Cursed by Ice (17 page)

Not too long after juquil’s hour, Dethan saw his brother return. As he watched from the high windows, he could see his brother’s breath fogging in the air from the vast temperature difference between them. Garreth threw the reins at a stable hand and walked into the keep.

Dethan knew he should wait, give Garreth time to come down from the pain of his curse, but he was so compelled that he could not seem to help himself. He went to the main hall and stopped his brother there.

“Brother,” he greeted him, “how do you fare?”

Garreth gave him a hard look. “You know how I fare,” he said bitterly.

“Yes, and for that I will be eternally sorry,” Dethan said with a heartfelt frown.

Garreth sighed. “You need not feel guilt, brother,” he said. “It does neither of us any good. I came with you voluntarily on that journey. I could have held my ground and stayed behind, but I wanted the adventure as much as you did. I am responsible for my own curse.”

“But I—”

“Was there something you wanted?” Garreth interrupted him.

“I wanted to discuss … I wanted to be certain you were not becoming unwisely attached to this girl you seem to be championing. First you go to great lengths to save her life, and I can understand why you did—it is in your nature to do the just thing—but now you have made her your lover? What can you possibly be thinking?”

“What I am thinking is that it is none of your business who I bed,” Garreth said crossly.

“Garreth …”

“No!” Garreth said sharply. “I am not a child, Dethan. I am not your younger brother who is getting into trouble at every turn as we did when we were children. I am a grown man now. I have lived a very long life, just as you have. I am free to make my choices, whether they make sense to you or not. In fact, you never come into the equation … nor should you! I shall do what I please whenever I please. Right now there is only one person I must answer to, and she is not you!”

“That’s just it! Weysa has hold of you and she does not like to share her champions. She will not want you to lose focus of your goals.”

“Bedding a girl will not make me lose focus of my goals!” Garreth snapped. “There was a time when you
wenched considerably during your campaigns! And yet you were still able to conquer in Weysa’s name! Now, leave me be!”

Garreth pushed his way past his elder brother.

“Garreth—”

“This conversation is over, Dethan,” he said.

“Where are you going? To find
her
?”

Garreth rounded on him. “Yes! I’m of a mind for a good fuck to warm me from the cold of my curse! Is that all right with you? Am I to beg your permission for it?”

“No, Garreth,” he said quietly. “I just don’t wish to see you or the girl hurt.”

“As I said, that is not anything within your power. Do not make me repeat myself again.”

Garreth turned away and marched out of the hall.

He had thoroughly warmed by the time he finished climbing the tower stairs to Sarielle’s chamber, figuring it was as good a place to start searching for her as any … although he suspected that after so many turnings of being held captive in that room she might not want to spend much time there at all. Both the hotness of his roiling temper and the vigorous exercise did well toward warming him. When he reached the door he stopped to take a deep breath, trying to cool his temper. Honestly what right did his brother have to question him? To questions his motives and actions? Dethan was way out of line.

But he didn’t want to think about his brother anymore. He wanted to focus on the woman beyond the door. He wanted to touch her, to make sure she was real, to steal moments with her that might make him forget all about his brother and his wretched curse.

He pushed open the door, holding in front of him the lantern he’d grabbed, letting the light fall upon her empty bed.

Where could she be?

Her sisters, he thought immediately. She would be with her sisters. He thought about leaving her to them, letting her spend some much desired time with them unmolested. But he could not seem to help himself as he hurried to their room. When he opened the door and let himself in, he moved to the girls’ beds.

To say he was surprised to find them empty was a bit of an understatement. Empty not only of Sarielle but of the children too. He quickly strode into the adjoining room and found the woman who had been acting as the children’s temporary governess, shaking her awake roughly.

“M-my lord?” she stammered sleepily.

“Where are the children?”

“I … the scourge took them this morning.”

Garreth grabbed the woman by the front of her dressing gown and pulled her nose-to-nose with him. “Call her that again and I will see you whipped within an inch of your life.”

