The Invisible Ring (40 page)

“Jared!”

Jared whirled, putting Lia behind him. Hell’s fire, where were his wits? No one should have gotten this close to them without his sensing it, especially someone cantering toward them on horseback.

“It’s Blaed!” Lia said, stepping around Jared and waving.

Reining in a few yards away from them, Blaed slid off the roan mare’s bare back and dropped the reins to ground-tie her. He spared one quick glance for Jared before focusing on Lia with a hunger that made Jared tense.

Not a sexual hunger, Jared realized as Blaed’s eyes traveled over the body that was covered from neck to mid-thigh by the bulky sweater, but the hunger a strong Blood male feels when he’s bonded to a Queen.

“You’re well?” Blaed asked hesitantly.

Lia gave him a dazzling smile. “I’m fine. I—”

Blaed pulled her into his arms. “Thera’s been frantic about you.”

*Thera’s not the one hugging her hard enough to crack her ribs,* Jared said on a spear thread.

Blaed let go too fast.

Jared lunged to catch her. Blaed grabbed the front of the sweater.

A minute later, Lia was standing out of reach of both of them, eyeing them warily. “Whoever said males were sensible obviously never met either of you,” she grumbled.

Blaed grinned at Jared. “She
is
well.”

“Don’t encourage her too much,” Jared said dryly. “She needs more rest than she thinks she does.”

Lia straightened her sweater. “Let’s go to the village. I’d like to talk to someone sensible. Someone
female
.”

“I thought you wanted to talk to someone sensible,” Jared said.

Blaed coughed.

Lia looked at the sky and threw up her hands.

The gesture, so like Reyna’s, stabbed Jared. As he turned away, he met Blaed’s now-solemn hazel eyes.

Feeling the prickle between his shoulder blades, Jared chose each word as if it were a step he had to take on a trail filled with hidden traps. “When did you get here?”

“Last evening,” Blaed said in a neutral voice. “Thayne’s always been able to call animals to him. Enough of the marauders’ horses survived, so we each had a mount.”

“My mother’s a good Healer. She’ll take care of the witchfire burns for him.”

“Jared . . .”

“My father got you settled in all right? Did you talk to him about getting a Coach to the Tamanara Mountains?”

“Jared . . .” Blaed’s hand closed on Jared’s arm.

Feeling the sympathy that flowed out of that touch, Jared jerked away, circling Blaed cautiously as he moved toward the roan mare.

“Go home. Jared,” Blaed said quietly. “I’ll escort Lia.”

Torn, again, between two needs, Jared froze.

“Go home, Jared,” Lia said.

Because it was the woman and not the Queen who said the words, he found himself galloping down the road to Ranon’s Wood. His mind refused to see the images his eyes collected, and he was grateful. There would be time enough to deal with the destruction later.

It didn’t take long to reach the lane that ended at the weathered, rambling house that had been in Reyna’s family for generations. The Healer’s House, passed on, not from mother to daughter, but from the old Healer to the strongest, or only, Healer in the next generation. Year after year, the land had been tended by and yielded its bounty to the women of that bloodline.

Generation after generation, strong Blood males had sought out those women, settling for a long-term contract as a consort if they weren’t able to win the coveted title of husband.

Jared tied the mare’s reins to the hitching post near the path that led to the front door.

Every spring, all the women in the family gathered for a few days to help plant the gardens at the Healer’s House. The males of all ages divided their time between helping with whatever repairs might be needed after the winter and watching indulgently while the women laughed and squabbled over the planting.

Jared opened the gate. It didn’t hang true and got stuck. He went sideways through the narrow opening.

“Mother?”

No one had planted this year. He felt the absence of laughter as keenly as he felt the land’s wounds. Flower beds that had dazzled him with color when he was young held a few wind-seeded flowers that looked spindly and faded.

Jared took a hesitant step toward the house. Took another. He raised his voice. “Mother?”

Another step.

He saw the smears of old blood around the front door.

Hurrying now, he flung the door open. “Mother!”

Sweating and freezing, he rapidly explored the downstairs rooms the family used. Then the healing rooms. Then the stillroom. Out the back door to the greenhouse. He didn’t notice anything except that there was no one there.

