He leapt from tree to tree, sinking black claws into the sides of each, and saw a maja flailing about herself, suddenly blind. Fires flared around her. She flipped them back and forth wildly like great scythes in her fear. The magic slapped against the trees, singeing bark, sending up gouts of steam, but the recent rains and snows prevented any fires from bursting forth. Durzo, on the ground, was beneath the swipes, and Kylar was above them.

In moments, the maja had exhausted her Talent and with no sunlight and no fire to draw from, her magic guttered out.

In the sudden darkness, both men moved. Kylar was on her almost before she could scream. He flew straight over her head, grabbed fistfuls of cloak and robe as he passed, and used her body weight like a beam to flip himself over and stop, which transferred his momentum to her. She flew backward half a dozen paces and crashed into a tree trunk, the breath whooshing from her lungs. Kylar landed on one knee on the forest floor and stood, blue flame trickling over his features.

By the time she’d taken two breaths, something was rising from deep beneath her skin. It was vir, and it rose as rapidly as a shark striking from the deep, starting at her fingertips, over her hands, and wrists, disappearing in a wriggle that made her sleeves tremble, up to her neck like a black blush, and then—it stopped. Durzo stood behind the tree trunk, his arms wrapped around it, fingers poking into two points in the side of the maja’s neck. She shrieked as the vir bulged against the blockage like a river at flood assailing a levee. Her cries crested and then fell as the vir receded, faded and sank beneath her skin once more.

Durzo stepped from behind the tree and grabbed her by the scruff on her neck. Holding her before him, he buried his fingers in those points on her neck again.

“A trick you didn’t teach me?” Kylar asked.

“You expect me to teach you all I know in a couple months? The vir needs a physical expression. Block the physical expression and you block the magical. It’s a weakness of the Ursuul family’s hidden vir.”

“She’s an Ursuul?”

“What better use for Garoth’s Talented daughters?” Durzo asked.

“I thought he had them killed.”

“Garoth wasn’t a man to throw away tools, no matter how blunt. What’s your name, sweetie?”

She didn’t answer, so Kylar did for her. “It’s Eris Buel. You little bitch. We had our suspicions about you.”