* * *
CHARLOTTE stepped out of the truck. Ahead, the overgrown dirt road ended, turning into a forest path. The boundary loomed before her. She felt it in the very marrow of her bones, a strange disturbing pressure that threatened to squeeze the breath out of her.
The slavers had passed through it. The brush still bowed, disturbed by the riders. She saw the traces of hoofprints on the ground and the twin grooves of wide wheels. They had a cart, and not magic-powered like the modern phaetons, but an old-fashioned, horse-drawn cart, the kind country people still used in the provinces. The trail led through the boundary, so she would have to pass this way, too. The last time she had crossed it, the feeling of her magic being peeled away nearly made her turn back.
Charlotte took a deep breath and stepped into the boundary. The magic clutched her, squeezing at her organs as if trying to wring the lifeblood from them. The pressure pushed her, propelling her forward. Each step was a conscious effort. Sweat broke on her forehead. Another step. Another. The pressure crushed her. Charlotte hunched over. She would crawl if she had to.
Another step.
Suddenly, the grinding burden vanished. Magic flooded her, rejuvenating her body. It was an absurd sensation, but she felt herself opening up like a flower greeting the morning sun. If she’d had wings, they would’ve unfurled. She inhaled slowly. There it was, the familiar potent power she was so used to wielding. During her years in the Edge, living with half magic, she had forgotten how wonderful it felt.
She had never understood why Éléonore didn’t move to the Weird . . .
Éléonore.
She had to keep moving. She was at least half an hour behind the slavers, probably more. The old Adrianglian forest stretched before her. The forest path forked ahead. Which way, right or left?
Charlotte knelt to the ground, trying to follow the hoofprints. A carpet of old pine needles blanketed the floor of the woods and the path, obscuring the trail. She had learned some tracking when she was a girl from an old veteran scout living at Ganer College because she thought it was interesting. But those lessons were long ago, and she had never taken them very seriously.
A high-pitched, labored whine came from under the brush on her left. She turned. Two brown canine eyes looked at her from a large black muzzle.
Charlotte froze.
The dog dipped its big head and let out another thin whine. She smelled blood. It lashed her healer instinct like a whip. The dark magic raging inside her vanished, as if snuffed out.
“Easy now.” Charlotte crouched and moved toward the dog. “Easy.”
It lay on its side, panting.
She reached for it.
The dog’s lips trembled, betraying a flash of fangs.
Charlotte stopped moving, her hand outstretched. “If you bite me, I won’t help you.” The dog couldn’t understand her, but it could understand the tone of her voice.
Slowly she reached forward. The dog opened its mouth. Jaws snapped but fell short of her fingers. It was too weak.
“If you were healthy, you’d tear my hand off, huh?”
Charlotte touched the fur, sending a current of golden sparks through the furry body. Male, low blood pressure. A bullet wound passing through the abdomen. Someone had shot the dog.
“This world is full of terrible people,” she told him, and began to repair the damage. The bullet had entered the chest, cut through the left lung, and tore out of the dog’s side. Judging by the state of the wound and blood loss, it had happened about five to six hours ago.
Charlotte knitted the injured tissues, rebuilding the lung.
The dog leaned over and licked her hand, a quick, short lick, as if embarrassed by his own weakness.
“Change your mind since it doesn’t hurt as much anymore?” She sealed the wound and petted his withers. Her hand slid against a spiked collar. “You wouldn’t be a slaver dog, would you?”
The dog rose. He was a massive beast—if they both stood upright, he could put his paws on her shoulders.
Charlotte got up. “Where are your owners?”
The dog looked at her, sniffed the air, and turned to the right.
She had nothing better to go on.
“Right it is,” Charlotte said, and followed the dog down the path.
* * *
THE wagon rolled over a root, creaking.
“That’s far enough,” a grating voice called out. Voshak Corwen, a seasoned slaver with over a dozen raids under his belt. Hardly a surprise, Richard reflected. This was the man Tuline had promised to betray. They must’ve agreed to set that little trap together, and when Richard had cut his way through Tuline’s crew, Voshak took his men and went after him.
“We make camp here,” Voshak said.
“We’re only two hours from the boundary,” a tall, redheaded man called out. Richard didn’t recognize him. Must be a new hire. The slavers needed to replenish their herd regularly—he kept thinning it out.
Voshak rode into view. Of average height, he was built with a gristle-and-tendon kind of strength: lean, with high endurance. He wasn’t the fastest or the strongest, but he would go the distance. A network of scars sliced his face. No doubt he had some romantic story about how he got them instead of admitting that a stablehand had raked his face with a pitchfork during a failed slave raid.
Voshak’s hair, a pale blond braid, which he bleached, was his trademark. It made him memorable. That’s how the slavers operated. They adopted costumes and personas, trying to make themselves larger-than-life and hoping to inspire fear. They counted on that fear. One could fight a man, but nobody could fight a nightmare.