The Rancher's Daughter Read online

  The wiseman inspected the guards’ work and nodded approval. Then he turned to face the crowd, which had stopped a respectful distance of three or four measures from the altar, and spoke a single, brief word.

  Silence dropped over the clansfolk. The wiseman turned back to Lainie. He raised his arms and began chanting in a high, raspy voice in a language that reminded her of the Sh’kimech tongue, only harsher and more hissing. Around her, the sense of power at work thickened. A fog began to gather before her eyes, dimming her sight. It crept into her mind, a flat, dull darkness, slowing and muddling her thoughts, and trickled in through her nose and mouth. It slid down to her lungs, making every breath a struggle.

  As the wiseman continued chanting, the fog grew thicker. Chill and dry, it seeped through her skin and into her blood vessels. Her arms and legs grew cold and heavy. Her blood turned sluggish and her racing heart slowed until every beat was a solitary, ponderous thud.

  The barrier that had blocked her from using her power disappeared. In sudden, desperate hope she reached for the rose-colored glow, but the darkness that had filled her got there first, cutting her off from it again. Voices, deep and hissing and utterly without warmth, spoke in the same language as the wiseman’s chanting. The one we were promised. Rich, strong power and a body to be ours. The beings’ greed and gloating filled her thoughts. The mortal who had awakened them and guided them into the world above and offered them this body thought he could demand their obedience in exchange. For the moment, they would let him think he was their master, but he had no hold over them. They would not obey him.

  The frigid heaviness spread through Lainie’s limbs, her belly, her chest, her mind. She shivered, then even that involuntary movement was too hard. Dull, cramping pain pulsed through her, and she felt herself being pushed out of her body.

  The Sh’kimech had wanted her to join her mind, power, spirit, and life force to theirs and to act as their hands upon the surface of the world. Yet she would have remained alive, herself, in possession of her mind, her power, and her body. But these beings wanted to evict her spirit from her body and take it and her power for themselves. Her body would remain animate, but she herself would be – where? In the Afterworld? Or cast out to wander the mortal world as a lost spirit, caught between life and death? While they walked the surface of the world clothed in her flesh, using her power to destroy as they wished.

  With every bit of her strength and will, Lainie clung to her connection with her body: the feel of the cold, hard stone beneath her, the ache in her outstretched arms, the sound of the wiseman’s chanting, the smell of smoke and pine trees, the slow, heavy beating of her heart, the memory of Silas’s voice and smile and touch. Each of these was a slender thread binding her to the world and to her life. But the dark beings’ avid hunger for her body and her power was even stronger than her will, her desire, her fear. Slowly and inexorably, they pushed her farther out of her body. With each increasingly distant heartbeat, the threads connecting her to her life stretched thinner.

  And then they began to snap. Thoughts, memories, sensations disappeared. She could no longer feel the heavy thumping of her heart. She wanted to scream, but had no breath. Then even her own awareness of herself, the last thread that tethered her to her life, began to give way, and she felt herself disappearing into oblivion.

  Chapter 10

  THE NIGHT SEEMED endless as Silas pushed through the mountains towards the Ta’ayatan settlement. When the sun finally rose, he recognized the country around him as being no more than a few hours away from the village. The horses’ pace was starting to flag, and though Silas’s fear for Lainie urged him to keep moving, he made himself rein in Abenar and dismount.

  Oferdon tumbled out of Mala’s saddle and collapsed to the ground. “This is why I don’t ride,” he groaned.

  Silas looked at where the sun was just clearing the peaks to the east. “Half an hour,” he said. “And keep moving. If you just lie there you’ll stiffen up.”

  The horses grazed on grass sticking through the blanket of snow while Silas and Oferdon walked around, Oferdon hobbling on stiff legs, Silas driven restlessly back and forth. Oferdon still nibbled on jerky from the same pouch he’d been dipping into all night. Silas recalled what Miss Tennir had said about the bookkeeper’s nervous stomach, and hoped that Oferdon wouldn’t be stricken with a fit of indigestion from eating so much of that stuff. He had no desire to be slowed down by a sick companion, but neither did he like the thought of leaving Oferdon behind where he couldn’t keep an eye on him. Silas himself was too on edge to eat anything now, but he had been eating during the night and his power was nearly back to full strength.

