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Grim writhed and fell, thrashing with a pain she didn’t understand. His convulsing body ground over the pebbles.
Watching the shifting wyre, Orielle edged around him then halted as the transformation ended. The Prime rose from a crouch. Naked, he blocked her advance to Grim.
“Well, pretty wizard, we meet again.” He stretched out a hand. Long as a weapon, yellow claws extended from his man-shaped fingers. His voice held no threat, but those claws did. “You invited me to play. Here I am.”
Grim’s scream cut her answer. She stared at his writhing body then jerked her gaze back to the Prime.He had closed the distance between them. “Stay back,” she warned and flung up a hand. Power ringed it, spinning faster and faster.
He laughed. “Wizardry can’t hurt the wyre.”
Grim squirmed. Those storm-grey eyes fastened on her, then his face contorted, matching the twisting of his body. Pain ripped from his throat.
“What’s wrong with him? You bit him. Is he transforming?”
The amusement vanished. “He’s dying. Rho don’t transform. A wyre bite poisons them. But you, pretty wizard, you’ll transform.” When he smiled this time, she saw his elongated canines. His tongue flicked out. “I’ll enjoy your taste.”
Sangrior was lost to her. She didn’t hesitate. “Volk. Volk! Volk, come to me!”
By her third calling of the Kyrgy knight’s name, the wyre scowled. When thunder clapped, he flinched. When the light flashed and the knight appeared, he sprang.
Volk thrust him backwards. His sword flashed. Violet ice rimed the blade.
The Prime snarled. “Lady Bone allies to this wizard?”
“The Lady needs no ally. Your sorceress crosses the lines. She tampers with the gobbers, who belong to my Lady. She allowed your hunts, yet you kill for the pleasure of it. She takes one of my Lady’s riders without recompense.”
“The gobbers accept the rule of the sorceress.”
“They cannot make that choice. All the creatures of this Wilding are my Lady’s.”
“Whether they want her rule or not?”
Volk did not attempt to control his expression. He scowled openly, deeply. “They do not make that choice. They are my Lady’s.”
“And this wizard?”
“The bargain between my Lady and this wizard supercedes the death your sorceress will give. Only when the pact between them ends may the sorceress have her.”
The wyre shook his head. His pelted chest thrust forward. “Not so, slave. We are old enemies, Frost Clime and Enclave. Your Lady must cede to us.” He grinned at Orielle and once again extended his hand. “Come to me, pretty wizard. Come and die.”
Volk stepped before her. “She has my guard.”
“Then face death, knight who cannot live.” The Prime crouched. Fangs crowded his unshifted mouth. His claws extended, reaching the length of a short sword.
Laughing, Volk swung his blade, cutting Air with a hiss.
With a growl, the wyre dropped to all fours and shed man-shape. A quick blur, faster than the other wyre, and he became a large wolf. He sprang.
The storm-violet sword slashed upward. The wyre yelped as Volk’s blade cut into his front leg. He fell short of the knight. Blood splashed onto the pebbles. He crouched on his haunches then sprang again, using his back legs for power. Volk thrust upward.
The blade pierced the wyre’s chest. Momentum thrust the knight back several steps. With the screech of a man, the Prime writhed on the blade, then strength left his body. His weight forced the sword down, to the shore.
The limp body blurred, and a man lay lifeless, the violet blade piercing his chest.
When Volk pressed a foot to the man’s chest, Orielle sped past him and fell to her knees beside Grim, curled into a ball and shuddering as the wyre’s poison worked into him.
The Kyrgy cleaned his blade in the river. Then he came to stand over her. “I will not ask how you learned my name. The suffering has lasted long enough.”
“You killed the Prime.”
He had looked to count the other dead wyre. Black eyes swiveled back to her. “Another will take his place and his strength from the pack. Nine remain. They will hunt you, Not-Wizard.”
“Six remain. I killed two up on the mountain. And we buried the seventh, remember?”
Lifted eyebrows were the only evidence of his surprise. He had returned to the guise of marble knight with icily controlled emotions. “A good accounting then.”
Grim screamed. Pain spiraled through him.
