Why had he done it? What did he care whether Sark got Kyla? He'd meant it when he said she'd given him naught but trouble. His destiny lay here—here, with Xaymar, queen of storms; here, with the secrets that would give him the power to carve out his dream empire. This other was sheer madness—without sense or logic; without even volition.
Yet he'd done it.
And now—?
Already, out there in the green-grey-purple Ulnese mountains, a slim Shamon girl was being dragged to a monster.
Almost without thinking, he looked to his armor.
He was half-way down the slope to his hwalon before it dawned on him that, with Xaymar unconscious and at his mercy, he'd still forgotten even to look beneath her veil.
CHAPTER VII
Bleakly, Haral looked down on the knot of coleoptera moving through the valley below.
There could be no mistake. This was the party. Even from here, sitting his hwalon high amid the barren crags above them, he could glimpse the shimmering gold of the captive Kyla's hair.