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Rhoden snapped awake. His grip tightened on his swordhilt. He lay still, silent, casting for any trouble.
His men slept around him. No shouts of danger came. Seeping in came awareness of when he was, no longer in the king’s service, and where he was, at the Archais citadel, and what the dangers were, sorcerers and their shifters.
And Inkeri, not a danger to him or his men. Definitely not a danger.
An innate sense honed by years of campaigning told that dawn neared. The coldest hour, when unwary men were most vulnerable. More than once he and his men had repelled an attack at dawn, and those victories eventually led to the Argent king’s victory over the Cortes king.
He sat up, casting off his blanket. Faint torchlight showed his men still asleep. Murmured voices told him of the men on watch in the corridor.
One person in the gallery was still awake, braced against the wall under a window. Inkeri.
When he stood, careful not to wake anyone, she rolled to her feet.
He gestured to the lighted doorway, and she picked a path to cross the room.
By mute consent, they entered the hallway. He raised a hand to the sentries, and they returned to their muttered conversation. He stared a long while at the shifter encased in pulsing blue power, a sphere like ice even though it melted beneath him. Then, voice barely above a whisper, he asked, “Did you not sleep?”
“I could not. Too many questions.”
“How many sorcerers? How many wyre? Was the watcher we sensed a sorcerer?”
She drew her blanket closer. “Or something more dire?”
That question chilled him. He touched her arm, drawing her away from the door, toward the stairs to the upper floors, farther from his men and the wyre encased in the eldritch sphere. She sank onto the second step, and he joined her. She slumped a little. Did the desert air chill her? Or was it the power she wielded to maintain that icy sphere?
He’d seen her jerk icy whips from a magical sphere and freeze constrictors. She’d wielded a strange, covert magic to set her trap against the sorceress, funneling a flesh-eating acid through the sand and to the dead Almandis. When the sorceress had reached to his blood for her spell, she absorbed the acid and died.
This sphere was stranger yet. Blued power surrounded the wyre. The power looked like the rime that iced branches and dead fruit in the deeps of winter. “Stasis,” she had called it, to keep the wyre alive long enough to answer their questions.
As a mundane, lacking arcane power, he should fear Inkeri and the elemental power she wielded. Fear had naught to do with what he felt for her. And in this moment, she didn’t seem strong enough to cause fear in anyone. Her eyes looked sunken, with deep shadows beneath. Hollows darkened her cheeks. He kept his touch at her elbow and wished he could warm her against the night’s chill.
“Have you decided which questions we should ask, Inkeri?”
“My lord, since you defeated him in battle, the wyre will look to you as the dominant. All questions should come from you.”
“As long as I know yours. We should ask about that watching sense, do you not think?”
She shuddered.
The watcher scared her, more than wyre, more than another sorcerer. What would terrify a wielder who hadn’t flinched from fighting sorcery?
“I would also ask where my men are.”
“Do you think they live?” she whispered.
“This citadel is a vast place. They may wait somewhere within, needing us. Only half the Verte troop lay dead in the gate court. Where are the others? Are my men with them? Did any of the merchants survive? This wyre will know those answers.”
“He will not know all you ask. Sorcerers enslave the wyres. They keep the packs untrained and illiterate. Since Frost Clime began the war, they have allied with the wyre packs of the far north. Those wolfen are trained fighters. We may face both trained and untrained.”
“How will we know which he is?”
“We won’t. Just ask the questions you most wish to know, my lord. Once I lift the stasis, he will not live long.”
“As long as he answers those first three questions.”
Bootsteps on the stairs above heralded a soldier returning from his watch on the roof parapet. He checked when he saw the baron and Inkeri then continued to give a clipped salute. “Sun’s rising, my lord.”
“Wake the others. Get the jeffah going.”
The man grinned.
“And send someone to take your post.”
“Aye, my lord.”
Rhodren looked down at Inkeri. She barely topped his shoulder, yet he would ask for no other to stand with him. He’d seen her mettle.
Aye, she’d be a wonderful lady for his barony, with its threats from the Cortes and machinations from other barons and the king’s worry that a strong leader would rise against him.
“Lead on, Inkeri. The day does not wait for us.”
. ~ . ~ . ~ .
The hours of maintaining the fluctuating sphere had stressed Inkeri’s mind. She envied Rhodren’s speed of rising and accepted the hand he reached down to her. She didn’t expect to stumble as she straightened. He steadied her against his sturdy frame.
“I need jeffah,” she excused, hoping he didn’t realize that she hadn’t slept and that power had stressed her concentration. “We must not delay. The wyres may attack soon.”
“We’ve never fought them before, just men and natural wolves. I heard your advice last night, but—. They say a bite. . . .”
“Only a Prime’s bite will infect you outside Moon-turn. Fight them as you do wolves.”
“Lady Moon is in two nights. How do we recognize the Prime?”
