Ven’Dar shoved me into the deepest shadow behind the gate. One of the jutting stone columns that supported the gate protruded from the passage wall just enough to hide us. There, like rabbits caught in the open meadow, we held motionless, our backs flattened against the stone wall.
“I’d swear to my own mother I heard steps out there,” said the guard, scratching his head and retaking his position beside his three comrades. “Guess I was wrong.”
“We’re all skittish,” said one of the guards - a woman. “What if the Three come to free their Fourth? And what would our people say if they knew he was here? We don’t know if the cell can even hold the power of a Lord.”
“Not sure I believe one of the cursed ones is here. Not after so long. He doesn’t have the look I expected of a Lord. I’d heard they’ve metal faces with jewels for their eyes.”
Signaling me to remain still, Ven’Dar slipped farther down the passage that would take us deeper into the bowels of the palace. The guards’ backs formed a solid wall on the other side of the gate.
“They can change their appearance at will,” said the woman. “Take anyone’s body they want and use it till it’s dead. It’s why you’re not to look on him. Not ever.”
“He ought to be dead,” spoke up the largest of the four, a barrel-chested man who was closest to me. His thick jaw was pulsing, and he flexed thick fingers on the pike-shaped weapon that glowed blue in the dim light. “After finding my two brothers spitted like suckling pigs two years ago… still warm they were, with those collars grown into their flesh… Eyes of darkness! It makes me want to slit this prisoner’s throat. I never felt that way before - wanting somebody to die by my own hand. I can’t see why the Prince would keep a Lord alive.”
The man standing next to the speaker laid a hairy hand on his comrade’s shoulder. “He won’t be much longer…”
A hand touched my own sleeve. I jumped, grazing an elbow on the column. Ven’Dar led me down another sloping passage, past another quartet of paralyzed guards, and into a dimly lit chamber, bare of any furnishing save a wooden bench pushed against one wall and a narrow, raised stone platform or table in the center. Eyebolts had been seated in the corners of the stone table. The only break in the gray stone walls was a rectangular gate of narrowly spaced bars that shone silver in the light of a single small lamp. The air was thick with enchantment, heavy, dreadful, weighing on my spirit like a mountain of lead. I shuddered.
“We’ve only a few moments,” whispered the Preceptor, as he closed the heavy door softly behind us. “A Dar’Nethi Watcher has already detected my winding and will be here very quickly to investigate. Not a subtle enchantment, but the only way to get us in.”
Ven’Dar motioned me to the bars, standing close behind me as I peered through. The cell was dark. The weak gleam of the guardroom lamp reached through the bars only far enough to illuminate the wooden bowl, filled with meat and bread, and the full mug that sat just inside the enclosure.
A light flared at my shoulder, casting a sharp, barred shadow deep into the cell. The prisoner was sitting on the floor in the corner, and when he held up his hands to ward off the new brightness, silver bands about his wrists glinted in the light. More of the shining metal bound his ankles and linked him to ring bolts on the wall. The bands and chains and the silver strips embedded in the walls and ceiling would hold the enchantments that kept him powerless, if such was possible. Two blankets lay crumpled on the floor beside him.
“If you’ve come to gloat, get it over and go away. I prefer the dark and would as soon not look on you.”
“Gerick, dear one, are you all right?”
“Mother!” Squinting into the brightness, he jumped up and moved toward the bars the few steps his restraints would allow. “What are you - Mother, you must get away from here!”
“I can’t believe this. I thought he’d at least - ”
“How did you get here? He would never have brought you into so much danger.” Gerick wasn’t even listening to me.
“I brought her,” said my companion. “Ven’Dar is the name. We’ve already met, I believe. You remember - the list.”
“You’re a fool, sir. Take her away from here.” Frost edged his words. “Mother, please go. Hide yourself away where you can’t be found. There’s nothing to be done here.”
“I won’t let him hurt you.”
“He’ll do what he has to do. But you mustn’t be anywhere near me. Things could happen… You don’t understand how much they hate you - the Three.”
Ven’Dar clamped a hand on my shoulder. “Time for a discreet exit, my lady. I’m sorry.”
Though I, too, heard the shouts and running footsteps from the passageway, I had no intention of leaving. But Ven’Dar closed his eyes and spread his hands again and was soon tugging insistently on my arm. “We must trust the Prince. And that means you must do as I tell you.”
“Gerick, you are not what you think,” I said, as Ven’Dar gently, but insistently, pried my hands from the bars and dragged me across the room. “Remember everything I’ve told you. The Lords do not create. They only destroy, and they care for no one but themselves. You are not one of them. I still believe it. I’ll always believe it.”
The enchanted light illuminated the face of my beautiful son, who smiled at me with a sweet, sad radiance. “I am what I am. I’m sorry.”
Sorry… as if sixteen years of horror inflicted on an innocent child were his fault. I wanted to scream out the injustice.
“Absolute silence, madam,” whispered Ven’Dar, his powerful arm crushing my back against the gray stone beside the door to the passageway. “You are a wall. Act like it.”
The guardroom door burst open, and eight armed men hurried into the chamber, followed by Karon, Men’Thor, and a stooped man in gray. Radele trailed behind, remaining in the open doorway, watching the others as if he were only an observer, not one of their party. Not the slimmest shadow remained in the room once they’d brought their torches inside, but to my mystification, no one remarked Ven’Dar and me. Deciding to take Ven’Dar’s odd suggestion as legitimate, I emptied my mind, and tried to think like a walclass="underline" flat, silent, so ordinary as to be unnoticeable.
“What foolishness is this, Ben’Shar?” Karon snapped. His hard gaze whipped about the room, passing over Ven’Dar and me without a moment’s pause. “I see no intruder. These ‘rumblings’ you noted must have come from your own belly. Was I dragged from a Preceptorate meeting because you failed to digest your lunch?”
“But, my lord, it was a powerful enchantment - a winding, I’m sure of it,” said the stooped man, scratching his chest as his eyes darted about the room. “This prison block is a snarl of windings. I’m never wrong about these things.”
“Perhaps the prisoner himself has a rumbling belly,” said Men’Thor, peering through the bars. “Clearly he hungers, and there’s not enough pain and fear in Avonar on which to gorge himself. Perhaps he summons his dark brethren to feed him.”
“Their need is their weakness,” said Radele, softly. No one could have heard him save Ven’Dar and me, who were but a hand’s-breadth from his back.
“You have no idea of what my ‘dark brethren’ are capable,” said the voice from behind the bars - a voice so cold, so alien to the sweet vision that still hung in my memory, that I wondered if I’d missed seeing some other prisoner locked in with my son. “These pitiful bands you use to detain me are but sand to the hurricane of their power. They’ll devour you, and you can’t even see it coming. Touch my mind. Open the door you find there, and you’ll see what your Prince has seen. You’ll understand how they appreciate mind-stealing murderers like you and your son.”
“Silence!” roared Karon, slamming his hands into the bars. “You will not speak, Dieste… Destroyer. For four years you’ve twisted words, twisted lives, befouled the world with your deceptions. No more. Tomorrow you will show what you really are. Let your putrid brethren come when you cry out to them, and I’ll put an end to them, too.” Karon raised his fist toward the cell, and the bars began to glow, first silvery blue, and then yellow. And when they flared a brilliant white that seared my eyes, from behind them came a scream of such mortal agony that the Dar’Nethi warriors shrank from it, and the old man Ben’Shar covered his ears. Ven’Dar pressed his hand to my mouth, but he could stop neither my tears nor his own.