“Cut him off!”
Her eyes refocused on him sharply. She sat still, glaring at him until he let her go.
“If he’s almost here, surely you can wait to talk to him.”
Her gaze softened. She sighed. “I was trying to bargain with him.”
He swept once more for Clayarks, and found none, but was now aware of the larger shapes of several approaching horses and riders. The Clayarks were leaving. Coransee had a party of about tenten, yesof his people with him. Apparently that was more Patternists than the Clayarks thought they could pin down and kill. The shooting had stopped entirely.
Teray sighed and turned his attention again to Amber. “I assume you failedin your bargaining.”
“I think so.”
He put an arm around her. “I could have told you you would. But thanks anyway.”
“He wants to take you back alive.”
“He won’t.”
She winced. “If we weren’t so close, you and I, I’d try to get you to change your mind.”
“No.”
“I know. We’re alike that way. Stubborn beyond any reasoning.”
He looked at her for a long moment, then drew her to him. “Look, I want you to stay out of it when he gets here.”
“No.”
He pushed her away in alarm. “Amber, I mean it. He isn’t Darah, to be frightened off. He’ll kill you.”
“Maybe. But he’ll surely kill you alone.”
He severed the link with her and almost gasped at the sudden terrible solitude. Solitude had never seemed terrible before. He had come to depend on the link more than he had realized.
“Teray,” she pleaded, “please. This isn’t an ordinary confrontation. He made you his outsider illegally. You haven’t challenged him. You don’t want anything he has. He’s dead wrong, but he’s still going to kill you. Your only possible chance is for me to help.”
“I said no. He’ll face me alone, without any of his people backing him. That’s the way I’ll have to face him.”
She looked up at the riders now in sight, coming down the trail. “The hell with your stupid pride,” she said. “You’ve forgotten that I don’t want to go back to Redhill any more than you do. You’d better link up with me again, because when he hits you, I’m going to hit him. If we aren’t linked, one of us is liable to get killed, without doing the other any good at all.”
“Amber, no …!”
“Link. Now!”
He linked, furious with her, half hating her, feeling no gratitude at all. Pride. He was trying to save her life.
He stood up to meet Coransee and his people. Amber stood next to him, close enough to make Coransee aware that his arrival had not caused her to change sides. She was the one Coransee spoke to as he dismounted. He came up to them, but his people stayed back, still mounted, apparently watching for Clayarks.
“I don’t suppose you persuaded him to submit.”
“I didn’t try.”
“And you’re staying with him. I thought you were brighter than that.”
“No, you thought I was more frightened of you than that. You were mistaken.”
He turned away from her with a sound of annoyance. “Teray … do you really want to die here?”
“I’ll either die here or I’ll go on to Forsyth. Nothing is going to get me to go back to Redhill with you.”
Coransee frowned. “What did you expect to find in Forsyth, anyway?”
“Sanctuary.” Coransee would find out sooner or later anyway.
“Sanctuary? For how long?”
“Even if it was only a few months, at least I’d spend them in freedom.”
“You’d spend them learning everything you could to defeat me.”
“Only because you’ve left me no choice.”
“I left you one very simple choice and you …” Coransee stopped and took a deep breath. “There’s no point in arguing that with you again. Whether you believe it or not, though, I really don’t want to kill you. Look… I’ll give you one more choice.”
“What choice?” asked Teray suspiciously.
“Not much of one, maybe. It’s just that even with our ancestry, I find myself wondering more and more how much of a threat you could become.”
Teray ignored the implied insult in Coransee’s words. “Left alone I’d be no threat to you at all. I’ve already told you that.”
“And it still doesn’t mean a thing. It’s not your promises I’m interested in, it’s your potential, and that’s something I can only guess at. Rayal would be able to do more than guess.”
“You want Rayal to evaluate me?”
“Yes.”
“What would happen if he found out that I… that I didn’t have the potential to interfere with you?” It was a humiliating question to have to ask. No matter what words he used, he was really saying, “What will you do with me if I turn out to be too weak ever to stand against you?”
“What do you want to happen?”
“I want my freedom!”
“No more?”
“Freedom from you will be enough.”
Coransee smiled. “You wouldn’t ask me for more, no matter how much you wanted it, would you, brother?”
Teray said nothing.
“No matter. Are you willing to be judged by Rayal?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll go on to Forsyth, then. We’re nearly there and I want to see Rayal anyway. But there is one more thing. Only Rayal’s findings can free you. You go to Forsyth as my outsider.”
Teray shrugged.
“My property.”
“You’ve captured me.”
“Say the words.”
Teray stared at him in silent hatred.
“I’ve wasted enough time with you, Teray. Say the words or face me now.”
Say the words and give up any right to sanctuary in Forsyth, should Rayal’s decision leave him still in need of sanctuary. Say the words that could later be picked from his own memory and used to damn him. Or refuse to say them, and die.
“I am your outsider,” said Teray quietly. “Your property.”
Chapter 7
Time seemed suspended. The thirteen riders rode two abreast with Coransee alone in the lead. Teray and Amber rode directly behind him, still linked, but resting, no longer watching for Clayarks. There were eleven others who could watch. Teray felt his own weariness shadowily echoed by Amber’s. They had not let themselves realize how draining the constant vigilance had been, especially during the past twenty-four hours. And to have that vigilance end in capture by the very person they had endured it to escape
…
Teray looked at Amber, and read not only weariness but bitterness in her face. He realized abruptly that the bargain that he and Coransee had made in no way included her. She had fled from Redhill because Coransee had denied her independence, tried to hold her against her will. And now she was his again. At least Teray had a chance for freedom, but she was caughtunless she wanted to try against Coransee her healer’s talent for swift murder. And she had already admitted that she was afraid of him.
Abruptly Teray urged his horse forward to pull alongside Coransee. He could not abandon the woman, could not let her be drawn back into captivity without even trying to help her. She had helped him. The shot rang out just as Teray moved.
Teray felt the bullet’s impact so strongly that he slumped to one side, almost falling from his horse. He held on somehow, aware of pain now, growing, but oddly dulled. It was then that he realized that it was not he who had been shot, but Amber.
The link, fulfilling its function too well, had given him so great a share of her experience that if they had been alone he could have been shot too while he was recovering. But he was not alone.
He realized from the alert, intense expressions of the outsiders and women that they were already seeking the Clayark sniper. The party had come to a stop. Teray left the hunt to them, dismounted, and went to help Amber.