8

SOMETIME DURING THE ride across the valley, Lainie lost consciousness again. When she came to, she found herself lying on rocky ground in the midst of a circle of seated and standing men. A quick glance told her there were well more than a dozen of them; maybe as many as twenty. Canyon walls blocked part of the night sky, and clouds obscured most of the rest. In the distance, thunder rumbled, and the fresh, wet scent of rain drifted past her nose. Every part of her body hurt, from her pounding head to her tingling toes. Her hands and feet were still tightly bound, the ropes chafing her wrists and bruising her ankles. It was just as well that she couldn’t move, though; drawing the men’s attention to herself was the last thing she wanted to do.

“Why can’t we have a fire, boss?” a man asked.

“Yeah, it’s awful dark out here,” another man whined.

“You want the people from town to find us? Or the blueskins?” That was Gobby.

“Hey, boss, is it true you’re a wizard?” the first man asked.

“If I am,” Carden said, “I’m a wizard who’s going to make you fellows richer than you ever imagined. Got any complaints about that?”

“Well, no,” the miners answered, and, “I don’t see no problem with it.”

“Do we get to take turns with the girl?” someone else asked.

“If anyone touches her before she’s done what I need her to do, I’ll geld him. After that, well, I promised her to Gobby, so I reckon it’s up to him if he feels like sharing.”

Grumbling met this answer. “Hey, Gobby, we’re pals, right?” someone called out. “Just like brothers!”

Lainie struggled to collect her thoughts. Pa and Mr. Vendine had been standing closest to Carden, with no one else between him and them; they would have taken the full force of the explosion. Most likely they were in no shape to come after her. Were they even still alive? She swallowed a cry at a sudden rush of grief at the thought. And now that everyone knew she was a wizard, no one else would bother to help her. They would be just as happy to leave her to the mercies of Carden and Gobby, to save themselves the trouble of hanging her.

Even if Pa and Mr. Vendine had survived the blast in the saloon, how would they find her in the mountain canyons? There were five large canyons opening up from the Great Sky range into the Bitterbush Valley, and a number of smaller ones. No one knew how far back into the mountains those canyons went or how many smaller canyons fed into them. The mountains were blueskin territory and had never been mapped.

They would never find her, and she didn’t even have her gun. Carden would use her for his evil scheme, the blueskins would get mad and attack the settlers in the valley, and Gobby and the other miners would have their way with her. She closed her eyes again and tried to hold as still as if she were still asleep, and not think about Pa and Mr. Vendine being dead and what was going to happen to her, but a sharp, sobbing intake of breath escaped from her.

“Hey, boss, I think she’s awake,” one of the miners said.

“Ah, good,” Carden said. “I was afraid she would be out much longer than that.” Footsteps treaded across the gravelly earth, then stopped next to her. Lainie felt Carden’s presence as he squatted down beside her. He shook her shoulder, not as roughly as she had been expecting but none too gently, either. “All right, girl, come on. It’s time to start earning your keep. So long as you do what you’re told, you’ll stay alive and unmolested. You hear me, girl?”

She didn’t respond. He shook her harder, then dragged her up into a sitting position. She glared at him. “If you think you’re such a great wizard that you don’t have to obey the wizard laws, what do you need me for?”

Carden chuckled. “Is that what Vendine told you about rogue mages? Try looking at it this way, Miss Lainie. You Wildings settlers came out here because you got tired of living under the rule of the Mage Council and all their high and mighty friends. Well, it isn’t just Plain people who don’t care to live that way. There’s some of us mages who don’t like it either. We refuse to live under the bootheel of a handful of men who think they’re better than anyone else and that they have the right to tell the rest of us what we can and can’t do. Surely you fellas know what I mean?” he asked the miners.

“Put that way, Mr. Carden, sir, you sound a lot like us, even if you is a wizard,” Gobby said.

“So, Miss Lainie, to answer your question, yes, I am a mage of great power and I don’t have to bow down to anyone else. But I wasn’t born in the Wildings. You see, a person’s power takes on a lot of the magical qualities of the land where they were born. You were born out here in the Wildings, right here in this valley if I’m not mistaken, therefore you are attuned to the powers of the earth around here. In other words, it should be much easier for you to discover more deposits of the ore than it is for me. Studying the patterns of where my miners found the ore in the valley has led me to believe that there are rich veins of ore coming out from these mountains. Locating deposits just beneath the ground is one thing, but in order to find the biggest, deepest lodes I will need to make use of your particular sensitivity to the magic of this place. Does that answer your question, Miss Lainie?”

