Unfortunately, the circumstances of that time were riskier than she’d ever imagined they could be. The same gossip who brought them the rumors about invaders also brought news that Lord Death and his mate had been moved to the observation chambers for the High Mage’s entertainment. He would be under heavy guard, and he would be constantly tortured, then healed, then tortured again. If she thought for one moment that she would get another chance to kill the High Mage, she wouldn’t even think about approaching Lord Death now. She would have waited until Lord Shan was back in his cell, manacled but otherwise unrestrained in his barbed cage.
Time, however, was a luxury she didn’t have. The other whispers in the Mage Halls were too rampant to be disbelieved. Among Vadim Maur’s new guests were the Tairen Soul and his mate. If Vadim Maur managed to claim a Tairen Soul’s power, nothing and no one would ever be able to defeat him again.
That meant she needed to free Lord Shan without delay. No matter how high the risk.
As the Mage led Ellysetta down the corridor, they passed a large, dark mirror hanging on one wall. The sight of her reflection made Ellysetta stumble. Everything about the reflection shining in the mirror’s dark surface came straight from one of her nightmares: herself, garbed in a boat-necked green gown, hair unbound and spilling about her shoulders, sel’dor bands clamped around throat, wrists, and ankles, walking in the company of a purple-robed Mage.
Fresh dread curled in her belly. She remembered the dream. Remembered what had happened in it.
Lillis and Lorelle.
She almost tried to reach for them, but the shredding agony of the sel’dor bonds reacting to her magic was too fresh in her mind.
The corridor wound around, and they reached a set of carved stone steps that curled downward into the bowels of the earth. The guards pushed her after the High Mage, and together, the four of them descended several flights, passing two sconce-lit landings that led off to other levels of the subterranean fortress.
They exited the stairs on the third level and walked down another series of corridors to an observation room. She could see different cells through the windows on either side of the room. Through the murky glass on the right, she saw a dark-haired Fey warrior being strapped down to a table. For an instant, she feared the warrior might be Rain, but when the Fey was pushed down onto his back for the final bindings, she saw his face.
Not Rain’s face, but not unfamiliar either. A face from her dreams. Her hands splayed instinctively against the glass in a gesture of horror and concern.
“I see you recognize my longtime guest.” The Mage took pleasure in her torment.
She wanted to say she’d never seen him before, but the lie stuck in her throat. She clamped her lips together and glared.
“The great Shannisorran v’En Celay, Lord Death. A legendary warrior of the Fey. Your father.”
Despite her effort to show no emotion, her chin trembled.
“And here.” The Mage walked to the opposite wall, where another viewing window looked into a different cell. A red-haired woman, her body covered in cuts and bruises and healing burns, was bound to a table just like the one in the other room. “Your mother, the beauteous Elfeya, though as you can see, she recently displeased me and was punished for it.”
Ellysetta clenched her jaw and closed her fingers into tight fists to hide the trembling of her hands. She knew what was coming. Her stomach churned with nausea at the prospect.
She turned away from the Fey parents she’d never known. They were, in most respects, utter strangers to her, but they’d suffered unspeakable torments to keep her from sharing their fate.
And she, in her desperation and misguided belief that she could outwit a master manipulator, had walked straight into Vadim Maur’s trap.
“A thousand years you’ve held them,” she told him bitterly. “A thousand years, you’ve tortured them without mercy. But they never gave in. Do you think I don’t know that? Do you think I don’t know they’d rather die than see me surrender my soul to save them?”
“Die?” Vadim Maur exclaimed. “Oh, they won’t die. Not yet, at least. Not for a very, very long time.” Several large, burly men entered the rooms where Shan and Elfeya lay waiting. “As I’ve learned over these last thousand years, Lord Death and his mate are quite strong. What I haven’t yet learned is how strong you are.” He leaned forward and spoke into a pipe that fed into both rooms. “You may begin.”
Moments later, the screams began.
