Bloodring (Rogue Mage #1)

Bloodring (Rogue Mage #1) Page 20

Tuesday passed in an agony of anticipation and worry. No seraphs appeared to take me in. No cops arrived with handcuffs, leg shackles, sharp knives. No one ran me off or arrested me or suggested I should undergo torture. No lynch mobs gathered in the streets. The day passed slowly; the weather continued to warm, and snowmelt to race downhill. The Toe River grew until I could hear its roaring as I worked. Early spring? In February? An end to the ice age? SNN was rife with conjecture about the weather and with speculation about the seraphs reputed to still be near Mineral City, the reporters giddy with excitement at the sightings. Seraphs had been filmed in Asheville, in Boone, in Linville, and in Black Mountain. Two other seraphs had been filmed leaving the New York Realm of Light, one smoky gray, one teal. I kept the overhead TV on between customers, one eye on the screen, and I turned up the volume for each update.

After lunch, Jacey filled Internet orders, Rupert stared out the window worrying about Audric, and I took care of customers. When Rupert tired of window watching and shooed me away, I went to the back to polish the cats. I couldn't tumble them; they were too big. I had to polish them by hand, starting with a sixty-grit wheel to remove the surface scratches, progressing methodically to the hundred-grit wheel, the two-twenty-grit wheel, the two-eighty, the six-hundred, and finally twelve-hundred-grit paper and the loving movement of my hand.

It took most of the afternoon, but by four, I was satisfied with their gloss. Ciana's had a small space between her front legs for a fine, thin silver chain. Mine was secured with copper wire to depend from a leather thong or chain. I didn't string it with my other amulets or create the necklace I had envisioned, but kept the pieces close together until Ciana got home from school and I could surprise her with them.

For the second time today, I peeled out of the jumpsuit uniform and ran upstairs to wash off stone dust. I stepped from the shower, dripping wet, and my back arched in reaction to a bolt of power. My hair stood on end. My skin crawled. I felt him enter the shop.

Though my body pulsed like it had in heat, this wasn't heat; not at all. But I knew. A seraph was here. Although I had been expecting it, misery and anger gushed up in me, an artesian spring of grieving. I bowed to the sink, resting my forehead against my fist. If I begged, perhaps they would allow me to stay long enough to say good-bye to Ciana.

I dressed in my battle dobok, placed each knife in its loop, braided my hair, and pressed it around the hilt of the neck blade. I draped my amulet necklace over my head in plain sight, the mended prime throbbing in time with my accelerated heartbeat. I put on my wide silver wrist cuffs and huge hoops in my ears, and dumped my jewelry into a small travel bag. I tossed the leather cloak over the bags and pulled them all, thumping, down the stairs.

I propped them at the door, beneath the prophecy Lolo had made at my birth. I'd have to remember to take that too. If I survived the punishment I would receive following my return to Enclave and the subsequent insanity from so many minds open to me, I would want it. Jacey, standing in a corner, stared at me, eyes blank with panic, face in a rictus of terror.

Straightening, my heart fluttering like a trapped, feral animal, I walked with my back straight and my head held high into the shop.

In human guise, he stood alone at the counter, silent, no aura of power, no chains, no shackles. No wings, no sword of justice and retribution. But there was no doubt he was an angel of punishment. The sigil of his office was a pale gold disc on his chest, the sigil that allowed him long minutes in contact with a neomage without generating his own heat. Rumors said the time was as long as an hour. An hour of torture for the mage he questioned. He turned glowing turquoise eyes to me and stared. Minutes went by; according to the beat of my racing heart, long, silent minutes.

"Little mage," he said at last, his voice like mellow brass bells rather than the tolling gong of doom I expected. "Come to me."

Knees quivering, stomach in a knot, blinking against tears, I walked to him, my battle boots loud on the wood floor. I stopped three feet away. Like all seraphs, he was beautiful, but his was a terrible beauty, a slash of mouth, jaw excised from cold marble, brow tall and wide with a widow's peak and dark hair curling like wood smoke.

He cocked his head, studying me, his glowing eyes moving up and down my body. With his left hand, he lifted his sigil and pulled it off, over his head. He stared at it a moment and looked again at me. Then, as though the action was of great significance, he set it on the counter with a soft clink.

Peripherally, I was aware of Rupert standing in the doorway to the workroom. Of Jacey's fear, mutating to something else. Of the silent crowd that gathered at the display windows of the shop, staring in, too fearful to enter.