The woman began to shake and tried to pull away.

“I-I don’t know where they are! It’s bad enough I have to cater to the little …” The Kithian woman spat her words but cut herself off from calling them a name that might anger him further. But then she ruined it with her next statements. “Me! Catering to slaves! And those demented little children aren’t right! There’s something very wrong with them!”

Garreth backed up, dragging the woman with him out of her bed.

“When did she take them?” he demanded of her.

“This morning!”

“And when she didn’t return with them you did not think to say something to someone?” he ground out.

“It is not my job to keep watch on a slave woman!”

“In fact,” Garreth hissed, “it is not your job to do
anything. You are summarily dismissed from this household!” He shoved her away from himself. “Pack your things and get out this instant!”

“Fine!” she hissed. “I don’t care if she is the wrena! She is still a slave!”

Garreth came back up against her with an angry growl. “There are no more slaves in this city. And you … Get out of my sight before I have you stripped and pilloried in the middle of the bazaar!”

The woman’s eyes went wide and she seemed to suddenly realize she had gone too far.

But Garreth did not give her the opportunity to try to redeem herself in his eyes.

“Where did she say she was going?” he bit out.

“The children wanted to go see the fields,” she said. “Sor, if you will forgive me—”

“No, I will not!” Garreth snapped. “Leave, madam. Now!” He turned his back on her and stormed out of the room.

Now he had to go back to Dethan and ask for his help. He was deeply disturbed that Sarielle had not returned to the keep, that she was missing. Where could she have gone? Why would she have disappeared like that?

“Dethan!” His brother was no longer in the hall. That meant Dethan was probably in his rooms. Garreth hurried, a sick feeling twisting low in his gut. Something was not right.

“Dethan!” he cried, pounding on his brother’s door.

The door opened and Dethan stood there half dressed, clearly getting ready for bed.

“Sarielle left with the children this morning and has not returned.”

To Garreth’s frustration, Dethan did not react with any urgency. “Have you checked the entire keep?”

“No! Dethan, something is very wrong here!”

“Garreth, let us search the keep for her before we get ahead of ourselves and worry where worry is not warranted.”

Dethan re-dressed himself, much too slowly in Garreth’s opinion, and together they set out to rouse the entire keep and begin a search for Sarielle. After over an hour of searching, they came up empty handed.

“She’s gone,” Garreth fretted.

“Garreth,” Dethan said hesitantly, knowing how fractious his brother was at present, “it is possible … She is a free woman now, Garreth. Free to go anywhere she wishes. Perhaps she has just taken the children and left. Left to start a new life elsewhere, away from the memories she has of this place.”

“No!” Garreth ground out. “She has not left! All of her clothing is still here. As are the twins’. She would not leave with nothing. She would not … she would not leave without at least saying good-bye to me.”

“Why? Because she bedded with you for a few hours? She does not owe you any—”

Dethan broke off when Garreth’s fist crashed into his face. He staggered back in shock and, touching his bloodied lip, stared at his brother.

“What in the eight hells is wrong with you?” he demanded.

“What is wrong with you?” Garreth countered angrily. “If this was your precious Selinda, you would be turning the world on end to find her!”

“Selinda and Sarielle are hardly comparable!”

“Insult her again and I swear to all the gods—”

“I only meant,” Dethan said hastily, “that my feelings for Selinda cannot possibly be the same as yours for Sarielle! You’ve known the girl for only a matter of days!”

“My feelings are not at issue here! The wrena is missing. With her goes the power to call up the wyvern! Is
that what you want out there? Possibly able to turn against us?”

He said the words but didn’t believe them in the slightest. He was only saying what he thought would most motivate his elder sibling to help him.

“A good point,” Dethan said seriously. “But how could she leave unless willingly?”

“We must search the city, question the guards and men. Someone has seen her and we will find out who. Once we do … then we can figure out what action to take.”

“Perhaps we should wait until daylight,” Dethan hedged.

