He looked at her for a long moment, then drew her to him. “Look, I want you to stay out of it when he gets here.”
“No.”
He pushed her away in alarm. “Amber, I mean it. He isn’t Darah, to be frightened off. He’ll kill you.”
“Maybe. But he’ll surely kill you alone.”
He severed the link with her and almost gasped at the sudden terrible solitude. Solitude had never seemed terrible before. He had come to depend on the link more than he had realized.
“Teray,” she pleaded, “please. This isn’t an ordinary confrontation. He made you his outsider illegally. You haven’t challenged him. You don’t want anything he has. He’s dead wrong, but he’s still going to kill you. Your only possible chance is for me to help.”
“I said no. He’ll face me alone, without any of his people backing him. That’s the way I’ll have to face him.”
She looked up at the riders now in sight, coming down the trail. “The hell with your stupid pride,” she said. “You’ve forgotten that I don’t want to go back to Redhill any more than you do. You’d better link up with me again, because when he hits you, I’m going to hit him. If we aren’t linked, one of us is liable to get killed, without doing the other any good at all.”
“Amber, no …!”
“Link. Now!”
He linked, furious with her, half hating her, feeling no gratitude at all. Pride. He was trying to save her life.
He stood up to meet Coransee and his people. Amber stood next to him, close enough to make Coransee aware that his arrival had not caused her to change sides. She was the one Coransee spoke to as he dismounted. He came up to them, but his people stayed back, still mounted, apparently watching for Clayarks.
“I don’t suppose you persuaded him to submit.”
“I didn’t try.”
“And you’re staying with him. I thought you were brighter than that.”
“No, you thought I was more frightened of you than that. You were mistaken.”
He turned away from her with a sound of annoyance. “Teray … do you really want to die here?”
“I’ll either die here or I’ll go on to Forsyth. Nothing is going to get me to go back to Redhill with you.”
Coransee frowned. “What did you expect to find in Forsyth, anyway?”
“Sanctuary.” Coransee would find out sooner or later anyway.
“Sanctuary? For how long?”
“Even if it was only a few months, at least I’d spend them in freedom.”
“You’d spend them learning everything you could to defeat me.”
“Only because you’ve left me no choice.”
“I left you one very simple choice and you …” Coransee stopped and took a deep breath. “There’s no point in arguing that with you again. Whether you believe it or not, though, I really don’t want to kill you. Look… I’ll give you one more choice.”
“What choice?” asked Teray suspiciously.
“Not much of one, maybe. It’s just that even with our ancestry, I find myself wondering more and more how much of a threat you could become.”
Teray ignored the implied insult in Coransee’s words. “Left alone I’d be no threat to you at all. I’ve already told you that.”
“And it still doesn’t mean a thing. It’s not your promises I’m interested in, it’s your potential, and that’s something I can only guess at. Rayal would be able to do more than guess.”
“You want Rayal to evaluate me?”
“Yes.”
“What would happen if he found out that I… that I didn’t have the potential to interfere with you?” It was a humiliating question to have to ask. No matter what words he used, he was really saying, “What will you do with me if I turn out to be too weak ever to stand against you?”
“What do you want to happen?”
“I want my freedom!”
“No more?”
“Freedom from you will be enough.”
Coransee smiled. “You wouldn’t ask me for
more, no matter how much you wanted it, would you, brother?”
Teray said nothing.
“No matter. Are you willing to be judged by Rayal?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll go on to Forsyth, then. We’re nearly there and I want to see Rayal anyway. But there is one more thing. Only Rayal’s findings can free you. You go to Forsyth as my outsider.”
Teray shrugged.
