Oberon's Dreams Read Free

toward the sunset.
    They went a while in silence, but Iryana made no effort to escape. She came easily along, her strange, dark eyes cutting into the back of Corin’s neck. At last, almost irritated, he asked, “What’s on your mind?”
    “A time is coming soon when you will wish that man were dead.”
    Corin glanced back and shrugged. “He is just a slaver’s guard. And I will leave these sands behind—”
    “I do not mean Razeen,” she said softly. “I mean the man you left in charge.”
    “Blake? Ha! He is no threat.”
    “He hates you.”
    “With all his black little heart,” Corin said.
    “You know this, and still you leave him so much power?”
    Corin shared a secret smile. “He alone among all my crew is wholly and utterly predictable.”
    “Even though he hates you?”
    “ Because he hates me…and still he follows me. That should tell you much about his ambitions. But perhaps your people are not so complicated.”
    She favored him with a smirk. “Or we are not so simple.”
    Corin laughed, bright and clear. “Oh, there is nothing simple about me. As for Blake…aye, I’ll give you that. But I know the shape of his schemes.”
    She reined up hard and rounded on Corin, her dark eyes flashing. “You do not know as many secrets as you claim, and I know more than you’d believe. I can see the treachery draped across that man like Aeshmir silks, and it drips with the blood of clever men.”
    “I am not without my bloody rags,” Corin said.
    “You are clean as sand-polished bone against his stain. You are shifting shades and interwoven tones, but there is a beauty and a harmony in your madness. He is just one shade and just one tone.”
    “Iryana—”
    “No.” She spoke over him. “Hear my words and understand. He drips with dark ambition, and you stand in his way.”
    Corin licked his lips and forced another smile. “I hear you,” he said, with unaccustomed gravity. “And I tell you true, I know full well the treachery that reigns over that man’s heart. I will not underestimate him.”
    She tore her gaze away, but not before he saw the sadness in her eyes. “There is not treachery enough within your heart to truly understand a man like him.”
    “Oh, Iryana.” He took her fingertips in his hands and waited until she turned to him again. Then he grinned at her with a new confidence. “Soothe your pretty heart. I am bad enough to handle Ethan Blake.”
    She smiled through a sheen of tears, and Corin reached up to brush away her hair. “Gods’ blood, I’m downright wicked. Now come! Let’s desecrate a tomb.”

CHAPTER THREE
    The pirates’ camp was not too far from the spot where the slavers had made their temporary market. It huddled in the precious shade of a deep, narrow chasm wind-carved from the sandstone cliffs. Jagged walls soared high above a path barely wide enough for a cart. The path rose gradually as it went, twisting for more than a mile before it reached another stretch of trackless desert.
    At the canyon’s nearer mouth stood makeshift tents and wooden wagons and heavy water barrels crafted of lumber from far-off places. Everything within this camp was out of place among the shifting sands, but none more so than the shiny bronze cannons mounted on two carts, both aimed back toward the open dunes. They were the surest reason Corin feared no retribution.
    But Corin’s thought was not on them now. He didn’t even slow as he led Iryana past the cannons and through the silent camp.
    “Your tents are empty,” Iryana said.
    “I did not want a fight.”
    “It would have been easier to hide behind your cannons. But you brought every sword at your command to the slavers’ market?”
    “If there’s one thing we do well, it is ambush. The unsuspecting make such easy prey.”
    She considered him in silence just long enough to make him wonder at her thoughts. Then she smiled and said, “You needed me.”
    He shrugged, not meeting her eyes. “I came for you.”
    “Did