“MOTHER!”

Inside again, he took the stairs two at a time, checking his brothers’ rooms first.

Davin’s room was bare of personal belongings. Janos’s looked as if someone had hurriedly searched through it and had left the clothes and books where they’d fallen.

No one in the second-floor guest rooms.

No one in the third-floor rooms.

Back to the second floor.

His clothes no longer hung in the wardrobe, but his books still filled the low bookcase next to the writing desk that had stood in front of the window for as long as he could remember. The same quilt covered the bed that had once felt so huge and that he now knew would be a snug fit for two people.

One room left.

His hand shook as he opened the door to his parents’ room.

Pain and grief entwined with love hit him at the threshold.

He closed his eyes and clung to the doorframe, unable to step back, unable to go forward.

Walls remembered. Over time, wood and stone absorbed the feelings of those who lived in a place and could be sensed by anyone with power.

This was different. Stronger. As if ...

Jared opened his eyes and looked at the large double bed that Reyna had shared with Belarr—the bed that a male child, no matter how young, didn’t climb into without his father’s permission.

At first, he thought Reyna had bought a new quilt for the bed, but he couldn’t figure out why she, who loved bright things, would choose such a dull color.

Then he saw a patch of blues and greens at the bottom corner, and then he realized the quilt had been soaked with blood.

Jared staggered toward the bed, fighting the sickness that churned in his stomach.

Blood sings to blood. That’s why the feelings were so strong. They weren’t in the wood and stone, they were in the blood.

His hand shook violently as he reached for the quilt.

The blood was old, but there was so much of it. All he had to do was open his inner barriers and touch it, and he’d know.

“Jared,” a gravelly voice said.

His hand hovered over the quilt. Another inch. Just another inch.

His hand wouldn’t move.

“Jared.”

Jared spun around, his heart pounding wildly.

An old man stood in the doorway. Unkempt gray hair hung to his shoulders. Grief and pain had carved deep lines into his face. His left sleeve was pinned above where the elbow had been.

Jared stared at the old man. His eyes widened. “Uncle Yarek?”

“Uncle Yarek,” the old man agreed, smiling sadly. “Reyna said you’d be coming home this autumn.”

“Mo—” Jared’s voice broke. In a rush, he crossed the room and hugged his uncle. Terrified of the fierce grief rising inside of him, he choked it back, chaining it down.

“Come away, Jared,” Yarek said softly as he stepped back into the hallway, drawing Jared with him. “Come away from this room. It’s too painful to look on. We’ll go outside. We’ll go out and sit in the garden, and we’ll talk.”

Saying nothing, Jared followed Yarek to a stone bench at the far end of the garden. Near the bench was a small, covered well.

“Would you like some water?” Jared asked.

Grimacing a little, Yarek settled on the bench. “Sure.”

Jared lifted the cover and lowered the wooden bucket. When he looked around for the dipper, Yarek said, “Here,” and called in a mug.

Jared filled the mug and handed it to Yarek. “Whenever my friends and I spent the afternoon playing in the woods, we’d all end up here because this well had the sweetest water in Ranon’s Wood.”

“Yes, it did.” Yarek drained the mug and handed it back to Jared. “Now it’s as bitter as a woman’s tears.”

Jared hesitated, finally dipped the mug into the bucket and drank.

As bitter as a woman’s tears. Or was it the land’s tears he was tasting now?

For the Blood, was there really any difference?

Because he was thirsty, he drank another mug of water before settling on the bench next to his uncle.

“What happened here, Uncle Yarek?”

Yarek looked at the sparse garden and sighed. “War’s what happened, Jared. War between the tribes.”

“But we’ve been united since the time of Shal.”

“If everyone had remembered Shal’s warnings about the long-lived races, we might have stayed united and strong. But that slut who controls Hayll has a way about her. It’s like finding a weed in the garden. You know it doesn’t belong there, but it looks small and pretty so you let it stay, not realizing that, although it looks small and pretty above the ground, underneath it’s sinking a tap root so deep you can never cut out all of it, and it sends out all these other runners that choke out everything but other weeds.

