Trail Of The Torean (Book 2) (8 page)

A winded voice came through the woods.

“So, my poor Sunathri, your chase is at its end.”

A flash of blinding light came from nearby to reveal three men on horses covering their eyes with the crooks of their robed elbows. A damaged horse struggled pitifully on the undergrowth. The wizard they had been chasing dashed into the wood, this time on foot, and was gone before Garrick could set sight on him.

With their prey now dismounted, the lead rider waved his cohorts to loop around. The horses slipped into the darkness, blowing with lathered complaints that told Garrick they had been hard used.

He followed the leader—a Lectodinian by the smell of his sorcery.

As he drew closer, the rider cast a thin magelight onto his hand to expose his prey. Garrick used his sword to pull back a branch that gave him a better view.

The mage's prey was a woman.

Her glare was defiant. Her eyes reflected the magelight with unabridged hatred as she struggled to free herself from a mass of whitish paste that held her foot affixed to the ground. Her long hair was black in the darkness, disheveled from her ride and hanging past her shoulders in waves. She held one arm gingerly against her ribcage, her teeth were gritted in obvious pain.

“Aha!” the Lectodinian rider exclaimed as he saw her. “This time, escape will not be so easy.”

“You can’t kill us all, Elman,” she said. “And I’ll not go down without a fight.”

“Anything less would be … unsporting,” the Lectodinian said with a tone of voice that made Garrick’s skin crawl.

The woman and the Lectodinian cast spells at the same time. Their magic clashed with multicolored sparks in the middle of the clearing.

She was Torean.

Of course she was.

Who else would a mage of the orders be chasing around in the midnight hours? It made him mad. He felt his energy stir, and he set gates as he reached to the plane of magic.

The Lectodinian appeared stronger than the woman, but he held his energy in reserve, toying with the Torean like she was a crippled mouse and he was a tomcat. A Koradictine mage, and another Lectodinian edged closer, crimson fire already playing on the fingertips of the Koradictine.

They hadn’t seen him, Garrick thought.

He used his anger to focus his work. He pulled magic through his link, matching the Koradictine’s timing as the mage cast a bolt of raw energy toward the woman. It was a powerful sorcery, and well-cast, but rather than fight him, Garrick let the spell’s momentum carry it forward and only served to divert it gently along a new course that hit the second Lectodinian squarely in the chest.

The mage fell to the ground like a sack of flour.

“What?” the Koradictine cried with surprise.

Garrick felt the dead Lectodinian’s energy rise from its body. Without a thought, he drank it in. It felt good, he realized with morbid satisfaction. Gloriously good.

“What did you do that for?” the lead mage snapped at the Koradictine.

“I didn’t.”

The Koradictine stared wildly into the woods and threw a hastily prepared ball of mage fire toward Garrick’s position. Garrick stepped away so the fireball merely sputtered in the undergrowth. These were powerful mages playing a deadly game.

This was no time to hesitate.

Garrick gripped his sword in one hand, and his wild energy boiling up as he rushed forward.

Another bolt flashed in the woods.

Garrick drew near the Koradictine, and the mage’s horse skittered. The mage waved a hand, and it was suddenly as if Garrick were walking through bog water. He cut the mire with a blast of life force, and plowed on. Then the Koradictine was close enough that Garrick could smell the horse’s lather and see the pupils of the mage’s eyes.

The odor of blood was cloying.

Red fire played on the Koradictine’s fingertips.

Garrick focused his life force on the tip of his sword as he swung the blade. It took the wizard under the rib cage just as he released his spell. The mage fell to the ground and white pain flared in Garrick’s chest.

He stood over the mage, then, blood pounding, his body burning with new hunger.

The Koradictine was still alive.

A grotesque grin crawled across Garrick’s face. A staggering need for vengeance flooded his mind. He caressed the life force inside the injured mage, molded it as he bent forward, thinking about Alistair, thinking about his fellow apprentices, and thinking about the orders’ cowardly attack on him in Caledena.

Someone will pay,
Garrick thought.

Someone will pay.

Light flared around him.

Energy crackled in the space between his fingers.

The wizard screamed from his place on the ground—a terrified, inhuman scream. Then he was done, and the wizard’s body lay in a huddled mass amid the forest undergrowth.

Sweat broke over Garrick’s forehead.

He had done it. He had ripped a man’s life force straight from his living body.

Blue magelight rose behind him.

He turned to see the Lectodinian leader, palm burning with illumination as he peered toward Garrick, his eyes hooded and his lips set in a tight line.

Garrick stepped into the clearing, his sword dripping Koradictine blood. His eyes were bloated and red-rimmed with the power of new life force.

“You are a demon,” the mage said.

“No,” Garrick replied as he strode toward the wizard. “But you’re going to wish I was.”

The Lectodinian kicked at his horse’s flank, and pulled its reins to turn it around. “Your luck is strong tonight,” he said to the woman as he doused his magelight.

Then the horse thundered into the darkness.

Unnoticed, Darien stepped from behind a tree as the mage passed. He reached up and pulled the rider roughly off his saddle. The man’s body hit the ground with a solid thud. Darien quickly placed a knee on Elman’s chest, then roped his hands and feet with cord.

Garrick stood over them both.

The power of their life forces was bold, the aroma sweet and strong. Wild magic boiled inside him as he reached toward Darien’s hunched form.

No!
he thought to himself.

He pulled back and put his shaking hand to his temple, gasping as the hypnotic focus he had been under was broken.

“Are you all right?” Darien said, looking up.

“Yes,” Garrick answered, perhaps too quickly. “That was well done.”

“Thank you,” Darien said, apparently oblivious to the full extent of Garrick’s struggle.

The woman called from the clearing.

