle began to boil behind her, and he stepped around to take it off the heat and pour the water into the pot she’d prepared.

It felt . . . nice, this serene domesticity, even with the small army hunting them directly below their feet, and the loss of two magical items between them.

He wondered how hard William’s men were looking, though. They weren’t that far from the castle here, and the men were still sitting about, at their ease; he could hear it from the snatches of conversation that drifted up on the warm summer air.

“You have friends amongst William’s men.” He remembered how the guard had held her, carried her so carefully to the dungeon, no matter how he’d dropped her when the sorcerer died.

She nodded, swallowed her last bite of bread. “I grew up with them, attended the village school with them. And since I’ve been old enough, I did what my father could never be bothered to do—heal, make potions, ease the life of the village. They trust me. Perhaps more than they trust William.”

“It sounds as if you’ve been more a witch than a sorcerer, but I’ve seen you draw sky magic with my own eyes.”

She shrugged. “I think I would have been an earth witch, if my father hadn’t interfered. My aunt was one, and it runs in families, more often than not.”

“What happened?” He drew mugs from the shelf, and she poured the tea, offered him fresh, cold milk from a stone jug, and honey to sweeten it. “I’ve never heard of a woman sorcerer before I met you.”

“I’m the only one, I think. It bothered my father in the beginning, but in the end, he grew to like the idea. He called me his little dragon. Mysterious, dangerous, and mythical. Except when they dive down at you from the sky and level your village.”

Soren sent her a grin over the top of his mug. “I can’t see you leveling anything.”

She shook her head. “I don’t like to do harm. But I never told my father that. Not that he’d have heard me, anyway. He was so convinced my mother was carrying a boy, he bespelled me in the womb to be the greatest sorcerer of my day. He had the silver pear, and he used up every scrap of power in it for that spell. It only came back to full strength when I was eighteen, and by then he’d gotten used to living without it, and gave it to me.” She sighed, pulled out a chair at last, and sat down. “It took him years to get over his disappointment at having a girl. And even then, he wouldn’t see I really was a sorcerer until I was fourteen or fifteen.”

Because they couldn’t start on their journey while a lunch party was going on below them, Soren helped himself to another piece of bread and honey, took a gulp of tea and leaned back in the chair he’d pulled out for himself. “What happened when you were fifteen?”

She took a more delicate sip herself, and rubbed her temples. “I’d been reading his spell books. He didn’t like me doing it, but he didn’t actively stop me. I was looking at a spell for calling rain-clouds; something that helps a village when the summer is too long and dry. His apprentice came in. Jack.” She fingered the shirt she was wearing. “These were his clothes, once.” She took another sip. “He laughed at me for even reading about it. He didn’t believe I was a sorcerer, even though my father must have told him some of it. And I . . . well, I was tired of watching my father train others, none of whom were ever good enough for him, in his own opinion, while I had to make do with trying to teach myself, practicing with whatever scraps I could scavenge from his workshop.

“So I challenged him. Jack looked at the spell, and I could tell from the way he tensed up that he didn’t think he was up to it. It gave me pause, as well, but I’d issued the challenge, and I wasn’t backing down, and Jack would rather have slit his own throat than concede to me, so we set the spell in our minds, went out the house, and I let Jack go first.” She lifted a finger to her mouth and licked a bit of honey off the tip of it.

Soren found his gaze riveted to her lips, to her tongue. He took another gulp of tea.

“He was sweating enough it almost looked like he had been caught in rain, but there was nothing but blue skies when his chance was over.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I didn’t think I would do any better than him, but I at least knew I couldn’t do any worse.” She paused and drank back the rest of her tea. Poked at the crumbs on her plate.

“And?” Soren was fascinated by the way she sat, so straight and unbending, and yet in the glow of light around her, in the way her golden hair fell in curls around her face, she was the epitome of soft and gentle.

“I
could
do worse, as it happened. In the opposite direction.” She spoke seriously, but then, as if unable to stop herself, her mouth quirked in a grin. “What a storm that was. Lightning, thunder, rain pelting down so hard it stung to be out in it.” She gave a soft laugh. “It washed away old Mr. Blackburn’s field, and I had to bespell it to rights afterward, with my father’s help.”

“Where was your mother in all this?” He was grinning at the thought of her bringing the heavens down around everyone’s head, proving herself, but it faded at the look in her eyes.

“My mother died giving birth to me.” She looked down into her empty mug, and swirled the dregs around. “My father had bespelled me in the womb, and what he did leeched everything out of her. She had no strength, nothing left when it was time for me to come into the world.” She lifted her gaze to his. “Sure as if he’d plunged a knife into her heart, he killed her, and he knew it.”