Kelryn regathered her composure. She raised her head, studying the tavern through tear-glazed vision. No patrons remained. The serving girls wiped and rearranged the tables. The bartender restored bottles, bowls, and mugs. She rose, stretched, and headed through the door to the rooms beyond. Gathering her supplies, she went back into the common room and slipped out into the night. Any direction seemed as good as another when she had no way to know for certain where Edward and Nightfall had gone, so she followed her only lead.
The road to the eastern cities did not take Kelryn far before exhaustion overrode her. Determination had driven her until that moment; but, as the sun rose higher in the sky, the decision to chase randomly after a stranger and a man who hated and mistrusted her seemed foolish. In the cities, she was protected. Here, she felt vulnerable and alone, prey for woodland creatures as well as the bandits or rapists who menaced those who dared to travel without armed guards. And, though it made little sense for one without a natal talent to fear them, she worried about sorcerers most of all. She had seen the pain they could inflict, and the memory obsessed her.
As if to personify Kelryn’s fears, a man stepped casually from the brush. He wore unwrinkled linens, finely tailored. Light brown curls fell rakishly across his forehead, and his dark eyes examined her like prey. He held Ka doll in his hand, apparently fashioned from the same grayish mud as the pathway. She recognized him at once as the sorcerer who had ambushed Edward in her room, the one the prince had called the Iceman.
Kelryn gasped, taking an involuntary backward step. Her heart rate trebled in an instant, and images of blood and death scored her vision until the man in front of her seemed to disappear. Terror froze her in place. She prayed for someone to come, anyone who might frighten the sorcerer away; but she stood alone on the broad stretch of road. She glanced about wildly, desperate for escape though her limbs would not obey her.
The wizard smiled. "If you’re looking for a place to run, don’t bother." He held the mud doll in one hand and seized its foot in the other. Suddenly, he twisted.
Agony shot through Kelryn’s leg, and she collapsed to the ground as much from startlement as pain. "Stop," she sobbed. "Please stop." Ghosts plagued her, a body striped with wounds. Splashes of blood on wall and ceiling.
Ritworth released the foot. By all natural law, the mud should have crumbled in his fingers; but the figure returned to its created shape, strangely pliable in his grip. He continued to study Kelryn calmly, the smile etched in place, as if he found as much pleasure in control as in the pain he inflicted on her. "Don’t try to escape. Answer my questions honestly, and there’ll be no more pain."
Kelryn remained in position on the road as the pain receded, her eyes still aching from the crying jag the previous night. She drew all her courage together, forcing away the images and managing whispered speech. "What do you want from me?"
”Information."
"I don’t know anything.”
"Let me ask the questions first." Ritworth came closer, standing directly over her, his face cruel and his eyes reflecting a happy madness. “Where are the prince and his squire?"
Kelryn whimpered, despising her weakness. "I don’t know."
Ritworth buried a fingernail in the gut of his figure. Pain doubled Kelryn over, and she snaked into a knot to escape it, without success. She screamed.
Still composed, Ritworth removed his finger, and the anguish settled to a dull throb. "I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that and ask the question again. Now, where are the prince and his squire?"
Pain and fear drove tears to Kelryn’s eyes. When she swiveled her head to display her integrity, she saw him through a blur of moisture. "Please. They left without me. I don’t know where-" This time, the agony speared through her back, and she felt as if she would snap in two. She screamed repeatedly, welcoming the hovering promise of unconsciousness.
Apparently realizing he would lose his information source to oblivion, Ritworth restored the shape of the mud doll. "Damn it, woman. I’ll find a pain that makes you talk if I have to inflict it by my own hand!"
Kelryn sobbed, curling into a helpless ball that only seemed to further enrage the Iceman.
“Talk, damn you. Talk."
"I-" Kelryn managed, obligated to say something. "l-just-"
Another man spoke from the brush, his voice ominously familiar. "She doesn’t know, Ahshir Lamskat’s son. Or should I call you Ritworth, too?"
The Iceman stiffened and spun to face this new threat. "Who are you?"
Kelryn’s fuzzy thoughts would not let the identity of the second man come into focus. Though she believed herself rescued, something about the voice shot shivers of dread through her. She loosened her muscles cautiously, moving slowly as much from fear of retribution as from discomfort. The pain seemed to disappear as swiftly as the magic inflicting it, but one glimpse of the newcomer’s middle-aged face with its neutral brown hair and ghost-pale eyes brought a crampy ache that had nothing to do with sorcery. She vomited, sick from terror and pain. Two sorcerers stood before her now, and she could not handle even one. She slumped to the ground.
“Does my name matter?" the more recent arrival said.
"I could make one up as easily as you did."
Ritworth’s response was a sudden harsh word accompanied by a gesture Kelryn remembered well. She cringed as he flung his ice spell at the other sorcerer.
As quickly, the newcomer pointed at a site directly in front of himself, mumbling. Where he indicated, the air seemed to shimmer like heat haze over dark earth. Ritworth’s magic entered the area and slowed to a crawl, its intention visible as icicles and crystals stretching toward its target. The blue-eyed sorcerer stepped aside as the spell crept toward him. Once through the band, the magic apparently returned to its normal speed; because, an instant later, a patch of ice slopped onto the road.
Frost dusted the more recent arrival’s brown bangs. "Nice," he admitted, unruffled.
Ritworth’s face puckered and reddened. He threw down the mud doll, slamming the breath from Kelryn’s lungs and sending bruises aching through her limbs, pelvis, and rib cage. She struggled for air as the wizards exchanged spells that came to her only as slashes of light and pin-point sparks across her vision. When she finally managed to breathe, they stood where they had, glaring at one another, as if daring the other to attack first again.
The newcomer broke the silence. "Ahshir, I didn’t come to hurt you. I have a proposition.”
The Iceman’s eyes narrowed. "A sorcerer make a deal with another? You mistake me for a fool."
"Listen to what I have to say first. Then you decide."
Kelryn remained in place, throbbing in every part as if she, not the doll, had gotten hurled to the packed roadway. She wanted to block out the sounds and scenes around her, to silently creep from the road and become lost in the forest. But pain held her immobile, and something about the blue-eyed sorcerer’s voice soothed and drew her to trust him. If not for the memory of him towering over another, inflicting torture that sent his victim writhing and seizing in a frenzied, panicked desperation to escape, she might have given her loyalty without understanding why. Horror and hatred overcame the gentle magic he used to help persuade, at least for her.
Ritworth, however, had no previous experience with the newcomer to prejudice him. He remained coiled and watchful, but he did listen. "Speak your piece, then."