Melliandra hauled her black canvas bag out of its hiding spot, using the rope that held it suspended along the interior wall of the refuse pit. The days in the pit had not been kind, and the canvas had absorbed a rank collection of smells and stains. She tossed the bag into her cart and, at the first empty chamber she found, she snatched the bag and ducked inside. Quickly, she emptied Lord Shan’s belongings from the black bag. The two long straps of daggers, she strung across her shoulders, and she tied the empty sword sheaths to her chest. The swords themselves, she transferred to a clean, canvas laundry sack and tucked behind a crate in the corner of the room. Using sheaths she’d stolen from the Mage Halls, she strapped the two daggers she’d stolen for herself to her legs—one on her right calf, the other on the opposite thigh—and strapped two sheathed red Fey’cha to her forearms, with their hilts just reaching her wrists. The oversized sleeves of the tunic she’d filched from the laundry specifically for this purpose draped down over her hands and hid the Fey’cha and Lord Shan’s weapons nicely.
Done, she tossed the empty black bag back in the refuse cart. After finishing emptying all the remaining refuse bins on the level, she emptied the cart and returned it to its closet, then stepped into the pulley-driven kitchen lift.
She rode the lift down to the kitchens. No one noticed her in the flurry of activity.
“I’m impressed by your ability to remain such an uninvolved observer in the face of such agony.” Genuine appreciation colored the Mage’s voice. “No other shei’dalin has ever witnessed such torment without begging for it to stop.”
Ellysetta spat a mouthful of blood. She’d wanted to beg. She’d wanted it so bad, she’d bit a hole through the inside of her cheek to keep from it. The screams of her parents still echoed in her head. They’d known she was there. And even as their guts were being ripped from their bodies, they were shouting for her not to give in, to be strong.
Telling her to be strong. Her. When she was the reason they were being tortured.
When she was the one upon whom the Mage had yet to lay the first unkind finger.
“I think there must be more Darkness in you than you want to admit,” Maur continued. “It’s doubtless one of the gifts you gained when I engineered your birth. You should thank me, Ellysetta, because without that gift, you’d be just another of those useless Fey females, as helpless as a rose without thorns. Instead, you’re strong, powerful. More like me than you care to admit.”
She gave him a baleful glare and remained silent. She wanted to tell him he was a liar, but she couldn’t. No matter how vile his claims, they contained at least a grain of truth. She was different from other Fey women. She could kill without destroying herself. Not only that, she could enjoy it. She remembered Kreppes, and the grim satisfaction, the barbarous thrill, of gutting her enemy, hearing his scream, feeling the hot spew of his blood upon her flesh. There had to be something in her, some hardness, some Darkness, some bit of evil that spawned such a dreadful trait and such macabre joy.
One thing was certain. That core of Darkness hiding inside her must never be released—not for her parents’ sake. Not for anyone else’s sake either.
“If you think your stoicism has saved them even a moment of pain, think again,” Maur said, misinterpreting her continued silence. “They will suffer for a long, long time for their part in keeping you away from me all these years.” He leaned back to the pipe leading to both rooms, and said, “Summon the healer. When she’s done, begin again.”
He nodded to the guards holdi
ng Ellysetta’s chains and turned towards the exit. A hard shove from behind sent Ellysetta stumbling after him. They went down four more levels, until they reached the bottom of Boura Fell. A long, dark corridor, narrower than the ones above, stretched into the shadows in both directions. Vadim Maur turned right and led the way to the very end of the corridor. There, next to a shuttered opening that reeked of refuse, a dark, narrow tunnel curved off to the left. The Mage took a torch from a stand bolted to the wall and lit it on one of the sconce lights.
As he led Ellysetta and her guards into the tunnel, the damp, narrow, black walls closed in around them. A terrible rotting smell made her shudder. The place smelled like death.
“Perhaps for ancient Fey you’ve never known, who long ago accepted their fate, you can stay strong,” the High Mage said as they walked. The tunnel twisted back around to the right, and the awful stench grew stronger. “But what about someone you love more dearly? Someone more fragile, more helpless? I think you will find it much more difficult to let them suffer.”
