Chapter Seventeen
Once the visitors were gone, Taz was called into Hebog’s presence.
“Taliesin, I’m sending you to Brighton with a message. Here is the pouch. You are leaving within the hour. The stables have been told to prepare a fast horse.”
“What of Miss Thornton?” Taz asked.
Hebog glared at him. “Miss Thornton is no longer your concern. Be glad that I am not punishing you for deserting your post, Taliesin, and leave the Englishwoman to me.”
Like hell. Taz did his best to keep his thoughts from his face. Arguing with Hebog would do more harm than good. He and Sephie would have a better chance if Hebog thought Taz was still his obedient puppet. He couldn’t bring himself to agree, but he managed to bow and say, “Sir.”
Once out of the room, he headed for his lodgings, singing under his breath for the tree that shadowed the building to hide his deviation from his path. He had to find Sephie. He headed down the side of the building, still singing, still in the shadow.
And here was Sephie, coming toward him. She was singing, too, and also keeping to the shadow, and her eyes lit up when she saw him. “Taz! I was coming to wait for you. We have trouble.”
He was impressed she had thought of the same spell as him to cast an illusion that she was part of the shadow. It sufficed as long as they were moving and as long as no one got too close, but if they were to stop to talk, they needed to be sure they were not interrupted.
“In the branches of the tree,” he decided.
“You keep singing the shadow, Sephie, and I shall bring the branch within reach.” It warmed his heart how easily they worked together, her continuing her original words and melody, and him harmonizing while singing new words that asked the tree to bend down one of the sturdiest branches so they could step onto it and be carried up out of sight.
“Hebog is sending me to Brighton with orders for the resistance there,” he told her, once they were concealed and could stop singing. “He says I am to leave you here. I think he has something in mind for you, and I suggest we don’t wait around to find out what it is.”
“I know what he plans for me,” Sephie said.
“I was peeling vegetables and some of the others were talking. You know how they do. They don’t know I understand almost everything they say now.
Taz, we have to get out of here. Hebog is the Red Dragon.
He has something planned in Brighton that he doesn’t expect you to survive, and he is selling me to one of the other resistance groups as a breeder for someone’s ungifted son, since he believes I don’t use my gift. ”
Taz realized he was not surprised that Hebog thought the cause justified violence against innocents. The anger that filled him was partly fueled, perhaps, by having it confirmed.
Mostly, though, the presumptuous plans for Sephie fed his fury, until it consumed his ability to think and he saw her dear face through a red haze. If Hebog or anyone else dared to lay a finger on Sephie, they would find out what a bard mage could do!
“Taz! Be careful!” Sephie’s soft hand touched his, reaching him, calming him, even through his rage. “Your gift is shouting to my mage sense,” she told him. “I don’t want Hebog or his people to find us.”
She is right. There would be time enough to strike back. First, Taz and Sephie had to get out of here.
He took a few deep breaths, forcing calm on himself. “They are preparing a horse for me. As soon as I have my things, I need to leave. How long will it take you to collect yours?”
The clever woman pointed to a satchel leaning against the side of the nearby building. “Already done,” she said. “What is the plan to get me past the guards?”
“Do you think we can cast a strong enough glamour that the gate guard won’t see you on the back of the horse?”
“My father’s one talent was making himself invisible,” Sephie commented. “I wonder if I can do it? Or we, I should say. If we can make me invisible, I can walk out of here and meet you on the road.”
“If we can make you invisible, you can walk beside me, so that if things go wrong we can sing our way out of it together,” said Taz, firmly.
He caught himself back at the looming frown on his darling’s face.
And she was his darling. The danger she was in had crystallized the thoughts he’d been brewing for some time.
She was not just the other half of his mage bard gift, but the woman meant for him.
The woman who held his heart. His thorny beloved, and she hated being given orders.
Instead of being annoyed by it, he admired and loved her even more.
“Sephie, please. I can’t bear to let you go into danger while I cheerfully ride out of here with Hebog’s blessing. ”
So it was agreed. They sat safely in the tree, singing in low voices to create a spell that stopped the sound from being heard beyond the leafy canopy, then singing more to try to create invisibility.
The first attempt failed. They could not cause light to pass right through Sephie. But then they tried curving it around her, and that worked better. Unless someone picked up a slight distortion in the air, they would never notice her.
