“Watch your tongue!” Rod sprang to his feet, and the cart rocked dangerously. But Flaran kept his footing easily, and, for some reason, that ignited Rod’s anger into a blowtorch. “Beware who you’re calling a slave! You’ve fallen so far under Alfar’s spell that you’ve become nothing but his puppet!”
“Nay—his votary!” Flaran’s eyes burned with sudden zeal. “Fool thou art, not to see his greatness! For Alfar will triumph, and all witch folk with him—Alfar will reign, and those self-sold witches who do oppose him, will die in torments of fire! Alfar is the future, and all who obstruct him will be ground into dust! Kneel, fool!” he roared, leaping up onto the cart-seat, finger spearing down at Rod. “Kneel to Alfar, and swear him thy loyalty, or a traitor’s death shalt thou die!”
The thin tissue of Rod’s self-control tore, and rage erupted. “Who the hell do you think you are, to tell me what to swear! You idiot, you dog’s-meat gull! He’s ground your ego into powder, and there’s nothing left of the real you! You don’t exist anymore!”
“Nay—I exist, but thou shalt not!” Flaran yanked a quarterstaff from the peasant next to him and smashed a two-handed blow down at Rod.
Rod ducked inside the swing, coming up next to Flaran with his dagger in his hand, but a dozen hands seized him and yanked him back, the sky reeled above him, framed by peasant faces with burning eyes. He saw a club swinging down at him—and, where the peasants’ smocks had come open at the necks, chain mail and a glimpse of green-and-brown livery.
Then pain exploded through Rod’s forehead, and night came early.
13
A blowtorch, set on “low,” was burning its way through Rod’s brain. But it was a very poor blowtorch; it seemed to go over the same path again and again, in a regular, pulsing rhythm. He forced his eyes open, hoping to catch the bastard who was holding the torch.
Blackness.
Blackness everywhere, except for a trapezoid of flickering orange. He frowned, peering more closely at it, squinting against the raging in his head, and figured out that it was the reflection of a flame on a rock wall. There were stripes up and down—the shadows of bars, no doubt. There were a couple of other stripes, too, zigging and zagging—the trails of water droplets. Then Rod became aware of fragile orange webs, higher up—gossamer niter, lit by the firelight.
He added it all up, and enlightenment bloomed—he was in a dungeon again. The firelight was a guard’s torch, out in the hall, and the trapezoid was the shadow of the little barred grille in the door.
He heaved a sigh and lay back. This kept happening to him, time and again. There’d been the gaol in Pardope, the Dictator’s “guest chamber” in Caerleath, the dungeon under the House of Clovis, and the cell in the Duke’s castle in Tir Chlis, where Father Al had taught him how to use his ESP talents… and the list went on. He frowned, trying to remember back to the first one, but it was too much for his poor, scrambled brain.
He put the list away, and very slowly, very carefully, rolled up onto one elbow. The blowtorch shot out a fiery geyser that seemed to consume his whole head, right down his backbone, but only for a few moments; then it subsided, and fell into perspective as a mere headache. A real beaut, Rod had to admit—those soldiers hadn’t exactly been deft, but they’d made up for it with enthusiasm. He pressed a hand to his throbbing forehead, remembering the chain mail under the peasant tunics. It was a very neat little trap he’d walked into—but he couldn’t imagine a less appetizing bait than Flaran.
Not that it hadn’t worked, though.
He lifted his head slowly, looking around him. Compared to the other dungeons he’d been in, this one was definitely second-rate. But, at least he had a couple of roommates, manacled to the wall across from him—though one of them had lost quite a bit of weight over the years; he was a pure skeleton. Well, not “pure”—he did have some mold patches here and there. The other one had some patches, too, but they were purple, shading toward maroon. It was Simon, and his chin was sunk on his chest.
Rod squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out the headache, trying to think. Why should Simon be here? He wasn’t a spy. Rod considered the question thoroughly, till the brainstorm struck: He could ask. So he cleared his throat, and tried. “Uh… Simon…”
The other man looked up, surprised. Then his face relaxed into a sad smile. “Ah, thou dost wake, then!”
“Yeah—kind of.” Rod set both palms against the floor and did a very slow push-up. The headache clamored in indignation, and he fell back against the wall with a gasp—but victorious; he was sitting up. The headache punished him unmercifully, then decided to accept the situation and lapsed into the background. Rod drew in a long, shuddering breath. “What… what happened? You shouldn’t be here—just me. What’d Flaran have against you?”
“He knew me for what I was,” Simon sighed. “When the soldiers had felled thee, young Flaran turned on me, raging. ‘Who was this ‘Owen?’ Thou, vile traitor, will speak! Wherefore did this false, unminded man march northward into our domain?”
“Our?” Rod frowned.
Simon shrugged. “By good chance, I did not know the answers he sought. I said as much, and he whirled toward the soldiers, pointing back at me, screaming, ‘Torture him! Hale him down now, and break his fingers, joint by joint!’ ‘Nay,’ I cried, i have naught to hide,’ and I abandoned all pretence of cloaking my mind, casting aside all shields and attempts at hiding.”
“What good could that do? As mind readers go, he was barely literate.”
“Oh, nay! He was a veritable scholar!” Simon’s mouth tightened. “Thou, my friend, wert not alone in thy deceptions. I felt naught, but I saw his face grow calm. Then his eyes lit with excitement—but they soon filled with disappointment, and he did turn away to the soldiers in disgust. ‘There’s naught here—naught but an old man, with some talent for spell-breaking. He could have gone free but, more’s the fool, he hath come back North to seek to undo our work.’ Then the auncient said, ‘He’s a traitor, then,’ and the look that he gave me was venomed—yet there was that strange emptiness behind it.”
Rod nodded. “Spellbound.”
“Indeed. Then the auncient said further, ‘Shall we flay him?’ and cold nails seemed to skewer my belly. But Flaran gave me a measuring glance, and shook his head. ‘Nay. He may yet prove useful. Only bind him and bring him.’ Then he did fix his gaze upon me, and his eyes did seem to swell, glowing, to burn into my brain. ‘An thou dost seek to break spells on these soldiers,’ he swore. ‘I will slay thee.’ ”
“So.” Rod lifted his eyebrows. “Our young klutz wasn’t quite the fool he seemed to be, was he?”
“Nay. In truth, he did command. He bade the soldiers march home, and all did turn to take up the journey. Some hundreds of yards further, we came to tethered horses. The soldiers untied them and mounted—and there were pack mules for myself and for thee, and a great chestnut charger with a saddle adorned with silver for Flaran.”
Rod watched Simon for a moment, then said, “Not exactly an accident we ran into them, was it?”
Simon smiled, with irony. “In truth, ‘twas quite well-planned.”
“Even to the point of rigging up a peasant mob to be chasing Flaran, at just the right time to run into us on the road.” Rod’s mouth tightened. “He knew that was a sure way to make us take him in. And he stayed with us just long enough to make sure we were what he thought we were, before he turned us over to his bully boys.”
“He did give us the opportunity to turn our coats to Alfar’s livery,” Simon pointed out.