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  "It's the only reason we could come up with for her to run to Hurog," explained Beckram. "Bastilla was no slave running for her freedom. Kirkovenal knows of at least one man she had killed and another she tortured. Ciernack didn't give her orders, she gave them to him. We think that Bastilla heard the stories about Hurog's treasure and went to check them out for herself—with her lover, Landislaw, in pursuit to make sure she made it back."

  Axiel shook his head. "I saw her feet after she ran to Hurog. I saw the scars on her back."

  Kirkovenal spoke. "I have seen her slice the skin off a man's back for the sheer pleasure she took in it. I've seen Black Ciernack, who the king himself is careful with, flinch from her anger. And I've seen her pretend to be an innocent maid or a whore, as it suits her."

  Beckram broke the silence that followed. "Before Bastilla 'escaped' to Hurog, Landislaw cornered me and asked me about the treasure of gold and magic the dwarves are said to have left at the old keep. It's nonsense, and I told him so—but Bastilla could have been sent to check it out. The only thing I don't know is why she stayed with Ward." Even as he spoke, a possible answer came to him. "Unless she found something. Something that she couldn't get right away. Ward rescues her and tells her he's headed to Oranstone, and she decides it might be the easiest way to get her information back to Kariarn."

  "Haverness thinks that the Vorsag have an enclave in Oranstone," said Kirkovenal abruptly. "You said Ward, his brother, and Bastilla left here headed south. Buril isn't too far from here."

  "Garranon's keep?" asked Beckram.

  Kirkovenal nodded. "Where Landislaw has been holding court. Bastilla's lover, Landislaw."

  "Who hates the king much more than he hates Vorsag," said Beckram.

  "You're speculating," said Axiel. "What proof do you have?"

  "When did Ward leave?" asked Beckram.

  "Right after the battle was over," Axiel replied.

  "I ask you, would any commander trained by Stala desert his men after a battle to go chasing after a few enemy soldiers?" asked Beckram. When Axiel made no answer, Beckram said. "No. He wouldn't. I think Bastilla believes there's some treasure at Hurog, but she can't get to it without Ward, and she intends to use Tosten to make Ward help her get it."

  13—WARDWICK

  Obsession is a strange thing. It can be the fire that forges a true blade, but more often it is the flaw that causes the sword to break.

  I dreamed of Hurog. It was so real I could smell the musty books in the library where I stood. Dusty tomes in languages no one could read anymore lined the shelves. Somewhere there was a map of the secret ways, but the long, shallow drawer that held all the maps was gone. If I couldn't find the map, they would kill my brother.

  Tosten cried out, his voice muffled and distant, but it still hurt me.

  "You take care of Tosten and Ciarra," my mother said. "I have to tend my garden."

  "All right, Mother," I said. Tosten's hand was warm in mine. Ciarra was a heavy bundle in my free arm. The sun was warm and bathed the flowers of the garden in a rich orange hue…

  "Where are the dragon's bones?"

  Tosten screamed. His voice echoed in my head until the garden disappeared, and I found myself in the dragon cave, deep in the heart of Hurog. I had to get out, but without Oreg, I was trapped. I'd come in through the sewers.

  Through the small tunnel that clamped down on me like a vise.

  "Hurog's magic's been poisoned, child," whispered Oreg's voice in my head. "It seeks out weakness in the blood of the dragon. Dreamers lose their way. Anger becomes berserker rage. Ambition becomes obsession. Hatred eats your soul."

  Hurog, I thought. Hurog means dragon.

  Hurog was gone when I woke up. Gone so far that all I could feel was the empty place that was left, and I could have cried at the agony of the loss. My right hand was so cold it hurt; icy waves traveled up my body from the battered platinum ring. I tried to pull my hand to tuck it in my armpit to warm it as I did in the winter months, but all I did was rattle some chains.

  I was in a small, dark cell with a high ceiling. A tiny window two bodylengths up the wall let in a little light, but didn't do much to cut the fumes rising from floor rushes, which should have been changed a decade ago.

  At first I thought I was alone, but when I lowered my gaze to the floor, I saw a broken form lying in the moldering rushes.

  I forgot my discomfort.

