Mags was surrounded. These men must have infiltrated the area in the early morning or even before dawn; that was why there were no birds.
He thought about fighting them and trying to run, and thought better of it. Granted, he knew the area much better than they did, but there were far too many for him to fight off effectively.
The last thing he wanted to do right now was to fight, end up with another blow to the head, and lose his Mindspeech again.
And they’d called him “Northerner,” which suggested that they knew he was from Valdemar, or at least guessed it, but didn’t know he was a Herald. He could be anyone or anything. So he submitted tamely while they bound his hands behind his back, roughed him up a little, and then bound his arms to his body, leaving just a sort of leash of rope by which they could pull him. He didn’t fight any of it, and he didn’t ask any questions either.
For one thing, he was pretty sure that asking questions was going to get him hit some more. For another, he was also pretty sure that they wouldn’t answer him.
He did let down his shields a very, very little bit, but he snapped them back up again as something exceedingly cold and exceedingly nasty brushed against his mind. It had a very familiar feeling to it, and after a moment he understood what it was.
It felt like that Karsite demon.
Now he felt terror; he clamped down his shields so tight that not even the slightest thought would escape; as he stumbled along in the wake of the Karsite who held his leash, he felt cold sweat breaking out all over his body. He was just glad that he wasn’t wearing anything that was identifiable as belonging to a Trainee. Somehow they already knew he was a Northerner, but maybe he could get away with . . . well he would have to think of a story, and fast.
His mind raced as he stumbled along; he was paying very little attention to where he was going or even to his captors.
Why would a Valdemaran be in Karse anyway?
He couldn’t feign being feebleminded, and he couldn’t feign being a deaf-mute. He’d had a bow and clearly knew how to use it, and he’d responded to the orders of the Karsite soldier.
Well, what if he wasn’t a Valdemaran, as such . . .
Who crossed borders all the time? Traders . . . entertainers . . . all right, he could pass as either of those. Or rather, something like an apprentice trader. He could grade gemstones in his sleep. Or if the Karsites didn’t, for some reason, forbid entertainers, he could easily pass himself off as a rope dancer. In either case, he could say he was with his family, and they’d all been attacked in the night—that would certainly be plausible enough and account for his wounds. And the cat had said that the demons pretty much roamed the night at will to keep people penned in their houses after dark.
But how had they found him in the first place?
The Mindspeech. It has to have been the Mindspeech. Maybe it was that connection to Dallen that had somehow alerted the demons . . .
He was jerked out of his preoccupation by a sharp tug on the rope; he looked up and realized that the group had reached Franse’s cave, and there was an even larger group of men together with a trio of black-robe priests there. The armed men were evidently ransacking the cave; they were hauling everything that had been inside out into the light, and what was too heavy to take out in one piece, they were breaking up and dragging out the bits.
He could hear the sound of axes on wood from inside, and even as the group he was with halted, someone hauled out part of one of the dressers and dumped it on the pile of discarded and wrecked furniture.
He tried not to wince.
Franse! The cat!
He felt sick.
He hung his head and looked around as covertly as he could for some sign of Franse and Reaylis, full of dread, and sure after what the cat had told him that he would see their bodies, or blood and evidence of a struggle. But as he peered around, allowing himself to shiver in fear, he didn’t see anything at all that would have told him that his friends were even in the cave when the soldiers arrived.
Did they have a back way out to escape? He found himself praying that they did.
The three black-robes certainly appeared extremely displeased, which would argue for Franse and the cat having escaped their clutches. So if it was Mindspeech that had somehow betrayed them . . . maybe Mags could convince them that it wasn’t his Mindspeech . . .
But he swiftly revised his idea of what to tell them after one look at them. They didn’t look like the sort who would allow entertainers into their country, and he very much doubted that they let anything other than select traders in, either.
However, he might be able to use his gem-sorting ability after all . . .
And even better, there would be enough of the truth in this story that if they had some sort of variation on the Truth Spell, he might be able to pass it.
I worked at a mine in the North. That was true enough. I’m a damn good gem sorter. That was true too. I was kidnapped. And that was true.
Now, if they asked why he was kidnapped . . . I don’t know, I don’t know who it was that grabbed me or why, but maybe they were gonna rob a mine and they wanted somebody to sort out the good stuff. The first part was true, and the “but maybe” part might allow him to slip the rest of that in without making it come up as a lie. And it would sound plausible. He hoped.
The Karsites were snarling among themselves, and they were talking too fast for him to understand what they were saying. The black-robes were definitely angry, and eventually, when no one brought out any more signs of Franse and Reaylis than another couple of sets of oversized and worn red robes, one of them left the other two and stalked over to him and his captors.
The priest grabbed him by the collar and shook him. The man was bigger than Mags and quite strong, and Mags didn’t have to feign cringing.
The Karsite priest shot out a rapid string of syllables and looked at the one in charge of the group that had taken Mags.
“Where the Cursed One is?” the man demanded.
