my breath a moment, listening intently. Mayam obediently stopped, glancing around. We had reached some sort of a game trail, the area thick with small shrubs and huge ferns that reached almost to my waist. Overhead, the branches of the trees whispered to each other in the language of the forest. I wished that I had Hallow with me, for I knew he’d made a study of such things, but limited as I was in my training as a priestess of Kiriah, I knew only enough to make out that there was no sound of large bodies crashing through the undergrowth.
I relaxed, lowering my hand. “I don’t hear them. With the goddess’s grace, we’ve lost them. Let’s go find a high point, so we can see where we are, and then we can figure out how to get out of this blighted land.”
Mayam followed me silently, but I felt her emotions leaching out, cloaking us both in a miasma of sorrow, regret, and despair.
Chapter 5
“I leave at dawn.” Deo imparted the information to Hallow, then turned and headed for the stable to ensure his horse would be ready for travel.
“What?” Standing outside the single remaining tower of Kelos, his hands spread out over an intricately drawn field of stars that glittered silver in the lifeless grey dust coating everything, Hallow looked up in surprise. The two other arcanists he’d evidently summoned stood with him, the three of them forming a triangle. The air and ground in front of them were full of symbols.
Deo considered the center of the triangle, the focus of all the magic that flowed around the starfield. In the middle of it, a wooden staff had been stuck in the ground, with a wooden bird attached to the top. “I suppose you know what you’re about, but I can’t imagine anyone wishing to be bound to such a puny-looking eagle.”
“It’s not an eagle; it’s a sparrow hawk, and Thorn will love it, assuming we ever finish this summoning spell. It takes three days if we all concentrate and don’t die of exhaustion in the meantime. What do you mean you’re leaving at dawn?”
“I mean that at dawn, I will leave,” Deo said with more patience than was usual for him. He was in an exceptionally good mood, anticipating the battle waiting for him. Not to mention Idril. They’d only had a short time together after they’d driven Nezu from Eris, and he’d laid down the law about her running off and marrying whoever caught her eye when she was supposed to be waiting for him. But now that he’d made himself clear on that front—and she had finished blistering his ears with her thoughts regarding his quite reasonable commands—he missed her.
“I understand the basics of the sentence, Deo,” Hallow said, snapping off each word at the same time he drew glittering symbols in the air. “What I want to know is why you feel compelled to leave right now. As it is, I’ve just sent Quinn and Ella to sneak into Starfall to keep an eye on what Darius is doing. Aarav and Tygo and I can’t stop the summoning spell or we won’t get Thorn back, and if we don’t get Thorn back, he can’t find Allegria and return her to me. Dammit, Deo, don’t you dare walk away from me!”
“You have no need of me,” Deo said, pausing to send a quick, potent glare to the arcanist. “I can’t help you with Allegria’s rescue, and you, yourself, saw the message I received this morning that my Banes have definitely sided with Jalas. I didn’t believe it could be so, but now there is no doubt of their perfidy. I did not risk all for them to abandon me and join forces with a madman.”
Hallow said something so softly that Deo couldn’t catch it. “Regardless, we need you here in case the thane and his men return.”
“The thane has been driven back to the spirit world. He will not return for some time,” Deo said dismissively, his mind busy with the things he would have to say to his Banes when he saw them, alternating with the things he wished to do with Idril’s fair body.
“You don’t know that—Tygo, quickly, that spell in the lower right is unwinding. Ah. Good catch. You don’t know that the thane won’t return just as soon as he regains his power.” Hallow pulled out a silver dagger and etched runes into the air above the staff. The runes glowed the same as the silver blue symbols on his wrists and ankles before sinking into the wood of the staff itself. “We have need of you here. If the thane were to come back now, we would be vulnerable. And since the whole reason you came to Kelos with us was to take care of the thane, I’d appreciate it if you could remain here to do just that.”
Idril had never been one to be driven by the lusts of the flesh, but the most recent meeting with her had changed something inside Deo. His heart had always been hers, but now…now it was as if she was in his blood. He frowned to himself as that thought prickled along his flesh like a particularly spiky burr. How dare she make herself so needful in his life? He made a mental note to inform her that although her place was at his side, delighting him with her quick wits, barbed comments about those who spited him, and her nubile, lush body, he was a warrior first and foremost, the savior of the Fourth Age, and he could not always be stopping his duties to think of her silky thighs, and the weight of her breasts in his hands, and the way she tasted when he parted her legs and—
“Deo?”
With an effort, and an uncomfortably tight feeling in his breeches, Deo realized his mind had wandered to the point that he’d missed whatever it was Hallow was saying. “What?” he asked, mildly peeved that his contemplation of Idril’s womanly parts had been disturbed.
“We need you here,” Hallow said, his eyes narrowed, and his dagger glinting in the sunlight while he continued to cast runes onto the wooden stock of the staff.
“You have the spirits here to help you should the thane decide to ransom Allegria back to you,” Deo said, dismissing the idea of remaining. The message his father had sent was most clear that his Banes had turned, and that, he would not tolerate. “The Banes must return to my side, after which, we will remove Jalas, and then deal with Darius and Nezu.”
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