The power. The power in the room. She sensed the seething of the magic, the darkness despite its brightness. An aura greenish and ugly, stronger than any she’d ever seen, enveloped Jyrbian.

The guard pushed her hard in the small of her back. Inside the room, the din of the spell was even worse. Her own power crawled in her veins, wanting to respond, to protect, but she fought it down. She’d never felt anything like it, not even the magic that flowed about the Ruling Council. Such malevolence! Such evil!

Then she saw what-who-Jyrbian had brought her to see. Hand to her mouth to stifle a cry of anguish, she took a step forward.

Bakrell was tied to a slab of stone in the middle of the floor, its surface angled. He was naked, muscles bulging. His mouth stretched wide, teeth bared in a silent mask of anguish.

“I’m sure you remember Bakrell,” Jyrbian said smoothly. As he spoke, the aura of power around him ebbed and diminished.

Bakrell made a pitiful sound, an animal whimper. Except for the trickle of blood that oozed from the corner of his mouth, he might have been sleeping. Or dead.

Khallayne maintained her composure. She dug her toes into the soles of her boots, feeling the coldness of the floor. Fought to keep her face impassive because she sensed her safety and Bakrell’s life depended on it. She fought and lost. There was no way she could conceal her horror, her disgust, her nausea.

“I know him,” she choked out, horrified when her voice stirred him, made him open his eyes.

Jyrbian straightened, made some small gesture she noted only at the periphery of her vision, and the putrescence that was his power poured back into the room.

Bakrell’s body contorted, straining at his bonds with such ferocity that it seemed he burst. And just as suddenly, slumped pathetically.

“Jyrbian, please… “ Although every inch of her skin crawled with revulsion, Khallayne held out a hand to him. “Why are you doing this?”

Jyrbian took her hand, drew her close enough that he could put a hand on her shoulder. “Because it pleases me.” He turned toward his captive and asked, “Doesn’t it please you, too?”

Bakrell’s eyes were dull, the shine of life gone from them, and she knew he was dying. She’d seen too many, fallen in battle, their lives draining away, not to recognize the signs. Gaze locked with Bakrell’s, she whispered, “Jyrbian, please don’t do this. I’ll do whatever you want.”

“My dear, you have nothing left that I want. He, however, has information that might lessen his suffering, should he choose to share it.” His fingers tightened on her shoulder, then eased off into a caress.

She couldn’t stop the shiver of repulsion that ran down her spine. “What?”

“The location of Igraine’s camp.”

The greenish light, the malevolent power, leapt again. BakrelTs body arched up off the stone. Jyrbian grabbed Khallayne as she tried to do something, grabbing her around the waist with strength she hadn’t known he possessed.

“Bakrell, if you know, tell him!” she cried.

Bakrell didn’t respond. His body pushed up off the stone, held for long moments, then dropped. His eyes rolled up in his head.

“If you know, tell him! He’ll kill you!”

Bakrell simply shook his head. No.

Irritated, Jyrbian flicked his fingers.

Bakrell’s body spasmed. His muscles bunched as if they would rip through his skin. He screamed. And screamed. The sound reverberated around the small room, echoing, stabbing her ears, her heart, like daggers driven into her skull. So loud, so tortured a sound, that it persisted in her mind even after Bakrell went silent.

Jyrbian released her. He went to Bakrell, touched him as gently as a lover. “Don’t you want the pain to be over? Don’t you want this to end? All you have to do is tell me. Just tell me where I can find Igraine. I know you know where they were going. How else were you going to take Khallayne and Jelindra back?”

Unable to speak, Bakrell rolled his head back and forth. Back and forth. No.

His dull eyes stared out through swollen lids at Khallayne. For a moment, just a moment, there was recognition in his face. Horror. Understanding. “Forgive me,” he rasped, his voice a blood-filled whisper. With effort, he rolled his head back until Jyrbian was in his vision. “‘You won’t hurt her?” he rasped, and when Jyrbian agreed, whispered, “Near Schall. On the shore.”

His eyes slid shut. His head rolled heavily to the side. His chest heaved, then settled, and didn’t rise again.

For a moment, the silence in the room was overwhelming. With a triumphant malevolence, Jyrbian turned to the guard in the doorway. “Take a company immediately. Start tonight. Bring Igraine back to me, dead or alive. But the humans who guard him I want alive.”

The Ogre saluted smartly, disappearing into the dark corridor.

When his footfalls had died away, Jyrbian turned to Khallayne. “Allow me to escort you back to your apartment.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Sunlight pierced deep into tbe clear blue waters of the Courrain Ocean. As she often did in the mornings, the Xocli paused, her large, flat tail moving lazily in the current, and turned one of her three heads to watch the return of her fellow sea creatures, riding the warming beams of light down from the surface.

A stately leaffish drifted by; the rippling fins for which it was named gamboled like ornaments, waving a warm good morning.

The nightly, vertical migration had begun at dusk. Tiny fish, too small for the Xocli to actually see, rose, seeking food. Slowly, the small fish that fed on the tiny ones followed, and the larger creatures followed them in turn. Nighttime in the depths of the Courrain Ocean was a totally different world than the day.

She watched the nightly dance and the morning return, though the Xocli didn’t rise with nightfall, not unless there was a voice, calling to her-as one called to her this morning, faintly and dimly.

The caller was not nearby, perhaps not even on the water, but she could feel the call of its sadness; the sorrow touched her core. Motioning to her children, she set out across the ocean floor, allowing the current to pull her along, take her where it would. There was no hurry. The melancholy of the caller would tell her when to rise.

One of her heads snapped up a larval shrimp floating on a sea leaf that sparkled like sequins. The tiny morsel made her hungry for more. She opened her three mouths and gulped in water, enjoying the rush of it through the gills on her necks.

Spectral light played across the gossamer, transparent mantle that shielded the organs in the Xocli’s necks and torso. Streaming along behind her, the little ones, the children, frolicked in and out of the beams of sunlight, diving below the reef and popping back out above or behind it.

The children ranged wide, then circled back to her as she turned. Not only was she avoiding the colder area north of the reef, where a vent in the ocean floor sent inky fluid smoking toward the surface, but the melancholy from the surface was stronger, singing in her bones, a siren song that could not be ignored.

The young were miniature copies of her: three heads sitting atop long necks, golden scales and fins rippling with all the colors of the ocean. The transparency of their young skin, their developing mantles, made them difficult to see against the reef, save for the brightness of their eyes.

She felt, rather than heard, the cry of one of the children. Turning back rapidly, she counted. One, two, three, against the reef. Another out on the floor, examining a miniature “chimney,” the beginnings of a vent, from which pale particles drifted upward. Another, still farther away, swam lazily. That left one unaccounted for, the one who was bugling in pain and fear.