to the point where a fair weather breeze could knock him down.’
‘At your service, with pleasure, your Grace, except for one thorny problem.’ Dakar’s round face furrowed in sly sarcasm as he accepted the knife to slice ropes. ‘When this brutish fellow gets up and cuts your heart out, I’ll be forced to explain. The Fellowship of Seven will hold me to blame when they hear how your line met its end.’
A small movement; the Master of Shadow turned his head.
Dakar sucked in a sharp breath. ‘You win, as always. Dharkaron show mercy, forget I ever spoke!’
Awash in dizziness and quick hatred, the captive gritted his teeth. Such reversal of fate lay beyond even dreams, that he might snatch back his chance to avenge his honour. He endured the frightful pain as his enemies raised his shoulder and turned him over. ‘I was never careless,’ he ground out in mulish acrimony. ‘Your black sorcery allowed you entrance to that keep. A vixen’s cunning got you out alive. Ath’s Avenger bear me witness, you shall get what you deserve.’
Behind and above him, Arithon s’Ffalenn regarded the older grid of scars that marked the captive’s naked back. ‘Your duke made you pay sorely for what was, at most, a lapse of attention. What brought you here? A need to strike back for injustice?’
Stubborn in pride, the exiled guardsman held silent, his cheek pressed to damp sand until his cuts stung. The grate of broken ribs stitched his side in red fire and spasmed his muscles at each breath. He squeezed his eyes closed, clinging to patience, but the close heat and the sweat that ran from him in his agony made him light-headed and sick. His senses upended into vertigo. Long before the ropes that tied his wrists were sawn through, his awareness had unreeled into dark.
He awakened raving, deep in the night. A vision tormented him, of clean sheets and the astringent scent of poultice herbs. He thrashed against the touch that restrained him and railed aloud at the woman’s voice that implored an unseen demon for assistance. Then he cursed as other hands reached down in diabolical force to restrain him.
‘Is there no end?’ someone cried in distress. ‘He’s started the bleeding again.’
Over his head loomed the face of the antagonist he had ached and endured horrors for the chance to kill. He shivered. His nerves an inferno of thwarted rage, he tried to strike out with his fist.
Bandages stopped him; then the sorcerer’s features, haggard with an incomprehensible pity.
‘Mountebank,’ gasped the guardsman, reduced to frustration and tears. His enemy’s dread shadows and his darkness were real enough. They spun him in their web once again and swallowed his struggles. Pinned helpless and moaning, he lost his thoughts into starless, lightless night.
Later he heard someone weeping his name. The harsh accents sounded like his own. Sunlight burned his eyes and branded hot bands at his naked wrists and ankles. He remembered the prison and the post. Again he tasted the fire of the whip, as Duke Bransian s’Brydion’s master-at-arms flayed open the skin of his back. ‘I’m no traitor, to beg like a dog to be forgiven,’ he said, and then retched, sickened by his weakness. ‘Why can’t you believe me? I opened no doors. I met no Master of Shadow!’
But the whip fell and fell. The accusatory voice of Dharkaron Avenger seemed to roll like thunder through his dreams. ‘If you suffered a flogging harsh enough to scar for failing to secure a locked passage, then what shall be your lot for setting fire to the ships of a sorcerer?’
The bed where he lay underwent a mad spin, like the turn of Daelion’s Wheel. The pain in his flesh swelled and drowned him. He heard water splash from a bowl and then music. Notes tapped and pried against his fevered senses like slivers flung off breaking crystal. Their sweetness conspired to weave a rolling pattern of freed beauty that scalded a breach through his hatred. Again he wept. The purity of song left him chilled like white rain, then threatened to break his laboured heart. He fell back, gasping against a soft pillow that swelled around his head until he died.
Or thought so, until he opened his eyes, limp and lucid, to a gloom gently lit by a candle. Rain chapped against the shutters of a cottage which smelled of oiled oak and dried lavender. He moved his head, aware by the softened prickle beneath his cheek that someone had washed and trimmed his hair. The strands were tarnished gold again, and shining on the linen, combed neat as in the days before his beggary.
‘He’s awakened,’ said a woman in a shy, cautious whisper.
Someone else in the shadows responded. ‘Leave us, Jinesse.’ Light steps creaked against the floorboards. A man’s outline swept across the candleflame, etched in brief light before he pulled up a wicker stool and sat down. ‘Your name is Tharrick?’
The guard captain condemned to an unkind exile opened bruised eyelids and discovered his enemy at his bedside.
He swallowed, whipped dry from the aftermath of fever and a pathetic, languid weakness that required all his will to turn his head. Echoes from delirium rang back out of memory to haunt him: What would be his lot for setting fire to the ships of a sorcerer?
Terrified by the kindness that had nursed his cruel injuries, he swept the stilled features of his benefactor with a scorching, searching gaze. ‘Why?’ he croaked at last.
Restored reason could no longer deny the compassion in the man, whose very hands had bandaged and poulticed, and whose masterful playing upon the lyranthe had spiralled tortured thoughts into sleep.
‘I came here to kill you,’ said Tharrick. ‘Why not make me suffer?’ He reddened at the memory of the curses he had uttered to speed this man’s spirit off to Sithaer.
Arithon stared down at his fingers, loosely cradled on his knees. His calm was all pretence. His masked spark of urgency lay so perfectly damped, his presence became a statement wound in patience. Whatever had unnerved him in the boiler shed, the emotion had washed clean and passed.
A faint frown tucked his upswept brows as the Master of Shadow weighed his answer. The lacings at his cuffs hung still as pen strokes, unmoved by the draught that teased the candleflame. ‘When a man has been handled like an animal, it should come as no surprise when, from mistreatment, he’s finally driven to desperation. What happened at Alestron was no fault of yours. The spell that brought the keep’s destruction was not mine, but your duke’s, that I was sent in by the Fellowship to help disarm. The plan went sadly wrong, for all of us. But I am not as Lord Bransian of Alestron, to hold you to blame out of temper.’
‘Temper! I wanted a sword in your heart!’ Tharrick gave a riled push at the blankets. Only sour luck had let him strike at a time when the victim he came to assassinate had been absent on business in the north.
‘Don’t.’ Arithon caught the guardsman’s shoulder, pressed him back. ‘Your broken rib could be jostled to nick a lung. The leg wound is serious. If you stir, you’ll restart the bleeding.’
‘I burned your brigantine!’ Tharrick gasped, anguished. ‘All your cut timber. Your ropewalk.’
Quiet on the stool, Arithon released his hold and looked at him. He said nothing. His face showed regret, but not anger.
Tharrick shut his eyes. His bruises throbbed. Under the ache of linen bindings, he felt as though his chest would tear and burst. Then remorse shredded even his last hold on pride. He wept, while the Master of Shadow stayed at his bedside and withheld comment like a brother.
‘Get
