“Her father.” The forced laughter didn’t quite hide the nerves in his eyes as he ran a hand through his short cap of black curls. He offered, “We could just send him a message through the courier guild.”
“Since when did Wildlings trust the guild?” Aryn asked. “Send one of your own.”
“Right.” Rubbing his sweaty hands down the sides of his saffron trews, Kel tried to figure out if any of his kin would look upon it as an adventure. How many Wildlings got to see the enchanted kingdom?
Thousands, probably, he thought, sighing dramatically. And none lived to tell the tale.
“And maybe we will be lucky. Maybe Tyriel has been with him all this time,” Aryn offered, trying to cheer up the younger man.
Not likely though. The elvish kingdoms would drive her mad within a month. Be her father a prince of the elves or no.
Aryn tossed restlessly, tangled in the rough linen sheets. He’d gone to bed wearing his leathers, ready to leave at a moment’s notice, save for his boots. It was a muggy, humid night and the summer air coming in through the open window barely stirred the air. The sheets clung to him, twining around him like ropes as he fought the scenes playing out inside his head.
Trapped in dreams, he flung his arm out. “Tyriel.”
Irian, the Soul within his enchanted blade, surged to violent wakefulness with Aryn’s fingers brushed the hilt.
Their souls merged and Irian reached out, pulling on the powerful magic that had let him bind himself to the sword.
“Come,” Irian said, taking control of the dream and dragging Aryn along with him as he flung himself into the dreamscape.
In a blink, they were somewhere else.
They were with Tyriel.
He could see her.
They could see her.
Gods, what’s happened to her? Aryn thought, hardly able to believe the slumped still figure was the bright laughing woman he had spent six years with.
“She is a prisoner,” Irian said, his voice echoing inside Aryn’s mind. “Someone has taken her and holds her in this hole.”
Aryn didn’t snarl at the arrogant prick for pointing out the obvious. He was too enraged to form words.
A sob shimmered in the air, coming from the woman standing across from them, near the wall of the small cell. She turned toward them, eyes skating dully across the space where they stood without stopping. Her lovely features were covered in bruises, her eyes sunken and dull.
There was no dancing, vivid light in her eyes.
The sharp blades of her cheekbones, once so stunning, now looked almost violent, as if they’d cut through her skin. The hopelessness that hung around her filled him with impotent rage that only worsened when Irian said, “She’s been raped. Beaten. Likely often.”
Aryn didn’t want to look, but he refused to avoid the horror, wouldn’t turn away from it and forced himself to memorize dried blood, and bruises in varying stages of healing on her thighs, torso, breasts and wrists. Scars showed on her belly and legs.
The rage exploded into a wildfire when she went to move and collapsed, her too-thin legs not supporting her.
Forgetting he was here on in a dream, he lunged.
And several feet from her, he was slammed into a wall, unable to reach her.
“We can’t help her from within a dream, Aryn,” Irian said from behind her. “Wake, Aryn. You must wake.”
Furious even though he knew the enchanter spoke the truth, Aryn shouted out her name.
It was his own voice that woke him.
Hair, face and torso soaked with sweat, Aryn sat up in the bed, his breath sawing in and out as he scrubbed his gritty eyes. A misty form shimmered into view and a large brooding figure started to pace, his eyes glowing red with rage, echoing the red that still shimmered around the blade.
This was Irian, a long-dead warrior of the plains, a nomadic race that had been the progenitors of the Wildlings, thousands of years gone from the land.
“Tyriel, what happened?” Aryn muttered, shaking his head as Irian prowled the room, swearing in a language no longer spoken.
“Does it matter? We never should have let her leave. I warned you.” Irian continued to pace as Aryn brooded.
“What did you want me to do? Hold her prisoner?” Aryn snapped. The second he said those words, he wanted to yank them back.
Irian whirled to face him. In a blur of speed that made it seem if he disappeared, the warrior crossed to him and caught Aryn by the throat. “You see what’s happened to her now that you didn’t listen to me. Arrogant pup.”
Although Irian’s form looked misty and insubstantial, the hand on Aryn’s throat felt all too real—and the pressure definitely was. But Aryn had fought with this warrior inside his skin. Freeing himself with a violence that spoke of temper, he said, “If you want to waste time fighting, that’s fine with me, you useless hunk of metal. Or we could be smart and start looking for her.”
Irian looked as he wanted to give into the violence he felt. Long dead he might be, but his soul was bound to the blade Aryn carried and he felt the same emotions he’d once felt, emotions familiar to Aryn.
“We find her.” He gave a sharp nod and began to pace, his form flickering in and out as he brooded.
Aryn dropped down on the bed and stared at the floor.
What in the world could have happened between the four weeks between her leaving Ifteril and the Bentyl Faire?
Where could she be? And would he find her in time.
“We will find her, Aryn,” Irian said, his voice fading. The primitive power in the enchanter was vast, but he had to hold it in check or it could overwhelm his bearer. Doing so for a long period, Irian had said, could be taxing.
“We?” Aryn asked, tossing the enchanter a look. “Or you, after taking me over?”
“We. Tyriel is yours, not mine,” Irian said. But his voice was no longer the steady cadence it had been, rather an insubstantial whisper. “After all, my body is long dead.”
Sadness filled the man’s eyes, and grief.
Irian faded from view, and then a door shut inside Aryn’s mind.
The swordsman knew Irian would respond to nothing else.
Even Aryn’s response that Tyriel didn’t belong to Aryn.
* * * * *
The pain, nauseating as it was, no longer kept her awake. Lost in a tumbling maze of dreams, the pain lashed at her out of the darkness. Flinching, she shrieked and tried to pull away from it, to hide.
But it merely found her again, and tore at her repeatedly.
When the pain did little to jar her out of her daze, the things came. Wet, spongy beasts from the underworld, crawling over her, invading her, ripping and biting at her helpless form.
The things weren’t real, a construct created by her captor, but she feared them the most.
Her captor fed on that fear and she hated him all the more for it.
Once, she would have battled them, banished them as the illusions she knew them to be.
But there had also been a time when she would have lashed out and destroyed the man responsible.
In despair, she curled in on herself, to wait it out. It would fade. It always did.
And it would come again.
It always did.
Chapter 1
Six Years Earlier
Gay, cheerful music poured from the flute she held to her lips.