The tunnel opened up to a gaping black maw of a chamber. A black stone promontory, railed with twisting vines of sel’dor, extended out over the abyss. The air was cold and dank, thick with the odor of putrefaction.
The Mage raised his torch to a shallow gutter overhead. Light flared as whatever the gutter contained caught fire, and flame raced along the gutter’s path, into the blackness. The gaping maw was a dark pit, and even before the fire concluded its circuit and fully illuminated the floor of the pit half a tairen length below, Ellysetta knew what was coming. She’d seen it before, in her nightmares.
She gripped the sel’dor railing, uncaring of the hot burn of the hated metal on her flesh. Her sisters sat huddled together in the midst of the dark, stinking pit, tethered by chains in the center of a nest of bones and other rotting scraps. The sudden brightness of the flames made them look up, shielding their eyes with their hands.
She wanted to scream the twins’ names. She wanted to throw herself on her knees and beg the High Mage for mercy, just as she had in her dream. She dared do neither. She knew why he’d brought her, knew that no matter what she did, Lillis and Lorelle were doomed. If she refused to accept a sixth Mark, Lillis and Lorelle would die. If she did accept the Mark, Vadim Maur would own her soul; and he would use her to enslave her sisters. They would become those Azrahn-eyed imps of Darkness from her nightmares, their souls bound to evil.
Oh, gods, gods. Why have you done this? They are innocent. They are children!
She didn’t think she had the strength to stand firm. Her sisters were the children she’d loved and cared for all her life, twin beacons of Light in a life full of fear and self-doubt.
“Will you not call to them, Ellysetta?” the Mage prodded. “Will you not tell them everything will be all right? I know you feel their fear.”
She closed her eyes, trying to shut him out. Aiyah, she sensed their fear. It burned worse than the sel’dor that pierced her flesh. She could not even spin a simple Spirit weave to whisper of her love and beg their forgiveness for bringing them into such danger.
“You were so brave, watching your parents suffer so nobly on your behalf. But will you be so brave now, watching your sisters eaten alive? Hearing their shrieks of pain and terror?”
Ellysetta’s head whipped around, her jaw going lax. Eaten alive?
The Mage leaned over the railing and raised his voice. “Your sister Ellysetta is here, little ones. Beg her to save you. She can, you know. All she has to do is give me what I want, and you will be released from the pit.”
The rumbling screech of metal echoed in the pit as unseen gates opened.
Then came the scrabble of claws against stone… and the bloodcurdling howls of the darrokken.
“The High Mage sent me with food for the prisoner.” Melliandra clutched the handle of the food cart in both hands.
The guard standing beside the door examined her with cold eyes. “I received no such order,” he declared, and his meaty fingers tightened around the spiked staff in his grip. “The healer just left, but the High Mage usually saves food until the prisoners are returned to their cells.”
Melliandra kept her expression blank and unemotional. “The High Mage is entertaining a special guest. He wants these two strong enough to survive a long time.” When the guard still showed no sign of stepping aside, she added, “Or I can return to the kitchens and inform my mistress that you kept me from fulfilling the Great One’s commands. I’m sure he will understand why his orders were overridden.”
As she expected, just the hint of an ill report to the High Mage was enough to give the guard pause. His brows furrowed and he poked the tip of his staff in the direction of her cart.
“Lift the cloth on that tray.”
Melliandra obeyed, revealing two bowls of fatted porridge, a pitcher of water, and a hammered-metal goblet. Simple fare. Nothing out of the ordinary for a prisoner.
After a brief inspection, the guard grunted and stepped aside. “Go on then, but be quick about it.”
She murmured an assent and pushed the cart through the doorway.
Lord Shan, silent and still as the dead, lay strapped to the table at the center of the room. Pools of blood glistened on the dark stone floor and still dripped from the table, but Melliandra could see no obvious wounds. The healer had done her job well.
Vadim Maur’s new torture master stood beside a table set with a variety of knives, hooks, and vises. Tools of the torturer’s trade. He was sharpening his curved disemboweling knife. At the sight of Melliandra, he scowled. “What do you want? The healer has come and gone. Get out.”
