Chapter Eighteen #4
But what strength? The weaves seemed too fine and fragile. A minor command was not what the High Mage was looking for. Only a master’s strength would do.
He made Jiarine focus more energy into the talis spell, pushing the girl harder to see how strong that faint weave would become.
A few chimes later, the glow around her grew brighter, the threads of her weave intensified, light shot out across heretofore invisible streams that had already blanketed the room from one corner to another without anyone being the wiser.
Only then did Kolis realize the weaves were already working on Jiarine, had been for longer than he knew. The clenching tightness that he’d mistaken for tension was her female body growing hot and aching with need.
A hand squeezed Jiarine’s thigh. Kolis looked down and followed the plump hand to the portly body of Lord Bevel.
Perspiration gleamed on the man’s bald pate, and his thick lips glistened with saliva.
He was leaning forward, breathing heavy hot breaths against the bare, plump tops of Jiarine’s breasts.
Kolis’s consciousness reeled back in disgust. Surely she wouldn’t. Jiarine appreciated her own value too well to hump a foul rultshart like Bevel.
But the Baristani girl’s weave was no slight suggestion, and Jiarine could not resist its dictates despite Kolis’s attempts to stop her.
When Bevel’s fat tongue slid across her skin and dove down to curl around one diamond-hard nipple, she came in an ecstatic gush and reached hungrily for the thick bulge tenting the man’s trousers.
Sickened, Kolis fled Jiarine’s body and left her to her rutting. He had what he’d come for. Ellysetta Baristani was a master of Spirit, powerful enough to exceed even the High Mage’s lofty standards.
Ellysetta couldn’t look away from Rain’s burning eyes.
She was distantly aware of the shrieking madness of the tairen.
She was even more distantly aware that the room had fallen silent, the quiet broken only by the shallow gasps of hundreds of lungs desperately seeking air.
She wanted to speak, but her tongue felt too thick, her throat too dry.
Her mind was a whirl of feelings and incoherent thoughts, simple sentences stripped to their barest essence.
I want. I need. I ache. I burn.
?Burn with me.?
And then Rain’s arms were around her, sweeping her out of her chair and against his chest, and air blew in a cooling rush against her hot skin as he sped up the stairs and out of the palace into the cool Celierian night.
Her head fell back against his arm, her eyes drank in the star-jeweled sky.
The sky whooshed past in a dizzying rush.
Rain was running, with her in his arms. Then they were home in the night-darkened front room of her house.
She was reaching for Rain, trying to hold him, needing him, wanting .
. . something. The ache was a terrible pain inside her. “Rain, please.”
His face was drawn tight, his eyes burning.
“I can’t, shei’tani. If I thought I could give you what you need and still keep my oath, I would.
But this is too much. Don’t ask it of me.
I would break my honor. Forgive me.” His mouth turned grim, his eyes went bleak.
“And forgive me for this as well.” He raised his hand.
She watched without comprehension as magic gathered at his fingertips, then spun out to surround her. She fell, unconscious, in his arms.
He passed her gently into Ravel’s keeping.
“Guard her,” he bit out. “Keep her safe.” He didn’t wait for Ravel’s answer.
He simply stepped outside and leapt into the sky.
The tairen’s roar rattled windows in panes across the city, and a fierce jet of flame lit up the darkness.
He shot up into the icy ether and arrowed east through the night, away from the city.
Sian and Torel ran south through the forest, dazed and shaken by what they’d learned from the woodcutter Brind Paldwyn. They didn’t speak, didn’t look at each other. For a full bell at least, they just ran.
?We should call General vel Jelani,? Sian finally said, breaking their long silence. ?He’ll want to know.?
Torel stopped so abruptly, Sian went pelting ten yards past. “All right,” he said. “We’ll call him now. You’re stronger in Spirit than I. Do it. I’ll stand guard.”
Torel’s nerves were singing as Sian closed his eyes and summoned his power. If the information they now carried was true, it was beyond deadly.
Twenty miles back, in the hut Sian and Torel had left in such a hurry, long, pale fingers passed over the sightless eyes of Brind Paldwyn, pulling the lids shut.
A pale hand turned over, palm upward. Fingers curled as if cupping a ball.
A shadowy spiral, glowing with red lights, rose up from the fingers.
Black eyes flickering with red lights stared deep into the whirling spiral of Azrahn.
Light and shadow flickered on the ridges of the scar running from the center of his forehead and through his eyebrow to just below his right ear.
A moment later, the Azrahn weave dissolved, and the weaver’s eyes faded back to their normal piercing pale blue, colder than the glaciers beyond the Mandolay mountains to the far north, the elongated pupils narrowed to thin slits.
The crouching black figure rose to an imposing height and pointed one long finger, calling Fire. Brind Paldwyn’s body burst into flames, searing, unnaturally hot flames that turned his body to ash in moments, yet never spread to the rest of the cabin.
Swift and agile as a deer, black-booted feet raced through the night-darkened forest, the footsteps soundless, as if they never touched ground.