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Authors: Sharon Shinn

Mystic and Rider (Twelve Houses) (51 page)

BOOK: Mystic and Rider (Twelve Houses)
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When she was about fifteen yards outside of the compound, Coralinda must have given a sign. Some of the guards broke for the gate at a dead run. Others ran for the stables. So much for promises to leave the mystics unmolested.
Senneth flung her arms in the air and felt heat scatter through her fingertips. Fire leapt up on top of the high stone wall and traveled like a runner along the entire perimeter. She clenched and released her fingers, and another sheet of flame created a shimmering and deadly barrier across the entire opening of the gate. She heard cries of alarm and terror as men tried to dash through and then skidded back. Maybe none of them had believed that magic would burn as hotly as fire.
She wheeled her horse around and pounded down the road, in fast pursuit of her fleeing companions.
 
I
T was an hour or so past noon before Senneth and the raelynx caught up with the others. She had started out at a dead run but knew the horse could not sustain that pace for long, so as soon as she felt she was out of immediate danger, she slowed to an easier gait. The fire she had left at Lumanen Convent would burn for a day, she thought, though there was always the chance a few of the hardier soldiers would be able to nerve themselves to dart through the flames. She didn’t think they’d convince any horses to break through, though, so she hoped they were safe from immediate pursuit.
Though safety, it would seem, was not something this small group was really destined to enjoy.
Once she’d been traveling for nearly four hours, she spotted the hawk circling above and then angling down as if to make a landing some distance ahead of her. Kirra, she suspected, and so she was not surprised when she rounded another curve and came upon her five companions drawn up on the side of the road. Justin’s face broke into a smile of elation when he saw her. He spurred forward to meet her, catching her hands in both of his and seeming as if he actually wanted to lean over both saddles to embrace her.
“Senneth! Amazing! You were so—I’ve never seen anything like that! She was afraid of you!” he exclaimed.
Senneth laughed and dropped his hands. “Not really. But I had her at a momentary disadvantage. How’s Tayse?”
Justin turned back to the other Rider, who was trotting up. So were the others; she was in the middle of a small, grinning group of friends. Well, Donnal only appeared to be grinning as he sat in wolf shape, panting on the side of the road. And Tayse did not have anything even remotely resembling a smile on his face.
“Unhurt,” Tayse said tersely. “But while I was there, she boldly threatened war with the king.”
“In a private interview with you?” she asked.
He nodded.
She continued. “Did she give her reasons?”
“His soul is corrupted by magic, and she’s the savior of Gillengaria. Standard fanatical rhetoric, but she strikes me as dangerous.”
“Very dangerous,” Senneth said. “Did she try to recruit you?”
A flash of surprise in his eyes, quickly hidden behind a neutral expression. “How did you guess?”
She smiled. “Standard fanatical rhetoric.”
“She gave me a moonstone and told me she could reclaim me.”
“And where’s the moonstone now?”
He smiled grimly. “I left it on the pillow of my bed.”
“Is it safe for us to be standing in the road talking?” Justin interrupted. “Do you think she’ll send soldiers after us?”
Senneth turned her smile on him, and he actually smiled back. She might have done it, she thought; she might have found the way to win over Justin. Save Tayse’s life. “Well, I think she will eventually,” she drawled. “But when I left, there was a ring of fire around the whole compound, so I don’t think anyone will be leaving soon.”
General laughter at that. “So we’ve got, what, a head start of a full day?” Kirra asked.
Senneth nodded. “Probably.”
“Then we can all sleep the night through without setting a watch?” Cammon asked.
She laughed. “Well, I’m not sure Coralinda’s men are the only ones looking for us. She may have gotten a message off to her brother after they captured Tayse. ‘Mystics on the loose, headed south.’ And who knows what else he’s heard about our escapades to date? I don’t know how far we can relax.”
“Oh, to sleep in a bed again for just one night,” Kirra groaned. “To bathe. To eat a meal that someone else has cooked.”
“Not just yet,” Senneth said. She glanced over at Tayse, who still seemed remote and far more unfriendly than someone who had just been rescued should seem. “But when we stop tonight, Tayse will have to tell us all the details of his stay.”
He nodded. “I think it might prove to be valuable for me to have gleaned what information I did about the workings of the convent.”
Justin pulled on his reins, turning his horse back in a southerly direction. “Let’s move on, then.”
“Senneth.” Cammon’s voice stopped her from following immediately in Justin’s wake. All of them lingered to hear what he had to say, made curious by the troubled sound of his voice.
“What?” she asked.
“Back there. At the convent. There was something—” He stopped, looking uncertain. “Someone there is a mystic,” he said.
Senneth felt her eyebrows stretch as high as they would go. “Are you sure?”
He nodded. “It was very faint. And she seemed—fairly young. I would guess she has no idea she has any power.”
Senneth glanced at Kirra, who looked as wide-eyed as Senneth felt. “So—not a spy gone gamely to the enemy camp,” Senneth said.
“There’s someone who will come to grief if she ever starts exercising her abilities,” Kirra commented.
“Maybe they’re so buried they’ll never surface,” Senneth said. “But that’s the last place I’d want to be if I was infused with latent power.”
“It was the last place I wanted to be at all, and I don’t have a speck of magic,” Tayse said.
They all laughed. Justin, still taking very seriously his duties as temporary leader, kneed his horse forward. “Move out,” he said, sweeping his left arm forward. “We can cover a lot of ground before nightfall.”
With a little sigh, Senneth silently relinquished to him all immediate responsibility for command. She settled back in her saddle, watching the others dispose themselves for travel. With Justin in the lead, Tayse fell back to take the rear. Donnal trotted ahead of Justin and then disappeared off into the undergrowth. Cammon and Kirra arrayed themselves on either side of Senneth, Cammon leading Donnal’s horse.
“How’s Tayse really?” Senneth asked quietly. “He seems—withdrawn. Did something happen?”
Kirra smothered a giggle. “I think he’s just miffed that he was careless enough to get taken on the road. I think he also wishes he’d fought back—even though it’s clear that he would have been dead if he’d lifted his sword.” She glanced at Senneth. “And maybe he thinks it’s embarrassing that you had to rescue him.”
“I don’t think it’s embarrassment,” Cammon said thoughtfully, and then looked alarmed and refused to elaborate when they both demanded to know what that meant. Finally he said, “It’s just that—Senneth, you know. She’s so powerful. She puts everyone in awe.”
Senneth felt her mouth twist. “I don’t think he looks on me with awe. Maybe he thinks we’re stupid to be going on to Gisseltess.”
“Maybe he’s mad because Justin’s acting all serious and in charge,” Kirra said.
“Give him a night to recover,” Cammon said. “And he’ll be in charge again.”
“I think this is
my
mission and
I’m
the leader,” Senneth said. When they laughed, she allowed herself to smile. “Some of the time, anyway.”
“I wouldn’t worry about Tayse,” Kirra said.
Cammon’s smile was secretive and hard to read. “Or you could just ask him,” he said. “What’s on his mind.”
After that they rode on in silence for a while. Senneth thought that if the day ever came where she could lie down in safety, she would sleep a week through. As dusk drifted down, Justin called a halt, and they pulled off the road to try to find a level place to camp. Donnal stood on all fours for a moment, sniffing the air, then bounded off to seek out game or water or whatever he was focused on at the moment. Senneth dropped her bedroll to the ground and expended a small quotient of energy to warm the air around them.
“Ah,” she said in a light voice, “so good to be home.”
CHAPTER 27
 
