“Why did you help Arcannen?” Avelene demanded before Paxon could pursue the matter. “Don’t you know who he is?”

The girl gave a sardonic smile. “I do now. At the time, I didn’t care. He was going to get me out of Rare Flowers, and he said he would teach me to use magic if I helped him. That was reason enough for me to go with him. I knew what would happen if I didn’t take the chance he was offering. No one else was going to do anything for me. Not anything I wanted them to do, anyway. I was on the verge of being thrown into the streets. They didn’t like me at Rare Flowers. I was too difficult, they said.”

“So this boy, Reyn, what kind of magic can he use?” Avelene pressed. “Have you seen him use it?”

Lariana shook her head. “I won’t tell you anything else unless you help me find him. Or just let me go so I can find him on my own. I’m not afraid to do that.”

Avelene smirked. “I guessing you’re not afraid of much. But there’s more to this than you know. We need you and Reyn to help us understand it. So you don’t get to do anything on your own. We can search the ruins together, if you want.”

This time Avelene didn’t reenter the red haze as Paxon had chosen to do earlier, but conjured a spell that brought the wind about from the ocean and caused it to blow the scarlet mist out over the choppy waters and away. It took considerable effort to achieve this; the haze was stubbornly resistant to her efforts. But in the end it dissipated and was replaced by the familiar sea mists of earlier.

With the way forward more readily visible now, the trio plunged ahead, scrambling until they reached the spot where Reyn Frosch had last been seen. It took them only moments, and then they stood together casting about the empty terrain fruitlessly. Then Lariana spied the open door in the cliff face, a black, gaping hole in the rock, and she charged over with a sharp cry, heedless of any danger. Paxon and Avelene followed, and quickly they were down the hallway beyond and inside the sorcerer’s lair.

Empty.

A swift search revealed the rooms were deserted, and Lariana stood staring about the central living quarters in a furious attempt to understand. “Arcannen has him,” she said finally.

“No,” Avelene said at once. “Arcannen is dead. I saw the man with the flash rip send so many of those projectiles into him there was nothing left.”

The sharp eyes fixed on her. “That’s what he wants you to think. But he’s alive. He’s alive, and he’s taken Reyn with him.”

“And left you behind?” Paxon asked. “Odd.”

“Not so odd. I was always expendable. Once he got what he wanted from me, once he used me to get to Reyn, to persuade him …” She trailed off. “I knew he would do something like this. I just hoped I would be able to keep Reyn close enough to prevent it …”

“But where’s the man with the knife?” Avelene wanted to know.

“Dead,” Lariana said at once.

“But what happened to him?”

The girl hesitated, shaking her head. “I don’t know.”

“We need to go back outside!” Paxon said suddenly. “Have another look around.”

They departed the sorcerer’s, going down the hallway and outside once more into the open air, where they began their search anew, eyes scanning the ruins through gloom and shifting mists.

“There!” Lariana exclaimed almost immediately, pointing upward.

Paxon and Avelene turned, eyes shifting. The Highlander heard his companion’s sudden intake of breath.

A steel support rod jutted from the shattered walls of the buildings above where they stood. The body of Bael Etris hung from that rod, his lifeless husk pinned in place with enough force that the rod had passed completely through his body. His eyes were open and staring.

“So Arcannen is alive after all,” Avelene murmured, looking at Lariana. “And you think he took Reyn with him?”

Lariana was nodding slowly. “Arcannen has him,” she repeated. “But I know where they are.”

TWENTY-TWO

REYN FROSCH ROSE FROM OUT OF A BLACK PIT, LIFTED BY THE rocking motion of the pallet on which he lay, summoned by the howling of a furious wind. He came from a long way down, a slow ascent back to wakefulness, his senses struggling to focus as his eyes blinked and his arms clutched protectively at his body. The world was gray, and there was a sense of not being anyplace he recognized or even anywhere solid but instead of being suspended in nothingness. He swallowed against the dryness in his throat, coughing hard as he did so, his body shaking.

“Hold on, hold on!” a voice muttered.

An aleskin was held to his lips and the pungent liquid slid between his lips and down his throat to loosen the tightness and waken him further. He drank greedily, hands lifting to clutch the skin so he could continue.

“There, that’s enough,” his benefactor announced, taking the skin away. “Let’s sit you up. Then I have to get back to flying.”

Hands pulled him from his slumped-over fetal position to one where he was sitting upright, and he found himself in a padded seat. Wind rushed against his exposed skin. He was flying in an airship below a sky thick with mist and gloom.

He fixed his gaze on the figure at the helm of the fast clipper.

Arcannen.

His memory came back in a rush. Slipping out from the sorcerer’s underground lair into the ruins of Arbrox to face the men who had come to kill them. Searching the shifting haze until suddenly Arcannen was no longer there, and he was alone. Facing a giant with a huge beast on a chain, then another man with smaller beasts. Summoning the wishsong to create images and in the end to fool the beasts into attacking one of their handlers. Watching both men die—one by his hand, one by Lariana’s …

Lariana!

“Where is she?” he demanded, his voice a rough croak, almost lost in the wind’s rush. “What’s happened to her?”

Arcannen glanced over his shoulder. “If you are referring to Lariana, I imagine she’s with the Druid and her protector. She’ll be all right.”

“You left her?”

Reyn was incensed. He struggled to rise, to charge forward and take command of the controls, to turn this craft about and fly back to where she had been abandoned and rescue her. But without even looking at him, the sorcerer struck him hard across the face and shoved him back into his seat, where he collapsed once more.

“I went to a lot of trouble to save you. Kindly don’t undo my efforts. Lariana will be fine. She knew this might happen. We talked about it long before now. Give her some credit for being able to take care of herself.”

The blow still stung as Reyn shifted to a sitting position and rubbed his face. Blood dripped from his nose. He felt suddenly drained, robbed of strength and hope, despairing. “Why didn’t you bring her with us?”

“That would have been difficult.”

“You would say that, wouldn’t you?”

“I say it because it is true. Think back. You were caught in a standoff with Bael Etris. He had a knife at your throat. He was clearly mad—raving and unpredictable. The Druid and her protector were too far away to do anything. You were frozen in place. So I used magic to create a smoke screen that hid all of you while I freed you and dispatched Etris. Lariana must have woken and stumbled away, probably in shock. I didn’t know where she was. I could only save you. I did what I had to.”

Reyn was not satisfied with his explanation. The sorcerer’s calmness only served to make him angrier. He could explain all he wanted to but in the end the result was the same. He had left Lariana behind, something Reyn would never have done.

“You don’t know what they will do to her,” he said finally.

Arcannen chuckled. “Oh, you think they might hurt her, do you? Hardly. They want me. And quite possibly you, knowing you have magic. They don’t care about her. They will try to discover where I am once they’ve figured out I didn’t die in the attack. But she won’t tell them. She’s too clever for that. She’ll lead them on a bit and then free herself and come find me. She knows how to do that. I told you, we worked it out a while back.”