She twisted and kissed him, and he clenched her to him, kissing her back hard and hungrily. How this much emotion had fountained out of nothing was something he couldn’t understand, but he would never get enough of her, never.
Adrenaline at what lay ahead had already started to beat a tribal rhythm in his chest. His hunger for her only heightened it. He bent her back over his arm, his kiss turning savage. They were both shaking when they wrenched apart, all lightheartedness and joking lost. She stroked his cheek and looked him deeply in the eye, her angular face serious. He brushed his mouth along her fingers.
Then, having already said everything they needed to say to each other, they left.
He glanced one last time over his shoulder, out the window at the gigantic stone faces of the gods. Hyperion faced the westering sun. The angled light had turned the god’s blank eyes golden.
Quentin had never been much for prayer, but this time, he decided to give it a go. Just see that we find her, he said silently to the god. We’ll take care of everything else.
They left the palace by way of the kitchens and stopped briefly to collect more portable food and wineskins filled with water—and another two bottles of brandy, because you never know, they might just be able to hang on to it this time—and they distributed it all evenly into two sacks, along with the vials of healing potion they had gathered from the barracks.
The light was fading fast by that point, so they jogged down to the shoreline and strode along the piers, looking for a small sailboat suitable for one or two people. They found one quickly and Aryal jumped in to hoist the sails while Quentin unfastened the ropes mooring it to the pier. He shoved it off and leaped in. The last of the day’s light lay fractured in slivers along the top of the rippling dark waves as they drifted beyond the pier into open water.
Aryal’s cloaking settled over the small boat like a shimmering veil. They had to figure out by trial and error how the tide ran, and how to move forward in the right direction using the angle of the wind. Eventually they settled into tacking in a zigzag course. By then the overlarge moon had risen and it shone with so much silvery light, to Quentin’s feline gaze the scene turned almost as bright as day.
They took turns eating, while the other remained vigilant at the tiller. Watching the island as it neared, he ate lightly, just enough fuel for whatever came next but not enough to weigh him down. While he swallowed his last bite of wayfarer bread, a flicker of light appeared.
It shone from the building that lay up the steep hill, nestled among the trees.
“We’ve got her,” he said softly. He could sense that Aryal had gone tense and still. He noticed something else too. Two piers at one end of the beach held several moored boats. “There are too many boats. We shouldn’t waste time trying to disable them all.”
Aryal asked, “What do you suggest?”
He turned to her. “I take point,” he said. “The current is running at an angle to the island. When we get close enough, I’ll swim the rest of the way to the beach. The witch is smart. She’ll have shadow wolves on the beach as sentries. We don’t know how, but somehow they’re linked to her, so I’ll draw her attention. Meanwhile, you sail with the current, land somewhere along the other side of the island and double back so that you come at the witch from behind.”
She studied his face. “You’ll draw her fire on your own?”
He gestured impatiently with one hand. “Yeah, it’s gonna hurt. That just means you’ll have to move fast. I’ll also try to wait a little while before I engage, to narrow down the lag time.”
Did she pause to think about how this might have been her opportunity to get rid of him, as he had once paused to think about her? No sign showed on her tense features. “I don’t like it.”
“Tough,” he said. He turned back to look at the island. “I’m the one who’s more equipped to fight the shadow wolves.”
“But you’ll be facing them both until I get to you. And while Elven armor is magic resistant, it doesn’t block everything. Once its resistance has been compromised, it’s no better than any other leather armor.”
“It’s better than a simple frontal assault,” he told her. “Her wolves could engage us to cover her retreat, and we’ll have expended our energy and given away the element of surprise for nothing. This way—she doesn’t know that you survived the first attack, sunshine. She might wonder, but she won’t know that you’re coming.”
She was silent for several moments. “Shit.”
“It makes sense,” he said gently.
“Okay, already!” she exploded. “But shit!”
He didn’t say anything. If their positions were reversed he would hate it just as much as she did, and there wasn’t any way to make it better. He studied the fast-approaching shoreline and rotated his shoulders, loosening them up for a swim and a fight. Was that a shadow he saw, pacing the beach?
They reached the point where she was going to have to angle away to avoid landing. He settled his supply sack and a wineskin of water firmly around his neck and one shoulder. Then he wrapped one hand around his arrows, holding them in the quiver, as he braced one foot on the edge of their small sailboat and prepared to jump over.
“Quentin,” she said.
She sounded so urgent that he paused to glance at her.
The expression on her face was tight, and her eyes burned with determination. Her mouth worked. Then she said, “I’ll hurry.”
He gave her a bright, hard grin. Then he launched over the side of the boat and hit the water, stopping only for a moment to watch as Aryal and the sailboat turned away. The strong current tugged him in the sailboat’s direction, so he couldn’t pause for long. He ducked his head and cut across the current, swimming in strong, sure strokes. The armor, weapons and supply sack made swimming awkward, and it was difficult to develop a rhythm.
But he didn’t have to go far. After a few minutes, he came up against the furthest boat at the end of the first pier, and he grabbed its anchor chain to tread water. He eased the supply sack, the skin of water, and the longbow and arrows over the rim of the boat as he studied the nearby beach. A path zigzagged up the hill that was so steep it warranted carved steps in places. It led to the top of a bluff. He could just see the edge of the trees at the top.
Down below on the beach, two spots of blackness glided across the sand as shadow wolves paced. They seemed restless. He recovered his breath as he studied them. Now that he knew what to expect, he could sense them quite well. Maybe, as Aryal had said, they weren’t the product of a magic spell, but he wasn’t convinced. Both wolves carried something of the same magical signature. It seemed too singular, as if stamped with a certain personality.
Did the witch have so much Power that she could cast a spell that acted like thirteen independent entities—and then not only maintain it indefinitely, but across large distances? His credulity balked at the idea.
Did the ones on the beach already know that he was here? Could they attack while he was still in the water, and if so, why did they hold back?
He pulled his own Power up and held it ready. Offensive spells were tricky to cast in battle, because they took time to create and fighting happened so fast. That was why the best and most effective spells were the simplest ones. They were easy to remember in a panic, and quick to spit out and do damage.
And one of the most effective spells of all was one that counteracted other dangerous magics.
One of the shadows stopped moving. It appeared to be facing him. It didn’t do anything, but just waited.
He wasn’t going to need the bow and arrows for this fight. He pushed away from the boat and glided toward shore, watching both shadows warily. The one shadow wolf never moved. The other didn’t stop pacing.