Dragon Bones (Hurog #1)(74)

"She had you to protect her children," said Tosten unexpectedly. "Me, I'm like Mother, clinging to my troubles. All the way here...all the way from Tyrfannig, I've been hurting you because you like Oreg better than you like me."

"A wise man told me once that horses kick and bite because they are afraid or hurt more often than because they are angry." It hurt to use Penrod's arguments.

"I am not a horse," he huffed.

"But are you afraid and hurt?" I asked. He did not reply. "You can't blame a horse that strikes out in pain or fear. You just see what you can do to relieve the cause."

Tosten laughed, a real laugh this time. "Or you slit the poor animal's throat."

"I have to admit there have been times..."

If someone had been listening, they'd have thought we were idiots, laughing ourselves to jelly in a filthy cell, me chained to the wall and Tosten so badly injured he yelped now and again as he laughed.

"So how are you going to rescue us?" He asked finally. "Are you going to switch allegiance from the bastard who killed poor old Erdrick?"

"To Kariarn?" I snorted. "Now, that's a good choice. Like the chicken who went to live with the foxes because she was afraid of the farmer's dog. No."

"So we'll sit here and rot?"

I looked at the silver ring on my numb hand. "I think I have a better plan."

I called Oreg to me, as I'd summoned him often in Hurog, though I'd never tried calling him outside of Hurog's walls. Since the pyre where I'd burned the village dead, I hadn't tried any more magic, because untrained magic can be deadly. Even so, I hadn't really expected the power that flooded my call. The ring vibrated with magic and sent warmth burning through the numbness of my hand and arm and made them mine again.

I could all but smell the magic that coalesced slowly into Oreg's huddled form, which looked very much like Tosten's huddled form had, except Oreg was shaking. He twisted awkwardly until he was clinging to my leg.

"Don't leave again. Please, please...don't leave again. It was too far." His toneless, despairing whisper set the hairs on my neck on edge, and I wanted to kill whomever had done this - but Oreg's father was long dead. Oreg was the only person I knew whose father had been worse than mine. Perhaps that, rather than the ring was the true heart of our bond.

Tosten stared at Oreg.

"No. I won't leave," I promised. "I didn't do it on purpose, Oreg. Are you all right?"

He buried his face in my leg and shook like a dog who'd been in cold water too long.

"What did you do to him?" There was abhorrence on Tosten's face.

Oreg's actions reminded me uncomfortably of Bastilla and Kariarn, too. "I did nothing to him. Give him a moment, and I'll explain."

Tosten glanced from Oreg to me and then turned painfully away, muttering something that sounded like, "It had better be good."

"Where are we?" asked Oreg after a moment. He didn't loosen his grip on me, but his voice sounded almost normal, if a bit muffled.

"Buril," answered Tosten when he saw that I didn't know. "Garranon's estate."

Garranon was dealing with the Vorsag? It didn't fit what I knew of him, but neither did Bastilla's new persona.

"How did you get here?" Oreg asked. "Where's Bastilla?"

"Bastilla brought us," I said as conversationally as possible when chained up with a man clinging to my leg. "She's responsible for the damage to Tosten. And she's not Ciernack's slave, she's Kariarn's. He seemed to indicate that she'd been altered somehow by the Cholynn - to turn her into his loyal creature. Can that be done?"

"Only if she consented first," he said.

"Did you know that she wasn't what she seemed?"

Oreg pulled away and looked at me finally. Even though the room was dark, his pupils were pinpricks. "I knew she was a mage as soon as she stepped onto Hurog land, stronger than she knew or at least stronger than she would admit to. Beyond that...once such altering as you spoke of is done, it is not an easy thing to detect, not even if you know to look for it."

I nodded. "She fooled me, too. Kariarn called her a chameleon." I smiled at him. "She's like me. She can be anybody she wants to be."

"No." Tosten interrupted abruptly. "Not what she wants to be. I've been thinking about that. You wanted someone to rescue, Penrod and Axiel wanted a lover with no strings. I...she let me talk to her, about how...about things. She stayed away from Ciarra because she couldn't understand what Ciarra wanted. That was how her act worked. As long as we saw what we wanted to see, we didn't look any further."

Oreg nodded, releasing his grip on me entirely so he could look at Tosten. "Ward becomes exactly what he wants to become, usually to the vast irritation of the people around him. He can't get rid of the stubbornness or the honor."

"Or the belief that he has to take care of anyone he meets." Tosten sounded both superior and pleased.

"Tosten," I said. "There are some things you should know - in case you get out of this and I don't. Oreg is not one of Father's by-blows. He was bound to Hurog the day it was built. He's our family ghost - though he's more a mage than a ghost."