Page 4

Four

E unaios stayed carefully outside the barrier as he used levitation magic to install chains linked to the floor and ceiling, then held Azreth still in a kneeling position and placed a collar around his neck and a manacle around his wrist. As soon as Azreth felt the mage’s magic release him, he heaved at the chains, and was surprised to find that they held fast. They were not iron, but they may as well have been.

He glanced down at the runes glowing on the floor beside him. The chains, and the stone they were anchored in, had been enchanted somehow to prevent them from breaking.

He glared at Eunaios, who was smirking a little, pleased with his work. “What is this for?”

“You’re going to be bound,” Eunaios said coolly. “As we’ve told you. You may as well save your strength. You won’t escape.”

Azreth disliked him almost as much as he disliked the lord.

When Eunaios was sure Azreth was held fast, he disabled the barrier, then came close and began painting runes on Azreth’s body. The black ink glided over his skin and hardened, marking him with a spell to be activated later. He finished before long, then left Azreth alone in the room again.

Azreth pulled against the chains with all his strength. The metal dug into his skin. Barbs on the inside of the collar prodded at him until they tore through, making him bleed. The stone flooring shook, but didn’t crack, let alone break.

He closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and tried to shove down the animalistic fear that had started to claw into his mind. The chains restricted his movement, holding him almost motionless on his knees, and they seemed to pull at his soul as well as his body.

He could survive many creative tortures, but he despised feeling powerless, and that was exactly what he was about to be. He would be owned and controlled by this mortal he hated.

The mortal would die eventually. Azreth could wait it out. He would have to.

But perhaps he’d underestimated the suffering that was possible in the mortal world. He had thought he had the strength to tolerate being owned for a while in exchange for transport to this plane. Maybe he’d been wrong.

He’d gone still again by the time he heard people approaching. He heard many pairs of feet—many more than the three mortals he’d met so far.

He was surprised to see a dozen or so people, guided by Nirlan and Eunaios, pour through the door. They gawked at him, making exclamations of shock and awe.

This was it. The binding spell. With a crowd to witness his defeat, apparently.

Nirlan was addressing the small audience as Eunaios began painting runes on the lord’s palms: runes that would bind Azreth to him and subject him to his will. Eunaios was right. There was no escaping.

He saw a timid movement out of the corner of his eye. The woman was here. He hadn’t seen her at first, because she was a little away from all the others, as if she didn’t quite belong to the group, which struck him as odd. Maybe he’d been wrong about how mortal mating worked, and a wife was really more of a slave than a partner.

Her eyes slid across the room and stopped when they met his. They looked at each other for a long moment. Her face was hard and stiff with repressed emotion. She must have been furious at Azreth for what he’d done to her last time they’d met.

She came closer, her deep, dark eyes never leaving his. As she came near, he was able to pick out her emotions from the jumble of indistinct mortal feelings filling the room. She was indeed angry, but it was an unexpectedly bitter, cool anger, and when he consumed it, it felt like chewing on uncooked bone.

She stopped just beside him, within arm’s reach, and looked at him. Unlike the last time he’d seen her, pale powder covered her face, and delicate black ink ringed her eyes and darkened her brows. Her lips were as red as her blood. She looked like death. Like a pale corpse with a bloodied mouth.

His collar was pulling his head up, baring his throat, forcing him into a position of submission in front of her.He was faintly embarrassed by how he’d been with her before, so out of control, like a starving animal.He wondered if she would have stabbed him if the lord had permitted it. She was the only one of his captors who hadn’t hit him with that baton yet, but he didn’t know if that was because she was less violent than the others, or if the opportunity just hadn’t arisen.

She leaned even closer, looking down on him, and he braced himself to be struck.

“I don’t know if you can understand me,” she whispered. “And I know you will likely kill me if I release you. But I would rather die now, on my own terms, than by his hand.”

He blinked slowly at her. She was fidgeting. He looked down at her feet, and she was vigorously scratching the floor with her slipper. Vigorously, and stealthily.

“All I ask is that if you must take my life, take his, as well.” There was a distinct note of desperation in her voice.She said nothing else, just glanced over her shoulder at the others. Her faint anxiety was blooming into true fear.

