Shadows Return (24 page)

“No!” Alec fought even harder as they lifted him and carried him toward the door at the back of the shop, the one he’d never seen open.

He lashed out with elbows and feet, and finally managed to catch the man on his left in the face with his arm. The man grunted and loosened his grip just enough for Alec to jerk free, then twist his other arm loose. He broke for the garden, but they caught him and threw him to the floor.

One of them got an arm around his throat and held him still while Ahmol jammed the hated leather funnel between his teeth. Oddly enough, Yhakobin didn’t seem angry at all as he bent down to pour something into the funnel.

“Drink, Alec. This won’t hurt you. It will make it easier.”

Alec choked and sputtered, but most of the liquid went down his throat, spreading numbness as it went. The world went dim, then black. His last thought was of Seregil. I’m sorry, talí. I really have failed you this time.

Consciousness returned very slowly. Alec was cold, and he was lying facedown on something very uncomfortable.

I’m not dead yet, anyway. That’s something.

He was hanging facedown in some sort of flat metal cage suspended six or seven feet above a dirt floor. His hands and feet were shackled to the frame, his body supported by crossbars. More metal pressed across his back and thighs. It was like being caught between two barred doors.

Judging by the way the metal dug into his flesh, he was naked again.

He could turn his head a little and, looking around, saw he was in a cellar. The room was large enough that the single torch burning by the narrow stone stairway did not light all the way to the far wall. A musty, damp smell hung in the air, with a sour tang to it, like a root cellar full of spoiled fruit. Right below him a hole had been dug, large enough to bury a good-sized dog. A mound of displaced earth lay to one side, and a spade.

Alchemy was starting to look a great deal like necromancy again.

Yhakobin came down the stairs, still in his apron. Ahmol followed, carrying a large basin.

“What are you going to do to me?” Alec demanded, straining against the shackles.

“It is time for you to serve your purpose,” the alchemist replied. He was carrying a small mallet rather than the knife. “I’ve told you many times how special you are. This is the final test.”

Yhakobin took a drop of blood from Alec’s bound right hand and did the fire spell. This time it burned longer, in a bright fan of every color that shifted and shimmered like the nacre on the inside of a seashell.

“That is the proof. You have been purified properly, and the Hвzadriлlfaie blood is ready.”

“For what?” Alec gasped, struggling harder against the restraints.

Yhakobin reached under his apron and took out what appeared to be tap and stopcock, like a tavern keeper would knock through a barrel bung to serve his beer. But this one was far too small for that, just a few inches long, and made of gold.

“You’ve seen my refining vessels,” the alchemist went on. “But they are not always made of glass or clay. Your strong young body is the final alembic for this process. In you, I have carried out the seven steps.”

Ahmol knelt and tipped the contents of the basin into the hole. It was the stomach Alec had seen earlier. Both gut holes were tightly tied up with black cord, and it was covered in black symbols, like the ones he’d seen on the amulets. There was something inside that made it bulge.

“You must have thought me very odd, for gathering your various essences; now you see the purpose. In this bag, together with various mundane elements, are your tears, your hair, your blood, and the spendings of your loins, mixed with sulfur, salt, and quicksilver, the water of life.”

“Kitchen magic,” Alec snarled, covering his rising fear with bravado. “It sounds like a foul pudding you’ve put together.”

Yhakobin smiled as he stooped under the edge of the cage with the golden tap and the mallet.

Alec could only hang there and scream as the alchemist drove the sharp end of the tap into his chest.

Treachery  

I
T WAS TOO soon to look for his kinsmen’s return. Riagil í Molan had no reason for concern until a trader of the Akhendi clan named Orin í Nyus brought him a handful of bloodstained Gedre sen’gai, an earring that belonged to Aryn with a wizened bit of flesh still clinging to the silver hook, and a Skalan gorget.

He rode out at the head of a search party that same day, with the Akhendi as their guide. The trader led them a day and a half up the coast, to a little ravine in a wooded pass. He’d seen the crows circling over it, he explained, and followed them to the pile of stripped bodies piled by a stream at the bottom.

Aryn was there, with the rest of the escort. Of Seregil and his talimenios, however, there was no sign.

“Could they have done this, Khirnari?” his cousin Nurien asked, with one hand over his nose to block out the stench.

The old man bent to examine the bodies more closely. In addition to sword wounds, he found the stumps of broken-off arrows in most of them. He pondered this for a moment. Then, asking his kinsman’s forgiveness, he cut one of the broken shafts from Aryn’s body. The barbed, intricately incised steel head was unmistakable. “This is the Zengati work.”

Nurien shook his head. “Slavers, this far inland, and this far east?”

“It’s less than a day’s ride to the sea from here,” Orin í Nyus pointed out. “They could have put in at any of a dozen smuggler’s coves.”

Riagil nodded and turned to wash his hands in the stream, already composing a letter to Queen Phoria.

A Change of Scenery  

I
MUST SAY, I liked my previous accommodations much better,” Seregil croaked, licking blood from a split lip. Ilar had finally made the mistake of thinking him tamed, not realizing how much of Seregil’s strength had returned. He’d visited him that afternoon without having his pet prisoner drugged first.

