The flask… What was it? It was not the same as the Dulcé had shared with us along the journey. This was the other one, the ornate one that was only for dire circumstances, and yet the Dulcé‘s own near drowning had not been dire enough. Baglos’s duplicity was so hard to accept. Now that I knew, I could recognize so many signs I’d missed. Yet, Baglos honored D’Natheil—loved him. I could not doubt that, for I had seen his grieving when he didn’t know I watched. I looked at the weeping Dulcé and the flask in his shaking hands, and in an instant I was filled with horrific certainty.
“No!” I screamed. “D’Natheil! My lord prince! Don’t! Oh, gods, don’t drink it!”
D’Natheil looked up in shock. He couldn’t have even known I was there, hidden in the shadows.
Baglos did not turn, but held the flask to the Prince’s lips. “Please, master, I beg you… before it is too late…”
But the silver flask clattered to the paving when Giano yanked Baglos away from D’Natheil. Giano shoved the Dulcé to the ground, then motioned to the gray-robed Zhid to take the Prince away. The two Zhid quickly wrapped the blindfold about D’Natheil’s straining eyes and dragged him into the darkness.
“Foolish, mundane woman!” cried Baglos. “Now they will use him to destroy the Bridge. We could have prevented it. You’ve ruined it all. I am forever cursed.”
“Oh, Baglos, was betrayal not enough?” I said. No matter how hopeless the day, I could not keep silent and watch murder done.
Baglos could not reply. Giano had turned his impassive gaze on him, and with no more feeling than a man crushing a gnat, flicked his knife across the Dulcé‘s throat. The blood of the Guide soaked quickly into the dry stones.
CHAPTER 34
Once Giano had followed his prisoner into the darkness, Maceron and his men settled for the night in the cavern, rolling out blankets, passing food around, and setting the watch. The sallow-faced young man who had been charged with my security loosened my bonds enough for me to sit on the floor. An eager smile played over his bony face; his tongue licked his full lips. As he refastened the ropes and knots, his tight little fingers brushed my arms, and soon his hands were wandering freely. I almost wept in relief when Maceron called him away.
I told myself to sleep. There was nothing else to do but mourn, and too much of that even to begin. Rowan, Kellea, Paulo, Jacopo… I could not bear thinking of them. And the cursed, foolish Baglos. Earth and sky, how blind I had been. Bound by his Dulcé‘s vows to a master who, by Baglos’s own account, had come near destroying the Prince once before. Loyal to Dar’Nethi traitors willing to sacrifice the prince they had damaged—and my own “mundane” world—in a scheme to save their precious city. Baglos must have been terrified that Dassine’s message would expose him. Had he called in Maceron’s henchmen to attack the herb shop, causing Celine’s death and Tennice’s injury? He had run out of the room during Dassine’s message and been dismayed at finding Zhid poison in Tennice’s wound. I grieved that Baglos was dead, for I wanted to rip out his traitorous heart.
But my anger waned quickly. What was the point? Perhaps I should have allowed Baglos to carry out his plot. Perhaps D’Natheil would be better dead at the hand of his servant than at the hand of his enemy. This time tomorrow none of it would matter. And the Bridge would fall.
Beyond grief and mystery lay the tale of enchantment and corruption from another world. Did I believe the disembodied voice that swore the doom of Gondai was the doom of my world, too? And if I believed it, did I care? For so long, I had cared about nothing and no one on this earth. But when I closed my eyes I saw Paulo embracing a nuzzling horse, and Kellea’s head on her dead grandmother’s lap, and Graeme Rowan’s eyes opening in wonder while grieving for his past, and Jacopo laughing as he helped me tend my garden and paying too much for people’s bits and pieces because they needed his silver more than he did himself… so much goodness in this world… and I knew I did care. Only now it was too late.
At some time in the night, torchlight, voices, and the bustling of horses and men announced another party of travelers. The activity took place far across the cavern mouth from where I sat, and the oppressive darkness swallowed up the new arrivals before I saw or heard anything to identify them. Baglos’s body lay in a forlorn heap not ten paces from me until two of Maceron’s men decided it was in the way, dragged it off, and dumped it under the colonnade.
The horrid night dragged on.
An hour had passed since the last change of the watch, and most of the torches had burned out. Rumbling snores echoed through the cavern, but sleep eluded me. When I closed my eyes, I would see Jacopo’s staring head, and Baglos weeping, and D’Natheil straining to catch sight of me as he was dragged into the darkness. My arms and shoulders were cramped from their awkward position bent backward and wrapped around the stone column, and the muscles in my stomach and chest ached and burned so that it was hard to get a decent breath. My fingers had gone numb, too, so when someone started fumbling at the ropes that bound my hands, it took me a few moments to notice it.
Certain that it was the sallow-faced man come to continue his loathsome caresses, I tried to scream, but a thin, cold hand clamped over my mouth. When my hands fell loose, I twisted around, grabbing and scratching the hands that kept such firm hold of me. All my anger and grief was channeled into that battle, but my cramped limbs had no strength, and my small and wiry captor seemed to have four hands. Soon I realized there were two of the bastards, one wrapping a bony arm about my throat and grasping a painful handful of my hair, the accomplice capturing my flailing hands and helping to drag me through the darkness and down a dark flight of steps.
“Would you stop?” The angry whisper hissed in my ear. “You’re going to bring the whole place down on us! If you promise to be quiet, we’ll let you go. Will you promise?” I nodded my head vigorously. But the attacker was no fool. I had barely opened my mouth to yell, when the hand smothered my mouth again, and the villain twisted one arm behind my back until I thought my shoulder would pop out of its socket. I was shoved through a stone passageway and into a room that smelled faintly of horses. A door fell shut behind me, and I spun about and backed away from it into the dark.
“Give us a light, boy,” said the person just in front of me—a woman, breathing rapidly. “She’d best see who’s here before she sets up a holler.”
The darkness parted to reveal a yellowish light… a sputtering lantern with a dark cloth being pulled off it. A flushed Kellea leaned against the wall in front of me, casually brushed her disheveled hair from her face, and massaged the hand that I had bitten three times over. Paulo squatted by the lantern, grinning despite an angry scratch on one cheek. And slumped in the corner on a pile of ancient straw was a wan, smiling Graeme Rowan. His shirt dangled from one shoulder, and blood-soaked rags were tied about his middle.
I was without words.
“She was determined not to be helped,” said Kellea. “I thought I might have to stick her a bit to shut her up. A good thing the boy was with me.”
“But I thought—” I felt a thorough fool. “One of the men up there—You were all—”
“I think I’m altogether more cooperative when being rescued.” The girl ignored my stammering.
“Indeed you are,” said Rowan in a whisper. “The best thing I ever did.” He shifted his position uncomfortably, and Paulo scrambled to support his shoulders.
“They told me you were dead,” I said. Forcing aside the first tears I’d shed in a lifetime, I squeezed Kellea’s small, hard hand, and then hurried across the room and ruffled a blushing Paulo’s hair. Then I knelt beside Graeme Rowan and gripped his hand and pressed it to my brow, giddy with relief that the three were not illusions. “How did you get here?” I said. “What happened to you?”