Uly looked sick. “He wouldn’t do that,” she said. “He wouldn’t. I don’t think they ever did it anyway ’cause the bed never creaked and Aunt Mea said it would. But Aunt Mea said it was fun.”
The bed never creaked? “Whatever. Is that all they fought about?” Vi asked.
“She wanted him to sell his sword, the sword Durzo gave him. He didn’t want to, but she said it proved he still wanted to be a wetboy. But he didn’t. He really wanted to be with us. It made him really mad when she said that.”
So he wanted out, too. That’s what he meant in the note when he said he tried. He tried to leave.
Nysos! Kylar might not even know she’d taken Uly. She didn’t know if that was a good thing or not. It did explain why he’d gone charging past them in the fog that morning, though. He would have been sure she’d return to Cenaria as quickly as possible.
Several hundred paces ahead, Vi saw the forest change. No, not change. It transformed as abruptly as if the earth had been split with an axe. On the near side, the forest was like what they’d been riding in for days. On the far side, enormous sequoys grew. They must be near Torras Bend. It didn’t mean much to her, but it looked like the riding would be easier under those great trees. There was almost no undergrowth in a forest that old.
They were only fifty paces from the sequoys when an old woman stepped out from the trees in front and to one side of them. She looked as startled as Vi felt. She was holding a glowing sheet of gold in her hands.
Glowing gold could only mean magic. The woman was a mage.
“Stop!” the old woman yelled.
Vi snapped her body back in the saddle and yanked the reins of Uly’s horse out of her hands. As she sat back up, she jabbed her heels in and looked toward the mage. The woman was running heavily, awkwardly—and not toward Vi and Uly. She was running away from the old forest and she had flung aside the glowing gold sheet.
What the hell? It was strange, but not so strange that Vi stopped. In all the world, the only people she had to fear were wetboys, wytches, and mages.
The horses charged for the forest, almost throwing Uly out of the saddle.
The mage was only thirty paces away now, almost even with them. She ran a few more steps, and Vi could have sworn that the woman was emerging from something like a vast, nearly invisible bubble covering the forest.
The woman brought up her hands and spoke. Something crackled and whipped forward. Vi dropped her body as far on the opposite side of her horse as she could. There was a concussion nearby and Uly flew off the horse.
Vi didn’t stop to look. She grabbed a throwing knife from an ankle sheath and threw it as she brought herself back up into the saddle. It was a long throw—twenty paces at a target she couldn’t see before the she released the knife—but it was really only meant as a distraction. Vi looked back.
Uly was lying on the ground, unconscious.
There was no hesitation. A wetboy doesn’t hesitate. A wetboy acts, even if it’s the wrong action. Vi couldn’t stay still, it made her a target. She dug her heels into her horse’s flanks again. The horse lunged forward—
And promptly crashed into the ground, its front legs cut out from under it.
Vi pulled her feet from the stirrups. She would land in a ball, roll free of the horse, draw throwing knives— except the horse fell faster than she expected. She slapped into the ground hard, her body flipping over as she skidded on her back. Her head kissed an iron-hard root and black spots swam before her eyes.
Up, damn you! Get up! She got on her hands and knees and tried to stand, eyes watering, head ringing.
“I’m sorry, I can’t let you do that,” the old woman said. She looked like she actually meant it.
No. It can’t end like this.
The beefy old woman raised a hand and spoke. Vi tried to throw herself to one side, but she didn’t make it.
38
It was two small cuts. A line along the ribs, and a matching line across the inside of his arm. Neither was deep. The knife had cut skin but not muscle. Even together, they were nothing