“Size and—he won’t have green-rimmed eyes, the way the wyres had last night. Did you see? Primes can change at will. Sorcery forces the change in the lesser pack members.”
“Then we must leave the citadel before tomorrow night—or kill all of them.”
“We don’t know how many are here.”
“That,” his gaze shifted to the power-encased wyre, “he must answer.”
Near the gallery door some men stood, talking idly as they watched the wolfen. A man stood at the door to the first room where they had stabled the horses. With arms crossed, he waited his relief, yawning hugely with a tiredness Inkeri dared not show. Those at the entrance had turned to watch.
They reached the wyre, and a greater trouble than weariness rushed upon her.
The wyre shivered in the stasis sphere. That shouldn’t happen. The static water around him had purpled as blood mixed with the blue of her elemental power. Beneath him, seeping down, the sphere was red and purple and blue. He had bled long and constantly.
She knelt and hovered a hand over him. Closing her eyes, dampening her ears, she focused all her attention on the sphere.
“What is it?”
The elemental energy had wavered more than she realized. Never before had she held it for more than a candlemark. The wyre had attacked at the beginning of first watch, a ploy that banked on the sentries believing the attack would be in a later watch, in the deeps of the night when even the most vigilant would be lured toward sleep. Inkeri hadn’t checked the sphere, believing her power would remain constant. Plants didn’t bleed, not as men and animals did.
“Inkeri?” Rhodren pressed.
“He dies,” she said baldly and straightened, more rapidly than she should have, for she again stumbled, dizzy with the rush of blood.
He caught her arm. “This you expected.”
“He has been dying these many hours, in pain these many hours.”
“But you said—.”
“I was wrong,” she snapped, angry with herself, with her weakness, with her arrogance, to believe she could hold a spell for so long without it changing. “My power wavered when it should not have.”
“You didn’t know—.”
“I should have,” and she released the sphere.
Elemental energy surged into her, a wash of power that revived her.
The ice of the stasis melted quickly, soaking the floor beneath the wolfen. It puddled outward. The shift, forced by sunrise, writhed through him. Fur receded into skin; bones reshaped. The wolf muzzle retreated into a man’s blunt profile. Paws became hands and feet. The wyre shuddered as he transformed. Naked, he lay gasping. The magical change had closed the wound, visible outward, invisible inward, but blood loss puddled around his body.
His eyes fluttered but didn’t open. Each breath rasped in his throat.
Rhodren knelt, careful to avoid contact with the blood. He grasped his belt knife. Inkeri thought the wyre too weak to attack, but she drew a throwing knife.
“Wyre? Answer me, wyre.”
He groaned. His eyes slitted open, but he didn’t look up. Nor did he move to an easier position.
“Wyre?”
“Go `way,” he sighed out. “Go far.”
“I have questions. I want answers.”
The wyre huffed. His eyelids shut.
Rhodren glanced at Inkeri, then he used his knife blade to tap the man’s shoulder. “Wake up, wyre.”
“I die,” he breathed.
Inkeri knelt and peered into the wyre’s face. “You do not die, not yet. Answer the baron.”
His nostrils flared. He sneered. “Fae.” His eyes cracked open and slid to Rhodren. “With a Naught.” He huffed another laugh. “Useless.”
“We waste the little time that remains to you,” she warned. “Redeem a little of the evil you’ve done before you slip into the nether realm. Answer the baron, and I will give you ease.”
“A Fae gate to Neotheora?” His eyes closed. He sagged heavily. His breaths labored. “I go without aid. I go free.”
“Where are my men?”
He groaned. “Dead, too. Waiting at gate.”
“Where are their bodies?”
He hissed. “Search and die.” Then his eyes opened to find Inkeri. They looked clear and focused. “Tasty bite. Wish to see.”
Tasty bite? She shook her head. Rhodren again asked about his men, but the wyre ignored him. “Do you serve sorcerer or sorceress?”
He swallowed. “Frost Clime—all same.” He gasped, struggling to take the next breath. “All same. All serve. Will die, Fae, man, all. Know not. . . .”
“Tell me,” Rhodren urged.
“All die. It . . . craves.”
“How many are you?”
“Only ... take ... one.”
“Only one wyre? To kill all my men? I don’t believe you. Where are they?”
Inkeri tapped her knife on the floor before the wyre’s face. His eyes opened to fasten on the blade. “One pack or two, wyre?”
Those eyes unfocused then slid closed. She rapped the floor, but he didn’t open them. He heaved a breath then breathed, “One claw ... enough. We pay ... cost.”
“What cost?”
“Not sorcerer. Sorcerer ... never ... pay. Slave ... pay.” His breath rasped. “Fae pay. Naught ... pay. All die. We ... die.”
“Tell me, wyre. Who will we pay a cost to? Who did your packs pay a cost to?”
“Venom. Fae Mark.” Then he sagged deeper onto the floor. His breath rattled out.
He didn’t take another breath.
