he did bolt?”
“The gods only know where you’d end up,” she told him frankly. “If he got out of my influence—I can’t predict what point beyond the Gate you’d come out at, or even what direction it would be in.”
“And if I can’t get him to a gallop?”
“Almost the same—if you didn’t keep within my aura you’d come out somewhere between here and where I’d land.”
He reached out and touched her face with the tips of his fingers. “You seem tired, beloved.”
“I am tired,” she admitted, confessing to him what she would admit to no other living person. “But I’m not too tired to Gate-spell, and I think it’s safer to do it now than it will be later.”
“Then I will force this bundle of contrariness disguised as a horse into keeping up with you.”
“Hold butter-brains here, would you?” she passed him the reins of her mount, not trusting it to stand firm on its own. She drew entirely into herself, centering all her concentration on the hoarded power within herself, drawing it gradually to the surface with unspoken words and careful mental probes. Her eyes were closed, but she could feel the energy stirring, flowing, coming up from—elsewhere—and beginning to trickle along the nerves of her spine. At first it was barely a tingle, but the power built up quickly until she was vibrating to its silent song.
At that point she opened the channels to her hands, raising her arms out in front of her and holding her hands out with the open palms facing the ring of standing stones.
The power surged along her arms and leapt for the ring of the Gate with an eagerness that was almost an emotion. She sang the words of the Gate-spell now, sang it in a barely audible whisper. Her eyes were half open, but she really wasn’t paying a great deal of attention to anything but the flow of power from her to the Gate.
The ring of stones began to glow, glowing as if they were stealing the last of the sun’s fire and allowing it to run upon their surfaces. The color of the fire began to lighten, turning from deep red to scarlet to a fiery orange. Then the auras surrounding each Gate-stone extended; reaching for, then touching,