The angel of punishment - one of the few seraphs to use the term "angel" in a title - looked at me. His eyes were already glowing with fierce energy, and the turquoise light slid out like tears, over his cheeks, his lips, up over his forehead, down over his body like a second skin, growing like mist, swirling around him, over him, with a clockwise spin. When it covered him from head to toe, he reached out a misty hand and brushed his fingers over my face. The pulsing energy slid from his fingertips across my cheeks, over my eyes, and down across my jaw, brushing my lips. I closed my eyes, feeling his energy, a lover's caress, tracing down my throat, around the nape of my neck, into my hair, and slowly, so gently, down my spine.

It was as if my clothes were nothing more than a cloud, and he touched me through them, the teal mist brushing my breasts and down my thighs. The mage-heat I expected from such an intimate seraphic touch didn't rise. My body remained cool and at rest. Surprised, I opened my eyes and stared at him through the mist.

The seraph finally smiled, a slight lessening of the tension in his narrow lips. He sighed and the mist that touched me boiled and swirled with his breath. I scented cinnamon and cloves and pomegranates, spicy and sweet. The swirl of the mist stopped. "It is true," he whispered into the mist. The words formed waves that crested between us and splashed down my body. "Finally. As it was prophesied. 'It shall be thus, blood to blood, bone to bone, flesh to flesh, in battle and before the throne. " He touched a layer of bloodstone on my prime amulet. I felt a sizzle of power to my bones.

"Bloodstone," I said, as if that were important. The mist slid away from me, and now it smelled like lemon mint and sage, cool and light, parched, like dried herbs.

"Yes. Bloodstone. It has happened," he said again, so softly I could scarcely hear. I felt the weight of the necklace resting on my chest. "Welcome, little mage."

With that, he swiveled, picked up his sigil, and walked from the shop. The crowd gathered in the door parted, and he moved through them, every eye following his progress. In the center of the street, he stopped. A flash of light burst from the sigil as he placed it over his head. The brilliance was dazzling and I turned away, blinking in the glare. When it cleared, the seraph had transmogrified. Fully winged, his feathers were a lustrous teal, edging to black at the tips. He lifted and spread his wings, exposing smoke-colored down beneath. One wingtip touched the window on the far side of the street. "Wait," he said to me. "I will return." With a snap of feathers like a battering wind, he leapt into the sky and was gone.

The crowd stood silent after the seraph was gone, motionless, as if frozen. Finally, a little boy turned and looked into the shop window. I damped my neomage attributes, which were glowing richly, and hid the amulets beneath my tunic. I met his eyes as human to human, but I knew it was too late. His mouth opened and I read the word in it. "Wow."

The crowd turned toward the shop, one by one, and then the entire group, as if pulled by a string. Their expressions were stunned, uncertain, growing angry. Elder Jasper was in the crowd, robed from kirk. I had gone to school with Jasper. He had performed Jacey's marriage ceremony. He was compassionate - usually - but now his eyes were full of terror. My heart plummeted. Terror in a human is not a good thing. In an elder it was deadly.

The little boy who had said "wow" was jerked away. His mother, Sennabel Schwartz, ran the library, and we had always been friendly. Now she stared at me, fear twisting her features. I caught sight of Durbarge and Thadd in the crowd. The assey was using a sat phone, his eyes on me.

Murmuring started far back in the crowd and rolled toward me. I caught sight of Ciana, looking from me to the crowd. Fear and horror etched her face. Fear for me. A hand swiped her back, out of the way. The little boy was pushed in the same direction and quickly swallowed by the crowd.

"Mage!" someone shouted.

Oh, no. Adrenaline flooded my veins.

Mage-fast, faster than human eyes could follow, I whirled and grabbed my luggage at the door. Behind me, I caught sight of Durbarge breaking into a run. Rupert slammed the shop door and locked it, shouting, "Run! Out back!"

I shot through the shop, into the stable. Zeddy stood there, saddling Homer for exercising. "Zeddy. Out of the way," I said, pulling my blade, advancing.

The huge boy looked from the blade held across my body, to the dobok, to the suitcases, to Homer, understanding dawning. And something like awe. "I ain't adjusted them stirrups yet. Whyn't you let me give you a leg up?" He cocked his head, listening. "Hurry, Miss Thorn. You got company coming." He laced his fingers and bent his very broad back, ready for my boot.

I hesitated only a moment before trusting him. I dropped the cases and placed my boot in his hands. As he tossed me up, I said, "Tell them I threatened you."