“What are you doing with the ore?” she asked.

“Well, now.” He smiled, showing strong, white, even teeth. His smile didn’t extend to the hard look in his eyes. “I don’t know that that’s something you need to trouble your pretty head about. All you need to worry about is what will happen to you if you don’t cooperate.” He took a small, heavy pouch out of the pocket of his suitcoat and tossed it carelessly in his right hand, again and again. The first finger of that hand now bore a wide gold ring set with a deep orange gemstone.

“If I’m going to have a part in whatever evil thing you’re doing with that ore, I want to know what it is.”

“Now, what makes you think it’s something evil? Why, Miss Lainie, I could be using it to make a cure for the worst diseases known to mankind.”

“If that’s what you’re doing, then why did you lie about foreign scientists wanting the ore? And don’t say you didn’t lie, because Mr. Vendine told me that scientists won’t have nothing to do with mages and magic.”

His eyes narrowed. “Do you believe everything Vendine told you? Because I could tell you a thing or two about mage-hunters like him that would curl your toes and make you decide I’m the safer bet.”

Lainie met his stare. “Why should I believe you? I know Mr. Vendine’s a good man.” And he was, she knew deep inside of her, no matter what her Pa or anyone else said. He had stood up to protect her Pa and the whole town. “And I’ve touched that ore. I know nothing good can come of it.”

Carden leaned forward, his eyes lighting up. “So, you’ve handled it. You’ve felt the power in it. You should indeed be of great help to me. Gobby, untie her hands, but hold on to her. Don’t let her try anything.”

Gobby moved behind her and started untying the rope around her wrists. She twisted and tried to jerk her arms away. “Grab her, Dinch!” Gobby ordered.

Another miner seized her left elbow, wrenching her shoulder, and Gobby loosed the rope from around her wrists. As soon as the rope fell away, he threw his arm around her neck, trapping her in a headlock. Carden captured her right arm in an iron grip. The pressure forced her hand open, and Carden upended the pouch of ore into her palm.

At the touch of the ore in her hand, a shock of sharp, painful cold shot up her arm to her chest. Her lungs froze; she couldn’t breathe. A thick, dark blanket of terror blinded her and smothered all thought from her mind. They were there, the beings who lived in the ore, they were inside her, and they wanted her. The sheer weight of their greed and malice pressed down on her, crushing her, as their cold fingers probed and violated every part of her body and tore into her mind.

They wanted to go home, and they wanted her to go with them. Her life-force would replenish them and in turn they would make her stronger. Her living body, able to walk beneath the light, and her power, greatly increased by theirs, would do their work, would eradicate the infestation of foul beings that swarmed upon their world –

No! Frantically, she scraped at the cold, dark, incorporeal fingers that probed and tore and grabbed, trying to drag her down with them to their home deep beneath the surface of the world. Let go of me! I won’t go with you! Leave me alone! With every shred of her strength, she fought to push them away and drag herself out of their grasp. There was no familiar voice calling her back, no glow of light to show her the way; all she had to guide her was the instinct to get away. Let me go! I don’t want this!

Finally she pulled herself free of the last scrabbling tendrils of cold. Someone was roughly shaking her. “I said, tell me where there’s more power!”

“They want to take me into the dark with them,” she wept in terror. “They want to use me to destroy everyone who lives in the light, they hate us…”

A hard blow struck her face. “Shut up! You won’t fool me with these female hysterics!”

The world around Lainie slipped back into place. She was huddled on the ground, Carden still squatting in front of her; Gobby sat beside him. Her face stung from the blow.

“Now, answer my question,” Carden demanded. “Where can I find more of that ore?”

She had dropped the chunks of ore. Was that what had allowed her to pull herself free? She stared down at the black lumps as she spoke. “It’s their life-force. Their spirit. All of their mind and thoughts, together.”

Carden picked up the pieces of ore and tossed them lightly in his hand, with no apparent ill effects. “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s power. It isn’t alive.”

Lainie stared at him, stunned by his blindness to the danger he was toying with. “They hate humans,” she said slowly, emphasizing each word. “They hate everyone and everything that lives in the sunlight. They want to destroy us. They want to make me into their weapon.”

“If you’re trying to tell me it’s an incredibly strong power, I already know that. I can handle it. What I want to know is, where can I find more of it?”