  Well short of half an hour had gone by when Silas decided he couldn’t stand to wait any longer. Every passing minute put Lainie at greater risk – if it wasn’t already too late. The horses had eaten their fill and taken the water they needed from the snow on the ground, and seemed rested enough. “Let’s go,” he said, and mounted up.

  Moaning and groaning, Oferdon hauled himself back onto Mala. The mare showed her disapproval with another snort and a nip at the air near Oferdon’s arm.

  They rode on, still guided by their A’ayimat escorts. Silas pushed the gray as fast as he dared across the uneven terrain while every fiber of his nerves and muscles and emotions screamed at him to go even faster. Having Abenar come up lame or winded wouldn’t do anyone any good, he kept telling himself. Oferdon complained constantly about the more jolting pace; Silas did his best to shut out the whining.

  After another hour or so, Silas began to hear a distant, rhythmic roar from the direction of the Ta’ayatan village. His heart jumped; something was happening. He pressed his knees harder into Abenar’s sides, and the gray’s pace picked up. Behind them, Mala followed as she had learned to do, while Oferdon shouted, “Hey! Slow down!”

  Silas didn’t answer or look back.

  As they got closer to the valley, the roar took on the tone of human voices shouting in unison. One of their A’ayimat escorts melted out of the surrounding trees and signaled to Silas.

  He reined in Abenar and dismounted. “What’s going on?”

  “That’s a call to war,” the A’ayimat man said.

  “War?” Oferdon squeaked. Silas’s gut twisted and his heart pounded harder. The Ta’ayatan were about to go to war, with Lainie as their weapon.

  “The others have gone to warn their clans,” their guide went on. “I’ll see you to the Ta’ayatan lands, then I have to return to my village as well.”

  Silas nodded thanks, then climbed back into the saddle and pressed Abenar into an even faster pace, pulled on by the frenzy of shouting from the Ta’ayatan settlement. Mala stayed right behind them in spite of the frightened, protesting rider on her back.

  As the next league flew by, the chanting got louder. And then it stopped.

  Silas’s heart nearly stopped as well. Something had ended, something else was about to begin… He flung out his mage senses, seeking Lainie. Instead of the warm rose glow of her power and the rich sweetness of her life force, he found a maelstrom of dark power, strong and grasping – and entirely alien to him. It wasn’t the Sh’kimech; it was something darker, colder, more implacable, with a devastating hunger for destruction.

  And it was in possession of Lainie.

  Desperation flooded Silas’s body with energy. He pushed Abenar into a full gallop, no longer noticing if Mala and her reluctant rider were keeping up. They covered the last league in a blur of trees, then crested the ridge over the Ta’ayatan’s valley and tore down the hillside into the settlement. Over Abenar’s hoofbeats and the pounding of his heart in his ears, Silas heard a single raspy voice chanting words in a language he didn’t recognize. The voice was coming from the far side of the village. Between Silas and the source of the chanting stood what looked like a couple of hundred clansfolk, far more than Silas remembered seeing in the village the day before.

  Without slowing down, Silas drew his gun and fired a war
ning shot into the air, then charged into the crowd. Men and women scrambled to get out of his way, many of them also pulling children to safety. Others grabbed at his legs, the saddle, the stirrups. He kicked at them and struck out with the butt of his gun while Abenar swung his head from side to side, biting and snapping. Men wielded swords, spears, and knives, but their movement was hampered by the press of their fellow clan members around them.

  Up ahead, over the heads of the amassed clansfolk, Silas saw the old wiseman standing at a stone altar, his back to the crowd, his arms raised high in the air as he chanted. On the altar, Lainie lay tied down and unmoving.

  Silas’s mind went blank with rage and fear. “Lainie!” he roared. He cocked his gun, feeding power into it while calling up its most devastating magical attack, then stood up in the stirrups and pulled the trigger.