“That’s what happened to Shalador. One by one, place by place, we lost our strong Queens, our good Queens. Some to age. Some to ‘accidents.’ One by one, until all that was left were the weeds.”

Jared rubbed his forehead. “And even a good man will eventually yield to a bad Queen if the hunger for the bond gnaws at him long enough and hard enough.”

Yarek nodded. “A strong love bond eases that hunger, too. A Blood male needs one or the other. I guess that’s why the warriors who came to demand we yield to the new Queen did what they did.”

Unable to look at Yarek, Jared focused on the cracked, barren ground in front of him. “Did what?”

Yarek shuddered. “They slaughtered the witches. They butchered our hearts. They didn’t give a call to battle and wait for the ones who chose to fight to come to the killing field. When every family in Wolfs Creek refused to yield and every male told them what they could do with their damned Rings of Obedience, the delegation left. Thirteen men. That’s all we saw until the next day when hundreds of them surrounded the village and attacked. They weren’t after the men. Our wounds and deaths happened because we were in the way. It was the witches those bastards wanted. Little girls, old women, Ladies in their prime, the darker-Jeweled girls on the verge of womanhood . .

.

“They raped some of them, just like they raped the land. Left some alive, broken and mutilated. Some of the lighter-Jeweled young witches were captured and taken away. A few—very few—escaped the breaking and slaughtering, but they weren’t old enough or strong enough for the males to bond to comfortably.”

“Is there anyone left at Wolf’s Creek?”‘ Jared asked, carefully circling around the questions that needed to be asked.

Yarek shook his head. “Only a couple of houses were left standing by the time it was done. They took most of the livestock, and we knew the land couldn’t yield enough for us to eat even if we were able to tend it and could find a Queen to heal it—and there was nothing to get us through from a new planting to the harvest.

“Belarr arrived that evening with forty men . . . and Reyna. She did what she could to keep us alive. Then Belarr and the other men brought us to Ranon’s Wood. There’s always been strong family ties between Wolfs Creek and Ranon’s Wood, so Reyna didn’t have to look far to find hands to help her.” Yarek cleared his throat. “I told her to take the arm. It wasn’t hanging on by much anyway, and I’d managed to stop the bleeding before they arrived. I told her to put her strength into the young ones. She cried but, may the Darkness embrace a true daughter, she did what I asked.

“A week later, the bastards came to Ranon’s Wood. Belarr had set up a watch, so they didn’t come in without warning, but they came, and it was Wolf’s Creek all over again—except they didn’t even give Belarr or anyone else a chance to refuse to yield.

“He fought. Mother Night, how he fought! But . . .”

“He wasn’t trained as a guard,” Jared said quietly. “He wasn’t trained as a warrior.”

“No. He was a strong man and a fine administrator and he’d served his Queen and Ranon’s Wood well, but he wasn’t a trained warrior.”

Belarr had had the strength of the Red, but hadn’t had someone like Randolf to show him how to use that strength to kill, hadn’t had a Warlord Prince like Blaed with him who would surrender to instinct and find the killing field within himself.

“They had to kill him, you see,” Yarek continued in a low voice. “They had to. They couldn’t let a Red-Jeweled Warlord live after they’d torn his wife’s body apart enough to make her scream but not enough to let her die quickly.”

Jared made a choking sound.

Yarek didn’t notice. “They paid dearly, Jared. The bastards paid for Reyna with their own blood. And they didn’t really win in the end.

“She was in the village when the attack started. Janos died trying to reach her. And she went down fighting to protect a young girl.

“I don’t know how Belarr reached her or where he found the strength to get her away from them. They were both dying by the time he got her home, and she . . . she kept trying to heal him. He asked me to leave them be, to look for Janos when the fighting was over. Then he carried her up to their room and lay down with her on the bed. Wasn’t my place to be there, so I closed the door.”

Yarek pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his nose. “I left the house and hid in the woods. Sounds cowardly ...”

Jared shook his head. “You’d already fought one battle. You weren’t strong enough to fight another.”

“I did have another reason,” Yarek said slowly, tucking the handkerchief into his pocket. “On and off all through the winter, Reyna kept saying you were coming home this autumn. I didn’t have much hope for Janos. I figured someone from the family should be here to meet you, and I was the only one left.”