“Can you help him?”
“I have no powers of healing, not for a Rho poisoned by wyre bite.”
“Can Lady Skuld help him?”
“You have her name, too?”
“Please.”
“What will you give, Lady Aiwaz?”
“I will not let him die. Can she help him?”
“No.” Grim growled the word. “No. Let me die.” Then the poison screwed through him and tore out a scream.
“Volk!”
“You will create a great debt to the Lady. She will have you.”
“So be it. Call her.”
He did nothing. But a flash as quick as lightning blinded her. When she blinked, Lady Bone stood beside her knight. Sangrior stood at her shoulder. He didn’t stand as straight, his shoulders were not as squared. He carried no sword.
Blood oozed from cuts on his neck, looking black against the marble whiteness of his flesh.
Orielle didn’t curtsy. She stood and tossed back her head. She pointed to Grim. “Can you heal him?”
“No greeting?” the Lady asked, but she smiled, for she knew she held the higher hand. Gliding forward, her white gown trailed behind her, like a wraith crossing. The pebbles didn’t crunch at her weight.
She stopped at Grim, a rocking ball that twisted on the ground. “No,” he ordered, the word grating. Then the Lady stepped over him and reached Orielle.
“I will need his name.”
“I do not know it.”
White eyelids closed over black eyes then opened slowly. “Truth. He did not trust you enough. For a Rho to trust a wizard, that would be a great thing. The Rhoghieri of the Haven will not so easily fall into alliance with the Enclave.”
Politics didn’t matter to her. “Can you heal him? Will you?”
The Lady’s long claws grazed Orielle’s chin then traced over her jaw, lifting to touch her cheek then her temple. She stood still and let the Kyrgy examine her. This close, she saw that the Lady’s eyes were not wholly obsidian. The sclera was black rather than white, but the iris was colored a deep blue.
“Do you bargain for him, Not-Wizard?”
She met those midnight velvet eyes without wavering. Grim groaned. She wanted to kneel beside him and take the pain away. Am I bargaining for him? He would refuse it. So the bargain is for me, to know that he is in this world, not dead, not cold, not lost to Neothera.
“For me. I bargain his healing for me.”
The claws tightened to pinpricks. Lady Bone’s smile widened, revealing the sharpness of her fangs. “You surprise me. Wizards do not count Rho lives as important.”
“I do. Did you prophesy then, when you called me Not-Wizard?”
“You gain wit. What bargain will you make?”
Her gaze swiveled to Sangrior. What tithe had he paid for his help to her? What tithe would Volk pay? How did she create a bargain that did not leave her indebted to Lady Skuld for centuries? “I do not seek to become one of your Kyrgy slaves.”
Volk lunged to her side. A knife she hadn’t expected pressed to her throat. “Shall I kill her, Lady?”
Sangrior lifted a hand. Red marks, jagged like lightning, had joined the white scars on his arm. “Lady, she does not understand.”
Lady Bone released Orielle and touched fingers to Volk’s blade. “Stand down, my love. This Not-Wizard is no threat to me.”
“Lady, she insults you.”
“From ignorance,” Sangrior flashed.
“Did I not cleanse the hold this Solsken has on you, my knight?” She returned to his side. Her touch to Sangrior’s cheek seemed tender, but three thin lines of red opened.
He didn’t flinch. His gaze dropped from Skuld’s and fastened on the shore. “Lady, you know all. She has no hold on me, not now.”
“You defend her when you should be wholly mine.”
“I am wholly yours,” he swore, “from my first ride to this day. But the Solsken is ignorant.”
“Does anyone go into a bargain knowing the whole of it?” She tapped his chin then gave him her back. “Have you forgotten, Not-Wizard? I am Kyrgy. These knights, all my riders, they are not slaves. They choose to be with me.”
“They choose between death and the limited life you offer, for however many years you extend it. Yet they are bound to you until you use them up. They are your slaves.”
“Do you see them escaping?” Then Skuld blinked. Her smugness faded. Unspoken was Saircuista, who had broken her bargain with the Lady and allied with a sorceress.
