A feeling of raw hatred blazed up from a deep, deep well shaft in his soul. The feelings that exploded inside him drove all thoughts from his mind except one—Kiranrao must die. His treachery could not go unpunished.
He invoked the power of the Sword of Winds and rushed after the murderer.
“Paedrin, no!” Hettie shrieked.
She would not be able to keep up with him, nor did he want her to. This revenge was for him to exact. He would hunt him down. He would chase him to Havenrook or farther. Kiranrao was a dead man. There was no way he could outrun Paedrin.
“Hasten!”
He heard the word barked with a loud, commanding voice. It was clearly Tyrus’s warning to come back. What did it matter now? The Tay al-Ard hadn’t worked when they were attacked; it wouldn’t work now. What point was there to obeying him? They had failed. All was lost.
He heard Hettie screaming, but he dodged through the massive oak trees, rushing past them like a breeze himself, the sword held poised, his body spread like a hawk. He saw Kiranrao sprinting ahead and began to close on him.
The screaming went silent.
Paedrin felt a branch slash his cheek as he ventured too near it. The boiling fury inside him began to subside.
What had happened? Was the Tay al-Ard working after all? Why had Hettie’s screaming stopped?
The woods were dark and menacing, each way looking like the one before, interspersed with ravines and stunted stumps. As he swooped down on Kiranrao, the Romani suddenly vanished in a plume of shadowy smoke.
Paedrin plunged forward, pointing the sword where he had last seen the Romani, and it struck into the earth harmlessly. He stopped his flight, kneeling on the ground, breathing fast, beginning to feel the first vestiges of panic. His heart thumped wildly in his chest and he tried to calm it. He listened, trying to hear the sound of fleeing boots. Nothing. He realized that he had never really heard Kiranrao’s movements when he was engulfed in his shadow-cloak. Closing his eyes, he reached out to discern the Romani through his blind vision.
Nothing.
Wild panic began to throb inside his mind. What had he done? Crouching on the rugged earth, he began to gasp with fear and dread. He lacked Hettie’s skills, could not track a man through the woods. His decision to hunt down Kiranrao was purely born of hatred and raw emotion. He had never trusted Kiranrao—had never understood why Tyrus insisted he come along. Murdering Khiara had been the ultimate betrayal, the ultimate sign of the lack of Tyrus’s wisdom. Their whole world had been shattered, and he had felt such a raw surge of hate and vengeance that it made him forget everything a Bhikhu ought to be.
With mounting agony, he could almost see Master Shivu’s scolding eyes, his look of disappointment and disapproval. This was not how he was trained. This was not what he had determined to be. And even worse, he had left Hettie behind screaming.
Paedrin regretted his decision immediately. He felt the shock of the abandonment. They had left him. Turning, he launched back the way he had come, shooting past the trees, hurrying to return to the place where the group had huddled near the broken Dryad tree. After several moments, he nearly went mad with panic, wondering if he was already lost. Which way was it? The trees all looked the same.
Movement fluttered in the trees ahead. He could hear the coos and clucks of the Cockatrice, fidgeting in the tree line. What had he done? What stupidity, what recklessness! He cursed himself a thousand times, wending through the trees, trying to find the place of the massacre.
His robes were still damp with his own blood. He touched his skin, feeling not even the trace of a scar. But inside his heart, the wounds were deeper, bleeding, ravaged. How could he have been this foolish? How could he have lost himself so utterly?
There.
He saw the broken Dryad tree. Skeletal. Abandoned.
Dropping down to a low crouch, he saw where the others had been standing before they vanished, drawn away by the Tay al-Ard. His mind whirled to make sense of it. If the Tay al-Ard was working, why hadn’t they escaped the fight with the Cockatrice and the Fear Liath? Tyrus had summoned them to him and it hadn’t worked. Was that real? He realized how little he understood about the operation of the device or its limits.
Blackness swam in his vision. Or was Tyrus mad? Had he lost control of himself? Had he lost himself to the madness of the fireblood? He remembered the warning that Annon and Hettie had shared with him about using their magic. He remembered seeing the look in their eyes—like a craving.
Paedrin knelt, plunging the blade into the ground, and rested on its hilt, breathing heavily. The others were gone. There was not a sound from any of them. With a swallow, he realized the Fear Liath’s lair was nearby, probably a cave where the sunlight would not penetrate.
The fluttering of wings sounded in the treetops above him. Spasms of agony pierced his mind. He was alone in the Scourgelands. He had forsaken the quest and his companions in a fit of blind rage. And when the dark came, the Fear Liath would emerge from its den and begin to hunt him.