“If the meeting of your mutual admiration society is over, maybe one of you could lend me a hand?”

Darien smirked.

“You want to help drag this guy back over there?”

The mage was still gasping for breath.

Garrick thought or a moment. “I think it best that you gather him up yourself,” he said.

Darien looked at him askew.

“Trust me on this one.”

“Yes, mighty wizard,” Darien replied. “I hear and I obey.”

Garrick ignored Darien’s sarcasm and returned to the clearing where the woman stood like a ferryman, her own magelight now raised in her hand. She was struggling to get her foot dislodged.

“Those were my favorite boots,” she said, peering at her feet with disgust.

“Sunathri, I assume?” Garrick said.

“You can call me Suni,” the woman replied. She stood straight and looked directly at Garrick. “And if you are who I expect you are, I’ve been looking for you.”

Chapter 12

Suni was, quite simply, beautiful. Her cheekbones were rounded, her jaw triangular. Shocks of dark hair fell over her forehead and flowed down her shoulders. She winced as she tried to untangle her leg, struggling against her sorcerous trap with stately grace despite cradling her ribcage with a willowy arm.

Holding her magelight low, she bent to examine her foot.

“Are you going to help me?” she asked.

Garrick drew a dagger from his belt and knelt to the task as Darien dragged the Lectodinian into the clearing.

“Hold on, Garrick,” Darien said.

Garrick paused, and both he and Suni turned toward his friend.

“Shouldn’t we ask her a few questions before we set her free?”

“There’s a gentleman for you,” she said.

“If the orders were chasing her, she’s trustworthy enough for me,” Garrick replied. He turned back to hack at the webbing that held her captive. A moment later she was free.

She flexed her leg, and scowled at the damage to her boot. She winced again when she took a deep breath.

“How badly are you hurt?” Garrick asked.

“It’s nothing that won’t heal. I’m more worried about my horse.”

He nodded with understanding. “Let me go look at him.”

“It’s all right. I can handle putting down my own mount.”

“I may be able to avoid that.”

“Not a chance.” She winced as she breathed deeply again.

“Let me do this,” Garrick replied. “I’ve always been pretty good with horses. Besides, you can hardly move.”

He leveled what he hoped was a commanding stare at her.

“All right,” she finally said.

Her relieved expression told him all he needed to know. Despite her steeled demeanor, she hated the idea of putting the animal down.

He looked at Darien.

“We’ll talk about what to do with the mage when I return. In the meantime why don’t you gather up the rest of the horses?”

Darien nodded. “All right.”

The horse lay on its side, breathing heavily, staring at Garrick with frightened eyes, and smelling of lather that came of hard running.

Garrick shuddered.

He had known the injuries would be bad, but seeing them turned his stomach. Both front legs were broken and bleeding.

He rubbed the horse’s flank and spoke in a voice so soft it might have been a song. He bent to the animal, working Braxidane’s magic down the horse’s shoulders and slowly into its forelegs. Energy flowed and he did his best to work with it. The damage was great, but Garrick merged so deeply with the beast that he could feel the calcium coarseness of its bones and the smooth grace of the muscles around them. He brought fractures together, willed growth, and felt blood and marrow surge once again.

The horse stirred and whinnied.

Garrick pulled back then, sweat making his shirt cling to his shoulder blades. He shivered in the cool evening.

The horse stood, nickering at first. Then it tested its legs for firmness, picking each up with stork-like dressage, and prancing before finally standing proud and still in the nighttime.

The animal’s coat shimmered with starlight.

It gave a throaty huff and bowed its head, its eyes huge and dark.

Garrick bowed his own head in return, feeling something deep inside him that he would never be able to describe to anyone.

The animal turned away then, walking toward the clearing where Darien and Suni would be waiting.

He emerged to find Suni bent and examining the horse’s forelegs.

“He has no scars,” she said.

She waited, but Garrick did not respond.

He was tired, and merely making it safely back to the clearing was more taxing than he wanted to admit.

Darien returned to the clearing leading the horses of each of the felled mages.

“The bodies are still in the woods,” he said. “Perhaps we should burn them.”

“Burning’s too good for them,” Suni replied.

“I’ll not leave them here to rot,” said Darien.

“We can wait until morning to decide,” Garrick said. He glanced around, feeling suddenly claustrophobic under the canopy of the trees whose leaves were freshly formed. “We need to rest, and I want to take a look at your ribs.”

Sunathri started to argue, but nearly doubled over when she drew a breath to speak.

“All right,” she finally said.

Sunathri went first, holding magelight ahead of her. Darien was next, dragging the Lectodinian and giving her directions. Garrick walked behind, leading the horses.

When they reached camp, Darien dropped the Lectodinian alongside the rocky wall and set to bringing their fire back to life.

Suni sat by the embers and reached her good hand out to warm herself.

Garrick knelt beside her. “Give me your arm,” he said.

She grimaced when he moved it.

He took her hand in his, and put the palm of his other hand low on her ribcage. She was thin, but strong, her hand chilled and dry. His fingers trembled, but he knew it had little to do with the wild magic inside him. Sunathri, he decided, was a fiercely attractive woman.

“Where does it hurt?”

“Farther up. When I breathe,” she said.

He slid his hand up her ribcage. “Here?”

“Farther—aaghh!”

He pulled back. What little life force he retained stirred in aggravation.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“I’m the one who should be sorry,” she replied, biting her lip. “Can you fix it?”

“We’ll see.”

He reached inside himself and tried to stir the life force that remained. The energy was easier to handle now that the current wasn’t as strong. The taste of honey came to him. He focused on her ribs, but couldn’t ignore the whole of her essence. Sunathri was motion. She was confidence.