failed to a spark, then leaped back in dazzling recovery. Swept by a chill that chattered his teeth, the prisoner shrank into his cranny.
The man spun toward the noise like a predator. He could not miss the lashed pair of ankles that protruded from the wood stores, livid and blackened with scabs.
‘Merciful Ath!’ He lilted a fast phrase in the old tongue that resounded with appalled shock. Then in a rage to freeze the falling rain itself, he changed language and commanded, ‘Strike his bonds.’
‘But, my lord,’ protested the master joiner through the sizzle as the leak let fall another droplet on the boiler. The wretch came intending to murder y—’
In fearful speed, the man in authority cut him off. ‘Do it now! Are you deaf or a fool, to defy me?’
While the joiner entered, chastened to cowering, the black-haired man sank to his knees and laid his own icy hands over the prisoner’s roped ankles. ‘Give me the knife. I’ll do this myself. Then send for a litter and some sort of tarp to cut the rain.’ In the same distilled tone of venom he added, ‘Dakar and I will serve as bearers.’
The prisoner flinched in agony as his leg was grasped and steadied and the knife touched against the crusted cord.
‘Easy,’ soothed the speaker in a murmured change of register. As the bonds fell away, the same fingers explored the swelling cuts and burns, gentle despite their marring tremor and the slowed reflex of deep chill. ‘We’ll have to ease him out before I can reach to free his wrists.’
Worked clear of his cranny with the aid of a fat man he recognized, the captive forced open the grazed, bloodied pulp that clogged his eyelids. The presence of the gem-dealing imposter last seen tied for questioning in the Duke of Alestron’s private study cleared his wits. At close quarters the identity of the other could be guessed.
Such sharp-angled features and green eyes must surely belong to the Master of Shadow, who had ruined his name in the duke’s guard and brought him to ignominy and exile.
‘You!’ he ground out, half-choked by bile and hatred. ‘You’re the dread sorcerer who enspelled my lord’s armoury the day it burned. I swore in cold blood to see you dead!’ He wrenched his strapped arms with such force that the stout, bearded henchman scrambled back in sceptical alarm.
‘You see who he is? You’re sure you want him freed?’ The Mad Prophet clasped his fat fists in trepidation. ‘He’s sure to fly at your throat.’
Arithon s’Ffalenn simply sat down. Already white, his face looked like paper soaked over bone from the impact of pity and shock. ‘I said I want his bonds struck. Have you eyes? Ath Creator, the man’s out of his mind with pain, and feverish to the point where a fair weather breeze could knock him down.’
‘At your service, with pleasure, your Grace, except for one thorny problem.’ Dakar’s round face furrowed in sly sarcasm as he accepted the knife to slice ropes. ‘When this brutish fellow gets up and cuts your heart out, I’ll be forced to explain. The Fellowship of Seven will hold me to blame when they hear how your line met its end.’
A small movement; the Master of Shadow turned his head.
Dakar sucked in a sharp breath. ‘You win, as always. Dharkaron show mercy, forget I ever spoke!’
Awash in dizziness and quick hatred, the captive gritted his teeth. Such reversal of fate lay beyond even dreams, that he might snatch back his chance to avenge his honour. He endured the frightful pain as his enemies raised his shoulder and turned him over. ‘I was never careless,’ he ground out in mulish acrimony. ‘Your black sorcery allowed you entrance to that keep. A vixen’s cunning got you out alive. Ath’s Avenger bear me witness, you shall get what you deserve.’
Behind and above him, Arithon s’Ffalenn regarded the older grid of scars that marked the captive’s naked back. ‘Your duke made you pay sorely for what was, at most, a lapse of attention. What brought you here? A need to strike back for injustice?’
Stubborn in pride, the exiled guardsman held silent, his cheek pressed to damp sand until his cuts stung. The grate of broken ribs stitched his side in red fire and spasmed his muscles at each breath. He squeezed his eyes closed, clinging to patience, but the close heat and the sweat that ran from him in his agony made him light-headed and sick. His senses upended into vertigo. Long before the ropes that tied his wrists were sawn through, his awareness had unreeled into dark.
He awakened raving, deep in the night. A vision tormented him, of clean sheets and the astringent scent of poultice herbs. He thrashed against the touch that restrained him and railed aloud at the woman’s voice that implored an unseen demon for assistance. Then he cursed as other hands reached down in diabolical force to restrain him.
‘Is there no end?’ someone cried in distress. ‘He’s started the bleeding again.’
Over his head loomed the face of the antagonist he had ached and endured horrors for the chance to kill. He shivered. His nerves an inferno of thwarted rage, he tried to strike out with his fist.
Bandages stopped him; then the sorcerer’s features, haggard with an incomprehensible pity.
‘Mountebank,’ gasped the guardsman, reduced to frustration and tears. His enemy’s dread shadows and his darkness were real enough. They spun him in their web once again and swallowed his struggles. Pinned helpless and moaning, he lost his thoughts into starless, lightless night.
Later he heard someone weeping his name. The harsh accents sounded like his own. Sunlight burned his eyes and branded hot bands at his naked wrists and ankles. He remembered the prison and the post. Again he tasted the fire of the whip, as Duke Bransian s’Brydion’s master-at-arms flayed open the skin of his back. ‘I’m no traitor, to beg like a dog to be forgiven,’ he said, and then retched, sickened by his weakness. ‘Why can’t you believe me? I opened no doors. I met no Master of Shadow!’
But the whip fell and fell. The accusatory voice of Dharkaron Avenger seemed to roll like thunder through his dreams. ‘If you suffered a flogging harsh enough to scar for failing to secure a locked passage, then what shall be your lot for setting fire to the ships of a sorcerer?’
The bed where he lay underwent a mad spin, like the turn of Daelion’s Wheel. The pain in his flesh swelled and drowned him. He heard water splash from a bowl and then music. Notes tapped and pried against his fevered senses like slivers flung off breaking crystal. Their sweetness conspired to weave a rolling pattern of freed beauty that scalded a breach through his hatred. Again he wept. The purity of song left him chilled like white rain, then threatened to break his laboured heart. He fell back, gasping against a soft pillow that swelled around his head until he died.
Or thought so, until he opened his eyes, limp and lucid, to a gloom gently lit by a candle. Rain chapped against the shutters of a cottage which smelled of oiled oak and dried lavender. He moved his head, aware by the softened prickle beneath his cheek that someone had washed and trimmed his hair. The strands were tarnished gold again, and shining on the linen, combed neat as in the days before his beggary.
‘He’s awakened,’ said a woman in a shy, cautious whisper.
Someone else in the shadows responded. ‘Leave us, Jinesse.’ Light steps creaked against the floorboards. A man’s outline swept across the candleflame, etched in brief light before he pulled up a wicker stool and sat down. ‘Your name is Tharrick?’
The guard captain condemned to an unkind exile opened bruised eyelids and discovered his enemy at his bedside.
He swallowed, whipped dry from the aftermath of fever and a pathetic, languid weakness that required all his will to turn his head. Echoes from delirium rang back out of memory to haunt him: What would be his lot for setting fire to the ships of a sorcerer?
Terrified by the kindness that had nursed his cruel injuries, he swept the stilled features of his benefactor with a scorching, searching gaze. ‘Why?’ he croaked at last.
Restored