Lord of the Wolfyn - By Jessica Andersen Page 0,85
a way his human tongue had never managed.
The huge shape moved, turned and came toward him, hooves ringing on the ground and striking sparks of metal on stone. The torchlight from the aisleway glinted off a long, metallic spiral and lit the blink of fiery orange eyes nearly lost beneath a long, flowing forelock.
It was the biggest damn unicorn Dayn had ever seen.
“Let me out and I’ll show you.” The stallion’s eyes took on a hard, vicious gleam that reminded him that while the creatures might tolerate the wolfyn, they sure as hell didn’t like them.
Then again, they didn’t like anyone. And captivity really pissed them off. “I’ve got a better idea,” Dayn said. And hoped to hell he wasn’t about to make a fatal mistake.
“Go see what all that commotion is up at the castle,” Moragh snapped in her servant’s direction. “It’s upsetting the beasts.”
“Yes, mistress.” The gnome bowed his way out.
The training hall—at least that was what Reda thought it was, based on all the open space and racked weapons—echoed with the hollow thud of the double doors shutting behind him, cutting out the distant blare of horns, the nearer snorts and stomps of the caged beasts.
The witch turned back, eyes glittering dangerously. “Now. Where were we?”
Reda just glared. Her head hurt and the large stone chamber around her kept going in and out of focus, but she held doggedly on to consciousness, clinging to the stone-cold fury that had come over her when the guards had opened her cell door and she had made a break for it, only to be struck down and dragged to her destination.
Pushed beyond fear and terror to a new place deep inside herself, where a hard and determined soldier of a woman existed, she wanted nothing more than to grab Moragh by her hair and dunk her head in the vat she was so carefully tending over a fire in the center of the big stone room. Or Reda could go for any number of the weapons displayed around the room; she wasn’t picky. What she was, however, was trapped in the center of a strange symbol drawn on the stone floor in glittering powder. It generated a magical field of some sort, an invisible wall enclosing her. She flattened her palms against it now. “I don’t know where you were,” she said in answer to the witch’s question, “but I was thinking about the scene where the wicked witch gets it, and wondering if I could get a vortex to drop a house on you.”
She didn’t let the bitch see the terror beneath her bravado, didn’t let herself think about anything beyond stalling for time. Dayn was on the island—she could feel his nearness through their bond—and he would come for her as soon as he could. She knew that just as surely as she knew she loved him.
And that she had to stay alive and whole until he arrived.
Moragh sneered. “You’ve got a smart mouth on you. Must come with that royal blood of yours.” She narrowed her eyes. “What are you, a quarterbred Medinian? Can see it in the eyes.” She bared her fangs and dragged her fingertips across the leather-bound book she clutched open to her chest. “All the more power for me. When I’m done with you, I’ll be damn near invincible. Realm travel, magic, science—it’ll all be mine.”
“You…” Reda faltered. Her grandfather Medina had been a huge bear of a man, equally prone to laughter and moodiness, and everyone had said she had his eyes.
Something screeched outside, a high, keening call that raised the fine hairs on Reda’s arms.
Moragh darted a glance in the direction of the bestiary. “Don’t know what’s gotten into them.”
“The lost children are here,” Reda said matter-of-factly. “They’re going to kill the sorcerer.” Her heart drummed against her ribs. Hurry, Dayn!
“Let them. Soon I won’t need the Blood Sorcerer anymore.” She lowered the book, scanned a page and then set the book aside to pick up a jewel-handled knife with a viciously sharp-looking cutting edge. Then, as she advanced on Reda, she recited a string of syllables in a low, sibilant tone.
“Don’t—” Reda’s voice cut out, her breath cut out, everything cut out as the magic that had held her trapped abruptly closed in on her, coating her skin. Panic lashed—she wanted to fight, attack, retreat, do something, damn it—but the magic held her, controlled her.
At a gesture from the witch, the grip of the magic forced Reda to drop her