Mags shook his head violently and tried to look scared and stupid. The “scared” part was easy enough to manage. “I don’t know!” he wailed. “He sent me out to hunt this morning! I don’t know!”
The man babbled back at the black-robe . . . that was when Mags realized why he had been able to understand the men who had stopped his kidnappers and why he couldn’t understand this lot. These people were speaking about three times faster than the ones who had interrogated the assassins, probably because the troop of soldiers, or at least their leader, had recognized the assassins as foreigners.
Mags braced himself for further interrogation, but the black-robe just looked disgusted and barked an order. Mags found himself shoved roughly aside with a handful of guards, while the black-robes barked orders, and small groups of armed men peeled off to search in every possible direction.
Mags kept his head down and shivered. He didn’t have to pretend fear; he could, very dimly, sense the inimical cold of demons, and they were inside the mine. Somehow they had managed to break through whatever Franse had used to guard the place.
Or else plain old humans got in, and then they could follow.
If such things could feel anything at all like comfort, they were feeling it now, in the dark, away from the sunlight. There was no sense of restlessness. They liked it in there, particularly now that everything Franse and Reaylis owned had been removed.
Mags broke out in a cold sweat all over again. Were the black-robes going to bother to question him at all? Or were they just going to shove him into the cave and let the demons handle him?
He was afraid to draw attention to himself but afraid to not draw attention to himself. He didn’t want to bring down their wrath on his head, but he didn’t want them to consider him disposable, either.
He remained where he
was, trussed up like a bird for the spit, while the men who had been sent out to search returned in groups of two and four, empty-handed. By this time, the sun was high overhead, and he was beginning to hope that Franse and the cat had managed to escape. He was pretty sure that if they got far enough away, the cat would be able to ensure their safety. Hadn’t Reaylis hinted that there were more Suncats than just him? He could probably guide Franse to another Suncat, another Gifted red-robe who could hide them.
Of course, that leaves me pretty much hung out to dry . . .
But he couldn’t blame Franse for that, any more than he could fault Franse for not helping the village that had been destroyed. Franse couldn’t even see well enough to shoot a rabbit—how was he going to defend himself? He couldn’t, of course. All he could do was run.
He sat on the ground where they had left him, just inside the garden, which had been thoroughly trampled. They’d stuck him in the cabbages; he managed to get himself marginally comfortable, sagged forward, and plotted out a story for himself, using as much real detail as he could. He didn’t know if there were mines on the southern Border that Karse shared with Valdemar, but he’d bet the Karsites didn’t know, either. He closed his eyes, strengthened his shields and added all the little details he could think of—especially how he had gotten kidnapped. He built up the picture of his life in his mind, and the picture of the person he should be. Stolid, unimaginative, someone who just wanted to go home. Someone who was completely bewildered by everything that had happened to him until now.
Now and again he looked up through his hair, and nothing much had changed. The black-robes had taken the one bench that had survived from inside and the two outside; they were directing the couple of soldiers that were left in sifting through Franse’s wrecked belongings, and they were fuming. The sun coming straight down through the trees told him that they had been there for several candlemarks. He forced his muscles to relax as they tried to cramp up on him, and he wondered just what the Karsites were going to do with him. What did they think he was? He was pretty certain that if they had any inkling that he was a Trainee, the end would have been swift . . .
Unless, of course, they intended to take him to a city and make a spectacle of his execution . . .
He broke out in a sweat all over again. He could picture that far, far too easily. From what he understood, it would be the sort of thing they would do, too. Somehow he had to convince them that he’d make a very poor show . . . though how he would do that, he had no idea. Maybe instead he could convince them that his skill with gems was too valuable to lose?
He should definitely try to convince them he was terrified. That wouldn’t be at all difficult, since he actually was.
More and more of the men sent to search for Franse and Reaylis came back empty-handed. The black-robes became angrier and angrier. This would be a very, very bad time to draw attention to himself, so he did his best not to.
Then, just when he was certain things could not possibly be any worse—of course, they became worse.
Much, much worse.
The sound of horses interrupted another snarling match between the officer in charge of the armed men, and the chief black-robe. Both of them looked up; they clearly knew who was coming, and neither of them looked happy about it.
Mags didn’t recognize anything about the men who rode in and dismounted until one of them opened his mouth.
Then he recognized the voice. It was one of his kidnappers—so, presumably, the other man was the second.
It was the first time he’d gotten a good look at either of them.
They certainly had the look of being part of the same tribe, if not the same family. Both of them were taller than Mags, about as tall as Stone had been. Both sported a healthy tan, but nothing that would make them stand out in Valdemar, although their black hair did put them starkly at odds with all the blond and light-brown Karsites. Still, there were plenty of black-haired people in Valdemar as well. He couldn’t see the color of their eyes from here, only that they were dark, not light, and deep-set beneath heavy brows. Both were clean-shaven. The speaker’s hair was clipped closely to his head, like a newly sheared sheep, and the other wore his hair pulled back in a tail. Their garments were virtually identical to the Karsite tunics and trousers, and they wore riveted leather armor over it all. They were well muscled and clearly fighting men.
