was a mage, but there were enough songs about it.
Rethwellan was close. No more than a few minutes’ walk. That was why they’d kept their fire low. She glared at her captor. “Why do you want us?”
“My keep could use a Bard or two.”
“You can’t imprison a Bard!” Lleryn exclaimed.
“I already did.”
Dionne’s head spun. Only this time she was sure it wasn’t just over another bad day. In fact, it hadn’t been that bad—two of the people in the village had needed herbs, and dispensing that kind of help was easy. Mari had stopped trying to sweet-talk, encourage, or force her cooperation. She sat placidly across from Dionne with the firelight brightening her cheeks as she measured herbs into handwoven net tea bags a mother had given her for calming a colicky baby.
They were in a pretty safe rest between two villages, with a pen the horses stamped quietly in, and two other sets of travelers near enough to see each other’s cookfires, if not near enough to hear each other.
All in all, it was a calm evening. But still, the fire spun around her, and she gasped and twitched, and suddenly her balance turned so awkward she leaned and then fell off the sturdy log she was sitting on.
Mari leapt up, looking around for an attacker, the herbs in her lap scattering to the ground. She cursed lightly under her breath on her way to kneel beside Dionne. “What hurt you?”
“I don’t know.” Dionne closed her eyes, searching inside. As a healer, she should know if she’d eaten something poisonous or taken ill. But it didn’t seem like that.
And then she
“Rhiannon!” she murmured. “Rhiannon!” Her heart beat faster, fear pounding through her veins. Her stomach lurched so hard she nearly threw up her dinner. A bruise blossomed on her cheek.
“What’s happening?” Mari demanded.
“I have to go to her!” Now she was half-screaming and half-sobbing. Her vision still seemed wrong, slightly off, but she struggled to push herself up.
Mari extended a hand, helping Dionne to stand up. “Are you sure she’s really in trouble?”
Dionne nodded, gasping and struggling for balance. “I have to ... go.” She started toward their shared traveling gear, grabbing her pack and stuffing clothes in it hurriedly.
“Are you crazy?” Mari asked. “She must be all the way across Valdemar. You need someone to help you!”
“So help me.”
“How?” Mari asked.
“Let me go.”
Mari shook her head, biting her lip and stamping her feet. “I can feel how much you need to.”
Of course she could. She was an Empath. Dionne tried to strengthen her need even more, sharpen it. She reached forward and took Mari’s hands, something she’d been avoiding as much as possible. She searched Mari’s dark eyes. “I have to go.”
Mari grunted. “I’m responsible for you. Gavin told me not to let you come back before time.”
Dionne fought back a sob. “Gavin doesn’t know Rhiannon’s hurt.”
Mari blew out a long breath. “I’ll take you back to the Collegium, and they can decide from there.”
Good enough. Haven was almost on the way. “Can we go now?”
“In the dark?”
“The moon’s full.”
Rhiannon and Lleryn were both allowed to ride, their hands tied to the pommels of their saddles. The horses were tied together, the reins all ending up in the mage’s hands. His horse’s heavy gait and broad, ugly face would have shown him for mixed farm and warhorse immediately had Rhiannon seen him during the day, instead of just his white outline in the smoke from the fire.
Almost as soon as they passed the border, their captor began to look better, the moonlight illuminating penetrating eyes and a strangely smiling face that made Rhiannon shiver. His control over their mounts became more sure, the horses nearly sleepwalkers moving at his command. At one point, he turned to them and said, “I’m really sorry. I don’t mean you any harm, but you belong in my dream.” He looked directly at Rhiannon. “The sad beauty of your song infected me, and I needed to take you. Surely you understand that?”
No. He liked sadness? All while he was wearing that funny grin that disturbed her? Maybe he was a little crazy or a little hurt, but that didn’t mean he should be after innocent Bards. She didn’t give him the satisfaction of an answer, but instead she looked straight ahead and appeared as unconcerned as possible given the situation.
Just as the first morning sun began to paint the hills with light, they turned up into a narrow, wooded ravine. “I bet this is the way to his keep,” Lleryn said.
“Shhh ...” He silenced them, leading them up a winding trail. Birds began to greet the day, the sound grating on Rhiannon’s nerves. What did he really want? He hadn’t even taken her gittern or let them take much of their stuff. Although maybe that was to get over the border well before light. Hard to tell, except that he definitely hadn’t seemed comfortable in Valdemar.
The keep itself loomed up out of the rock—part carved into cliff, part tall wooden walls that seemed built for defense. In fact, it all looked amazingly well-built, and somewhat fresh and new. Either he’d had a small army to help him, or it was magic-built. But if it was magic-built, the amount of power made her shiver. She watched it grow bigger and bigger as they came closer, colder and more daunting. At one point, Rhiannon was close enough to lean over and speak quietly to Lleryn. “I don’t care about our mission. This is going to be tough without a Herald- Mage.”
Lleryn grunted, and while her face looked as disconsolate as Rhiannon felt, she said, “It will be all right. Maybe this’ll be a good song some day.”
Rhiannon blinked back tears and once more pictured Dionne’s worried face. She couldn’t die here. It was impossible to imagine leaving Dionne alone. “Maybe it will.”
Dionne had been through the story twice under the skeptical eyes of Gavin, Breda, and three other teachers when an older man in Whites interrupted and tossed a dented and worn gittern to Breda. “I found this.”
Even from a distance, Dionne knew it was Rhiannon’s. “How?” she demanded, not caring that she wasn’t supposed to speak unless spoken to.
No one reprimanded her.
“I was supposed to meet them. I waited an extra day where Lleryn told me to and then went looking. I found their gear, but not their horses. Bandits wouldn’t have left so much behind.” He was just beginning to bend with age, and a wide scar ran down his right cheek. His lips were pursed in worry. “I came here since we had some dispatches to send back anyway, and I wanted this reported. It’s not the first strange kidnapping along that border—quite a few local farmers have disappeared. I’d like to take some help, if Haven has any to give.”
“Thank you.” Dionne stood up and looked around. After the last few tough years, Valdemar was short of more than just Herald-Mages. While she’d also have to convince others, these teachers would be the first barrier to cross. “I want to go. I can help find Rhiannon, and that will find the rest of these people.”
No one moved or spoke for the space of three breaths. Then Gavin said, “Go on. You won’t be any use without her anyway.”
A day later, Deckert, Rhiannon, and a second Herald named Cienda, young enough that she still wore her first set of Whites, headed out of Haven. The small group had obtained permission to cross the border for a period of no more than one week and a distance no greater than a day’s ride, and specifically to find two missing Bards.
The Healer’s Collegium had broken a general rule and allowed Dionne to take one of her father’s horses, a three-year-old dun mare named Sugar, with long legs and a long black mane and tail. As beautiful as Sugar was, Dionne felt poorly mounted beside the Companions.
That night and the next she woke sweating from dreams of Rhiannon, frightened and bitterly unhappy. She could see and feel her sister deep inside, and a few specifics of her surroundings came through as well. Stone walls, and a view from a window of a vast forest. Each morning she told the Heralds every detail she could remember from her dreaming, and they shook their heads. “Sounds like anyplace along the Rethwellan Border,” Deckert said.
“At least it doesn’t seem like the Pelagirs,” Cienda pointed out. “The forest sounds healthy.”
“Yes.” Dionne closed her eyes. “It is. They’re at the end of a long draw between deep hills that are covered in trees.”