With her toe, she was scratching at one of the runes Eunaios had drawn on the ground, and the paint was wearing away. She was… erasing it.

Suddenly, the rune flickered and then went dark, its magic extinguished as she destroyed the mark. She looked up at Azreth, eyes wide, then hurriedly backed away.

From across the room, Nirlan finally took notice of his wife. He frowned at both of them, suspicious.“What are you doing?”

Azreth looked down at the broken rune. Cautiously, he tried pulling the chain attached to his wrist. It easily came up from the ground with a snap.

She’d freed him.

She’d freed him?

The room filled with shouts. The mortals ran from him, fighting over the doorway. Eunaios and Nirlan were closest to him, both watching him with growing horror.

Nirlan grabbed Eunaios. “Finish the spell!”

Azreth shot to his feet, fighting the numbness in his legs as he took the manacle in his teeth and wrenched the metal apart. He grabbed the collar and destroyed it next, and suddenly there was nothing holding him back. In two strides, he’d crossed the room and picked up Eunaios by the front of his robe. The man’s eyes were wide as Azreth lifted him high, opened his mouth, and sank his teeth into his throat, cutting off his screams.

Blossom-sweet blood sprayed down Azreth’s throat. The mage panicked and raged, writhing and twitching. His emotions blazed and spiraled and then quieted with acceptance of his fate.It was just as good as Azreth had imagined. There was nothing that tasted more exquisite than death.

As he threw aside the mage’s body, a burst of warmth hit his side. Confused by the sensation, he turned to see a woman with a ball of magical flame in her hand. He realized it had been an attempt to hurt him. So he went to her and ripped out her throat, too, and again he drowned in delicious anguish.

As he dropped her, he was panting with a sort of ragged, hysterical joy, mortal blood covering his mouth and chest. This was everything he’d dreamed of.He had a sudden, wild urge to laugh.

When a set of guards approached, wearing steel armor and wielding steel blades, he simply picked up one and threw him into the wall, crumpling his armor. The next guard stabbed at Azreth with his ridiculous, brittle sword, which merely glanced off Azreth’s skin. The mortal blanched. He started to turn and run, but Azreth knocked him to the ground and pressed his palm to the man’s chest, crushing him slowly until his body snapped inward with a satisfying crunch.

As panicked shouts moved down the hallway, Azreth stood at ease, his mind hazy with bloodlust and satisfaction. All the other mortals had wisely run.

Except one. He could smell her fear from across the room.

He turned to look at the dark-eyed woman. The wife. She’d pressed her back against the wall, keeping as far away from him as possible. As he looked at her, her knees buckled, and she slid to the floor. She looked at him like he was a monster. He supposed he was.

Curiosity nagged at him. She’d asked him for death twice now. He’d never met someone so eager to die.

As the mortal blood cooled on his skin, he sobered. There could be other mages here. Other traps. Guards who wielded iron instead of steel. The thought chilled him.

He couldn’t let himself be trapped here again. He needed to get out.

He turned and moved down the hallway after the others, leaving the woman to her own devices.

He followed the sounds of mortal cries down the dark tunnels. The building was enormous and labyrinthine. Several times, he was confronted by more guards. He quickly ended them.

He found his way up a flight of ancient steps into an equally ancient building made from blocks of dark gray stone. He was above ground now, and windows on the walls gave him glimpses of a black sky dotted with stars.

That alien sky frightened him. He was in a strange world filled with unexpected dangers. He had avoided becoming enslaved to the mortals, but only narrowly. He needed time to rest and consider his options. He needed to get out of this place.

He came to a set of massive doors at the end of a large hall, and he could smell fresh air leaking through them. He burst through the doors, and suddenly he was outside.

Cold, uninviting air blew over his skin. The sky opened up above him, vast and empty and dark. Ahead of him was a sort of courtyard and another massive wall. A prison inside a prison.

It was a castle. Eunaios and Nirlan had summoned him into its dungeon.