Both of them had light swords and very long daggers. The swords seemed to have a slight curve to them.
The first man spoke slowly, enunciating every word carefully, so Mags had no trouble following him. He stared at the black-robe as if the man were something he had just scraped off his boot. “You will turn this boy over to us. He is ours,” the assassin ordered, with his customary arrogance.
The black-robe stared for a moment, then exploded into incoherent rage. Clearly he was not accustomed to being addressed this way.
Mags had never seen anyone so angry in his life. The man grew purple in the face. He screamed at the assassin, spittle flying, as the assassin stood there coldly with his arms crossed over his chest. The other two black-robes were angry, but not nearly so furious as their chief. Mags huddled over his bound hands and arms, only cautiously taking peeks covertly through his hair. Right now would be a really, really bad time to attract attention.
When the chief black-robe had reduced himself to impotent spluttering, the first assassin held out his hand behind him, and the second reached into the front of his tunic, extracted a folded paper, and set it into the waiting hand. The first one handed it to the black-robe.
The black-robe seized it and tore it up.
Or, to be more precise, he attempted to tear it up. Grunting with effort and struggling with what looked like a simple piece of parchment or vellum, he couldn’t manage the tiniest rip. That only made him fume more. And when he tried to wad it up and throw it at the assassin’s feet, not only would it not allow itself to be wadded, when he tried to throw it down anyway it wafted back to the assassin’s hand, and the assassin presented it all over again, with a smug smirk.
Mags felt his mouth go dry. The hell?
The other two black-robes behind their leader were just as startled by this and grew pale, and all the armed men stepped back involuntarily, even their captain. It was perhaps an unlikely reaction to something so outwardly harmless—but what kind of magic (and it had to be magic!) could make a fragile piece of paper act as if it were stronger than steel and fly like a feather?
The chief black-robe was the only one who was not impressed. He spat out some words, but he snatched the paper out of the assassin’s hand and opened it. His face contorted into such a scowl it scarcely looked human as he read the paper. When he spoke again, looking up at the first assassin, his words dripped vitriol, and there was the promise of future mayhem behind them.
“We will challenge each other one day when you are not hiding behind the robes of the Son of the Sun.” Both of the black-robe’s fists were clenched, and now his fury was mingled with frustration. A dangerous combination.
The assassin continued to smirk and shrugged. “When our task is complete, we shall be gone. You may seek us out if you dare. Your little pets will find a warm welcome, and I should enjoy covering my books with your skin. In the meantime, I will take my property.” He pointed with his chin at Mags.
The black-robe turned his back on the assassin; Mags assumed that he thought he was expressing utter contempt, though what he looked like was a spoiled child who wasn’t getting his way for once.
Well, now wouldn’t be the time to tell him.
But he gestured vaguely in Mags’ direction, as if to say “Take it, I don’t need it,” and stalked into Franse’s former home, shouting at the top of his lungs, his voice echoing out through the tunnel entrance.
The other two black-robes followed him in, leaving Mags, his ca
ptors, and the assassins alone together.
A most uncomfortable silence hung over them all.
The man holding Mags’ rope dropped it abruptly, as if saying, “You take it! I don’t want it!”
The assassin just looked at the Karsite.
Now Mags couldn’t see the man’s expression very well from the position his head was in. But as the assassin handed the paper back to the second one, Mags actually heard his captor gulp, audibly.
That more or less suggested whatever look the assassin had been giving the Karsite, it had been enough to frighten and intimidate a hardened soldier. One who served black-robe priests who controlled demons.
It was also true that while the Karsite soldiers had been exuding an air of don’t make me kill you, the assassins had an aura of something else altogether. Something more like I just might kill you if I can’t think of anything better to do.
The assassin continued to watch Mags’ captor. Mags could see the Karsite actually starting to shiver. Then the soldier carefully bent down, not taking his eyes off the assassin, and picked up the end of the rope. He tugged on it, and Mags clambered clumsily to his feet. It was a good thing his hands were tied in front of him, or he’d never have been able to get up.
He tugged on it again and led Mags to the assassin. The assassin held out his hand, and the man put the end of the rope in it. Then the seemingly hardened, tough soldier actually skittered away as fast as he could, never taking his eyes off the assassin and never turning his back.
“Good.” The assassin raked the remaining soldiers with a cold glare. “We will be going. Follow, and you die. Tell your master that if he sends his little dogs after us, I will be picking my teeth with their bones.”
He led Mags over to the horses, but he didn’t move all that quickly, which at least meant Mags wasn’t falling over his own feet trying to keep up. He did fasten the end of Mags’ rope to the back of the horse’s harness—which was when Mags saw that both horses were still in wagon-harness and the men were riding them bareback. They must have just unhitched them and left the wagon somewhere in order to travel faster. How had they found out that the black-robes had found Mags in the first place?
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