BOOK III: Danilo

21

Danilo Syrtis-Ardais roused at the sound of footsteps. He had been in the dark, or at least in the dim, uncertain light of this foul cell, for more days than he could count. His head had stopped throbbing where he had been struck, but the lump on his scalp was still tender. At first, he had been bound like a common criminal. He remembered feeling sick and dizzy, but whether from the blow to his head or from something poured down his throat, he could not tell.

He had a dim memory of rough hands hauling him upright and prying his jaws apart, then a hot, stinging taste redolent of kireseth.A thought had wavered at the edge of his fracturing consciousness that it was one of the distillations that suppressed laran.They must have forced it into him to prevent him from calling for help with his mind.

Wildly, as if his heart were straining outward, he reached out.

Regis . . .

Almost, he felt an answer. Almost.

Then the nightmares took him.

He’d slept uneasily, drifting in and out of such fevered madness that he thought he was once more in threshold sickness, only magnified a thousandfold. Was this what Regis had endured? He could not tell what was real, the stone walls with their film of greasy moisture or the flames of steel-edged glass that rushed at him, only to shatter into crystals of blood. One moment he seemed to be back at Castle Aldaran, the next, deep in the bowels of the Terran Headquarters Building or at the bottom of Lake Hali, struggling to breathe the fuming cloud-water.

He had screamed until his throat was raw, of that he was certain. Fire had lanced through his chest as if he were breathing, or perhaps spewing forth, the rage of the Sharra matrix. During one of his few lucid moments, he remembered falling down a crevasse along Scaravel Pass, although he could not imagine what he had been doing there. One rib was most likely cracked, and the muscles along his spine burned.

Someone fumbled with the door latch. It clicked open, making a sound like ice cracking. Danilo slitted his eyes against the bar of brilliance as the door inched open. Acid clawed at his throat. He tried to speak, to beg for help, but the only sound he heard was the abnormally loud wheeze of his breath.

The world twisted: a hand in his hair, tipping his face back.

No, don’t—

A voice reached him in the spinning darkness, a basso growl. “He can’t take much more of this. Our orders are to keep him secure, not turn him into a mewling idiot.”

Another voice rumbled an incoherent answer. The hand released him. He fell back on the thin pallet . . . fell endlessly between the stars.

After a time—an hour, a century—his gut settled. He opened his eyes, and the world no longer whirled unpredictably. A low, insistent sound lurked at the edge of his hearing. He should know what it was, that blanketing hum.

Danilo pushed himself to sitting. His mouth tasted like the inside of a banshee’s nest, all feathers and rotting flesh. His hands were free, although the skin over his wrists was shredded in strips.

How long had he been here? From the feel of his beard, a tenday at least, most likely two. His joints ached and his muscles felt pasty from disuse, but his vision was clear. He could think.

He was in a stone-walled room lit by a slitted, unglassed window on one side. With dark-adapted eyes, he made out a pallet, a bucket for waste and one of water. The water looked clean. He washed his face and hands.

He had been drugged but now was free of it. The humming sound must be a telepathic damper, like those used during Comyn Council meetings. Untrusting folk, the Comyn were so terrified of one Domain using laranto influence another that they insisted on using that infernal device. Still, he reflected as he stood and began to limber his arms and legs, it was better than the kireseththey had forced down him.

They.As far as he knew, he had few personal enemies, and those would not hold him in this cowardly manner but would challenge him outright. Regis, on the other hand, had many who wished him ill and who would not scruple to use someone Regis cared about against him.

Danilo paused in his exercises and swore softly. In all the years he had guarded Regis with his life, he had never considered himself at risk.

Who, then?His spine popped as he twisted slowly from one side to the other. And why?

Valdir Ridenow, the Pan-D arkovan League, and about a hundred other individuals, for the stance Regis had taken against Federation membership. Any one of the same number of claimants against whom Regis had ruled in the Cortes. The Aldarans, again? Probably not. The Terrans themselves—an agent of the Federation, trying to force Regis to withdraw his opposition?

Danilo threw himself back on the pallet. It all came down to the Federation . . . or did it? He raked his hair, filthy and too long, back from his face. Although clearer than before, his thoughts moved sluggishly. He was missing something vital, something he ought to know . . .

Regis would not give in to threats and intimidation. Danilo broke out in a humorless barking laugh at the thought of Regis being intimidated by a mere human, whether Terrananor Darkovan. They were amateurs compared to what Regis had already faced. Dyan Ardais would have spitted them on his sword before breakfast and thought nothing of it.

The thought heartened Danilo, for he had been the target—he refused to think of himself as a victim—of Dyan’s casual brutality. In the end, honor had won out, no small thanks to Regis. Amends had been offered and accepted. Danilo had mourned Dyan’s death.

Hold on,he urged himself. Regis will not stop until he finds you. He will come. He will. Nothing will stand in his way.

When the telepathic damper cut out, Haldred Ridenow appeared outside Danilo’s cell. Danilo wanted to pummel the man senseless. With restraint, he stepped back from the door, hands well away from his body, poised on both feet. He was not in shape to take on a determined assailant, but the stance, drilled into him over years of training, gave him a semblance of dignity.

Haldred spoke through the slitted window. “I see you’re awake. That’s good. I’ve come to fetch you to better surroundings. You’re to have a bath, a shave, and decent clothes.” His lip curled to emphasize the rank odor.

“Why?” The word came out as a croak. The screaming had been real, not another nightmare. “What do you want?”

“Everything will be explained to you in due time. Are you coming? Or have you grown so accustomed to your prison that you cannot leave it?”

“I will come.”

“Then I require your word of honor that you will not try to escape or offer any resistance. Not that you could do much in your present condition, but we don’t want you damaging yourself in a futile attempt. And you must submit to a blindfold.”

Seeing no other choice, Danilo agreed. Haldred bound his eyes with a cloth and then placed one of Danilo’s hands in the crook of his elbow. On uncertain feet, Danilo followed. He had not the slightest trust in his captor’s motives, but it was always better to know the enemy’s intentions. Haldred was indeed his enemy, although Danilo did not understand why.

They went along a corridor, then up several flights of stairs. Haldred was surprisingly solicitous, warning Danilo of the changes in flooring and supporting him when he stumbled.

Danilo surmised that he had been held somewhere beneath Comyn Castle, possibly in one of the old abandoned dungeons. The Castle itself was a warren with so many disused or forgotten sections that a prisoner could easily have been hidden without the inhabitants knowing. Regis—was Regis searching for him, even now? Or was Regis waiting for him, having brought about his release?