Zeddy handed me the cases and helped me tie them in place. "I reckon I can handle them people just fine, Miss Thorn. But Homer, he ain't warmed up." He opened the door and looked out. "They're coming. You best go!"

I kicked Homer into a lumbering trot. His long legs took me from the grooming area into the daylight and rounded the stable. I caught a blur of movement and color. Humans. They shouted in concert. "There she is!" "Stone the mage!" "Leave her alone!" "Get her!" "Keep her! Make her save the town!" "Gut her!"

Breath stuck in my throat, I kicked Homer again. Mentally, I found the fish used for the shield, and spoke the incantation that had amended its original conjure and allowed it to move as I moved. The shield, shaped like purple feathers to my mage-sight, snapped into place over Homer and me. The big black horse shied quickly left, then right. I controlled him, urging him uphill, my bags banging into my knees, hard. A shot sounded. Another.

"Where'd she go?"

"Tracks! She's headed up the Trine!"

A lucky bullet pinged off the shield. Quickly, I outdistanced them, Homer's long legs eating up the yards. But I was leaving a clear trail through mud and snow.

I moved Homer into a runnel. His hooves sank into wet ground still covering a layer of permafrost. The huge feet threw mud everywhere. I slowed him to a walk to keep splatters from creating a trail as easy to follow as spoor or hoof prints, and maneuvered him into a stream. The movement of water hid his tracks and would throw off his scent if they brought out bloodhounds. And they would.

Alternating between a bone-jarring trot and Homer's ground-eating walk, I planned. I would head north to the amethyst mound, uncover as much as I could carry to help me fight past the Darkness and over the peaks to the far side. With the amethyst, I might be able to reach that town of Ledger by tomorrow night. The stone had undeniably been damaged by the explosion that stripped it of power, but a quantity of it would still be more than all my amulets combined. I hoped.

The voices fell behind. I was safe. For now. When I licked my lips, I tasted salt. It was only then that I realized I was crying.

It took an hour of hard riding to reach the oval glen with its high mound at the west and the smaller cairn thirty feet beyond. Homer's wound packing held through the climb. If I needed blood for a working, I could rip the bandage off and create a fresh flow.

Above me, the ice cap groaned, all around me water plashed and trickled, and overhead a cold wind whistled off the Trine. It was like a symphony composed by half-mad humans. That the Most High had composed it was scary.

This time I didn't leave Homer in the meadow, but brought him around the mound to the far side, tethered him to a low limb, and loosened his saddle girth. I climbed to the top of the mound and surveyed the area with mage-sight, studying it intently, instead of doing a general sweep. Except for a weak pulse in the depression of the recently disturbed ground, I saw nothing that would indicate the presence of the amethyst lodestone. There was even less to designate navcone. Of course, it might have helped if I knew what the heck navcone was.

I saw Ciana's distinctive footprints mixed with larger ones and my heart wrenched. Was it only yesterday I had a life, people to love? Tears threatened again but I forced them away. I'd grieve later, when it was safe. Much later. Steadying myself with a deep breath of the cold air, I leaned against a tree and combined a skim with mage-sight. Vertigo swelled and crested in me; gorge rose. I forced myself not to drop the two divergent senses, and slowly the nausea settled.

With the scan open, I again studied the surrounding terrain. Above the lavender light of the buried amethyst, I spotted a delicate tracery of something else. Not the red and black of Darkness; not the delicate rainbow tints of mage or seraph workings. But something else. Something I had never encountered in my interrupted studies. It appeared to be both here and not-here. It was a fog, a mist of energies that pulsed not at all. A golden vapor of... something. Like the final breath of a dying godling.

I couldn't quite bring it into focus, couldn't quite get a sense of its smell or structure, as if it was created just for the purpose of camouflage. Keeping it in sight was impossible. It kept slipping away. Struggling to follow the shape, I finally decided it was strongest at the disturbed side of the mound and at the cairn of stones, the cairn I was pretty sure a Stanhope had built. He had lifted the stones in my vision.

I had come to the mound for three reasons - to get some amethyst, to see what the cairn hid, and to see whether I could use it to flee. But the need to be on my way worried at my mind like fire ants, keeping me on edge.

I moved down the muddy mound, pulled off my gloves, and started digging barehanded. If only I had brought a shovel. Water. Food. I laughed sourly and the bitter sound echoed off the rocks. I quickly found a dozen stones and, because snowmelt didn't seem to affect them much, set them in a puddle to clean while I worked. When I had all I could carry easily, I filled in the hole in the hillside, so no one could say whether I had been back. Knuckles abraded, hands dangerously chilled, I risked drinking a mouthful of snowmelt. With the amethyst close, it wasn't so bad.