  "Tosten?" The hand I could see was swollen and misshapen. I thought of hearing his screams in my dream and realized it hadn't been a dream at all.

  "Tosten!" I shouted it. I needed him to move, because I couldn't tell if his ribs were rising at all. I couldn't bear it if he were dead.

  As if in answer to my cries, the cell door opened, and Kariarn stepped through. He looked very like the boy I remembered, a year or so older than I was. His fine brown hair was trimmed neatly at shoulder length. His clothing was expensive without being ostentatious. But it was his companion I stared at.

  I almost didn't recognize Bastilla in the self-effacing woman who stood just behind the Vorsagian king, her eyes lowered and her head bowed submissively. Gone was the ragged warrior, and in her place was an immaculately groomed slave wearing a wisp of ivory silk that did little to hide her body. What had Kariarn done to her?

  "Ah, the guard told me you were awake, Ward," said Kariarn.

  I looked at him.

  "Sorry about your brother." Kariarn nudged Tosten with his boot. If I hadn't been chained, I'd have killed him. "The magic wasn't working against you. My archmage swore there was no one who could stand against it, but Bastilla said you were a stubborn Northman, and it might not work." He reached back and patted her on the top of her head like a huntsman patting his hound after a kill. I kept waiting for her to turn on him and almost didn't follow his next words. "Which is why she brought both of you. She was right; you couldn't talk fast enough, once he started screaming. It's too bad you didn't know what we needed. Who'd have thought that the lord of Hurog wouldn't know how to reach his treasure without a wizard to guide him?" Kariarn gave me a chiding look. "No matter. Bastilla left a bit of hair in the chamber so my archmage can use that to locate it. A waste of power—but with the dragon's bones, that will hardly matter." The lust in his voice when he said "dragon's bones" reminded me of the way my father sometimes stared at a new chambermaid.

  I swallowed to wet my dry throat. Bastilla? Behind his back, she smiled at me. It was a smile I'd never seen on her face before, sly and triumphant.

  I said, "You're telling me all of this because…"

  He smiled. "I'm tired of all the old men who think they know better than I. I need young men, men who understand youth doesn't mean stupid or weak. Bastilla tells me that your wizard will follow you, no matter which ruler you choose."

  He stopped speaking, perhaps waiting for me to confirm or deny what he said. But I was distracted by the cold that numbed my arm. It didn't hurt anymore, and that worried me. Had they done something to me? Why just that arm? Had they tried to steal the ring?

  "I can take Hurog, Ward." The mention of my obsession turned my attention back to Kariarn. "I have magic at my fingertips that will knock down her dark walls and leave her in ruins, to get my dragon bones. Or I can take you there and give you Hurog instead. You could swear fealty to me instead of the boy-lover Jakoven. What do you owe him? He killed your cousin and took Hurog from you. Look what he's done to Oranstone. A man like that does not deserve the throne. Look beyond what is, Ward. Five Kingdoms dwindling into slow death in the hands of Tallven blood could be six flourishing lands under me. I could make you king of Shavig, Ward—as you should have been."

  I could hear my aunt patiently explaining how a war could be lost before the first blood was shed. The worst of it was that Kariarn was right: Jakoven wasn't fit to manage an estate, let alone the Five Kingdoms. Kariarn wouldn't stand by while another country ravaged his lands; he would protect what was his. I even understood his obsession with magic far better tha
n I would ever understand Jakoven, for I was obsessed, too—with Hurog.

  At my feet, Tosten moved his hand briefly.

  Kariarn must have seen the direction of my gaze. "Bastilla can heal his wounds; that's another of her talents. I see she didn't tell you of it. I'm sorry I let her play with him a little too long, but she'd earned her reward. She likes hurting things, and I indulge her when I can. As I said, she can heal the damage done to my allies."

  I bowed my head, staring at Tosten's hand that might never again touch a harp string. I thought numbly, Bastilla did this? Bastilla enjoyed my brother's pain?

  "Show him your pet, master," said Bastilla suddenly.

  He jerked on her chain, roughly pulling her to her knees, coughing and choking. "Speak when I ask, slave. Have you been gone so long I must train you over again?"

  She shook her head quickly, and it seemed to satisfy him. He rocked back upon his heels. "The timing is not right. Let him think a while."