“Master Maur commanded me to feed the prisoner,” she said. “He wants him kept strong, to make him last longer.”
After some grumbling about interruptions, the new torture master set down his implements and moved aside.
Melliandra pushed her cart towards the table. She flicked a quick, searching glance around the room, noting the three guards who stood in the corners of the stone chamber, barbed sel’dor pikestaffs in hand. Four armed men. Worse than she’d hoped for.
“He can’t eat like that.” She gestured to the sel’dor straps that kept the Fey immobilized on the table. “He needs his hands to feed himself.”
The torture master snorted. “I know what happened to Goram, and I’ve heard all the tales about how Lord Death can gut a man with his little finger. Feed him yourself. Because he stays where he lies, bound and strapped.”
Melliandra ground her teeth. There was no way even Lord Death could defeat four armed men while restrained so securely he could barely move a finger.
“I’m not putting my fingers in his mouth. He’d bite them off for sure! Just one hand,” she pressed. “Surely between the four of you, you could skewer him if he so much as twitches.” When they still didn’t budge, she offered a bribe few umagi could resist. “I’ll bring you all hot stew from the Mage Hall kitchens for a week.”
That did the trick. With a muttered oath, the torture master unhooked a ring of keys from his belt and tossed them to one of the guards. “Left arm only. The rest of you, look sharp. If he moves, spit him like a roast pig.” He narrowed his eyes at Melliandra. “I like extra meat in my stew. Don’t forget.”
“Won’t,” she vowed.
Two of the guards held the barbed points of their pikes pressed against the Fey’s throat while the third unlocked the restraining straps at his left wrist and elbow and jumped back. Melliandra watched their twitchy nervousness with a curious mix of satisfaction and trepidation. They feared him so much. She only hoped Lord Death’s abilities lived up to his reputation.
The Fey flexed his arm with slow deliberation, curling and uncurling his fingers to return circulation, rotating his wrist, elbow, and shoulder. All the while, his slitted green gaze made careful note of the guards’ reactions and the shifts in their location.
“Enough,” the torture master declared. “Feed him and be done with it.”
Wit
h a curt bob of her head, Melliandra took one of the bowls and approached the table. She held the congealing porridge close enough that he could scoop it into his mouth with his fingers. She knew the moment he touched the crystal she’d put at the bottom of the bowl. With casual deliberation, his eyes met hers. She glanced down at her right arm, where the cuff of her ragged sleeve gaped beneath her skinny wrist, and lifted her hand just enough to show him the redhandled blade sheathed at her wrist. His breath caught for an instant, the response so faint she only noticed because she was looking for a reaction. He’d seen the distinctive name mark etched into the pommel. His crystal, his blades. He’d nearly killed the High Mage last time, even without them. This time, she prayed whatever extra power his own weapons provided would give him the edge he needed to succeed.
Lord Shan stuffed the last of his porridge in his mouth, then pretended to cough, as if he’d swallowed some of the food the wrong way.
Torn between suspicion and alarm—the High Mage would definitely not be pleased if his prized prisoner escaped him by choking to death—the torture master took a step towards him.
Lord Shan moved so fast his hand was a blur. One moment he was gasping for breath, the next, a red-handled dagger quivered in the torture master’s chest, one guard collapsed across Lord Shan’s body, his mouth working soundlessly as blood gushed from the gaping hole in his throat, and the pike he’d been pointing at Lord Shan was buried in the eyeball of the second guard. The third guard died on the point of a second red-handled dagger gripped in Melliandra’s fist.
The thud of falling bodies and the clatter of the pikes against the stone floor brought the guard outside the door running in to investigate. He died before he took his second step into the room, the dagger from the torture master’s chest buried hilt deep in the newcomer’s throat.
Melliandra leapt across the room to drag the fallen guard inside and close the door. “Well, I guess you really can gut a man with your little finger.”
He flashed her a look so flat and cold and full of death, she knew he’d earned every awed and terrified word ever spoken about him.