There was no getting through to him; all he cared about was his greed for the ore. If she couldn’t convince him that what he was doing was dangerous, she would have to find another way to stop him and to get away. Not that that looked likely the way things were now. Even if she managed to untie the ropes that bound her feet, she would have to contend with a powerful and lawless mage and twenty miners, all much larger and stronger than she was, and all armed.

Maybe, just maybe, Pa and Mr. Vendine were alive after all. Maybe they could follow her into the maze of canyons and take on Carden and his gang of miners –

No, she told herself. She couldn’t afford to depend on them to stop Carden and rescue her, not when she didn’t even know if they were alive. She was going to have to deal with Carden on her own and save herself. In the meantime, till she figured out how to do that, she had to keep herself alive and unhurt. Which meant giving Carden what he wanted, at least for now. She recalled the tug of the dark beings, the direction they had tried to pull her in. “We have to go farther back into the canyon,” she said. “That’s all I know right now.”

“All right, then. Gobby, tie her up again.”

Carden stood and mounted his horse. Gobby tied Lainie’s hands behind her and hauled her to her feet. “Can’t wait till you’re riding me instead of that horse, girl,” he said as he dragged her to Carden’s horse and tossed her up onto it, across Carden’s lap.

Lainie knew what was what; she knew what Gobby meant. The thought made her want to throw up. Just the words made her feel filthy. “You’re gonna have to stick with knocking sheep, Gobby. Or yourself, since the sheep won’t have you.”

Whistles, laughter, and jeers, and a curse from Gobby, answered this. Carden laughed as well. “I hope you like ’em spirited, Gobby, ’cause this one sure is! Let’s move.”

The other miners mounted up, except for a handful who climbed into the carts piled high with equipment and supplies. Lightning flashed, briefly illuminating the sloping sides of the canyon rising up into the mountains, and thunder cracked overhead. A few hard drops of rain hit the back of Lainie’s neck. The men complained about riding in the rain, but Carden ordered them to get going. “We want to cover as much ground as we can tonight,” he said. “There’s no time to lose.”

They rode off, the horse’s movements jouncing Lainie’s battered, aching body. She looked at Carden’s shiny black boot, just below her face, and wished she really would throw up.

A SENSATION OF being tossed around jolted Silas back into consciousness. Someone was trying to boost him up to lie on his stomach across a saddle. “I got it,” he mumbled. The person helping him backed away, and he managed to haul himself up onto Abenar. Burrett Banfrey, looking none too steady, was also mounted up nearby. A younger ranch hand, also on horseback, was leading a horse that Silas recognized as Lainie’s brown mare. Dobay, standing closest to Abenar, made sure Silas was steady in the saddle, then mounted his own horse.

“Dobe –” he started to say, then the words disappeared into the pounding in his head.

“Wik an’ me came in with Banfrey,” Dobay said. “We got knocked around a little by that explosion, but not as bad as you two, an’ we tried to stop them when they took Miss Lainie, but there was too many of them. Then we heard you say you’ll go after Miss Lainie, so we’re taking you back to the house to rest up first.”

The ride out to the Banfrey ranch was an endless blur of various discomforts. When they got to the house, the world was still swimming around Silas’s head. Everything in him demanded that he go after Lainie right away, before Carden and Gobby could do her any harm, but he didn’t think he could even stay in the saddle another minute. Dobay caught him as he half-dismounted, half-fell from his horse and guided him to a room somewhere in the house, where he dropped onto a bed and surrendered to unconsciousness.

He awoke later in the night to thunder and lightning and rain. A realization penetrated the fog around his brain – the rain would wipe out the tracks that Carden’s group left, making physical tracking much more difficult. Not impossible, but hard enough that it would be a job to figure out where they had entered the maze of canyons in the mountains to the west. He could sense Lainie’s location by her power, unless she was shielding; like many untrained mages, she seemed to have instinctively figured out how to hide her power. He might also be able to detect her shield, since camouflaging a shield was a much more difficult skill than making one, but that would be much harder from a distance. If she used magic along the way, that would also give him something to follow. But a physical trail would be the fastest and most reliable way to find her before Carden did her any harm.

