Knight's Blood by Julianne Lee Read Free Book Online Page A

child back.”
     
    “And I can’t help you. Not even were I so inclined, which I decidedly am not. I’ve no idea where your cursed brat might be.”
     
    “But you know where I am.”
     
    Impatience tinged the voice. “Were he lurking about my burrows, I expect I might also know where the little monster was. But he is not, and therefore I couldn’t tell you where you might find him.”
     
    Lindsay’s throat tightened with frustration, and now she was more afraid of having to give up and leave the way she’d come than she was of anything Nemed might do. She said, “Then allow me to search for him myself. If you don’t have him, then someone does. I want to go looking.”
     
    “By your costume I assume you mean to search a century other than your own. What makes you think you can find your offspring there?”
     
    Because I know you have him . But Lindsay didn’t say it out loud. “The changeling. There was a changeling, and he told me the baby had been taken to the past. Back to where he’d been conceived.”
     
    “To Eilean Aonarach. Fourteenth century.”
     
    “Right.” 1315.
     
    “And you need my help in this because . . . ?”
     
    “You can send me back.”
     
    “I can?”
     
    “You’ve moved me through time before. You can do it again.”
     
    “At what cost do you think I did that? You think it such a simple thing to send a being back and forth in time? Surely you know better than that.”
     
    “Alex and I both once traveled seven years and a number of miles in this very knoll. It seemed simple enough for you at the time.”
     
    “It was. And it was random. What you ask is not the same thing.”
     
    “It’s not? How? What’s the difference between that and what you’ve already done on a whim?”
     
    A great exhausted sigh came from nowhere. “Och, that I would be saved from impertinent mortals.” Then the elf said, “How might I explain this so your tiny, modern human mind might grasp it?” There were some more sighs and mutterings, then, “Take, for example, a boat on the ocean. The boat drifts. It moves. It travels from one spot to another without any effort on the part of its passengers. No cost.”
     
    “All right, then, a boat on the ocean.”
     
    “It travels neither fast nor far.”
     
    “Right.”
     
    “Now compare that to travel to the moon. Nobody arrives on the moon accidentally, nor without a great deal of effort.”
     
    “Fast and far.”
     
    “Indeed. Not to mention costly.”
     
    “So, what happened to Alex and myself in this knoll was like drifting. Accidental. Even though it was you who sent us there.”
     
    “I tossed you through the wall only. What awaited you was there without my influence.”
     
    “And now what I need is influence, such as what got us home. Such as what sent us to the past to begin with.”
     
    “Such as what has made me but a ghost of my former self. Your vile husband has nearly destroyed me. Twice.”
     
    “And for that you’ve taken our son?”
     
    “I’ve nothing to do with your brat!” The outburst was loud, and assailed Lindsay’s eardrums to the point of pain. She knelt, gasping, her hands covering her ears, until she thought she could stand sound again. For all the elf’s complaints of weakness, his voice was powerful. Then she looked up, drew a deep breath, and made an offer.
     
    “Let me bear the cost. Take from me what is necessary to get me there.” Just don’t kill me doing it.
     
    “I could, you know. Kill you by doing that. That is to say, you could die in the attempt.”
     
    Lindsay squeezed her eyes shut. The wanker was reading her mind. She knew Nemed couldn’t kill by magic. Nor could any fey being, but she also knew accidents could happen. The spell he’d fashioned, the one ruined by Alex’s plane, had killed thirty Nemedians who had been the last of their kind.
     
    “I can’t read your mind. Not well, in any case. Some things are just obvious.”
     
    “Allow me to search