The young woman forced her terror back and stared up the length of her outstretched arms to the frayed bit of rope that prevented her from plunging into the lake so far below.
"Please," she whispered in agony. Her arms felt like melting lead, and her body seemed to grow heavier by the second. There was nothing beneath her feet to catch her weight-nothing but air and that terrible fall to the water. Teza stilled a sob. She hated water.
The young woman looked higher into the eyes of the creature who dangled her so carelessly over the edge of the high cliff. He was blacker than night's shadow, hungrier than a shark, and more beautiful than the most exquisite horse Teza had ever seen. Some people said the rare predatory water horses, the aughiskies, did not exist, but Teza would have been delighted to trade places with any of those doubters just to prove them wrong.
A tense stillness closed around her. There was only her hoarse breathing, which rasped like a threnody behind the beating of her terrified heart. She sensed a scream well inside her from the depths of her mind, and it spread outward to her heart, lungs, throat, and mouth until she nearly burst with the primal terror within her.
The aughisky's eyes glowed green with their own cruel fire. Deliberately he shook the rope attached to his bridle. Teza slipped downward. Her face turned white, and her features screwed into a mask of panic.
Suddenly he wrenched the rope out of her hands, and Teza began to fall.
The scream so tightly held burst loose in a horrible, rending shriek of protest. "NO!"
Teza bolted awake to the sound of her own voice. Blackness enveloped her, and she tore frantically at the blanket that covered her head. Panting, wet with sweat, she scrambled out of her rough bed and crouched like a cornered beast by the embers of her campfire.
Close beside her, head hung low to see her, stood the aughisky, blacker than the night around him. His large eyes gleamed a ghastly light, and he watched her with an uncanny intelligence she found disconcerting. He snorted, a noise that sounded suspiciously like laughter.
"Oh, gods of all!" Teza gasped and collapsed to a sitting position by her fire. She heaped wood on the embers until the flames roared, but the heat and light did little to dispel the cold fear that settled in her bones from that terrible nightmare. It had seemed so real!
What am I going to do? she thought. Over a year ago, she had fled Immilmar with a price on her head and a stolen aughisky in her keeping. Since that time, she had hidden in the wild lands-far from the city she loved and the lake that nourished her horse. They had scraped out a meager living, but Teza was sick of the struggle, and she could see the aughisky was not thriving.
What he felt about their circumstances, she didn't know. She never knew what he was thinking. Teza usually had a close rapport with horses, and she loved this glorious black animal with a passion she had never felt for another beast. But he remained aloof, unfriendly at times, watchful, and distrustful. She knew he could not leave her voluntarily, nor would he really try to drown and eat her because of the spell of binding she had placed on him with a hippomane. Yet he always seemed so cold and distant.
Something cool brushed her cheek. Teza looked up from her fire and saw with dismay snowflakes swirling around her camp. It was early in the month of Uktar, and already winter approached. Winter the year before had been a miserable series of frozen hungry nights and empty hungry days.
She turned to study the aughisky. There were real risks taking a water horse that drowned and ate humans to Immilmar. On the other hand, what was worse? The threat of exposure and imprisonment or the very real danger of freezing if she spent another winter in the wilderness? Her world was the city with its back streets, busy ports, markets, and people to keep her company. Surely her minor crimes had been forgotten by now.
The wind gusted through her camp, driving snow before it with icy-sharp teeth. Teza shivered. "Oh, to Thay with it all. I'm going home!"
Teza! You black-haired catamount! Where have you been?" A long-familiar voice boomed to her over the raucous afternoon noise of the busy tavern.
Teza looked up from a flagon of huild, and a grin spread over her long, swarthy face. "Rafbit!" she exclaimed, acknowledging a friend she had not seen for a year.
She watched with pleasure as a shaggy, slightly disheveled half-elf wove his way through the crowd toward her. Slender as a willow branch and sinuous as a weasel, he always reminded Teza of a cat in the way he could move through a room light-footed, silent, causing barely a ripple in the crowd as he passed. That ability, as well as delicately etched features and blue-black hair, were inherited from his moon-elf mother. His voice, Teza firmly believed, was bequeathed solely by his father, a Rashemi berserker of prodigious skill and temper.
She slid over to make room for him at the bench near the roaring fire.
"The last time I saw you," he said heartily, dropping down beside her, "you were packing your worldly goods before the Fang found your door. Something about the Huhrong's prized stallion turning up in the Fair Street Horse Market?"
Teza winced. The volume of Rafbit's talk drowned out the voices around them and caused heads to turn their way.
"Whisper, Rafbit," she reminded him.
The half-elf grinned good-naturedly. He was used to such advice. "So where have you been?"
"Living among the wild things," Teza replied. She pulled a long swallow from her flagon to savor the fiery taste ofthejhuild. "By the cloak, I missed that."
"When did you come back?"
The thief did not twitch from her pleasant contemplation of the firewine, but her senses jumped alert. She knew Rafbit well enough to hear the slightly tensed tone in his words. There was more than simple curiosity in his question. She replied casually, wondering what he was about. "About two days ago."
Rafbit lowered his voice even further until he actually reached an undertone. "Teza, you are a gift from Mask! Your return couldn't have come at a better time. How about a job?"
She moved then, deliberately pulling a plate of bread and sjorl cheese closer to break off several pieces. While she ate, she studied the man beside her.
Rafbit was an old friend, not a close one and not one she would willingly trust with her life, but still a friend. Her problem was she could never entirely trust his motives. A streak of self-serving maliciousness ran through his character, and it sometimes landed other people in serious trouble. She stared intently into his face, but all she could see was excited query.
"What sort of job?" she asked mildly.
"Come to my place." He hustled Teza out the back door into the bitter blue twilight.
Winter had come with a certainty since Teza returned to Immilmar, bringing snow and freezing winds. People dressed in layers of wool, leather, and furs and hurried more than normal through the busy streets of the Iron Lord's capital.
The tavern Teza and Rafbit had left was a tiny place tucked away in a back alley in the lowest, dirtiest part of the city. It was a place frequented mostly by patrons who had moved beyond the law and did not wish to be bothered by the guardians of the Huhrong's peace. Thus, it was very unusual to see a horse standing against the wall near the exit. Especially a horse of such magnificence and color.
Rafbit's eyes widened when he saw it, and he chuckled. "You're slipping, Teza. Inside taking your ease when this gorgeous animal is out here looking for a new master."
"He's not looking for a master," Teza said dryly. "He's looking for a meal."
"A meal? That horse doesn't look hungry. I've never seen a beast look as healthy as that one." He walked toward the black animal slowly but confidently.
Teza agreed. To her relief, the aughisky had flourished since they returned to the environs of Lake Ashane, and now his glossy sable coat and perfect conformation made him an eye-catcher in a city where most of the horses were short, shaggy work beasts. Already several of her competitors had disappeared. "Be careful," she added, a warning to both the half-elf and the aughisky.