*
Getting out of the tree presented new problems. Sephie found it hard to climb down when she could not see her hands and feet. They sang the branch down again, but Taz fumbled for her invisible hand before he could help her to the ground.
He left her in the shadow of the tree, leaning against the trunk, while he went to fetch his own satchel. She was surprised that he walked unerringly toward her after he reemerged. “Can you see me?” she asked.
“I can sense you, but only because I know you,” Taz reassured her. “If the guards sense a mage gift, they’ll think it is mine. I’ll sing as I go, and that will help to conceal you.”
The horse was waiting outside the stable. Taz attached both satchels to the saddle then mounted. He stayed by the mounting block to ask at which inn he should leave the horse after the first leg of his journey, and what he should look for in a remount.
He listened to the groom’s instructions with every evidence of concentration and asked questions that kept the man’s attention on him. It must have worked, for the man did not notice Sephie using the mounting block to settle herself on the horse’s rump.
The horse realized she was there, sidestepped, swished its tail, and tossed its head, twisting its neck to see what had suddenly added to the weight on its back.
“Hey there,” said the groom. “What’s up with you? He’s feeling his oats today, Taz. Better give him a run once you are out of the ravine.”
“I’ll do that,” Taz promised.
They were waved past both guard posts, with the comment that Taz was on the list of authorized exits. Sephie held her breath when they reached the first guard post, and again at the second, where Taz commented to the guards, “Now for a gallop to shake out this fellow’s fidgets.”
And with that, they were off, Sephie holding on to Taz’s waist as if her life depended on it, and given the rocky nature of the ground on both sides of the road, it well might.
But they were rapidly putting Hebog and his plots behind them, and that was well worth the risk. However, Sephie had been thinking while they negotiated the guards and the ravine. What if Hebog sent for her once Taz was gone? Wasn’t that likely?
Even as close as they were, at the speed they were traveling, he would have trouble hearing her.
Sephie had an idea that might work. She put her concerns into a song, envisaging the sound leaving her mouth and appearing right beside Taz’s ear.
He stiffened, and then she heard his own voice singing, “We cannot risk it. Keep an eye out for someone who might take the horse onward. We must disappear.”
Perhaps some saint was on their side, or their guardian angels were watching over them. A man was trudging along the road ahead of them. Taz reined the horse in and drew up a few yards past the stranger.
He swung one leg over the horse’s head, and jumped to the ground. He left Sephie to slide down on her own. They were in the way of the walker’s progress, so he had stopped to watch them—or him, rather, for only Taz was visible. Taz turned to him, and in Cymraeg apologized for blocking his way.
“Can I impose even more?” he asked. “This horse needs to be returned to the inn at Dolwydellan, but my wife is unwell, and I am reluctant to leave her. If you are heading to Dolwydellan, would you take my horse and drop it at the Golden Goblet? And I shall go home to my wife.”
After a bit of haggling over price, the man headed off, happily mounted on the horse. Taz put the straps of his harp case and both satchels over his shoulder and held out his hand until he felt Sephie’s firm clasp.
“Shall we find out what the message says?” Sephie asked. “I think we need to know what Hebog has planned.”
Taz considered that for a moment, his brows creased.
“I agree, but not here. It has magical seals on it. I expect we can break them, you and I, but I don’t know if they have a spell on them to tell Hebog they’ve been broken.
Are you willing to try a translocation? I know we haven’t done it before, but I know the method, and I’m certain that, together, we can manage it. ”
Sephie didn’t hesitate. “I agree. A translocation will make it impossible for Hebog to track us. Where shall we go?”
“For safety’s sake, it should be somewhere we both know. The Gwydir forest? Or just outside it. I doubt the fae allow people to translocate into their forests.”
“Very well.” Sephie doubted that was far enough to escape Hebog’s reach, but it would suffice for a start. “How do we do this?”
“We need to visualize the place we want to be, then… The best I can explain it is that we move the place we are standing next to the place we want to stand, then step from one to the other.”
“So, it works like the fae gates,” said Sephie. “Very well. Let’s try it.”
The tylen would help. Retrieving it meant removing both satchels so he could take it from its case, but that done, he slung the empty case and his own satchel back in place. Sephie had picked up hers. “I’ll carry this, Taz. Play on.”