The battle soon spread to both ships. Somehow in the confusion, Micum and Seregil found each other and fought shoulder to shoulder, back to back, as the precariously balanced fight raged on.

For a time it seemed that it would go on indefinitely, but in the midst of the melee one of Rhal's seamen killed the captain of the Plenimaran ship. At almost the same moment, Micum struck down the commander of the marines. Confusion spread among the remaining enemy and they finally surrendered.

A cheer went up from the Lady as the surviving enemy sailors and soldiers threw down their weapons in surly submission. Whooping and howling their triumph, Rhal's men surged forward to loot the vanquished ship.

Exhausted, Seregil and Micum left them to it and jumped back aboard the Lady.

"By the Flame, that was a proper fight," Micum gasped, nudging a severed hand out of the way with his foot before collapsing on a bulkhead.

Looking his friend over, Seregil saw that Micum had come out with no more than a cut over one eye. He'd taken a shallow cut across the shoulder himself.

Stripping off his tunic and shirt, he glanced at it, then held a wad of cloth against it to stanch the bleeding.

"Too close quarters for my taste," he said, collapsing on the deck with his back to the bulkhead.

Rhal appeared from out of the surrounding confusion and strode over to where they sat. "Well, we caught your ship for you but there's still better than twenty of her crew left standing," he informed Seregil. "I know we don't want to be weighed down with prisoners, but I'll tell you straight that I won't be a party to the execution of beaten men."

"Neither will I," Seregil told him wearily.

"I say strip whatever we need off her, take the sails, and set the crew adrift on her with food and water. How long will repairs to the Lady take?"

Rhal rubbed his jaw, looking around at the damage. "We'll have to step a new mast and rig the new sails. No sooner than sunup tomorrow."

"How many days to Plenimar?"

Rhal eyed the sky. "Barring foul weather, I'd say three days, maybe four. Running with Plenimaran sails could save us a fight or two."

Seregil looked to Micum, but the big man merely shrugged.

"Do it, then," Seregil told the captain. "And put the Plenimarans to work, too."

39

Hands. Hands on him, touching, seeking, tormenting.

Alec wrapped his arms around his knees, curling tightly in the darkness of the tiny cabin as he fought to block out the memory of being touched and wishing he still had Thero for company. He'd seen no sign of the young wizard since that first night on board the Kormados.

Mardus and his people were subtle in their methods; in all the terrible time since his capture they hadn't once broken the skin, or drawn so much as a drop of blood. But inside he hurt.

Oh, yes. He hurt very much.

The dyrmagnos Irtuk Beshar, a walking nightmare, had straddled him with her withered hams, flaking fingers scrabbling over him in a grotesque parody of lust as she ripped her way into his mind, raping the memories from him. She'd kissed him afterward, thrusting a tongue like a ragged strip of moldy leather against his clenched teeth.

The necromancer, Vargul Ashnazai, assisted her in these interrogations and Alec soon came to fear him on a deeper level than he did the dyrmagnos or Mardus.

The former carried out her hallucinatory tortures with zest, but as soon as she'd finished,

Alec seemed to cease to exist in her mind. Mardus was more difficult to read. It was he who directed the tortures and put the questions to Alec, his eyes flat and soulless, his voice as gentle as a father's as he named the next obscenity to be carried out.

Otherwise, however, he treated Alec with a peculiar mix of distance and solicitude that bordered on courtliness. In the worst moments of torment,

Alec sometimes caught himself inexplicably looking to Mardus for rescue.

Ashnazai was different. In the presence of others, the necromancer maintained an impassive demeanor.

Left alone with Alec, the searing hatred spilled out like acid.

"You and your vile companion cost me great status that night in Wolde," he'd hissed in Alec's ear as the boy lay trembling in the darkness after one of the dyrmagnos' assaults. "At first I thought only of killing you, but now, you see, I am given by the Beautiful One to relish my revenge."

And relish it he did, until Alec came to dread the sight of him more than any of the others.

Ashnazai's attacks left no marks, drew no blood. Instead, he salted his spells with lurid descriptions of the murders he'd helped carry out at the Cockerel.

"It's a pity you didn't arrive earlier that night," he told Alec. "The old woman never said a word, but how that foolish son begged. And the girl! She stayed proud right up until they hacked off the old bitch's head, then she screamed, those great breasts of hers heaving. The men wanted to take her right there on the bloody floor—"

Held silent and immobile by the magic, Alec could only shudder as Ashnazai passed a clammy hand over his chest, then traced a hard line down his breastbone. "Did you ever take her on that floor, boy? No? Ah, well, I suppose other things happened there, eh? But then, snik, snik, snik, like so we had the heads off for the mantel decoration.

I must say, your reaction was all that I'd have hoped for. I nearly added your head to the collection, but then I thought of a more—how would you say?"

The necromancer traced the line down Alec's chest a second time with a look of almost dreamy pleasure.

"A more satisfying revenge. You shall pay for the difficulties you made, and be of great use."

The implication was clear enough. Thinking of the bodies Micum and Seregil had seen, with their chests split open, ribs pulled back on either side like wings, Alec wished they had killed him that first night.

The rounds of torture continued for several days and when they'd finished with him, Alec finally understood why Nysander had told Seregil and him so little. They wrung everything from him, though it was nothing more than the fragment of the prophecy.

"There now. Well done, Alec," Mardus said, smiling down at him when the dyrmagnos had finished. "But your Guardian is dead, this mysterious band of four he spoke of sundered, broken. Poor Seregil. Even if he did desert you in the end, he must be feeling a bit guilty at having brought such destruction down on so many of his friends."

Torn loose from any shred of hope or pride, Alec could only turn his face away and weep.

After the torture ceased, the soldiers became Alec's chief source of daily misery. Among them were Mardus' captain, Tildus, and the men-at-arms who'd bullied him in Wolde. With Seregil's training to guide him, he looked for a weak link among them, a man with some fatal streak of sympathy, but Mardus had chosen his personal guard with care.

A harsh, brutal lot, they'd crowded to the grate to listen when he was tortured. Now they were the ones who dragged him above for the daily airings on deck that Mardus insisted upon. They stood over him at meals, sniggered when he begged for a pail to relieve himself. Few of them spoke any Skalan, but they managed to get their crude jests and insults across.

A few of them made free with their hands, too, and laughed when he lashed out at them.

The worst among them was a hairy, muscular brute called Gossol. During the brief struggle at the Cockerel the night of his capture, Alec had smashed him in the mouth with the hilt of his sword and broken off the man's front teeth. Gossol held a grudge over it and made a special effort to torment him at every opportunity.

On the morning of Alec's sixth day aboard, Gossol showed up alone to escort him above. One look was enough to make Alec brace for trouble.