The Invisible Ring

tall enough to throw her arm over his shoulders, she settled for wrapping both arms around one of his, forcing him either to slow down or drag her.
    He slowed down. Reluctantly. “Let go.”
    She ignored the snarled order. “Being an only child, I don’t have any firsthand experience, but it’s been my observation that one of the duties and privileges of a younger sister is to be a ripe boil on her older brother’s backside.”
    “Well, you certainly qualify for that,” Jared growled. “Though you should keep in mind that the way to get rid of a boil is to lance it.”
    They walked in silence for a few minutes.
    “What went wrong in the village, Jared?”
    Jared looked at the cool eyes watching him so intently. Then he looked away. “Nothing went wrong in the village. We left to get some supplies. We came back.”
    Thera tucked some stray hairs back into her braid. “Lia was glad to see you.”
    “Of course she was.”
    Thera nodded as if something finally made sense. “I don’t think Brock or Randolf would have come back.”
    Which had nothing to do with anything. Lia should have known he would come back. Damn her.
    Thera waited a minute; then, when he didn’t say anything, asked, “What do you think will happen once we get to Dena Nehele?”
    Jared clenched his teeth. Damn damn damn.
    “Lia’s asked me several times, privately, if I had finished my formal training. Each time, when I told her that I hadn’t, she mentioned that her mother was a Sapphire-Jeweled Black Widow who would be very pleased to have a Green-Jeweled apprentice or journeymaid.”
    “Mother Night,” Jared muttered.
    “Only a cruel person would say that to a slave—unless the slave was never intended to be a slave. Don’t you think?”
    Jared bit his tongue.
    Thera nodded as if he’d answered. “That’s what I thought, too. You know what else I think? I think she had a reason for the choices she made in Raej, that she chose each of us because she felt she had something to offer us. Except you.”
    Stung, Jared stopped walking. “She has something to offer anyone with the sense to see it.”
    “That’s what Blaed said.”
    “Blaed’s a fool.”
    Thera bristled. “He is not!”
    “You said he was. This morning.”
    “That was this morn—”
    Jared sucked air when Thera’s hands clamped on his arm.
    “Listen,” she said, cocking her head.
    A rhythmic pounding. Off to their right. Out of sight.
    He probed cautiously, recoiling when he brushed against a slimy psychic scent. “It’s Garth.”
    Thera released him and started walking toward the sound.
    Swearing, Jared grabbed the back of her coat. “Stay here.”
    She turned icy green eyes on him. “You can come with me.”
    Keeping a firm grip on her coat, Jared muttered, “Blaed and I are going to have a little talk about tethers.”
    Thera made a sound a feral dog would envy.
    They found Garth, his large hand filled with a stone that he was using to pound something he’d placed on a flat rock. His teeth were bared. His face was contorted. He grunted with each impact as he pounded, pounded, pounded.
    “Garth,” Jared called, approaching warily. “Garth!”
    Garth stared at Jared with blue eyes filled with a killing rage.
    Jared hesitated, then stepped closer because he’d caught a glimpse of something shiny. “What are you doing?”
    Garth’s mouth kept working, but no words came out. With an anguished bellow, he threw down the stone and ran away from them.
    Jared took another step toward the rock.
    “Jared, be careful,” Thera said.
    Shiny brass buttons, mashed and useless, with pieces broken off.
    Buttons.
    And something else. Something in the buttons he could almost sense.
    “Jared . . .”
    He heard the sharpness, the intensity in Thera’s voice.
    Careful. Careful.
    With a delicate psychic tendril, he probed one of the buttons.
    It happened too fast. One moment there was only that psychic sliminess. Then a psychic fog shot out of the buttons and rapidly changed into thick, sticky strands full of tiny hooks.
    It looked like a badly woven net, Jared thought as it came down over his mind. The tiny hooks dug into his inner barriers, securing the strand. Another strand touched. More hooks dug in.
    More strands. More hooks.
    It surrounded him in seconds and immediately started to constrict. If it sealed his inner barriers, it would lock him inside himself.
    Like Garth.
    And then he knew what it was.
    He poured the strength of the Red into his inner barriers, poured everything he had into his inner defenses.
    It was a tangled web.