The women formed a tight circle around him, each one raising a long dagger. He leaped for the throat of the woman immediately in front of him, feeling more like a beast than a rational man as he tried to strangle the life out of her. Her knife thrusts somehow missed him as they struggled… struggled… struggled until her neck snapped and her veil fell off-
Revealing the face of his sister Aradia!
Wulfston was shaken awake. Groggily he stared at the two very large men who dared thus handle a Lord Adept, but neither his powers nor his body would obey his will. He remembered where he was.
Or did he?
He was in the same room where he had awakened before, but as the two men helped him to sit on the edge of the bed his feet touched stone, not earth. The walls were also stone. This could not be one of the wooden huts he had seen near the well where he was captured!
The men determinedly urged him toward a wooden tub. As he gathered that they wanted him to bathe, he realized that his clothes had been removed while he slept. The water was warm, and scented with spices. As he sank into it, the warmth eased the paralysis out of his muscles.
Still silent, the men handed him soap and a sponge, then stood back and waited. Wulfston studied them as he washed away the sweat of illness and bad dreams.
His guards-or whatever their function-were night-black giants with no trace of humor in their faces.
Like the horsemen who had pursued him, they wore tan tunics, but these garments were emblazoned with a black lion’s head in the center of the chest. Wulfston gathered that it was the mark of some elite group-palace guards?
Palace?
That was it-the place felt like his own castle. He glanced at the room’s only window, and saw the branches of strange trees at eye level. They were above the ground floor. The rosy glow of sunset filtered through the trees.
His attention went back to the guards, who stood grimly waiting for him to finish his bath. Why so grim?
They were not mistreating him, but he suspected they resented their orders to nursemaid him. Whose orders?
Why had whoever was in charge decided he needed two strong men as guards? He was certainly no threat in his present condition. The guards had shaken him awake, even though the only safe way to waken a powerful Adept was with a light finger touch on the forehead. So they were sure his powers would not manifest, as he verified when he found that he could not even strengthen his limbs with Adept energy.
Could it mean that his Reading powers were growing? Dominating his Adept talents?
No, he realized as soon as he tried them, whatever small Reading talents I had have deserted me, too
He could not even Read the surface emotions of the two men.
“Where am I?” he asked them, first in Trader’s Common, then in Zionae. Both attempts earned him only stares, and an apologetic shrug from one of the men.
The bathwater was cooling, so he turned his efforts to scrubbing himself clean. The brown soap they had given him was much coarser than even the cheapest at home, and he wondered what other differences he would find. Ghulaika had hinted-
Chulaika. Chaiku. Zanos. Astra. Huber.
Are they still alive? he wondered on a stab of guilt at having been completely consumed with his own survival. And where are they?
While Wulfston toweled himself dry with a huge sheet of sheer, soft cotton, one of the guards laid out clothes for him. They were impressive, but nothing like what he was accustomed to: a black loincloth of soft, satiny material; a gold satin tunic with matching trousers that tie-cinched at the waist; and a pair of black leather sandals.
He was handed a large wooden comb resembling a flat, oversized fork, and discovered that it was a better instrument for controlling his hair and beard than the combs and brushes he struggled with at home.
As he stood before a small, circular mirror affixed to one of the walls, the image that stared back at him began to resemble his old self. His beard needed trimming, but he still looked reasonably neat, and felt much better about facing… what?
Casually, he tried to slip the comb into his tunic-it could make quite an effective weapon-but one of the guards snatched it out of his hand the moment he finished grooming his beard.
“Well? What now?” he asked rhetorically.
One of them opened the door. Wulfston followed him out, and the other guard brought up the rear.
Elaborate candleholders lined the corridor. Wulfston noted that the stone walls appeared new-not much older.
than the walls of Castle Blackwolf, completed two years before.
Near the stairs that appeared to be their destination, Wulfston stopped to look out a window. The second guard nudged him, but Wulfston held his ground to get a view of the outside of the castle.
Stretching away before him were the dark outlines of a small community under a dusky sky. Lights were coming to life in structures resembling the buildings of Zendi. This was a city, not a primitive village.
Just below him, workers were constructing a stone wall, hauling stone and mortar up wooden scaffolding to a height perhaps two stories above the ground. The first story had been completed around the castle for as far as he could see in either direction. The workers passed tools and materials with the precise, efficient movements of people who had labored together for a long time.
His patience at an end, the second guard took Wulfston’s arm and urged him down the stairs. Still unaccustomed to such treatment, Wulfston glared at him-and noted a glimmer of fear in his eyes. So.
The guards knew he had powers… and that the drugs they had given him would not deprive him of them forever.
Feeling relief from a fear he had been unable to acknowledge, Wulfston began considering how he might escape as he turned and continued down the stairs.
At the bottom they entered a wide, high-ceilinged foyer. To his left were the massive iron doors of the castle’s main entrance, closed and barred. To his right were an impressive pair of teakwood doors, also closed, each with the face of a roaring lion carved in its center.
The two guards now flanked him, pausing for a moment before the doors. Wulfston squared his shoulders and took a deep calming breath as they pushed open the doors and ushered him into-
— a gallery of a hundred silent, staring people.
Two stone tiers, each higher than a man was tall, curved around the huge room in a semicircle. Seated on each level were perhaps a dozen ebony-skinned men and women in high-backed thronelike chairs.
Each was dressed in elaborately embroidered finery, some in robes similar to Aventine fashion, others in gowns or caftans such as he associated with Africa. About each person’s neck was a talisman on a gold chain. All had the bearing of rulers.
Each chair was flanked by two people standing, some hulking bodyguards, some more like his own retainers at home. All were impressively attired, as were the two dozen or so men and women standing on the floor level, against the curved wall directly ahead of him.
Emotion charged the air. People stared, pulling back in their seats as Wulfston and the two guards strode into the brightly lit chamber. It felt for one moment as if this vast assembly of strangers recognized him-with fear.
The mood was dispersed by the sudden yapping of dogs. Wulfston was unreasonably pleased to see Traylo and Arlus, even though they were leashed and restrained by two men flanking a young woman at the center of the lower tier.
Wulfston recognized her: the girl with the blowgun at the well!
His captor.