Something hard bounced off his back, and he looked down to find an arrow on the ground beside him. Yet more mortals approached him, one wielding a bow, and the other a sword. The swordsman was the biggest mortal he’d yet seen—a man almost his own height—and yet, unfortunately for the mortal, he was still just a man.

The mortal brandished the useless weapon. “Die, beast!”

Azreth took a long breath, wondering at them as they ran toward their own death. He didn’t have the patience or desire for the dramatic flair he’d had downstairs. So he simply stabbed one of them in the throat with the point of the arrow, then bashed in the skull of the other with the hilt of his own sword. He took surprisingly little joy in it.

On the outer wall was a closed gate, through which he could see grass and a dirt road and hills in the distance. But as he got closer, a cold, unpleasant sensation settled over him. A bad energy was coming from the gate. Iron.

Clenching his jaw, he turned his attention to the high walls. He was trying to decide how best to scale or break through them when he heard a panicked breath behind him.

He turned, and there was the dark-eyed woman again, blinking at him in surprise. She’d followed him.The lightning baton rested on her hip like a sword.

He crossed the space between them quickly, taking her by the arm before she could draw the baton. She tried to pull free, and he jerked her back toward him.He hadn’t thought he was being overly rough, but her entire body was thrown off by the movement, and she cried out, nearly falling over.

Azreth took a breath, considering what to do next.

He had enough magic now to summon his false arm, so he began working the spell. Magic trickled around the stump of his right shoulder, then coalesced into a perfect mirror of his left arm. It was the most complex spell he knew, but he was well practiced at it. It was complete in seconds.

The woman watched the process closely, as if filing away the information for later. Maybe she disapproved of the broken pretending to be whole. Or perhaps she was thinking of ways to use his infirmity against him.

He pointed to the iron bars. “What will unlock this cage?”

The woman’s eyes flicked toward the bars, then back to him. Fear cloaked her like a second skin.

He squeezed her arm tighter when she didn’t answer. Her body was as soft as bruised fruit, and he could sense the brittleness of the bone beneath the muscle, narrow and oddly flexible under his grasp. It disturbed him.

It occurred to him that he might have been damaging her, and he loosened his grip slightly. “Speak,” he said.

“I—I don’t know. I’ve never seen it down. You could lift it. I’m sure you’re strong enough.”

“I cannot.”

Her eyes returned to the gate, flitting across the bars. “On the wall. There’s a lever.”

Azreth let his gaze leave her for a moment, just long enough to look. She was telling the truth. There was a handle. A mechanism to open the gate from the inside.

He studied the woman. She’d traded her delicate slippers for sturdy boots at some point during the past few minutes, and she wore a cloak and carried a small traveling bag, now. There was a panicked look in her eyes, but it was a different sort of panic from the others, somehow.

She was just watching him. Waiting.

“Raiya!” Nirlan appeared in the doorway, but he skidded to a halt when he saw Azreth.His eyes darted between them, his expression hovering on the cusp of outrage—and Azreth realized the lord still wanted his wife, even though he’d thrown her carelessly into his cell just a few days ago.

Azreth thought of all the ways he’d fantasized about killing Nirlan. He could disembowel him, crush him, behead him. He could take the baton and shoot him with lightning until it ran out of magic.

As Nirlan took a step backward, Azreth almost chased him back inside the castle. Back inside his prison. Back where he’d been trapped, unable to move, unable to feed or weave magic.

Fear pulsed through him, extinguishing the bloodlust. His heart pounded. He needed to escape. He needed to run.

He was afraid. He was weak.

The woman had stopped trying to pull away. She took half a step toward Azreth, putting him between herself and Nirlan. Azreth came to a decision.He picked her up and held her across his chest.She yelped in surprise.

“Be still,” he warned her quietly, and a part of him was worried she would fight, and that he’d have to hurt her. He was surprised to realize how much he did not want to do that.

She’d saved him. Even if she’d only done it to hurt the lord, he was grateful.

Fortunately, she went rigid and motionless against his chest as he went to the wall. When he pushed the lever, something in the interior of the wall clicked, and the iron gate began to recede into the arch above.

He didn’t look back as he passed beneath the iron bars and escaped into the world beyond.