by Spurrier, Jo
It was hard to believe she’d only been here a few weeks, as Rasten insisted. It felt like years, like aeons. Her days were broken into too many fragments to count, each one of them lasting a lifetime.
Her power was growing. That was her only other measure of time, next to the sigil that throbbed on her back. Her control was increasing, too, but not in the way she’d expected. Early on, Rasten had learned to read her, and learned to balance the forces of pain and power within her to keep her poised at the crest of the wave. On the journey to the Greenstone — it seemed a lifetime ago, as distant and unreal as a dream — he’d told her, if you want to ride it, you have to let it carry you. Now, at last, she was beginning to understand what he meant. She was learning to let the power carry her with it as it surged and roared within her, instead of overwhelming and drowning her beneath the surging torrent.
But the understanding had come too late, or so it seemed to her. While she was learning to ride it, struggling to keep her head above the deluge, Kell sought to knock her off balance, or hold her under the singing flood. If she resisted his jabs and his traps, then he goaded her with barbs and thorns, tempting her into lashing out at him while the thrumming power made her mind simplistic and heavy-witted, little more than a pain-maddened beast. He teased and taunted her until she lashed out at him, and then he struck her down, stripping her power away and striking her with lashes of energy that seemed to rip through her mind like strands of barbed wire. And then, while she sobbed and shook and choked in the chains, they would begin the whole ordeal again.
Sierra dug her fingers into the blanket and crushed them in her fist. She knew she was playing into Kell’s hands, giving him what he wanted when her power broke loose in a futile attempt to savage him. But how could she control a beast driven to utter madness? She knew what he wanted — he wanted her to give up, surrender, offer up what he demanded with no reservation. He meant to break her in like a wild horse, and he wouldn’t stop until she grovelled at his feet.
Understanding that was the simple part — countering it was another matter. She’d been trying for days to keep the beast contained, to keep it from launching at him with teeth and claws, but to no effect. At this point Kell could control it better than she could — it leapt to his bait every time, while she fought a perpetually losing battle to keep her power in hand.
I’m getting weaker, Sierra thought, digging her fingers into the blankets and crushing them in her fist. The effort made her tremble — the weeks of strain and exhaustion were taking a toll. Twice that day she’d fainted in the chains, and woke to Rasten rousing her with smelling-salts and cold water. In the last week he’d had to force her to eat, and she’d thrown up the watery gruel again as often as not. I’ve been holding on so far … but for how much longer? Just how much more of this can I take? The way things are going, I’m afraid my mind will be the first to break.
No. She clasped her hands to her head, as though she could squeeze the thought from her mind. No, don’t think like that. I can do this. I have to do this. I don’t have a choice. Black Sun, give me strength. I know I’ve been given this power for a reason … please just give me the will I need to see this through … Sierra squeezed her eyes closed and pressed her face into the mattress, but the effort of it set her back throbbing again. With a shuddering breath, she forced herself to relax, trying to empty her mind. She just needed to sleep. Things … no, things wouldn’t look any better in the morning, but with some rest she would be better able to face it.
As she willed her limbs to feel heavy and limp, the fingers of her right hand began to sting.
For a moment Sierra didn’t move. Just ignore it, she told herself. She’d grown used to random pains and cramps, but the location was odd. Her knuckles sometimes ached from digging her nails into her palms, but this felt different.
When the sting lingered, Sierra lifted her head with a grunt of effort to squint at her fingers. Her nails were whole, untorn and perfectly clean, as both Kell and Rasten insisted she pay strict attention to cleanliness even when it was the last concern in her mind. The nails felt for all the world as though she had torn them down to the quick.
Then she felt the tingling heat behind the echo of sensation.
Sierra sat up swiftly as her stomach twisted into a knot. Her back protested, but the sudden fear that gripped her drove it from her mind. With the servant gone, the three sorcerers were the only souls living in the basement, and neither Kell nor Rasten had any reason to shred their fingernails until they bled. The sensation must be coming from someone else in the cells. Kell had already made her turn on Rasten — did he intend to make her torture an innocent next? By all the Gods, no, please … I can’t do it. Please don’t make me do it.