  A bolt of blazing blue light shot over the heads of the crowd and pierced the wiseman’s raised arm. He jerked and spun around as Silas burst through the crowd into the empty space around the altar. Cracks spread from the wiseman’s arm to the rest of his body, widening to reveal a swirling clash of blue and gold power within. The wiseman screamed, an unearthly shriek filled with rage and pain.

  Then the warring magics exploded in a blinding flash of light. When the light cleared, there was no trace of the old man except for a dusting of ash on the ground where he had stood.

  Stunned silence broken by gasps of horror met the wiseman’s destruction. Silas climbed down from Abenar. His heart pounded in his throat and dread turned his muscles to ice water, and he had to grab on to the saddle to support himself.

  “Damn you!” From the direction of the altar, Mikat the sentry charged towards Silas, knife in hand. Silas fired at him, a mundane bullet that struck Mikat in the leg and sent him tumbling to the ground. A second man near the altar raised a knife to throw it; Silas shot it from his hand. The man cried out and collapsed to his knees, clutching his bleeding hand to his chest.

  No one else came forward to challenge Silas. One impossible step at a time, he started walking towards the altar. A painful, burning pressure filled his chest; his breaths came in hard, ragged gasps. At the altar, he stopped and looked down at Lainie. She lay utterly still, her skin deathly pale, her eyes staring wide open and unseeing at the sky, her mouth frozen open in a scream that would never sound.

  He had come too late.

  The last of Silas’s strength abandoned him. He grabbed the edge of the altar to keep himself from falling. Sorrow swelled inside him until he thought he would burst, and his heart felt like it was being ripped from his chest. “Ah, darlin’.” Grief choked off his voice, and tears overflowed his eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

  The crack of a gunshot sounded, and pain punched into his back, near his right shoulderblade. He staggered against the altar. Before he could gather enough power and focus to throw a defensive shield, a second shot hit the back of his right thigh, just above his knee. The leg buckled and he grappled at the edge of the altar, trying to stay on his feet. He turned and saw Oferdon, still mounted, ride out from the crowd of Ta’ayatan, his gun in his hand. The one-time bookkeeper smiled as he took aim again.

  Silas realized he was still holding his gun in his left hand. He raised it, but it seemed unnaturally heavy. Before he could aim, Oferdon fired again. The shot hit Silas’s upper left arm and he felt the sharp crack of the bone breaking. The pain of it nearly made him black out. His gun dropped from his useless hand as a fourth shot hit his left thigh. His legs gave way and he fell to his knees in the snow and mud. Yet another bullet struck his chest near his left shoulder.

  “Gods damn you for a sheep-knocking son of a bitch, Oferdon!” he shouted. “We had a deal!” Of course, he had planned on breaking the deal, too, but those plans hadn’t included shooting Oferdon in cold blood, at least not unless he had no other choice.

  “Yeah, we had a deal.” Oferdon clambered down from Mala and walked over to Silas, his stride confident if somewhat stiff. “But I think I can do better. I can get the full two thousand for bringing Coltor’s daughter home, and the eight hundred gilding bounty on you when I send back your mage ring, and maybe there’ll be something in it for me for retrieving this poor girl’s body from these savages. Has she got a family somewhere who’d reward me for that?” He stood over Silas and grinned down at him.

  An urge to kill the man with his bare hands surged through Silas. He tried to summon up either the physical strength or the magic to do it, but pain and grief and shock had left him with nothing. He settled for spitting on Oferdon’s once-shiny shoes. “Go knock yourself, you bastard.”

  Oferdon’s face went red. Snarling, he struck the butt of his gun against the back of Silas’s head. The force of the blow knocked Silas facedown into the half-frozen mud. Oferdon’s weight settled on his back, and the bad end of the gun came to rest against the base of his skull. “I’m also sure these fine people here will want to honor me for killing the man who killed their priest. And then there’s the glory I’ll get for bringing down the notorious Siyavas Venedias while facing an entire tribe of blueskins on my own. Let’s see my wife sneer at me then!”