“No. Now. We must find her before too much time has passed. If … if we find her and it is as you say, that she is leaving of her own accord and wishes to be let go, then fine. We can leave her be. But … until we know for certain, I will not rest.”

“Very well,” Dethan said. “As you wish.”

The brothers began their search.

It was almost two hours later when they found the guards at the gate who had seen her pass and walk out into the huff fields with the children.

“Did it look as though she was set to journey a long distance with them?” Dethan asked.

“No. They looked as though they were … playing,” the guard said. “But we could not see them after they went into the huff fields. The grasses are too tall.”

“So anything could have happened to them,” Garreth said. “We must search the fields.”

“Brother, this time I have to insist we wait until dawn. We will find nothing in those vast fields in the darkness and we could miss some important signs of their passing if we flounder around.”

Garreth had to admit his brother was right this time, though he did not do so with any joy. In fact, he was a
cloud of irritability and anger as he paced the hall waiting for daylight. Dethan took the opportunity to gather the men and arrange them into searching groups, then laid a map of the city and the surrounding fields upon a table and organized where each group of men was to search. The fields were vast and the grasses high. It could be painstaking work. It gave Garreth only the smallest amount of comfort to see his brother being proactive.

When dawn came the brothers left the keep and the city behind and began to search the fields. It was quite some time before they found the field they were looking for. In the center of the high grasses was an area that had been trampled down, and there were signs a horse team and a wagon had been there.

“She snuck out into the fields to a wagon and left, as I suspected,” Dethan said gingerly, afraid of enraging his brother with the truth. “She must have supplied it over time and—”

“Supplied it how?” Garreth asked. “With what money?”

“You said yourself the wyvern lies on a bed of treasure!”

“And when would she do this? When she was dying? When she was traveling to the wyvern? No. You are only seeing what you want to see,” Garreth said.

“I could say the same to you!” Dethan snapped.

“Look, brother!” Garreth snapped, pointing to the ground. “Her footprints … but no footprints belonging to the children. In fact, it’s as though she came into the field alone. But there are the prints of another adult.”

“A lover perhaps? One she is running away wi—”

This time Dethan caught Garreth’s wild punch in his hand before it could strike him on his jaw. The brothers struggled, tussled. Dethan finally shoved his youngest sibling away.

“All right!” he said. “Say she left unwillingly! With whom? How? Why? Answer me this!”

The answer came to both brothers at the same time. “The mage!” they cried in unison.

“You see, brother?” Garreth said heatedly. “There is a danger here!”

“But why would she go with him? If the children were not here, he would have no leverage over her.”

“Perhaps …” Garreth cast about for a reason. “What if somehow he had control over them? Maybe that is why we see no prints. There has to be some kind of explanation.”

“Assuming it is the mage, how are we to find him? He can make himself invisible to us at any time.”

“I—” Garreth cast about for a response. “I don’t know,” he said at last.

“What we need is a mage of our own. Surely there is someone in this city who can see through his magic.”

“No, my lord,” a Kithian guard spoke up. “The mage saw to it his was the only power to be had in the city. Anyone with mage ability was either forced to leave the city or met with an underhanded death by one of the mage’s agents or tricks.”

“Then we must seek out an answer from other cities,” Garreth said. “We will send groups of riders to the cities in search of mages or magesses.” He paused. “And I will go back to the wyvern. Surely he can find her.”

“No. It would be a fool’s errand to go back to that place of danger when the wyvern may no longer be there.”

“What else would you have me do?” Garreth railed. “Just sit by and do nothing?”

“You have a city to run, like it or not. We do not yet have a strong enough foothold here. You speak of my wife and child … whom I cannot return to until I know you are safely in charge of this city! Now, that may
seem selfish to you, but it is also what you promised Weysa you would do and she will not take too kindly to you shirking your responsibilities to her.”

Garreth despised it, but his brother was right. He would be mad to risk Weysa’s outrage. She could just as easily put him back on that mountaintop, leaving him there to freeze for all time.