A sharp pain on her thigh cut through her panicked thought. It stung like a horse-fly bite, but when she looked there was nothing there. The pain remained, moving over her skin in a stinging path, as though someone was dragging something sharp across her thigh …
Only it wasn’t her thigh, was it? This was happening somewhere else, somewhere nearby.
How many people knew how the echo of sensation fed her power? Her stomach clenched with a sudden, icy dread. Not many. Not even her own family had understood how closely she sensed what those around her felt. What if it wasn’t some random injury, but a message that only she could read?
Her eye fell on the pail of charcoal Rasten had brought for the stove. Sierra snatched up a piece and retreated to the farthest corner of the cell. There, she emptied her mind and concentrated solely on the sensation, tracing the stinging path with the crumbling lump of charcoal. When she was done, she had drawn three letters on the pale skin of her thigh.
CAM
Shaking, she dropped the coal, sending it skittering across the floor.
Isidro had been trying to reach her, questing towards her mind when her defences were low with exhaustion. Each time she’d walled him out, willing him to forget her, afraid of what would happen if Kell felt his attempts to make contact. She’d thought it was his stubbornness and determination, demanding she explain herself or hoping there might be some way to free her. But what if she’d been wrong? What if he’d been trying to warn her? Oh, ye Gods, Cam … How in the Fires Below did they get to you? Then she thought of the passages she’d collapsed to block the trail, and scowled. ‘Tigers take you, you son of a bitch,’ she muttered. ‘I told you not to follow me!’
It could be a trap. What if Kell had sensed Isidro’s attempts at contact, and was trying to tempt her into rebellion? She had no way of knowing whose skin that name had been scratched into.
Or it could have been Cam’s last, desperate attempt to warn her before they put him on the rack.
Hurriedly, she wiped the word away. If Cam was here, she had to find him and get him out. Sierra knew all too well what use Kell would make of him. But how? Rasten could return at any moment. He rarely left her alone for long.
She drew a deep breath. One thing at a time. She could not risk Rasten finding her gone. If Cam was here, Rasten had to know of it. He would try to hide his presence from her, but if he suspected she already knew … Sierra shivered at the thought. Rasten would never allow her to interfere.
Sierra went to the door to listen, pressing her forehead against the chill metal of the bars. If it was a trap, Rasten would know she would want to act urgently — he and Kell could be lying in wait.
Sierra shoved herself away from the door with a growl of frustration. It would be foolish to swing into action without gathering all the information she could. Whatever Rasten was doing now could hint at what his master was planning — but if he sensed her looking in it might give her game away.
Sierra paced two swift laps of the cell, and then lay down on the bed once more. It smelled of sweat and sex, and the linens were spotted with dried blood. Sierra’s back was such a painful ruin of wounds and bruises that she could only lie face down, but that made it easier to block out the doubled vision that would alert him to her pr
esence.
She found him kneeling on a stone floor, his wrists tied behind his back and the end of the rope thrown over a beam overhead. Another rope around his neck forced his face down towards the floor, so all Sierra could see through his eyes was a blurred and shifting view of the flagstones.
She broke the contact hurriedly, trying to pull away before the welling sensations could make an impression on her mind, but Kell’s hard, panting breath told her enough. So, it’s just a brief amusement tonight, something to whet his appetite for tomorrow’s sport … If she was right, it gave her the whole night to find Cam and release him — but she had to deal with Rasten first. That was only the first of her problems: they were in the middle of the king’s wretched encampment. Sierra had escaped before, but only thanks to her power and the snowstorm that had concealed her. Isidro had been rescued, but while being transported through controlled territory with only a handful of guards, in such a state as to be no threat to anyone. Cam had neither of those advantages.
