Master and Apprentice Read Free Page B

tried to ignore the whisper that insisted the deceiver the Morai warned about could be anyone. Even Ian.

Chapter 2
    A fter we’d put some distance between us and the cave, the terrain changed from mostly rock to mostly trees. Ian stayed ahead of me and trudged along at a steady pace, ignoring the arm dangling lifeless from its socket, the massive burn on his chest, and his likely broken ribs. Immortality and stubbornness weren’t the best combination.
    I jogged to catch up with him. “Don’t you think we should stop for a few minutes?”
    He ignored me.
    “Ian.” I grabbed his good arm. “Stop.”
    “It was not right.” He looked at me like he’d just realized I was still there. “He should not have been free of the tether. Akila’s vision has never been wrong before.”
    Ian’s wife was Bahari—the hawk clan—and had a knack for air magic, especially flying and illusions. She did the scrying beforehand and found tethers so we could go on our little killing sprees. “Uh, there’s a first time for everything?” I said.
    Ian shook his head. “There is something else here. Magical interference. This mountain is rife with it, and I do not like it. We must keep moving.”
    “Come on, Ian. We’ll never make it back to town walking. Especially not with you beat to hell.” Despite my protest, unease coiled in my gut. Anything that made Ian uncomfortable was bad news for me. Usually painful, bad news in the form of a vengeful Morai. But Ian could barely walk, much less cast any spells, and only time would restore his power. And mine. “Let’s just make a quick pit stop, all right? Give it an hour. You can rest, and I’ll stand watch.”
    He cast me a dubious look. And started walking again.
    “Damn it, stop being a jackass!”
    “I am fine.” He staggered a little, took two more steps, and collapsed.
    I cursed under my breath and went to him. “So we’re resting,” I said. “Right?”
    “Apparently,” he muttered into the ground.
    “Glad you see it my way.” I knelt beside him and tried to look through the trees. “I think there’s a decent clearing up ahead,” I said. “You gonna let me help you get there, or are you comfortable here?”
    He let out a long breath. “Very well.”
    “You’re welcome.”
    Somehow I managed to get him up and leaning on me. My burned hand let out a few shouts of protest during the struggle, and settled back to a persistent ache as we pressed awkwardly forward. The clearing that looked no more than fifty feet away took five minutes to reach, and it wasn’t much of a clearing. Just a semicircular patch of ground covered in browning pine needles. At least there weren’t as many rocks here.
    “Okay,” I said. “I’ll let you down here, and—”
    “You all just keep movin’.”
    The voice, not clearly male or female, came from across theclearing. A shotgun protruded between two trees, with a figure in a wide-brimmed hat behind it.
    For a minute my brain went blank. Why the hell would anybody else be on this oversize pile of rocks in the middle of nowhere? The only quasicivilization, the little mountain town where we’d rented a room, was miles away. But the shotgun suggested hunter, so maybe whoever this was had been hunting something they shouldn’t have and didn’t want to be discovered.
    The sharp blast of the gun jolted me out of pondering. A cloud of dirt and pine needles burst from the ground near my feet. “Jesus Christ!” I yelled, dragging Ian back a few steps. “You can’t just shoot people.”
    Brilliant. I sounded like a Sunday school teacher. That’d deter the nut with the gun.
    “I said move. Get on outta here.” The barrel came back up. “I won’t miss next time.”
    Ian breathed in shakily. “I can walk,” he whispered. “We will find another spot.”
    “Guess we don’t have a choice.”
    The gun bearer moved forward and stopped just outside the light in the clearing. “You hurt?” The tone was a few degrees gentler, but no