At the thought of what Carden and Gobby might do to Lainie, desperate energy surged inside him. The need to find her and see her safe drove him to try to get out of bed, but his weakness and disorientation overcame him and he fell back. He was no good to anyone like this, he told himself; after he had rested and recovered he could make up lost time. The part of him that wanted to go after Lainie right away didn’t want to accept it, but soon lost the argument as he sank back into a heavy sleep.

When Silas woke up again, the room was bright and hot. The light and heat made his head pound even harder, but otherwise he felt stronger and less shaky, and his power had mostly regenerated. His long sleep had given Carden a substantial head start, but there was nothing to be done about it. He had been in desperate need of sleep; he would just have to push hard to make up the time. He seemed to remember Carden saying something about wagons; if Carden had wagons with him, that would slow him down, especially once he started up the canyons.

Silas got up and made his way out to the necessary. The sun was a little past midday, and tall thunderheads were building up over the mountains to the west and the hills to the east. He did his business, then wandered back inside to the dining room, hoping to find something to eat. Banfrey and Dobay were there, sitting at the table with plates of cold stew and biscuits.

“Sit down,” Banfrey said through a mouthful of biscuit. “It’s what Lainie was fixing for us last night. Still good, even cold.”

Silas got a tin plate from the sideboard and joined the other two men at the table. He plopped a big ladleful of cold stew onto the plate and set a biscuit in the middle of it to soak up the congealed gravy. There was a pitcher of water on the table, so he found himself a tin cup and poured some. His mouth felt parched and fuzzy, and the cold water, just pumped from the well, felt good going down.

“You mean what you said, that you’re going after Carden and Lainie? You’ll get my daughter back?” Banfrey asked.

“Yes, sir,” Silas replied. “I can’t leave Miss Lainie in the hands of men like Carden and Gobby. And it turns out Carden’s the man I’ve been hunting, though I wasn’t sure it was him until the day before yesterday.”

Banfrey and Dobay looked at each other, then nodded as though confirming a decision they had already made. “We’re going with you, Vendine,” Banfrey said. “One man can’t take on that bunch alone, even if he is a wizard.”

Silas set his fork down. “Meaning no disrespect, Banfrey, but the two of you would be in way over your heads. You saw how Carden repelled my shot at him. He’s powerful, how powerful I can’t even guess. Neither of you would have a chance if he decided to attack you, and I’m not going to be able to protect you. I’m going to have to put all my attention and strength into dealing with him.”

“We might be able to help you with the other fellas, though. The miners. The two of us are pretty good shots,” Banfrey said. “Listen, Vendine. Lainie’s my baby girl. She’s all I got left. If I don’t go after her, then I don’t deserve to be called her Pa.”

“As for me,” Dobay said, “I’ve known Miss Lainie since she was born. I’m going to lay it out here – I know there’s been some thought of me marrying Miss Lainie.” Burrett gave him a sharp look. “I know,” Dobay went on, “you haven’t said nothing yet. But I’ve known you long enough to know how you think. I know you want what’s best for your family an’ your land, an’ you want them to stay together. That’s clear enough, an’ I’d have to be a fool not to pick up on the hints you’ve dropped. I’m not sayin’ I wouldn’t do it if you came right out an’ asked me to, but I don’t see Miss Lainie that way. She’s like kin to me. A niece, or even a daughter, almost. An’ I don’t think less of her for bein’ a wizard – she can’t help it – but bein’ married to a wizard, I’d worry even more than I do now, and that’s too much already. But you’ve been good to me, an’ I’ve watched Miss Lainie grow up almost like she was my own. So I’m coming with, too.”

Silas hadn’t imagined the foreman capable of such a long speech. The news that Banfrey had thought of marrying Lainie to his foreman was unwelcome; he was relieved to hear Dobay disclaim any interest in marrying her. How did Lainie feel about the idea? He hoped she wasn’t in love with Dobay. Not that it was any of his business, of course. It was just that it would be something else to tie her to the ranch when she was going to have to leave and go to Granadaia.

“So you see, Vendine,” Banfrey said, “we’re not asking you if we can come with. We’re telling you.”

Silas let out a long breath, unhappily admitting to himself that they were right. Carden and a dozen or more miners probably was more than he could handle alone, and it was Banfrey’s right to go after Lainie and to bring his longtime friend and foreman with him. “All right. I can’t argue with that. Just one thing – if I tell you to get out, you get out. Take Miss Lainie with you if you can, but get out. Understand?”

“Seems fair,” Banfrey said. “An’ in the meantime, we’ll do as much as we can to even the odds for you.”