T
AYSE knew he was being surly and that only Senneth cared, and she was the last person in Gillengaria he wanted to offend. Yet he could not shake off his strange sense of oppression and behave in a normal fashion. He had been so sure she would come for him that he had not even been surprised when the breathless guard burst into his room and demanded that the Rider leave with him instantly. He had not known precisely how she would accomplish the rescue until he saw the pacing raelynx, the phalanx of mystics, Senneth at the absolute center of every pair of eyes in the courtyard. Her star-white hair made a halo around her face, and her expression was one of pure serenity. She might be the focus of the whole world, he thought; she had that much strength of purpose, that much force of will. The royal court and the Twelve Houses and the merchants and the farmers and the laborers would all gladly revolve around her.
Or maybe he was the only one who felt her presence so powerfully, who had made her the sun for his own small world.
Something he did not want to do.
She had scarcely glanced at him as she sprang him from his trap. All her attention had been on the Lestra. Tayse had climbed into the saddle, followed Justin and the others through the gates, and ridden away as fast as their horses could take them, and all the while his body had been clenched in mute protest. They could not leave her behind, solitary and undefended! Yet it was clear she had planned this whole escape, down to the final tongue of fire, and that the only part any of them could play had already been scripted by her.
So they had ridden out—and he had strained every sense to catch the sound of her horse cantering up behind them—and interminable hours had passed before Kirra brought the welcome news that she was just a few minutes behind them. He had waited as gladly as the rest of them for her to ride up, relaxed and smiling, but he had not been able to show his emotions on his face.
Something had changed.
He could not define it; he had no words for it; he did not even want to understand it. He would almost rather still be a prisoner inside Lumanen Convent than to feel this crushing weight upon his chest and not have the first idea how to dislodge it.
He was as weary as the rest of them, but it was no particular relief to stop for the night. He felt the quick bloom of warmth as Senneth did something to ward off the chill, and all of the others fell gratefully to the ground.
“Can we just stay here?” Kirra said drowsily. “Forever? Do we actually have to get back on the horses tomorrow and ride?”
Tayse handed his reins to Cammon, who was collecting the horses. “I’ll look for water,” he said.
Kirra pointed. “Donnal went that way. That usually means that’s the first direction to go.” She tossed him her water bottle. “Thanks.”
Tayse gathered the other containers, then headed out the way she’d indicated. Sure enough, within a quarter of a mile he practically stumbled across a slim, mossy stream. It was so covered with leaves and fallen branches that it was easy to miss, but it was moving swiftly enough that there were only margins of ice showing white along its narrow banks. He knelt down and filled the containers one by one, first emptying and rinsing them of their stale contents.
He rose to his feet but found he was in no particular hurry to get back to camp. Looking around, he saw the stump of a tree, neatly sheered off below waist height. He settled onto it as if it was a tall barroom stool, and for a moment he wished he had a glass of ale to accompany the illusion. After the events of the past two days, he thought he deserved a drink or two. Too bad the forest yielded no taverns.
He heard a rustling in the undergrowth, coming from the direction of camp. He leaned his fists on his knees and waited. It was entirely without surprise that he saw Senneth break cover and make her way slowly to where he sat. It was not quite full dark, but she was still a shadowy shape, her face lit faintly by the glow of her hair. She approached him slowly, as if uncertain of a welcome.
BOOK: Mystic and Rider (Twelve Houses)
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