Which had nothing to do with anything. Lia should have known he would come back. Damn her.
Thera waited a minute; then, when he didn’t say anything, asked, “What do you think will happen once we get to Dena Nehele?”
Jared clenched his teeth. Damn damn damn.
“Lia’s asked me several times, privately, if I had finished my formal training. Each time, when I told her that I hadn’t, she mentioned that her mother was a Sapphire-Jeweled Black Widow who would be very pleased to have a Green-Jeweled apprentice or journeymaid.”
“Mother Night,” Jared muttered.
“Only a cruel person would say that to a slave—unless the slave was never intended to be a slave. Don’t you think?”
Jared bit his tongue.
Thera nodded as if he’d answered. “That’s what I thought, too. You know what else I think? I think she had a reason for the choices she made in Raej, that she chose each of us because she felt she had something to offer us. Except you.”
Stung, Jared stopped walking. “She has something to offer anyone with the sense to see it.”
“That’s what Blaed said.”
“Blaed’s a fool.”
Thera bristled. “He is not!”
“You said he was. This morning.”
“That was this morn—”
Jared sucked air when Thera’s hands clamped on his arm.
“Listen,” she said, cocking her head.
A rhythmic pounding. Off to their right. Out of sight.
He probed cautiously, recoiling when he brushed against a slimy psychic scent. “It’s Garth.”
Thera released him and started walking toward the sound.
Swearing, Jared grabbed the back of her coat. “Stay here.”
She turned icy green eyes on him. “You can come with me.”
Keeping a firm grip on her coat, Jared muttered, “Blaed and I are going to have a little talk about tethers.”
Thera made a sound a feral dog would envy.
They found Garth, his large hand filled with a stone that he was using to pound something he’d placed on a flat rock. His teeth were bared. His face was contorted. He grunted with each impact as he pounded, pounded, pounded.
“Garth,” Jared called, approaching warily. “Garth!”
Garth stared at Jared with blue eyes filled with a killing rage.
Jared hesitated, then stepped closer because he’d caught a glimpse of something shiny. “What are you doing?”
Garth’s mouth kept working, but no words came out. With an anguished bellow, he threw down the stone and ran away from them.
Jared took another step toward the rock.
“Jared, be careful,” Thera said.
Shiny brass buttons, mashed and useless, with pieces broken off.
Buttons.
And something else. Something in the buttons he could almost sense.
“Jared . . .”
He heard the sharpness, the intensity in Thera’s voice.
Careful. Careful.
With a delicate psychic tendril, he probed one of the buttons.
It happened too fast. One moment there was only that psychic sliminess. Then a psychic fog shot out of the buttons and rapidly changed into thick, sticky strands full of tiny hooks.
It looked like a badly woven net, Jared thought as it came down over his mind. The tiny hooks dug into his inner barriers, securing the strand. Another strand touched. More hooks dug in.
More strands. More hooks.
It surrounded him in seconds and immediately started to constrict. If it sealed his inner barriers, it would lock him inside himself.
Like Garth.
And then he knew what it was.
He poured the strength of the Red into his inner barriers, poured everything he had into his inner defenses.
It was a tangled web. The kind of web Black Widows used for their dreams and visions. The kind they used to entangle a mind and draw it into a living nightmare.
He struck out desperately, but the power only got through the shrinking spaces between the strands. Fed by his own strength, the strands in the tangled web swelled like fat slugs.
Panicked, he tried again and again.
*No, Jared! Don’t attack it! Don’t feed it!* Thera’s voice sounded like ice-coated fire.
Trembling, he obeyed.
Was this how Garth had felt? Had he done the same thing, unwittingly aiding in his own destruction?
*Hold your inner barriers, Jared,* Thera said. *I know how to get rid of this.*
She didn’t sound as confident as her words, but since he didn’t see another choice, he again obeyed. His body was shaking, but he felt distanced from it, unconnected. If he tried to raise his arm, how long would it take his body to receive the message—if it received it at all?
Without warning, a psychic knife came whistling down— a long, sleek blade, its edge glowing with icy Green fire.
It hit his inner barriers with enough force to make him gasp. It struck again and again, slicing through the sticky strands, charring the severed ends.
As sections of the tangled web fell away from him, little balls of psychic fire struck them, burning them to ash.
He endured the blows as Thera’s Green knife continued to hack at the tangled web.
Finally, enough had been cut away for him to be aware of something outside himself. Something that sounded like a roll of thunder, like the roar of a waterfall.
Like the sound of power gathering before it was unleashed.
*Leave it, Thera!* Jared shouted. *Get away from here!*
The Green knife paused.
*Mother Night,* Thera whispered, swiftly breaking contact with him.
Jared shook his head to clear it. His connection to his body still felt sluggish. Strands of the tangled web were clinging to his inner barriers, making him feel tainted, but he was no longer imprisoned.
Hands grabbed him. He stumbled.
“Jared!” Thera shouted. “There must have been another spell in those buttons. I can’t tell how strong it is. I don’t know if we can shield against it. We have to run.”
His legs just wouldn’t obey him. “Go,” he said. “I can’t run.”
Swearing, Thera tugged him away from the rock, toward the road. “Damn you to the bowels of Hell, you stupid man. RUN!”
She gave him a vicious clout. He couldn’t tell if it was physical or psychic, but it got his legs moving until he was running away from the rock, running up the road.
Feet pounded behind him. Two horses galloped toward him.
Seeing them burned away the last of the sluggishness.
He ran faster.
How dare she ride toward danger? How dare she risk herself? When they got out of here, he’d show her the sharp edge of his temper. Just see if he didn’t.
*Blaed!* Jared roared. *Protect Lia! Shield Lia!*
*Get down!* Thera yelled. *GET DOWN!*
He saw Blaed sweep Lia out of the gelding’s saddle, pull her to the ground, and cover her.
He tasted bitter jealousy that he was still too scrambled to use Craft, that he wasn’t the one shielding her, protecting her.
Thera knocked his legs out from under him. He went down hard, then tried to shake her off when she landed on his back. Wrapping her arms around his head, she buried her face against his neck, and enclosed them both in a Green shield.
The ground shook under him as the area around the flat rock exploded. Small stones and dirt rained down on them.
Thera pressed against him harder and kept muttering, “Mother Night, Mother Night, Mother Night.”
Moments later, years later, there was silence.
Thera rolled off him, quickly stood up, and moved a few feet away.
Shaken by everything that had happened, Jared moved more slowly. He noticed that Blaed, too, was slow getting to his feet.
Lia, on the other hand, strode toward Thera, her face tightened by anger. Her gray eyes looked stone hard.
“You stupid bitch,” Lia shouted. “I’ve been lenient about allowing you to use more than basic Craft, but I did not give you leave to play around with spells you have no training to handle.”