Dragon Blood (Hurog #2)(93)

"Ward?" Tisala's voice drew my gaze, and I saw her more clearly. Part of me noted uneasily that the light of the gem had followed my gaze without my bidding, but the rest of me was focused on Tisala. I straightened abruptly, anger stiffening my spine. The battering, I realized, had probably come from Jakoven's men, but her hands were bound and she was obviously a prisoner.

I looked back at Kellen, who said quietly, "Is that the Bane, Ward?" His eyes were trying to convey a message to me, but I was too tired and angry to work it out.

"It's not Kellen who doubts you," said my uncle, and I saw that he was here, too. "But when we realized where you were going, a number of the Oranstonian lords who knew your father expressed their doubts. In your place, he would have taken the Bane and used it to gain the throne - and they don't know you."

His words bounced off the rising tide of my wrath, which grew apace when I noticed that he was bound as well.

I waved my hand, drawing on the power of the staff ("What power?" asked a small, rational part of me, buried beneath the roil of anger) and the ropes fell from Tisala's wrists. "Tosten, Axiel, Garranon," I said in a voice I hardly recognized.

"Here, Ward," said Garranon behind me. "I'm fine."

"And I," said Axiel.

Tosten said, "Nothing wrong with me that won't mend. Have a care, Ward. Keep your head."

I didn't even have to look at them to release their bonds as well as Duraugh's. The magic of the staff filled me up and powered my finding sense until I could have identified every man in the camp, though I'd never seen most of them before.

"Why are my people bound?" I asked gently. "They've done nothing wrong. With this"  -  I shook the staff - "Jakoven could have leveled a battlefield. Stealth was the only way. So these people risked their lives for you and you make prisoners of them?"

When Tisala came to me, no one tried to stop her. "My love," she said, as if she'd always called me that. "Ward, listen to me. No one was hurt. Farrawell and a few of his ilk believe that claiming the Bane was your purpose from the beginning. There are enough of them here who agree that Kellen had no choice but to confront you."

I listened to her, but I kept my eyes on Kellen. She might say he had no choice, but I knew better. The power that filled me quivered in rage at the thought. And it told me exactly what I could do about Kellen and the Oranstonians who put my people in bonds.

"Ward," said Oreg clearly. "Your eyes are glowing Hurog-blue - like the staff."

I turned to the dragon-mage and the awareness that was a part of the Bane's magic knew him as dragon. It calmed at his presence, giving me space to understand what he'd said. And as it faded, the urge to destroy Farrawell and Kellen ebbed. But it wasn't gone, just concealed as it had concealed itself from me before.

I took a deep, if shaky breath. "Siphern save me," I whispered. "I thought it was gone." But the Bane had only hidden, waiting to infect me with its ravaging madness.

I knew then that Jade Eyes had been both correct and wrong. Blood and tears had indeed freed the Bane, freed it of any control. Knew moreover what it intended to do, because destruction was all it understood: The Bane was a far more capable Death-Bringer than my little brother's fat gelding.

"Oreg, aid me," I said, but the Bane read my intentions before I could say anything and launched an attack - not at me, but at Tisala, who held my arm and had no protection against magic.

I threw up a warding around the bronze dragon head even as I pushed Tisala away from me. But the Bane had been storing power for a long time and was sated on dragon's blood. My safeguard wavered, and Tisala collapsed to the ground.

Oreg's hands closed on my shoulders and the barrier stabilized, holding the Bane momentarily.

It gave me time to say, "Away from us. Get back, it's loosed."

Kellen gestured sharply and the people who'd been crowded around us stepped back to the trees. Haverness, though, came forward and picked up Tisala. She moaned as he carried her away and I knew a moment's relief that the Bane hadn't killed her.

Then the Bane began struggling again and I had to turn my concentration elsewhere.

"What do we do?" I asked as I strengthened the warding. "We can't just continue to contain it."

"You were right," Oreg said, "it is connected to you. You understand it best - I'll loan you my strength to do what you can."

"I think I could bind it again," I said.

As if the Bane understood, it redoubled its attack on our barrier. Slowly I gave control of the warding to Oreg, to free my weaving for a more permanent solution.

"If you can," replied Oreg.

I knew one binding spell that would hold the Bane as it had tied Oreg to Hurog - a slave to the whims of the Hurogmeten. I drew my knife with my free hand and awkwardly cut myself without losing my hold on the staff, because that spell began with a sacrifice of blood.

Dragons' voices wailed in pleading terror as I began the spell and they made me hesitate. How could I do this?

The question stalled me further. It had been Oreg's father binding his son to Hurog that had tainted the world with his evil act and my destruction of that binding had begun healing the earth. If I bound these creatures, revenant though they were, would it compound the evil that Farson had started?