Arms wrapped around his knees, the darkness pressed in. That, too, was a familiar sensation. He put it out of his mind. A barely heard ringing tickled his ears, and above this the slow thump of his heart.
After a time, the few noises he could hear faded to the voices in his mind. Those voices spoke their concern for Leitos and the Brothers, and some fretted over his own quandary.
Slowly, anger rose up, and he turned his attention to it. Worry rarely did a man any good, and while anger served its own dark master, at times it had a way of providing strength, even as it exacted a price. Right now, Adham was willing to pay whatever fee his wrath demanded.
By the time the rattle of a bar being removed from the door sounded within his tiny cell, he was grinding his teeth to the point of pain. As the door swung open, allowing a wedge of pale light to slice through the widening gap, his muscles clenched into tight knots. When he saw the narrow Fauthian face, Adham sprang.
The guard’s impassive expression flashed away to stark surprise. Dropping the torch, he reached for his dagger. At the same time, his lips parted to sound the alarm.
By then Adham was on him, fingers buried in the flesh of the man’s skinny neck. Eyes popping and shot through with hot blood, his teeth bared like a wolf, Adham wrung that throat, twisting, ripping.
The Fauthian forgot his dagger and clamped his hands onto Adham’s wrists, tried to pull them off. Adham drove forward and slammed the guard against a wall. The gagging Fauthian lashed out, his fists fluttering like a pair of startled birds.
“Where is my son, you filthy yellow worm?”
The guard, eyes bulging, answered with strained gurgles. Even if he freed the man, his crushed windpipe would not allow him to answer.
But Adham did not want an answer, he wanted weapons. Still, his fury drove him to shout. “Answer me!”
Other guards began to spill from a doorway from farther down the corridor. They rushed to aid their fellow, shouting and drawing swords.
Adham rammed the top of his head against the Fauthian’s face, once and again, each blow bringing the crunch of shattering bone. His fingers sank deeper, and the Fauthian’s mouth gaped, his tongue wagged. Adham darted his head forward again, driving that bit of pink flesh against the man’s teeth. The Fauthian’s eyes rolled.
Before the others could reach him, Adham snatched the Fauthian’s dagger, slashed his throat, then threw him before his companions. The lead guard danced to avoid his fallen companion, but fell in a sprawl. One after another, the guards tripped, adding to the growing tangle of arms and legs.
Adham sprinted down the corridor. Curses chased him, but nothing else. He paused at a crossing corridor. Right or left? Gloom marked one way, and torches brightened a distant junction in the other direction.
Adham ran full out into the light, and soon reached the intersection. Here he had only one choice, a wide stairwell leading up. He took the stairs two at a time, thinking up had to be better than down, when escaping a prison.
At the top of the stairs, he crashed into a massive set of double doors. He expected resistance, but they banged open, revealing a circular hall alight with scores of torches burning between grotesque sculptures. At the center of all that radiance stood a ring of smoothly tapered pillars, rising up to meet an open portal in the domed ceiling-the heart of the palace. Within that columned ring knelt the blindfolded Brothers of the Crimson Shield, most bloody and battered, all with their hands tied behind their backs.
Shouts rang out behind Adham, pushing him into the hall. He sensed a trap, but surely it was not for him. Or so he thought, until the architect of that snare spoke.
“It seems the resourcefulness of you Izutarians is not overstated,” Adu’lin said to one side.
Dagger at the ready, Adham searched for the Fauthian leader, but he remained out of sight.
“I now see why the Faceless One prizes your people,” Adu’lin went on. “I dare say that if you ice-born savages abandoned your futile resistance and embraced the High Lord of this world, his rewards would be beyond measure.”
“My people will fight until the last drop of our blood soaks the ground at our feet. To the Thousand Hells with you and your false god.”
“A pity,” Adu’lin said, not sounding put out in the slightest. He emerged from behind the statue of a nightmarish creature of horns, tattered wings, and bony limbs. Once he revealed himself, more armed Fauthians crept from the shadows.
Adham glanced over his shoulder. The guards he had thwarted stood behind him, looking eager to begin whatever it was Adu’lin had in store.
“Until the last drop of my blood,” he growled, and feinted toward them. They leaped back as one, but he had already spun around and was running for Adu’lin.
At Adham’s brazen attack, the Fauthian leader’s smug smile fell off his face. Adham loosed a battle cry and raised his dagger. If a man was to die this night, he meant it to be Adu’lin.
So great was his wrath, Adham barely noticed the Alon’mahk’lar step from behind a statue. Coarse reddish hide slashed with black, the demon-born moved between Adham and Adu’lin, a great sword held in its six-fingered hand. That weapon, fully as long as Adham was tall, swept upward.
“Do not kill him!” Adu’lin warned sharply.
The creature hesitated, and that was all Adham needed. He buried his dagger in the demon-born’s belly, and the Alon’mahk’lar bellowed. Before Adham could wrench the dagger loose, the Alon’mahk’lar smashed a fist against his shoulder. A loud popping noise filled Adham’s head, and fiery agony rushed through every inch of his body. The blow flung him through the air, and he bounced off a pillar. He collapsed to the stone floor, and fought to regain his feet.
The Alon’mahk’lar stalked close, protuberant black eyes slit by golden pupils. A double set of horns grew from its skull. One set spiraled upward, and the second set curved down around its thick neck. Its belly still bore Adham’s dagger. The beast raised its sword, preparing to cleave Adham in two.
“Hold,” Adu’lin shouted, arresting the demon-born’s attack. “The Faceless One offers handsome rewards for the living blood of the Valera line. Besides,” he added, “I promised our guest a harsh lesson, which I still mean to deliver.”
Adham gulped a breath while the Alon’mahk’lar was distracted. Envisioning the course he would take, Adham moved abruptly, teeth gritted against fresh agony.
He caught the hilt of the dagger, gave it a twist, and tore it from the demon-born’s guts. The Alon’mahk’lar floundered back with an eye-watering cry. In spite of Adu’lin’s command, the creature swung its sword. Adham flung himself aside, cringing at the sword’s fleeting brush over the back of his head.
He was up again in an instant, clumsy but moving toward the bound Brothers, whose blindfolded heads were turning this way and that.
The Alon’mahk’lar roared behind him. With the barest measure of caution, he slashed the bindings holding one man’s wrists, then another’s.
Wild shouts went up all around him, from the Fauthians and the freed Brothers. After the shouts came the sounds of fists pummeling flesh, steel hewing muscle and bone. Screams erupted from the wounded and dying.
Adham did not waste a moment to see who suffered the worst of the spreading melee. Once he had freed three Brothers, he knew he would never free them all.
His knife had just started to part another cord, when clawed fingers tangled through his hair and wrenched him off the ground. That huge fist turned him, until he was staring into the Alon’mahk’lar’s face.
Growling low in his throat, Adham thrust his dagger deep into one of the creature’s eyes, and deeper still, until only the hilt and cross guard jutted from the socket. The Alon’mahk’lar spasmed violently, throwing Adham aside.