The Invisible Ring

these other runners that choke out everything but other weeds.
    “That’s what happened to Shalador. One by one, place by place, we lost our strong Queens, our good Queens. Some to age. Some to ‘accidents.’ One by one, until all that was left were the weeds.”
    Jared rubbed his forehead. “And even a good man will eventually yield to a bad Queen if the hunger for the bond gnaws at him long enough and hard enough.”
    Yarek nodded. “A strong love bond eases that hunger, too. A Blood male needs one or the other. I guess that’s why the warriors who came to demand we yield to the new Queen did what they did.”
    Unable to look at Yarek, Jared focused on the cracked, barren ground in front of him. “Did what?”
    Yarek shuddered. “They slaughtered the witches. They butchered our hearts. They didn’t give a call to battle and wait for the ones who chose to fight to come to the killing field. When every family in Wolfs Creek refused to yield and every male told them what they could do with their damned Rings of Obedience, the delegation left. Thirteen men. That’s all we saw until the next day when hundreds of them surrounded the village and attacked. They weren’t after the men. Our wounds and deaths happened because we were in the way. It was the witches those bastards wanted. Little girls, old women, Ladies in their prime, the darker-Jeweled girls on the verge of womanhood . . .
    “They raped some of them, just like they raped the land. Left some alive, broken and mutilated. Some of the lighter-Jeweled young witches were captured and taken away. A few—very few—escaped the breaking and slaughtering, but they weren’t old enough or strong enough for the males to bond to comfortably.”
    “Is there anyone left at Wolf’s Creek?”‘ Jared asked, carefully circling around the questions that needed to be asked.
    Yarek shook his head. “Only a couple of houses were left standing by the time it was done. They took most of the livestock, and we knew the land couldn’t yield enough for us to eat even if we were able to tend it and could find a Queen to heal it—and there was nothing to get us through from a new planting to the harvest.
    “Belarr arrived that evening with forty men . . . and Reyna. She did what she could to keep us alive. Then Belarr and the other men brought us to Ranon’s Wood. There’s always been strong family ties between Wolfs Creek and Ranon’s Wood, so Reyna didn’t have to look far to find hands to help her.” Yarek cleared his throat. “I told her to take the arm. It wasn’t hanging on by much anyway, and I’d managed to stop the bleeding before they arrived. I told her to put her strength into the young ones. She cried but, may the Darkness embrace a true daughter, she did what I asked.
    “A week later, the bastards came to Ranon’s Wood. Belarr had set up a watch, so they didn’t come in without warning, but they came, and it was Wolf’s Creek all over again—except they didn’t even give Belarr or anyone else a chance to refuse to yield.
    “He fought. Mother Night, how he fought! But . . .”
    “He wasn’t trained as a guard,” Jared said quietly. “He wasn’t trained as a warrior.”
    “No. He was a strong man and a fine administrator and he’d served his Queen and Ranon’s Wood well, but he wasn’t a trained warrior.”
    Belarr had had the strength of the Red, but hadn’t had someone like Randolf to show him how to use that strength to kill, hadn’t had a Warlord Prince like Blaed with him who would surrender to instinct and find the killing field within himself.
    “They had to kill him, you see,” Yarek continued in a low voice. “They had to. They couldn’t let a Red-Jeweled Warlord live after they’d torn his wife’s body apart enough to make her scream but not enough to let her die quickly.”
    Jared made a choking sound.
    Yarek didn’t notice. “They paid dearly, Jared. The bastards paid for Reyna with their own blood. And they didn’t really win in the end.
    “She was in the village when the attack started. Janos died trying to reach her. And she went down fighting to protect a young girl.
    “I don’t know how Belarr reached her or where he found the strength to get her away from them. They were both dying by the time he got her home, and she . . . she kept trying to heal him. He asked me to leave them be, to look for Janos when the fighting was over. Then he carried her up to their room and lay down with her on the bed. Wasn’t my place to be there, so I closed the door.”
    Yarek pulled out a