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  Challenges

  Blending: Book 3

  Sharon Green

  Copyright © 1998, 2011 by Sharon Green

  The competition has begun. The band of five which best combines elemental magics into the most powerful alchemy will be chosen to win the throne and ward off doom for the kingdom. But the stakes are much higher than anyone suspects.

  Each magical adept possesses a potent preternatural talent. Stunning Tamrissa is Fire; Vallant the sailor, Water; Jovvi the lissome ex-courtesan, Spirit; farmer Lorand, Earth; and blue-blooded Rion, Air.

  But their fragile union threatens to disintegrate when Jovvi and Tamrissa discover a secret sensuality that would make their Blending supreme. And the dissension within is nothing compared to the perils assailing the enchanted quintet from competing nobles and judges alike, all determined to see the peasant mages perish. For as they vie for the Palace of Five, the brave but unwary team rushes headlong into desperate danger…and unknowable jeopardy.

  In order to prove themselves to be the Chosen Five of the ancient Prophecies, Lorand, Rion, Tamrissa, Jovvi, and Vallant compete in a series of deadly contests designed to reveal the full scope of their magical powers.

  About the Author

  Sharon Green is the author of more than two dozen novels, including the five books of her tremendously popular series, The Blending. She lives in Tennessee.

  Yes, I know, this time I dropped the story right in the middle of that costumed ball they made us attend. By now you’ve probably forgotten what was happening then, so I’ll remind you: the testing authority was scheming, our opponents were scheming, and we were scheming. See, that wasn’t so difficult.

  And it wasn’t much harder to live through, at least not the beginning of it. The palace of the Seated Five was big and beautiful, the music was nice, the snacks delicious. The other people there, however… They were all members of the nobility, and were staring at us as though they considered us trained but still dangerous animals. What we assumed were our first-scheduled opponents—they came over and insulted us, then ambled away. A member from another noble Blending-to-be had tried to get information from Rion by lying to him, but Rion had caught him at it. Vallant Ro managed to get in touch with Pagin Holter, who had previously been in our residence, and found out the location of his new residence.

  All of which was only the beginning of the evening, and doesn’t even say anything about personal feelings. The only one really trying to keep our group moving forward was Jovvi, ignoring the emotional storms of the rest of us in an effort to put us in the best possible position for the competitions. That meant gathering as much information as we could, every item available from the store of data the testing authority had been keeping secret. We hadn’t made much progress with that, but Jovvi’s determination refused to let us stop trying.

  And so we continued with the evening, having very little idea of what still lay ahead of us…

  CHAPTER ONE

  Jovvi brushed at the skirt of her costume, a blue that was nicely set off by the silver sequins of the gown’s top, her thoughts filled with faint satisfaction. Rion had resisted that noble’s tempting offer all by himself, showing the strength of personality they’d all begun to expect from him. The changes in him had been nothing short of incredible, and even the noble who had tried to get information out of him had been surprised. The man was a member of one of the noble challenging Blendings, and hadn’t been quite as strong as Jovvi had thought he would be.

  She paused to smile encouragingly at a still-nervous Tamrissa, then went back to her musing. Possibly the noble hadn’t been using his full strength in Spirit magic on Rion, and that’s why she’d been able to block his attempts so easily. It would be dangerous to start believing that the nobles weren’t any good, even though it would be nice to think so. That would give her and the others an even better chance to win the Fivefold Throne…

  Sight of Vallant closed that line of thought rather abruptly. Vallant had actually managed to get in touch with Pagin Holter, and the small ex-groom who had originally been in their residence had given Vallant more than the address of his new residence. He’d also found out that the betting on the upcoming competitions was completely one-sided, all the gold having been placed on one or another of the noble groups. That no one was betting on one of the common groups meant those with the gold knew something everyone else didn’t: that the common groups had no chance at all no matter how strong they were.

  “Is something wrong?” a voice asked, and Jovvi looked up to see Lorand staring down at her. His worry was clear despite the mask hiding most of his features, so she smiled at him.

  “Nothing more than the usual,” she replied, working to sound more lighthearted than she felt. “Vallant managed to speak to Pagin Holter, and learned from Holter that no one is betting on any of the common challenging Blendings to win. That doesn’t count the ordinary man or woman who bets a few coppers or even a piece of silver. Those with gold to bet are placing it only on the noble groups.”

  “That doesn’t sound very good,” Lorand said with a frown, his dark eyes filled with disturbance. “It means that they intend to do something to make us lose, and the … ‘smart money’ knows it. Do you think we’ll be able to find a way around whatever it is?”

  “First we’ll have to find out what it is,” Jovvi replied, sharing his disturbance. “I don’t expect it to be something simple, like the drugged tea they tried to give us before the qualifying tests, but we’ll still have to keep that in mind. If we eat or drink anything before the competitions, we’ll deserve to lose.”

  “Is that why they tried so hard to get me to drink that tea?” Lorand asked, now looking surprised. “I hadn’t realized it was drugged… So now I have something else to thank Eskin Drowd for. If I hadn’t seen him there, smirking and expecting me to fail, I probably would have taken the tea.”

