He shook his head. “I do not know the trigger event, though once it cascaded, it went quickly.” A shimmer of anger or frustration passed over his face. “If Szerain knows it, he has kept it well hidden.”
I kept my face as composed as possible. “And where is he now?”
He lowered his head and looked at me. “I cannot answer that question, as you likely already know.”
I chuckled despite myself. Okay, so now I knew for certain that he knew I knew about Ryan and Szerain. “Oathbound,” I drawled.
“Oathbound,” he echoed, with the faint hint of a nod. His mouth tightened. “Complicated and anachronistic. Bound in rhetoric and intrigue.”
“Well, I’m pretty good at figuring shit out,” I replied. “One pesky oath won’t stop me.” Assuming I lived long enough to dig into this particular mystery.
His face remained an expressionless mask, silver-grey eyes steady upon me.
“Do you have to leave if I talk about it?” I asked. Wouldn’t that be fun if I’d discovered lord repellent? Of course the alternative to leaving could be squash-the-human, but since he already had a loaded gun pointed at my head, I had nothing to lose.
He raised an eyebrow. I took that as gushing permission. “Szerain and Elinor had a hand in this big bad cataclysm thing a few hundred years ago,” I began. “But nearly destroying the world wasn’t enough to get him exiled. Oh, yeah. You guys needed him to fix what he’d broken. Restitution.”
Mzatal remained silent, but I thought perhaps a slight spark of interest lit his eyes.
Sitting back, I steepled my fingers as if deep in thought. “So it wasn’t until—what? A couple of decades ago or so?—that Szerain did another Bad Thing,” I continued. “He got himself into shit so deep there’s an Oath from Hell around it, and eventually he got kicked out of here.” I tilted my head. “And according to Turek, Szerain chose exile instead of handing over information about whatever it was.” I tapped my fingertips together. “My question is…why did he choose exile? What could possibly be worth it?” Narrowing my eyes, I regarded Mzatal. “Plus I wonder if this Bad Thing had anything to do with the Peter Cerise fiasco.” Peter Cerise, whose summoning several decades ago had accidentally called Rhyzkahl instead of Szerain, and resulted in the slaughter of the other five summoners involved. “Is there a connection? And if so, what?”
With the mention of Cerise, a muscle in Mzatal’s jaw rippled. I made a note of that sore spot on my mental clue board.
“All must be revealed in time,” he said as he rose from the chair.
“But for now you get to torture this mark off of me,” I said with a tight smile. “Won’t that be fun.”
“No, it will not be,” he said, face back to the inscrutable mask.
I stood, then gave him a wary look as the hair on my arms lifted. Potency swirled to him like water down a drain in gold and purple flickers on the edge of my othersight. He placed his hands on my shoulders and met my eyes. I found myself wishing I could understand this lord—terrifying and all too ready to kill me one minute, and then almost decent in the next. What the hell was his game?
His gaze bored into me, and I didn’t really want to move. The myth surfaced about snakes hypnotizing their prey, but before I could process that, his hands shifted to my face. Not even a heartbeat later his mouth was on mine, kissing me hard and deep, though not at all roughly. Potency crackled through me like a zing of static electricity between my cells and in the next instant he broke the kiss and stood back, hands clasped behind his back, while I struggled for some sort of response.
Un-fucking-readable, he nodded once as if satisfied, then turned toward the door. “Come,” he said, though this time it wasn’t accompanied by a lasso of power.
I didn’t move, could only stare. What. The. Fuck?
Mzatal glanced back and saw my awesome statue imitation, took my upper arm and nudged me forward. Blinking, I moved, and he dropped his hand. He led the way out of the room and to his grove, and I followed, keeping a wary eye on him the whole time. My thoughts whirled in uneven loops, but foremost among them was, I need to get the hell away from Mzatal.
Gestamar and Idris waited near the entrance to the tree tunnel. Gestamar bellowed a greeting while Idris simply looked nervous and unsettled. Mzatal took my arm as we entered the shadowed tunnel, no doubt to better sense if I should suddenly try and use the power again. I didn’t bother to tell him that I had no idea how I’d done it the first time. It didn’t matter. As soon as I stepped beneath the sheltering limbs a deep peace descended on me again, and I barely noticed his grip.
He stopped in the center of the grove and passed me over to Gestamar, who wrapped a clawed hand around my arm while the lord crouched and channeled power into the knob of wood in the center of the grove. I remained perfectly still, feeling as if the grove spoke to me in a language beyond words. My eyes slid to Mzatal as he completed the offering of potency and stood. He lifted a hand to initiate the transfer, and in that instant I knew—knew—the grove.
The grove shifted around us. We were in the remote location now, wherever that was. Mzatal took my arm again as he greeted the mehnta, but I stayed where I was. Silently, I touched the grove.
“Kara, come,” Mzatal said. “There is little time.” He began to move but I pulled back against his grip.
“Wait, please.” My heart pounded while I hoped to hell and back that the collar would shield my thoughts enough to keep him from realizing what I was about to do.
His grip tightened on my arm, eyes narrowing. “Kara…what—” He stopped as the grove began to activate, then cursed, face going intense as he literally dragged me toward the tree tunnel.
I dug my heels in. “No!” Now, I silently begged the grove. Take me now! Take me to Rhyzkahl!
He stopped as the power rose around us and pivoted to face me. “You will regret this,” he said through clenched teeth. “I will come for you.”
I opened my mouth to say something brilliant like, “Bite me, you lame-ass fuckbrain.”
But he was gone before I could even form the words.
Chapter 11
It took me a couple of seconds to realize that Mzatal hadn’t simply disappeared. “Holy fuckballs,” I breathed, then let out a shaky laugh. I did it. I used the grove. I escaped!
The distant bellow of a reyza came to me through the tree tunnel. Rhyzkahl’s demons knew I was here, or rather, they knew someone was here. Nighttime, I noted instantly. And damn near frigid. The trees of the grove gave off a soft bluish glow, and sigils that reminded me of stick-in-the-ground solar yard lights marked the path of the tree tunnel. Full of triumph and still pumped with adrenaline, I headed for the tunnel and the freedom of Rhyzkahl’s realm.
The grove thrummed with a tingle of activation as I reached the arch of trees. I glanced back, and my gut clenched at the sight of Mzatal appearing in the center of the clearing. His face contorted into a snarl of determination as his eyes met mine. My already thudding heart went into hyperdrive. Shit! I’d hoped he wouldn’t be able to follow so quickly. I broke into a run, heading for the night blackness at the far opening of the tree tunnel. Surely Mzatal wouldn’t dare pursue once I was out of the grove and on Rhyzkahl’s turf. Or would he? I had no real idea how the dynamics of the lords worked.
I cleared the arched trees, and an instant later a lasso of potency snaked around my right ankle. I yelped and went sprawling, clawing at the ground to try to pull away from him as I kicked and struggled against the damn lasso. So close…so close! I could see the lights of a palace ahead, and more reyza bellows filled the air.