Bryan took a step forward when Ronan’s eyes darted to Arien. “This is not what I want. We are not a violent people. I can see that you are the same. Merisgale will not know that you gave the sword to me. They will think you were ambushed. The boy has injuries. They will not question your word. Go back to your forge and leave this to us.”
“I understand you more than you know, centaur, but I cannot do what you ask of me.” Ronan felt as if he were being torn. His heart pounded at the choice that was left to him. His hatred for the sword deepened.
“But no one need ever know what happens here,” Bryan insisted, stamping a hoof against the road and creating a cloud of dust. The movement brought Ahearn moving forward without Ronan’s command. But the horse did not charge and Ronan gave Ahearn’s reins a slight tug to remind him to wait.
“
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Keegan’s head snap around. No doubt the horseman was surprised that Ronan had included him in those he would fight for. Ronan realized in that instant that Keegan had known the suspicion Ronan had felt toward him the day before. He would right his mistake. Keegan would know that Ronan would never doubt him again.
“Very well, blacksmith,” Bryan said sadly, looking back to the one who waited for command. “Do it.” Ula screamed.
It was a sound that Ronan was certain if one note higher would make a man’s ears bleed. And it stopped everyone, causing them to look at her. Her shoulders were squared, thrown back and her dark eyes looked like dangerous wells of evil. Overhead, the skies suddenly darkened, drew black clouds from every direction. Wind tore at the trees, bent them with little effort and for once Ronan saw the true power of the healer.
She had hidden this side of herself, allowing Ronan only to see her as a bothersome woman, perhaps even as mad. But Ula Baen was more than that and anyone who looked at her at this moment could see that fact clearly.
With flourish of her hand and without even looking in Arien’s direction, Ula’s tiny blade split through the air and planted in the neck of the centaur that hovered over the boy. For a moment the creature only stared at her, then staggered backward and fell into a muscled heap.
Thunder clapped and lightening forked from the sky as if it were by her will. It struck the ground only a few yards from where they stood. Ronan felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as the electric charge filled the air. Any moment, she would have the sky spitting ice at them!
“Get out of my way or I will take you out one by one.” Her voice didn’t even sound like her own. Ronan stared as the centaurs moved away from her so she could go to Arien. When she dropped to his side, the wind settled and the sky immediately cleared. It was as if her power had never been, which made it all the more frightening.
“You travel with those that hold the dark forces.” Bryan’s eyes swung to Ronan, widened with surprise and fear. “You mean to give the sword to Sleagan. You mean to give the power of the sword to someone who could do more damage than the wizard.”
Ronan shook his head. “I mean to give it to Thestian and no one else.” Ronan tore his eyes from Ula as she began chanting over Arien’s body. “And no centaur or crazed old woman is going to stop me.” His mind reeled but he forced his confusing thoughts into dark corners. He would save his questions for later. Desperately, he wished he could call to the dark skies as Ula had. He would then let those black depths just suck him up and out of this situation.
“But I
Ronan watched the centaurs back further away. Obviously Ula knew a little more about the half beasts than Ronan. Her threat scared them much more than his.
“I do not believe you to be an evil man. Your eyes speak that to me. But you travel with one who would use the dark forces to get what she wants. I fear you will not reach your destination, blacksmith.” Bryan met Ronan’s gaze and for a moment, held it.
“He is to be addressed as Sir Culley.” Keegan’s voice caused Ronan to break the centaur’s connection to him and slanted a look at the horseman. There was no humor in the Keegan’s face only seriousness and respect. When had that happened?
Bryan nodded for the four remaining centaurs and they hefted up their dead comrade. A jerk of his head commanded them to back away. Slowly they did and Ronan said nothing as he watched them leave. When they were gone, he looked down at Ula while Keegan untied the horses.
Ronan slid from Ahearn’s back and stepped toward Arien. His throat felt dry and he clutched the King’s Sword, ready to go after the centaurs if the boy’s life had been taken. Ula looked up at Ronan as he knelt at her side. She touched his arm but Ronan had to ask. He had to know if he had failed the boy.
“Is he…dead?”
Four
Ronan’s eyelids dipped and then closed, but only for a moment before they flew back open. No, he couldn’t sleep. He wouldn’t. Not when Arien was so close to death. Ula had longed ceased her chanting and Keegan had even settled down to rest. Ronan stayed awake, watching over his young apprentice.
He stretched, moved around by throwing more wood to the fire. It wasn’t cold but the heat of the fire gave him something to focus on. He picked up a stick and poked at the wood in its heated depths. Then he tossed the stick into the flames.
Restlessness ached in Ronan’s bones. He kicked at the dirt, fussed with his clothes, stared out at the trees trying to see into the darkness that surrounded them. He had to keep his attention on something, anything that would keep him from falling asleep. He tried to think of his home, of metal in fire but his thoughts just returned to the boy.
The memory of his Arien’s big smile when Ronan would compliment him on his work flickered in and out of Ronan’s thoughts. He’d wanted Ronan’s approval so badly. He’s worked hard for it.
“Live,” Ronan whispered in a low, desperate voice as he ran a hand over his face and scratched at his beard. He was tired. The others slept but Ronan knew the centaurs were not really gone. They were just out of sight. He remembered the determination in Bryan’s eyes. Ula had spooked him but the centaur would not give up so easily. He would summon his courage and come at them again.
The two of them were not so different, Ronan decided. He and the centaur shared the same kind of hollow in their chests, the kind left by losing someone they loved.
Ronan’s thoughts drifted to his mother. If there had been a way for Ronan to save her, he would have. He’d have done whatever it took. At fifteen he wasn’t the man he was now. At fifteen, he’d only wept and held her hand, watched her die. Before that moment he’d not cared of being a blacksmith. It was what his mother had chosen for him. No, he’d wanted a more noble life, the kind that came with power and recognition. He’d been a boy of dreams, none of which had saved his mother from the grips of death.
Arien wasn’t going to die. “Live,” Ronan said again fiercely. He realized that he’d grown to love the boy in the short time he’d been with him. He was his family. So were Keegan and Ula in a way. That fact hit him hard in the chest. He remembered how angry he’d been when he’d seen them surrounded by the centaurs. It had been an anger that scared him. And he’d been ready to use the King’s Sword. If he had used the weapon he would have knowingly sealed his fate, an ugly one that Ronan did not want.
How had he become this person? He was a man who now had feelings for mere strangers in only a few days when he’d lived most of his life alone. And Ula bothered him most of all. He’d seen her shrouded in darkness, wielding it as dangerously as Keegan had his sword. Yet, Ronan could not find it in his heart to push her out.
Bryan had said she used the dark forces. The centaur was probably right. Ronan had never witnessed anything so frightening. But she had tried to save Arien. She had risked her own life to try to save him. She had the courage of a youth in her old body. There was something good in that, something honorable and right. And Ronan couldn’t ignore that.