By the time Rasten returned, perhaps ten minutes later, Sierra had come no closer to finding a solution, but she had at least decided how to deal with him.
He avoided looking at her as he fumbled for the key, but once the door was open and he slunk inside, he slammed it shut behind him with a clang and clatter of metal.
Still ignoring her, Rasten hung the key on the hook and stripped off his clothes on his way to the stove. He poured hot water into a basin and began to bathe, while Sierra sat cross-legged on the bed and gnawed on one thumbnail, turning her face away to give him privacy in the Ricalani manner. She knew what must be done, but in his condition she had her work cut out for her.
Sierra didn’t look up until he was dressed again, and standing at the foot of the bed with a frown. Had he been alone Sierra guessed he would have thrown himself on the pallet and tried to sleep, but the arrangement Kell had imposed upon them meant they could no more escape each other than they could him.
Sierra patted the mattress beside her. ‘Come and sit.’
She could tell he didn’t want to, but there was nowhere else but the stone floor. Stiff and unwilling, as though every movement pained him, he settled beside her. Sierra reached for his shoulder, but swiftly — far more swiftly than she anticipated, given his ginger movements, Rasten seized her wrist. ‘Don’t touch me,’ he growled.
Sierra twisted in his grasp to wrap her fingers around his hand. ‘You ought to make use of the tools you have, you fool,’ she told him, and took his pain. All of it drained away — the ache of strained muscles in his shoulders, the raw skin where the rope had rubbed, along with everything else.
Rasten went immediately tense, fighting against it as Isidro often did, but he restrained himself as an icy touch of numbness spread along his nerves.
Once she was finished she had a good store of power, but she didn’t hold it for long. Rasten pulled her forward and pressed his free hand over her heart to drain the power from her. When it was done he let her go and slumped back onto the narrow bed.
Sierra drew a deep breath. This could go very badly, but either way, she would get what she wanted. ‘Is that all?’ she asked. ‘You take what you want and then roll over and go to sleep? You’ve spent too long among southerners, Rasten.’
He opened his eyes to scowl at her. ‘What in the hells are you talking about?’
‘Sex isn’t all about power and pain, Rasten. I can understand why you’d think it is, but it has other uses. How soundly will you sleep with that fresh in your memory?’
Still scowling, Rasten sat up. ‘You want to fuck? You haven’t had enough of the sport over the last few weeks? I’m surprised you can stand to be near me.’
‘I chose to be here, Rasten. I knew what I was letting myself in for,’ Sierra said. ‘All that business in the stocks doesn’t really compare to what I’m thinking of. Isidro was kind enough to oblige me, but I suppose he had more reason than you do to understand that comfort can be found in another’s arms, even if everything else in your life is awful and uncertain …’
He was suspicious, but something of what she said had intrigued him. ‘Well, if that’s what you want …’ he said with narrowed eyes, and he grabbed her hips and dragged her to the centre of the bed, shoving her down onto the rumpled covers.
‘Stop!’ Sierra said, and she placed both palms against his chest and gave him a shock of power. Rasten pulled back with a muttered curse. ‘Sneaky as a crow, aren’t you?’ he hissed. ‘Where did that come from? I drained you dry not two moments ago.’
‘The touch only works on pain already present,’ Sierra told him. ‘Not if you give those injured muscles another reason to ache. Now …’ She stroked her hands down his chest. He was as tense as a colt fresh to harness, with no way to tell if he would remain gentle or erupt into rage. ‘Kiss me.’
It was a rather strange experience. Rasten didn’t know how to be gentle and, even as she guided his hands, she could feel the urge for violence lurking beneath his skin. As power and sensation climbed within her, she realised that she was testing him in a way that had nothing to do with her plans for the rest of the night. Entirely without intention, she had found a way to discover whether he was drawn into Kell’s shadow so far that he could not experience pleasure without causing pain to another. But as he pressed her down onto the woollen mattress, as she took his hands and showed him how to stroke and caress, he showed her part of him could find joy without breaking others down to reach it.