  She recovered control of her breathing, but she didn't get to her feet. Instead, she knelt in the molding rushes and kissed his boot. He raised her up with a finger under her chin, and she kissed his hand as she stood. I could see her face for a moment, and the blind adoration in it made me feel ill. I didn't understand. She could have stayed free of him. She was strong—a wizard, even.

  I may not have loved her, but I had liked her. I stared at her for a long moment and wondered if she might be faking this.

  But Kariarn said that she'd been the one who hurt my brother, that she'd enjoyed it. I couldn't imagine the Bastilla I knew hurting anyone except in battle.

  She was a better actor than I was.

  I looked away and met Kariarn's amused eyes. "She is my chameleon," he said, reading my mind. "She is whoever suits me best—a gift from my archmage. A human succubus. She belongs to me, body and soul. Don't you, Bastilla?"

  "Only to you," she answered.

  Kariarn held my gaze. "Haven't you met a Cholyte before? When they enter the order, they give up their will to Chole's prophetess, the Cholynn, or whomever she bestows them upon. The Cholynn gave Bastilla to me as a present when I turned thirteen."

  He left, leading Bastilla behind him. I heard a bar slide into place on the other side of the closed door.

  After a moment, Tosten groaned again and sat up. "Did he mean that magic turned her into that?"

  "I don't know," I said.

  "Pox rot you," he snapped weakly. "Don't look at me like that. You didn't have a thing to do with it."

  "I should have spoken sooner."

  "Most of this happened after you talked." He looked away from me and into the shadows. "Gods, Ward. I thought she was my friend. She broke my finger, then kissed me as if my pain were one of Mother's aphrodisiacs. She licked the blood from my back." He shuddered. "Kariarn had to drag her off of me." Tosten bowed his head and spoke as if the words were dragged from his throat. "Tell me that it was magic that made her that way. Tell me that she's possessed by demons."

  "I don't think that even the gods can change someone completely. Some people just like others' pain," I whispered. "Father was like that." I remembered a dark night when I held my lover while she cried and told me that my father had raped her. I said, "After he beat me, he used to go straightaway to his bed with whatever maidservant happened to be closest."

  Tosten buried his face in his knee and laughed. "Aren't you supposed to be reassuring me at this point? You know, taking care of the helpless?"

  "I can't protect you from knowledge," I said at last. "You have to acknowledge evil, or you give it too much power over you. Look at Mother. She's spent most of her life running from what our father was, so she left her children unprotected against him." I hadn't realized how angry I was with her, with the passive way she'd watched Father cut Tosten with a tongue that bruised as well as his fists, until Tosten had tried to kill himself to get away from it. In my dreams, Oreg had excused her by telling me that Hurog's magic twisted her—but she should have fought for her children.

  "She had you to protect her children," said Tosten unexpectedly. "Me, I'm like Mother, clinging to my troubles. All the way here…all the way from Tyrfannig, I've been hurting you because you like Oreg better than you like me."

  "A wise man told me once that horses kick and bite because they are afraid or hurt more often than because they are angry." It hurt to use Penrod's arguments.

  "I am not a horse," he huffed.

  "But are you afraid and hurt?" I asked. He did not reply. "You can't blame a horse that strikes out in pain or fear. You just see what you can do to relieve the cause."

  Tosten laughed, a real laugh this time. "Or you slit the poor animal's throat."

  "I have to admit there have been times…"

  If someone had been listening, they'd have thought we were idiots, laughing ourselves to jelly in a filthy cell, me chained to the wall and Tosten so badly injured he yelped now and again as he laughed.

  "So how are you going to rescue us?" He asked finally. "Are you going to switch allegiance from the bastard who killed poor old Erdrick?"

  "To Kariarn?" I snorted. "Now, that's a good choice. Like the chicken who went to live with the foxes because she was afraid of the farmer's dog. No."

  "So we'll sit here and rot?"

  I looked at the silver ring on my numb hand. "I think I have a better plan."

  I called Oreg to me, as I'd summoned him often in Hurog, though I'd never tried calling him outside of Hurog's walls. Since the pyre where I'd burned the village dead, I hadn't tried any more magic, because untrained magic can be deadly. Even so, I hadn't really expected the power that flooded my call. The ring vibrated with magic and sent warmth burning through the numbness of my hand and arm and made them mine again.