Seregil had looked up out of habit as soon as the door opened, expecting Zoriel. But it was Ilar instead. Seregil was on his feet with his hands around the bastard’s neck before either of them guessed he was going to attack. In the blink of an eye, he had Ilar on the floor under him, digging his thumbs into the man’s windpipe under that golden collar and watching his eyes bulge.

Looking back on it now, Seregil had to admit that it hadn’t been the wisest course of action. If it had just been the two of them, his rage might have carried the day. But naturally, the coward had guards just outside the door, and they’d made short work of Seregil, hard as he’d fought. To his credit, it had taken three strong men to pry him off Ilar. The last of his strength was gone by then, leaving him with no choice but to curl up like a pill bug as they beat and kicked him unconscious. He did, however, have the satisfaction of seeing Ilar hanging back, clutching his throat and looking suitably shaken. Seregil would have much preferred him on the floor dead, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

It had been early afternoon then. When he’d come to in this cold little cell, the light through the single tiny window was colored with the slanting glow of sunset.

They’d left him his slave’s robe, at least, but the brick floor under him was damp and cold and his collar was digging into the side of his neck. His abused body felt like it was stuffed with broken glass as he rolled slowly onto his back and tried to take stock of his new surroundings before he lost the light.

It was a task made more difficult by the fact that there appeared to be two of everything: two windows, somewhat overlapped; two doors, both sadly lacking an inner handle or lock hole; two smelly slop buckets against one wall; and, against the other wall, a weirdly elongated sleeping pallet.

When he tried to sit up, his head threatened to explode, so he quickly gave that up. Instead, he forced himself back over onto his belly and crawled to the pallet, which drifted frustratingly in and out of focus and insisted on bobbing like a boat on the tide.

He made it at last and dragged himself onto it. There were a few faded quilts and a dented pillow. As tempting as it was to just collapse on top of them, the room was already too cold for that. Whimpering a little, he used up the last of his strength to crawl under the covers, face crushed into the pillow.

Suddenly he was surrounded by the scent of Alec, stale, but unmistakable. Alec had slept in this bed, this cell!

“So this is where you’ve been, talí,” he whispered, sniffing the quilts and finding traces of his lover’s scent there, too-musk and sweat and unwashed hair. He let out a hoarse noise caught between a laugh and a sob and pressed his bruised face to the pillow again. “But where are you now?”

The double vision warned of a bad head wound. He dragged himself up with his back to the wall and pulled the quilts up to his chin, trying very hard to quell the nausea burning in his throat. He pressed his cheek to the cold wall, hoping it would help. He found if he sat very, very still, he didn’t feel quite so much like dying.

Stop whining and think!

But thinking turned to Alec, and those thoughts soon turned to worry. Where in Bilairy’s name was he?

He’d been struck on the head before, with similar effects, and Micum had gone to great lengths to keep him from sleeping, claiming it was dangerous. Seregil had no one but himself to rely on this time and it was difficult. His body kept trying to betray him. Time and again he caught himself nodding off, and paid for it with pain and nausea when his head snapped up.

Would dawn never come?

It was still dark when a faint scratching at the door awoke him from another light doze. He’d been dreaming that he was in bed with Alec back at the Stag and Otter; in his confusion he tried to get up and go to the door, thinking it must be the damned cat wanting to be let in.

Moving, however, proved a worse idea than ever. His bruised muscles had stiffened while he slept; even this slightest movement was too painful, and his head felt like an inflated bladder on a stick. He gave up. “What do you want?”

The scratching became a soft tapping, brief and faint.

“Who is it?” he demanded more loudly, wondering if he was in fact addressing a rat.

“You are Seregil, of Bфkthersa clan?” a woman whispered in Aurлnfaie. “Come to the door.”

He tried again, but the prospect of dragging himself across the floor was too much right now.

He was still seeing double and felt dizzy just raising his head. “I can’t. Who are you?”

“Zoriel sent me. She fears for you.”

“Tell her I’m fine.” He waited, but there was no response. “Please, where is the young man who was here before me?”

Again silence. He waited, but his mysterious visitor was gone. Why hadn’t he asked about Alec first? In the back of his mind lurked the very real possibility that Alec was gone from the house-sold off, or dead-Focus, damn it! You’ve gotten out of worse scrapes than this.

Then again, he didn’t really know what sort of scrape he’d landed in just yet. Alec had been kept here, and the few times that Seregil had seen him in the garden, he’d looked well enough.

He stared up into the darkness, assessing the strange, brief conversation. He was surprised that the old woman cared enough to ask after him. And it seemed she’d had to convince a third party to do it for her, and apparently at some risk. His visitor had spoken Aurлnfaie, meaning either she was a slave or that someone intended for him to believe she was.

Dawn found him still awake. Using the wall to brace against, he managed to get on his feet and limp around the confines of the little room, trying to work some of the pain from his body.

His vision was better now, at least.

A thorough search left him depressed and disappointed. Whoever had built this cell had known what he was doing. There wasn’t a damn thing he could make use of, unless he could take down the guards with the pail. Which wasn’t completely out of the question.

Time passed and no breakfast appeared. Forcing himself up again, he searched again, looking closely at every inch of the place. While examining the door, he came across the scratched names. Khenir’s was there, and Alec’s, too. Seregil traced the awkwardly incised lettering with the tip of his finger, then added his own beside it, in case they changed places again. “I’ll find you, talí. Hold on.”