“Do you keep a large stable in the city?” asked Traneus.
“No, a friend and I have a breeding herd at his estate.”
“The war’s driven the price up. A few years’ worth of foaling will be worth-” Traneus broke off suddenly with a harsh gurgle, a black-fletched shaft protruding from his throat.
Shocked, it took Alec a few seconds to comprehend what had happened. Then the air was thick with the buzz and whine of flying arrows. Un-shouldering his bow even as he kicked free of the stirrups, he slid off his horse, looking for cover as he nocked a shaft on the linen bowstring. This stretch of road was wide and lonely, and the thick trees that lined it were good cover for their unseen attackers. Arrows seemed to be coming from all directions.
“Get down, all of you!” Seregil shouted. He jumped to the ground and dragged Aryn from the saddle. All around them, riders cried out in pain or alarm.
Alec knelt at Seregil’s side, using the enemy’s arrow flights to target the unseen archers.
“Where are they?” gasped Aryn.
“Everywhere!” Alec sent another shaft into the moving shadows between two trees. More of their escort were falling. Alec’s fine horse was bucking wildly, with an arrow in its glossy flank.
“But this is our fai’thast. Who would do this?” Aryn gasped.
“Doesn’t matter now,” Seregil told him, looking around sharply. “We’ve got to find cover.”
But there was nowhere to go. The enemy had somehow managed to surround them. As Alec watched helplessly, the rest of their small escort was cut down, Aurënfaie and Skalan alike.
“This way, and keep your head down,” Seregil hissed, grasping Alec and Aryn by the shoulders and propelling them toward the underbrush on their left.
They hadn’t gotten ten feet when Aryn staggered, clawing at an arrow that had pierced his upper thigh.
Seregil dragged him to the ground and covered the Gedre with his own body. “Alec, check the wound. Did it cut the artery?”
“Yes.” There was nothing they could do to save the man, and they both knew it. “We can’t stay here!”
“What would you suggest?” Seregil snapped as an arrow sang over his head and another narrowly missed Alec’s outstretched hand.
Then, unaccountably, the attack ceased as abruptly as it had begun.
Alec listened, but all he could hear were the cries of the wounded. Every member of their escort lay dead or dying. Aryn was dead. Seregil’s friend Rien lay faceup with three shafts protruding from his chest.
“It’s us they want,” Alec whispered, standing slowly, an arrow nocked ready. “The only way they could have missed hitting us was if they meant to.”
Seregil put his back to Alec’s, braced for the next attack. “Who are you? What do you want?”
There was no answer. Sweat trickled down between Alec’s shoulder blades as he waited for an arrow to find him.
“Show yourselves!” Seregil demanded, and was again answered with silence.
One of the Gedre riders pulled himself slowly to his feet, bleeding from a gut wound, and tried to reach them. An unseen archer put a shaft between his shoulders and he fell without a cry. Another man tried to drag himself to cover, only to be hit by two shafts that came from the opposite side of the road.
And still, not one shaft had hit either of them.
“They want us alive. If we can get into the woods, we might have a chance.”
“Left or right?” Alec whispered.
Seregil looked around. The forest was thick here, and there was no telling what lay beyond the road. He signed “left” and they broke into a run as they made for the trees.
They were within a few yards of cover when he heard a sharp clicking noise, like someone trying to strike a fire. Then the air in front of them thickened and turned black. Out of that blackness rushed two huge, hideously misshapen forms, each a misbegotten, misjointed parody of a man.
“Dra’gorgos!” Seregil cried, half in warning to Alec, half in shocked recognition. He’d run afoul of one before and hoped never to again.
He barely had time for the realization before the things were on them and the sun went out like a snuffed candle. Blind and disoriented, he seemed to feel a hundred hard, fetid hands clutching at him.
“Alec!” he yelled, striking out with his sword.
His blade hit something and exploded. There was no other word for it. For an instant he saw a flash like lightning. And perhaps it was, because the jolt of it sent a searing pain up his arm to the shoulder and slammed his teeth together so hard he bit the inside of his cheek.
“Alec!” Unseen arms were tightening around him like bands of iron, crushing the air from his lungs and reducing his voice to a hollow wheeze. “Alec, where are you?”
Lost in blackness and choking on the charnel stench, Seregil heard a distant scream.
Blind, chilled, and rapidly losing consciousness, Seregil tried to get to Korathan’s wands inside his coat, hoping that breaking them all at once would alert the prince that something had gone terribly wrong. But the monster’s grip was too tight. Desperate to leave some sign that would be recognized, he slipped Klia’s ring from his finger and let it fall, and with it a prayer that it be found by a friend.
Alec had just had time to drop his bow and draw his sword before the blackness bore down on him.
“Seregil!” he yelled, caught in darkness and the grip of the black nightmare. A dra’gorgos-or at least that’s what he thought he’d heard Seregil shout before the world went black. He tried to fight, but something hit his arm, numbing it except for a burning pain in his hand.
The hilt slipped from his fingers and his consciousness with it.
CHAPTER 8 No Stomach for Magic
SEREGIL WOKE IN darkness, chilled to the bone and caught in a wave of gut-wrenching nausea. His mouth was filled with the mingled bitterness of bile and iron; his teeth grated against a thin, flat metal plate that pressed on his tongue. He shuddered at the sensation and another wave of nausea threatened. The sour reek of vomit was strong, and a rushing, pounding sound filled his ears. Wherever he was, it was dark and moving. As his mind cleared, he recognized the sounds.
A ship. Bilairy’s Sack, I’m in a ship’s hold. How the-?
Moving his arms and legs carefully, he ascertained that although no bones seemed to be broken, he was shackled hand and foot. Gagging, he tried to sit up, but his head felt too heavy. He collapsed back on his side and felt rough planking against his bare skin. Metal dug into his temple, and the plate between his teeth shifted, cutting the side of his mouth. He was naked, too.
Just his luck.
They’ve got me in branks.
He rolled slowly onto his back, trying to ease the pressure of the iron cage around his head. Rough chain bit into the underside of his jaw, holding the wretched apparatus in place.
The last thing he recalled was the ambush in the forest. How in the name of the Four had he gotten on a ship? And in this condition, too?
What became of Phoria’s message sticks? he wondered dully. And what will she do when no word arrives?
He was still too addled from the dra’gorgos attack to get further than that, but knew from experience that the illness was probably his usual reaction to magic. His first thought was that someone had sent him here by a translocation spell, but if so, the effects would be wearing off by now. Instead, he was still wretchedly sick, and it was making it hard to concentrate. And since he wasn’t given to seasickness, something must be acting on him, probably some spell on the shackles. He never knew how a new magic would affect him, but more often than not it was unpleasant. This certainly fit the pattern.
He pulled weakly at the shackles and heard the dull drag of heavy chains against wood. There was a long bar between his hands, making it impossible to use them effectively, and another between his feet. He dragged his right hand awkwardly to his face and used his lips and cheek to examine the thick metal band around his wrist. It was a handspan wide, and he could feel neither lock nor seam. He twisted his wrists and the bands cut into his flesh; too tight to wiggle out of, even if he disjointed his thumbs. That was almost a relief; it had been a long time since he’d had to use such drastic measures and he was in enough pain as it was.