I retrieved the weapons case from the saddle, opened a velvet bag designed to hold a blade, and tumbled the amethyst in. I put one crystal the size of my fist in my chest pocket before closing and hanging the case across the saddle horn and sliding on my gloves. I thumbed a shield of protection over Homer, took up my walking stick, and climbed the cairn to its center.

I was close to where Rupert had sat the day before. Stretching my shoulders and back to relieve the strain, I thumbed a charmed circle and opened my scan. The crevices in the cairn and the ground around it were littered with black pebbles of energy, glowing opals of power I hadn't seen until I was directly on top of them. The cairn was booby-trapped. I pulled in my legs, circling them with my arms. The motion brought on vertigo and the world swirled around me.

The sun shifted in the sky, falling to dusk in a heartbeat. The otherness of the scan I had noted earlier had taken over. In vision-memory, I saw a young boy standing at the base of the stones, his face slack. His eyes were unfocused. He moved with the erratic, shuddering motion of a puppet as he opened a bag and lifted out a handful of the black opal stones. Walking around the cairn, around and around, he placed the booby traps into the fissures of the rocks. It was the daywalker, I remembered, but much younger.

As he walked, one of the opals rolled and fell a few inches onto the bolder below. A massive explosion followed. The day-walker ignored it, as if he hadn't seen the boulders blast apart. I understood that he slept, clearly under the control of a being not present, that I saw a vision, a record, from another time. Rupert had survived picking up one of the booby traps. We had been more than lucky not to have tripped one.

I checked around me, noting each of the opals, and focused on one. It glowed, a hot ball of brimstone, but was wrapped in a tiny net that coruscated. With gloved fingers, I lifted one, and it tried to push me away, like a magnet would push another away. Was that how we hadn't activated them? Because they resisted us?

The opal flared softly in my fingers, blue over its red heart. The opal was a Dark conjure, overlaid with a tracery of Light. A Darkness that had been amended in some way, just as I had amended the conjure of the shield, I thought. But this was a much more difficult alteration. I had never seen such a thing. So far as I knew, it wasn't possible.

I carefully set it down, wiped my fingers, and crossed my legs yogi fashion. I set the walking stick in my lap, breathed in deeply, and looked down, through the boulders of the cairn. Below me was a soft golden glow. Here, not-here. Present, not-present. Nausea swirled through me; gorge rose, hot and acidic. Just in time, I rolled to the side and vomited.

The blended scan dropped me, sickeningly fast, through the rocks, into the deeps. The smooth walls of a cavern appeared. No roots protruded from them, but a dull red glow permeated the limestone. A man was lying on a thin mattress on the ground, a worn blue blanket over him. Lucas. I smelled death and old blood and caught my breath, but his chest rose and fell. He was alive, barely. Beside him was an urn of water with a metal dipper. Nearby was a tray with crumbs on it, crumbs that glowed faintly blue.

I could feel cold rock under my palms, smell the stink of my last meal. With that to center me, I tried to pull back from the cell where Lucas was held, but dizziness snared me.

A form entered the cell through a crevice in the rock. It was the same boy who had bespelled the cairn, but older now, a young man, black hair in a long braid. The daywalker, dressed all in black. A small diamond brooch glimmered on its shirt, a rune weaving its tracery through the faceted stones, the working of a conjure visible with the blended scan. A rune of forgetting. That was why I kept forgetting him.

The bloodstone hilt warmed in my hand. Mentally, I passed the vision of the daywalker and its rune into the stone, storing the memory. I'd not forget, this time.

The creature knelt beside Lucas, placing an object near him. I concentrated on it, falling closer. It was a small black leather shoe. Ciana's shoe. My heart clenched. "It won't be long now," the daywalker said, stroking back Lucas' hair, tenderly, as a lover might. "Soon we will have all of you. And enough blood to bring our creation to life."

Lucas moved in his sleep, as if his dreams pained him, as if he battled monsters. The daywalker soothed Lucas' limbs to stillness, murmuring softly. It tilted Lucas' head back, cradling him tenderly, bending as if to share a kiss. As it opened its mouth, small fangs unhinged, snapping forward from its palette, like a serpent's. With a vicious motion, it sank the fangs into Lucas' neck. With one hand, the walker stroked Ciana's shoe like a talisman as he fed. With the other, he stroked Lucas' body.