  I could all but smell the magic that coalesced slowly into Oreg's huddled form, which looked very much like Tosten's huddled form had, except Oreg was shaking. He twisted awkwardly until he was clinging to my leg.

  "Don't leave again. Please, please…don't leave again. It was too far." His toneless, despairing whisper set the hairs on my neck on edge, and I wanted to kill whomever had done this—but Oreg's father was long dead. Oreg was the only person I knew whose father had been worse than mine. Perhaps that, rather than the ring was the true heart of our bond.

  Tosten stared at Oreg.

  "No. I won't leave," I promised. "I didn't do it on purpose, Oreg. Are you all right?"

  He buried his face in my leg and shook like a dog who'd been in cold water too long.

  "What did you do to him?" There was abhorrence on Tosten's face.

  Oreg's actions reminded me uncomfortably of Bastilla and Kariarn, too. "I did nothing to him. Give him a moment, and I'll explain."

  Tosten glanced from Oreg to me and then turned painfully away, muttering something that sounded like, "It had better be good."

  "Where are we?" asked Oreg after a moment. He didn't loosen his grip on me, but his voice sounded almost normal, if a bit muffled.

  "Buril," answered Tosten when he saw that I didn't know. "Garranon's estate."

  Garranon was dealing with the Vorsag? It didn't fit what I knew of him, but neither did Bastilla's new persona.

  "How did you get here?" Oreg asked. "Where's Bastilla?"

  "Bastilla brought us," I said as conversationally as possible when chained up with a man clinging to my leg. "She's responsible for the damage to Tosten. And she's not Ciernack's slave, she's Kariarn's. He seemed to indicate that she'd been altered somehow by the Cholynn—to turn her into his loyal creature. Can that be done?"

  "Only if she consented first," he said.

  "Did you know that she wasn't what she seemed?"

  Oreg pulled away and looked at me finally. Even though the room was dark, his pupils were pinpricks. "I knew she was a mage as soon as she stepped onto Hurog land, stronger than she knew or at least stronger than she would admit to. Beyond that…once such altering as you spoke of is done, it is not an easy thing to detect, not eve
n if you know to look for it."

  I nodded. "She fooled me, too. Kariarn called her a chameleon." I smiled at him. "She's like me. She can be anybody she wants to be."

  "No." Tosten interrupted abruptly. "Not what she wants to be. I've been thinking about that. You wanted someone to rescue, Penrod and Axiel wanted a lover with no strings. I…she let me talk to her, about how…about things. She stayed away from Ciarra because she couldn't understand what Ciarra wanted. That was how her act worked. As long as we saw what we wanted to see, we didn't look any further."

  Oreg nodded, releasing his grip on me entirely so he could look at Tosten. "Ward becomes exactly what he wants to become, usually to the vast irritation of the people around him. He can't get rid of the stubbornness or the honor."

  "Or the belief that he has to take care of anyone he meets." Tosten sounded both superior and pleased.

  "Tosten," I said. "There are some things you should know—in case you get out of this and I don't. Oreg is not one of Father's by-blows. He was bound to Hurog the day it was built. He's our family ghost—though he's more a mage than a ghost."

  Oreg turned betrayed eyes to me—though how else he expected me to explain his recent actions, I don't know. Tosten looked at me almost the same way.

  "Oreg's the ghost?" Tosten said. "And you didn't tell me?"

  "I didn't know until the day Father died," I replied. "And, well, it seemed as if it were Oreg's story to tell, and he didn't choose to." That didn't seem to soothe either of them, so I changed the subject. "Oreg, could you get us out of here?" I jangled my chains meaningfully.

  "Yes, master."

  Tosten's eyes widened as Oreg echoed Bastilla's response to Kariarn's orders.

  I rolled my eyes. "Don't sulk, Oreg. Tosten, quit looking so—"

  A weird mewling moan filled the air, starting high, like a stallion's shrill whistle and then dropping so deep that the stone against my back vibrated.

  Oreg came to alert like a hunting dog on the scent. "Basilisk. Where did they find a basilisk?"

  "Basilisk?" asked Tosten.