All the while she let her power rise, scaling higher and higher until Rasten reached his climax — and then she pressed her hands to the sigil carved into his back. She sent a bolt of power tearing through him, knocking him unconscious and stripping away his power with one blow.
Rasten collapsed on top of her, utterly limp and so heavy that she couldn’t breathe, and the memory of that awful moment with Isidro struck her like a knife to the gut. Gasping, Sierra scrambled out from under him, terrified that she had not hit hard enough, and that at any moment he would come to and realise what she had done.
But Rasten never stirred. She pulled the blanket over him, and donned his discarded shirt. It left her legs bare, but covered enough for warmth. Barefoot, Sierra opened the door, and the click of the turning lock seemed very loud in the sudden silence of the cells. Outside, she closed her eyes, searching for any sign that Kell had felt her use of power, but her faint connection to him was quiet and still. He was asleep, sated from his session with Rasten.
She locked Rasten inside and took the key with her. With no pockets and no sash, she had nowhere to tuck it away, and so she created a tiny mage-light and fixed it to the tip to make a kind of lantern. If she had to carry the wretched thing, it may as well be useful.
Sierra tried to sense Cam, but nothing came to her — even the echo of the scratches had faded. It could mean he was already in bad shape, growing so weak that the pain had ceased to bother him, but it seemed more likely her dalliance with Rasten had drowned it out.
Sierra began by tracing the familiar route to the torture-chamber. The rooms around it were used for storage, and Sierra peered into each one briefly before moving on. All seemed disused, and were icy cold except for the chamber from which the furnaces were fed.
With no sign of life in any of those, Sierra began to hunt through the cells instead, but already she felt a sinking sense of failure in the pit of her belly. She couldn’t imagine Rasten or Kell leaving a prisoner like Cam out on display. It was an unnecessary risk. But what did that leave? A hidden chamber? If that was the case, what hope did she have of finding him?
Her heart was pounding in her throat, but Sierra forced herself to stop and think. What would Isidro do? He’d make a methodical search, going over every inch from one end to the other, and he wouldn’t give up until he found what he sought.
First of all, he must be near a furnace. Cold would weaken him, and he couldn’t be allowed blankets for warmth. The furnace that heated Rasten’s cell was the same one that served Kell
’s apartment, but that would put him close to Sierra, a risky option.
The only other furnace burning in the dungeons was the one near the torture-chambers. Sierra had already been through that section and found nothing, but it seemed the best bet and she headed back there once again.
She began this time with the chamber nearest the door. The storerooms were a hopeless jumble of weapons, chains and ruined clothing, which the old servant had saved for some inexplicable reason. Sierra had to fight through it to thump against the rear of the cupboards and cabinets in search of any hidden doors. She searched and searched, peering into every crevice, but all her instincts told her that she was alone.
Sierra was considering the risk of calling Cam’s name when a peculiar sound from the hall caught her attention.
Her first thought was of Rasten, awake and coming in search of her. Hastily, she snuffed her light and crept to the chamber door.
The hall was still and silent and she listened, not daring to breathe, as a groan of rusting metal came from the main door.
The thought that anyone would creep into this place confused her so thoroughly that Sierra just stared dumbly at the entrance. It was only when the lock opened with a muffled click that she remembered her situation, and by then there was no time to consider her options — all she could do was close the door and hide behind it.
Someone thrust the doors open and the gleam of a lantern spilled over the passage, creeping through the gap beneath the door. Sierra laid herself flat on the grimy stone and peered out under it.
All she saw were two pairs of winter boots, smeared with mud and melting snow.
The two intruders each seemed to be carrying a burden of some sort, although Sierra couldn’t see enough to tell what they might be. They moved with a ponderous slowness, making no noise other than the sound of laboured breathing and the scuff of leather on stone. Once inside, they closed the door and stood still for a moment, then went into another of the side-chambers, taking their light with them.