No! Battle instincts flared. I tried to pull my blade, fingers on the surface gripping uselessly. Lucas sighed. I struggled, sliding away from the cell where the foulness was taking place. The otherness of the blended scan pulled at me, and my sight divided with a sickening lurch. Distantly, I heard the sound of my retching. In the visions, Lucas still slept, the sound of lips muted at his neck.

In the divided scan an earlier Lucas was carried, screaming, bleeding, fighting, from the surface into the earth and along the tunnels, showing me the way. Without thought, I stored the path in the bloodstone.

Near Lucas' prison was a second cell, this one glowing bright blue and red. Inside, a seraph lay on a bed of seraph feathers, his wings clipped to the wrist bones. He looked up at me with green eyes, glowing with red flecks like Christmas ornaments. "Mage," he mouthed, struggling to rise as I swept past. In a third cell was a sleeping woman, the dark-haired mage, her limbs twitching, her dreams troubled.

"To me," a voice like bells whispered in my head. "To me, little mage." A tendril of blue reached for me through the walls of the prison, like the bluish light in the crumbs of food Lucas had eaten. It wrapped around my wrist in the here, not-here, and pulled. I was towed down, and down, until I saw a single glimmer of bluish purple. Far, far underground. "To me." The blue brightened and pulsed, just once, with hope, with desperate need. The tendril of energy beckoned, entreating, begging. I could hear sobs of relief. Of pain. "Help me!"

No. I'm being chased. I'm running, I thought back. A wailing fear erupted, the sound of bells, bells, bells. I retched again, my stomach empty, but the nausea overpowering. The blue holding my wrist tightened.

I was dragged toward her, through cubic acres of old stone, through the heart of the mountain. I jolted to a stop, slammed against a barrier of sticky red material, like a web of steel threads. It arrested my downward passage, halted and trapped me.

Just below, a handsbreadth beyond, was a glowing blue chamber. In the center was a bizarre and fearsome creature. I had expected a mage. Or a seraph. This was neither. This was unlike anything I had ever seen before. Unlike anything I had heard of before. This being, enclosed in a cavern guarded by an impenetrable tracery of Darkness, was a being of Light. It was one of the High Host, I was almost certain, but no seraph. Unlike the High Host, this one felt female. On the surface, my body curled up on the icy stone into a fetal position, the blade half freed in my hand. Below, I was watching her.

She had four faces on one head, each pointing in a different direction. One was human, one a cat face, one a bird of prey; the fourth face was the chiseled features of a seraph, softened into female curves. The entire rest of her body was feathered in pale lavender, a mishmash of body parts, demi-wings, hands, feet, breasts, all secured with reddish black chains that had seared into her flesh. And every part of her body was covered with eyes.

Eyes. Held in demon-iron chains. I blinked. Somewhere in the depths of my memory came a portion of scripture, from Ezekiel. "And every one had four faces: the first face was the face of a cherub, and the second face was the face of a human, and the third the face of a lion, and the fourth the face of an eagle."... "And their whole body, and their backs, and their hands, and their wings, and the wheels, were full of eyes round about."

That was it, whatever it was; this thing, this glowing being, was something unseen since ancient times. No mage had ever seen such a creature.

There was no question that she was a Power of Light, a member of the High Host, but an unknown being, unknown except for the four faces and the eyes... something about eyes... She turned those eyes up to me. All those eyes, begging. I focused on her chains. Huge demon-iron links bound her to the spelled heart chamber, a cell that had been carved out of the mountain just for her. "Trapped," she belled. And I understood.

About me, the web thrummed. The vibrations grew stronger, faster. Coming toward me. "You have been discovered," the bells whispered. "Flee." But to where?

I tried to pull free, but the strands held me fast. I tried to take a breath, but there was no air in the heart of the mountain. Like the being with the eyes, I was ensnared.

I knew what had happened. On the surface, I had forgotten to breathe. There, I was still lying on the cairn of stones. And someone had broken the charmed circle. Someone, something, was inside with me.

Wrath of angels, I was trapped. And I was dying.

A claw appeared beside me. It was more than six inches long. It plucked the red strand securing my face. I felt the thrum of the vibration through my whole body. Yet my body was on the surface. I wasn't here, not really. But the sense of my body was fading. My sight was telescoping down; I was passing out from lack of air.

Above the claw were barbs, the barbs of a spider's leg, though the leg was jointed differently from a spider's, with six joints that I could see. At each joint was a hooked claw. I was glad I couldn't see the rest of it. The strands vibrated again, and I realized that something else was heading my way. This one was bigger than the first. A lot bigger.