  Of all the people for him to fall in with, Silas thought, it had to be a morally vacuous little failure with a consuming need to prove himself. He cursed himself for a soft-hearted idiot. So much for fair play and not wanting to break a woman’s heart. Without Oferdon slowing him down, he might have come in time to save Lainie. He should have just killed the weaselly two-faced son of a bitch back in the canyon. He had been trying so hard to convince Lainie that not all mages were evil, cold-hearted monsters that he had forgotten there were good reasons why mages had that reputation, and good reasons why he needed to be equally cold-hearted in dealing with them. And now Lainie had paid the price for his mistake.

  The weight of his failure crushed his heart, and more tears leaked from his eyes into the mud. I’m sorry, darlin’. If there was any consolation, it was that his sweet Lainie, good girl that she was, had probably never done anything to displease any of the gods and would therefore be welcome in all the heavens. Maybe, from time to time, he might be able to catch up with her in whatever heavens he was allowed into – if any – as the two of them made their eternal rounds through the Afterworld. “Damn you, Oferdon,” he groaned through clenched teeth. “The gods damn you to all eight hells.”

  Oferdon chuckled and cocked the trigger on his gun. Five shots, Silas thought; this would be the sixth and last. A cold that didn’t just come from the damp ground and chilly air sank deep into his bones, and he shivered. Loss of blood and the shock of the bullets’ impact, he supposed. Not fear of death; a world without Lainie in it was a world he no longer wanted to live in.

  “No hard feelings, now,” Oferdon said. “After all, it’s for a good cause –”

  Shouts of fear from the gathered Ta’ayatan cut off his words. “What –?” Oferdon shifted his weight, turning to see what was happening, and the muzzle of his gun slipped from Silas’s head. Silas twisted around, agony shooting through his broken arm, and looked up.

  Above him, Lainie was standing up on the altar. The ropes that had tied her down hung loosely from her wrists and ankles. Darkness shadowed her eyes, and her expression was fierce and terrible. Cold, dark power – both the Sh’kimech and that other power he had felt – rolled off of her in waves of rippling shadow.

  The only thing Silas could think was that she was alive.

  Chapter 11

  AS THOUGH FROM a vast distance, through the single fraying thread that still anchored her to her body, Lainie heard her name cried out in a voice full of rage and anguish. It was wrong; her name should not be spoken in that terrible way by that voice. Still, she grasped at it, another thread to strengthen her hold on her life against the beings that were crowding her out of her body.

  The distant rhythm of the wiseman’s chanting returned to her hearing. Then a burst of magic, bright, clean, and familiar, cut through the nothingness around her, and the chantin
g ended in an explosion of pain and fury and light. The dark beings faltered at the sudden disappearance of the power that had beckoned and guided them.

  This was her chance. Clinging to the voice she had heard and all it meant to her, Lainie began pulling herself back into her body. The respite from the fight was short-lived; the dark beings recovered almost immediately and started trying again to force her out of her body, but their brief lapse had been enough to let her get a slightly stronger grip on her life. She could feel the cold running through her veins and the marrow of her bones, and the hardness of the stone altar beneath her back. She heard angry voices, followed by one gunshot and then another.

  The dark beings beat back against her. This body was promised to us. We claim it for our own.

  No, it’s mine. The man who promised it to you, it wasn’t his to promise. He had no right. Lainie redoubled her hold on the fragile bonds between her and her body. You don’t belong here; go back to where you came from.

  Silas’s voice came to her again, much closer now but filled with complete and utter despair. The sound of the voice she loved so much and her own sorrow at his sorrow gave her more strength, and she pulled herself another hair’s-width back into her body. The dark beings’ certainty, their will, was absolute, but Lainie refused to give way. She had to fight and win to be with Silas again.

  She clawed her way a tiny bit further back to life. Now, though she still had no command over her body, she could feel the ache in her outstretched shoulders and the cold air on her face.

  A sudden loud crack pierced her awareness, followed by a choked gasp of pain from where Silas had spoken before. Silas! she cried out silently. More shots followed, one after another; he shouted, his voice filled with anger and pain, and another voice answered, mocking.