  “Holter also said that Drowd was added to his residence to replace the man who went insane during that supposed competition,” Jovvi told him, her thoughts now busy with this new point. “From what you said about his very late appearance at the testing and qualifying area, it’s possible they added him to that group without first making him qualify. If so, that suggests something else I don’t like very much.”

  “That they don’t care how good or bad one of us is, as long as they have the required number of warm bodies,” Lorand agreed, putting her thoughts into words. “That seems to confirm the theory that we’ll just be there to make the event look good, and the idea is beginning to get me angry. I don’t like having people use me for their own purposes without caring what I want.”

  “But that’s all we can expect from the testing authority,” Jovvi pointed out. “They’re there to make sure their fellow nobles look good when they win, so anything we accomplish will have to be done on our own. That’s one of the reasons I want us to try our best: to get even with the testing authority for treating us so badly. If we actually manage to win, we can tell those cheats to go home and not come back.”

  “Right now that’s a better incentive than winning the Throne,” Lorand said with a grin. “Kicking them out after telling them what incompetents they are should also get even for all the people they ganged up on. And the others should enjoy it as much as we will.”

  The laughter they shared had felt wonderful to Jovvi, but after no more than a moment Lorand’s grin faltered and died.

  “I … think I’ve bothered you enough,” he said, his gaze no longer meeting hers. “I know you want me to stay away from you, and except for matters involving the group, I mean to do exactly that. I care for you too much to want to see you upset…”

  He began to turn away then, his thoughts and emotions a roiling mess, and Jovvi found it impossible to let that go o
n.

  “Lorand, don’t,” she said, stopping him with a hand to his arm. “You’ve been incredibly wonderful about understanding how I feel, something most men wouldn’t have found possible. It isn’t you I’m trying to avoid, it’s the uncertainty brought about by your fear of burnout. Uncertainty is something I can’t handle, so you could say we both have problems that need to be worked on. And since we’re both still here, maybe we can work on them together…”

  Jovvi hadn’t known she was going to say that, but the hunger she felt for Lorand had been growing stronger rather than fading. He’d come to mean more to her than any other man she’d ever known, and a stab of pain flared in her chest when he slowly shook his head.

  “I don’t deserve to be made an offer like that,” he said in a choked voice, very deliberately not looking at her. “I thought I’d gotten past the fear of burnout and I felt twelve feet tall—until I discovered that the fear was still right where it had always been. I’m a helpless fool, Jovvi, and I love you too much to saddle you with someone like me. You deserve better, and as long as I stay out of the way I’m sure you’ll get it.”

  This time he did move away, and Jovvi’s frantic thoughts could find nothing to say that would stop him. She’d been the one who had told him how much she needed security in her life, something his fear kept him from giving her. Neither one of them had changed, so there were no words to keep him beside her. Jovvi could look at his tall, broad-shouldered, blond-haired form and ache to have his arms around her again, but finding a way to bring them together again seemed impossible.

  Rather than staring at him where he stood only a few steps away, Jovvi turned to look elsewhere as she fought not to cry.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Rion didn’t deliberately listen to the conversation between Jovvi and Lorand Coll, but he wasn’t so far away that not hearing it would have been possible. It could have become a matter of embarrassment if either of them had noticed, but both seemed too wrapped in pain to see the trivial. Which Rion could understand, once he thought about it for a moment. Jovvi and Coll had been attracted to one another almost from the first moment they’d all entered the residence. They were the last two people Rion would have expected to have trouble between them, but it had happened anyway. Tamrissa and Vallant Ro had spent more time disagreeing than getting along, so the coolness between those two was perfectly understandable, but—

  Rion’s thoughts on personal interaction came to a sudden halt, shoved aside by an abrupt and unpleasant idea. He considered it alone for a moment, then moved over to where Vallant Ro stood. Ro glanced at him, then shook his head with a small grimace.

  “That wasn’t any fun to overhear,” Ro said softly, clearly knowing Rion would understand his meaning. “Someone might think I’m glad not to be the only one with woman trouble, but that isn’t so. Those two are too decent for anyone to be enjoyin’ their pain.”

  “I agree,” Rion answered just as softly with a nod. “They shouldn’t be having that problem, but speaking of problems, I think we all have one. Do you remember when Holter said he’d never be chosen over you to round out our group because he didn’t belong? We were in the coach coming back from practice at the time.”

  “Of course I remember,” Ro agreed, his brows raised behind the mask. “What about it?”

  “It just occurred to me that he was beginning to belong, and that could be why he was transferred to another residence,” Rion replied slowly, searching for the proper words of explanation. “A short while ago, a former acquaintance of mine came over to … chat. He’s a member of one of the noble challenging Blendings, and what he most wanted to chat about was Tamrissa’s weak points. He said something about Fire being the most important aspect in a Blending.”

  “I think I see what you’re gettin’ at,” Ro said after a moment, his brow furrowed in thought. “Holter was gettin’ along with Tamrissa and I’m not, and that’s why I was the one who stayed. I told her once that she and I had to be close or the Blendin’ wouldn’t work, and at the time I thought it was somethin’ I made up. Looks like I might have been tellin’ the truth after all.”