I felt a distant twinge on my face. Another. Thinking that the thing had touched me, I fought against the strands. The pain on my face came again, stinging. Another. Somewhere, someone was slapping me. It came from above me, on the surface.

Suddenly, a breath of air filled my lungs. Wonderful, moist, warm air. A breath had been forced into my body. Someone was beating my face and performing mouth-to-mouth on me, up on the surface. I wanted to laugh - someone was killing me and saving me all at once.

Pain could be used as a tether. I could follow the pain. Using the energy of the slaps, I pulled from the web that had caught me, slipping myself free of the strands. The claw reared back and plunged down, spearing through me. I wasn't present bodily, but my energy was there, and I felt something, some vital part of me, rip.

The pain of the beating forced the red strands to part, and I moved up through the boulder-heart of the mountain. Faster, I moved up and up straight toward the air and the sun and the sky. My scan was still open and I remembered to draw in energies from the stone, age-old energies from the time of creation. The energies that had sustained me once, before the amethyst gave itself to me. "Yes, amethyst," the bells sang, far beneath me.

I burst into dying sunlight and high into the air. Saw my body, supine on the cairn of stones. A man bent over me, one hand holding the back of my head, his mouth on mine. I was sucked into the dark again with a horrendous pressure, into my body, a tight, stiff, unforgiving place. I took a breath. Opened my eyes. Looked into Thaddeus Bartholomew's face, flesh sparkling with kylen might.

His mouth was hard on mine, sealing my lips shut. It was his breath I had taken. Another filled my lungs. He pulled away and slapped my face, sharp ringing slaps. Three of them before I grunted, "Stop," and tried to lift my arms to defend myself.

He rocked back on his heels, face flushed, breathing hard. "Thank the Most High," he said, winded. "You weren't breathing." He looked at his hand, and the seraph ring was glowing, a bright light that faded quickly.

I blinked the scan off, seeing with only human eyes as I groped both elbows under me. I pried myself into a half-sitting position. The smell of vomit was strong on the air. I wiped my mouth with a hand that felt as though it weighed a ton. The touch of the kylen was fresh on my lips. Faint heat trickled through my veins.

Thadd stood, eyes widening. A look of horror crossed his features and he backed away, down the cairn of stones. He wiped his hands down his jeans, as if to get the feel of me off his skin. "What are you doing?" he whispered.

Mage-heat. Once he took off the ring, the transformation of his body by his kylen genes had begun. Now, even with the ring in place, he felt the touch of a neomage, felt it in parts of him that had their own little minds. He thought I was doing it to him on purpose.

Gasping still, I chuckled at him, a breathy little laugh. His face suffused with color, growing even more red than when he bent over me. "It's not a love spell, you idiot," I wheezed. "If you got hot and bothered, it's because I'm a mage, you're kylen, and you used your ring to break a conjuring circle. You're going into heat." But my own heat is subdued, subtle. A thought for later, when I was sure I would keep breathing on my own.

"Keep heading north," he said, backing away, his feet missing all the little opals, as if they slid just to the side of his boots. "When you get over the Trine, disappear. I'll head them away from your trail." Thadd turned and strode to his horse, the bay he'd ridden before. With a single leap, he was mounted and heading down the Trine.

I looked around. He had come alone. Broken away from the searchers, or come before they could organize. He had come to help me, I realized. Thaddeus Bartholomew was a man of honor, even to a mage. And he had used an amulet with no training, no preparation. I wanted to call him back, but the taste of kylen burned on my mouth. It would be unkind and perhaps dangerous to call him. Legends said kylen youths, when they came into their gifts, could be treacherous. How much worse could a grown male be?

By the time I managed to get my knees under me, he was gone, and the sun was sitting on the peak of the mountain to the west. Sunset. I had to get out of here. But Ciana's shoe... Where had the daywalker gotten her shoe?

The memory of Rupert being accosted in the street, dragged away beneath a gray cloth, was brittle in my mind. And the daywalker's words, just before he bit into Lucas' neck. He wanted blood. Stanhope blood.

I could do nothing alone. But I wasn't alone. Not anymore. I remembered Raziel's words when he learned Lucas was in danger. "A quest," he'd said, with what looked like glee. Seraphs would protect Stanhopes, when they got around to it. Or if a mage called them in dire.

Against Thadd's good advice, I wouldn't be going over the Trine. I wouldn't be running away. Ciana was in danger. A daywalker wanted her blood. My fist circled the hilt of my walking-stick sword. I was going to war.