  “I’m afraid so,” Rion agreed, still disturbed by the idea. “We knew that the testing authority was doing its best to sabotage us, and now we seem to have discovered one of its methods. I wonder just how important this will turn out to be.”

  “If that noble was questionin’ you about it, the answer’s probably, very important,” Ro replied, his frown beginning to look permanent. “The next answer we need is what to do about it, but that one’s not as easy to find.”

  Rion felt the urge to say that it wasn’t as difficult as Ro seemed to think, but he held the words back as a struggling understanding of Ro’s position forced its way to his notice. Rion liked Tamrissa and had no trouble getting along with her, but Ro couldn’t say the same—at least not about the getting along part. The matter might turn out to be even more of a problem than Rion had first imagined.

  The conversation with Ro might have gone on a bit longer, but a definite stir in the crowd took their attention. Rion joined everyone else in looking toward the entrance doors, and saw that someone of apparently great importance had just arrived. It was also possible to see that another common challenging Blending had arrived earlier, the members of which, in silver and orange, now stood closer to the entrance than their own group did.

  People swirled around the new arrivals, but when they approached the group in silver and orange it was possible to see the ones who had been surrounded. There were five of them, all dressed in white, which told Rion that the Seated Blending had arrived. The Blending always wore white for formal public appearances, and Eltrina Razas, their residence’s testing authority representative, wasn’t far from the Five. She seemed to be introducing the participants in silver and orange, most of whom looked nervous and awed despite their masks.

  “It looks like we’ll be next,” Ro commented from Rion’s right. “I know this is supposed to be a great privilege, but if they passed us by I would not sit down and start cryin’.”

  “Nor I,” Rion agreed, oddly pleased to find that his groupmate seemed less impressionable than the fools in the orange group. He’d never been as close to the Five as Mother was and therefore hadn’t had much to do with them, but he’d seen them from a distance on more than one occasion. They’d seemed as petty and vicious as any other noble, and he’d never really wanted a closer acquaintanceship.

  But that didn’t stop the entire entourage from heading for them. Tamrissa moved to Jovvi’s side as the crowd approached, Coll came to stand on Rion’s left, and then all three men drifted a bit closer to the ladies. Personal difficulties or not, they were a group who had begun to support each other automatically. Eltrina Razas hurried ahead of the very important newcomers, and when she reached the group she wore a frown.

  “Will you people stop looking as though you’re about to be attacked?” she hissed, annoyance and a touch of being harried clear in her manner. “You’re going to be introduced to the Five, not set in opposition against them. Smile!”

  Obeying her own order about smiling, Eltrina turned just in time to greet the arrival of the entourage. Most of the Five looked bored and sullen, leaving all of the interacting to Damilla Sytoss, their Water magic member.

  “And this, Excellencies, is the second group,” Eltrina purred in a sleekly burbling way that Rion had seen others use many times before. “In order, they are Tamrissa Domon, Fire magic, Jovvi Hafford, Spirit magic, Lorand Coll, Earth magic, Clarion Mardimil, Air magic, and Vallant Ro, Water magic. They’re—”

  “That’s Rion Mardimil, not Clarion,” Rion interrupted to correct, ignoring Eltrina’s immediate outrage and the expressions of startlement on most of the Five. “If you insist on doing this, you can at least make an effort to get it right.”

  “How dare you speak to us like that?” Eltrina gasped, now reddening with embarrassment. “Haven’t you learned yet that you’re of no consequence whatsoever? You—
”

  “Nonsense,” Jovvi took her turn at interrupting, adding to Eltrina’s fury. “If he—and the rest of us—are of no consequence at all, why are we here and going through this farce? You really can’t have it both ways, you know.”

  “The girl is quite right, Eltrina,” Damilla Sytoss said with a grin, also interrupting the testing authority representative. “These people aren’t of no consequence, not when they’ll be formed into a challenging Blending at the start of the new week. I was supposed to have the pleasure of telling you that, my dears, but obviously you already knew. That leaves me nothing to do but congratulate you and wish you luck, and yet that’s actually quite enough. Perhaps we’ll meet again when the last of the competitions is over.”

  Her smile showed too much amusement for that final word of encouragement to have much meaning, and then they were all drifting on toward the next group in silver and yellow. All but Eltrina, that is, who gestured to a young man to hurry ahead and be ready to make the introductions, while she lingered for a moment with another purpose in mind.

  “I meant to pass on this news earlier, but with the group in orange arriving late I simply couldn’t manage it.” The one Eltrina addressed was Jovvi, and the older woman’s expression had turned to one of sly satisfaction. “That person from your home town and her two cohorts—they were arrested today, and a special session of court will be held tomorrow at which they will be tried and sentenced. Attempting to kidnap a participant in these competitions brings fearful penalties if convicted, which I have no doubt they will be. We won’t need your testimony, but you may attend if you like. The particulars are here.”

  She thrust a folded sheet of paper at Jovvi, then hurried off after the entourage with an almost gleeful step. Rion didn’t understand why that was until he saw Jovvi’s pallor and the way she held the paper crumpled in her fist. Clearly she was disturbed by what she’d been told, and Tamrissa put an arm about her shoulders.