Captain Tildus shouted something in Plenimaran and a contingent of marines lined up in two ranks flanking the square of canvas. A few sailors drifted over, but not many. Mardus nodded to Alec's guards and they moved him in front of the soldiers to the left.
Vargul Ashnazai went below through a different hatchway. While he was gone, guards brought up another prisoner and stood with him opposite
Alec.
It was Thero.
Alec's relief at seeing him was short-lived, however. The young wizard's face was as vacant as before beneath the iron bands of the branks, and there was the gleam of madness in his wide, staring eyes. A grizzled man in nondescript robes stood just behind him; another necromancer, he guessed.
Ashnazai returned, followed by two marines carrying a large chest on carrying poles. The box and poles were both covered with gold and unfamiliar symbols. This was set down in front of the dyrmagnos. As the others began chanting, Ashnazai opened the chest and lifted out a crystal diadem that glittered in the sunlight.
"Behold the Crown," he intoned reverently, placing it on the canvas before Irtuk Beshar.
The sight of it wrenched at Alec's heart. This was the mysterious object Seregil had risked his life to find for Nysander.
Ashnazai next lifted out a bowl made of crudely fired clay and placed it inside the circlet. "Behold the Cup!"
Last came a loop of golden wire on which had been strung a number of wooden disks. "Behold the Eyes of Seriamaius!"
Alec let out an involuntary gasp as the dyrmagnos began placing them, one by one, inside the cup.
Mardus turned to Alec. "You recognize those, I'm sure. Just think, if the two of you hadn't stolen one, you and poor Thero would not be standing here now. All those lives lost, all that destruction, Alec, because of that one impetuous act. Ah, but
I'm forgetting that it was Seregil who committed the actual theft. That's what you told Irtuk Beshar, that you simply helped. But it all comes out the same in the end, doesn't it. Here you are with me, and there he is, safely back in Rhiminee, no doubt thinking himself very lucky. Can you still be loyal to this faithless friend of yours?"
"Yes." Alec met Mardus' gaze levelly in a show of bravado he didn't feel. Past Mardus, past the ship's rail and out over the wide sea he could see the tiny dot of an island on the horizon, too far away to be of any use.
Just like Seregil.
A wave of longing rolled over Alec, bringing the sting of tears to his eyes. All those days with Seregil taken for granted the memory of them made him ache as he stood stranded among these enemies.
The dyrmagnos placed her withered hands over the crown for a moment, then called out harshly in her own tongue.
There was a scuffling sound from belowdecks, followed by a terrified cry. A moment later Gossol was hauled on deck by several soldiers. Bootless and stripped to the waist, he looked around wildly at the gathering before him. When he saw the dyrmagnos, however, he went ashen, his great barrel chest heaving in voiceless terror.
"We were debating the choice of victim, but you have spared us the tiresome inconvenience of a lottery," Mardus informed Alec pleasantly.
"This is only a preliminary sacrifice, of course. The blood of this ignorant lump has neither the power nor purity of, say, a half Aurenfaie boy or an Oreska wizard, but it's sufficient for our purposes today."
"That's why I'm still alive?" Alec managed, his voice scarcely more than a dry croak.
"Certainly," Mardus assured him, as if promising him some gift. "You and Thero are being reserved for the supreme moment. The power of your blood, Alec! The long years sacrificed. Yours will be deaths of highest honor. You should pay careful attention to this ceremony. Yours will be very much the same."
Gossol was thrown down on his back and held by four marines marked apart from their fellows by white headbands.
A fifth man knelt holding a gag across the condemned man's mouth.
In the midst of his fear, Gossol suddenly locked eyes with Alec and shot him a look of pure hatred. The power of it tightened Alec's throat and he quickly averted his eyes, hating the guilt washing through him.
As the incomprehensible chanting went on, he looked instead at Thero, trying to guess what was going on in the wizard's addled mind. Thero stood motionless, locked mute by whatever magicks the necromancers had placed over him. Only the spasmodic twitching of his fingers clutching the front of his cloak suggested that he comprehended anything around him.
Irtuk spoke again and the second necromancer lifted something from where she sat. As he passed it to Ashnazai, Alec saw it was a strange axlike weapon. The heavy, curving head had been chipped out of black obsidian and bound onto an iron haft. Despite its obvious weight, Vargul Ashnazai raised it above his head with practiced ease. With no other paean than Gossol's strangled scream, he struck and the black blade cleaved open the doomed man's breastbone as neatly as a wood cutter would split an oak stave.
Alec turned his head quickly, squeezing his eyes shut until his head throbbed. But he could not escape the sounds that followed. Gossol's screams rose to a squeal before they choked off to a gurgle. There was the dry-stick sounds of bones breaking, and the wet suck of a carcass being opened. Eyes still closed, Alec remembered the feel of Vargul
Ashnazai's cold finger tracing a line down his bare chest.
He suddenly felt very light. Opening his eyes, he saw the sanded planks of the deck rushing up to meet him.
40
Beka's scouts spotted the convoy of horse-drawn wagons that morning and trailed it as it wended south through the coastal foothills. There were only ten of them, Gilly reported, and only one decuria of cavalry to guard them, a fact that confirmed Beka's assumption that they were deep in the Plenimarans' northern territory now.
The country they'd come into was steep and well wooded. Beka let the scouts keep the wagons in sight, biding her time until they stopped for the night.
The wagoneers made camp in a little forest hollow by a stream just before sundown. Leaving her main group of riders a quarter of a mile down the road, Beka chose her fastest runners, Zir, Tobin, and Jareel, to accompany her, and left Rhylin with orders to disrupt the camp as soon as she had accomplished her mission.
Darkness fell, and the wagoneers lit cook fires for the evening meal. Their escort posted a few guards up and down the road.
Beka and her raiders stole through the darkness toward the supply wagons, each of them armed with jars of firestones they'd captured in a similar raid two days before. Reaching the wagons, Beka looked underneath the nearest and saw unsuspecting wagoneers cooking their evening meal less than twenty feet away.
With Zir keeping watch, Beka and the others split up and scattered firestones over the crates and bales in the wagon beds. Ribbons of smoke curled up quickly, but the wind was in their favor, blowing it away from the camp.
Rhylin had been watching for it as his signal, however. Beka's group had hardly finished their work before a frantic whinnying came from the Plenimaran horses picketed nearby.
Whooping and waving torches, Rhylin and his decuria drove the draft animals into the camp, scattering startled soldiers and drivers. Flames shot up in the wagons, adding to the confusion.
Before the Plenimaran guards had time to act, Braknil's decuria charged in with bows and loosed a hail of arrows to cover me retreat of the others.
Beka and her group skirted the camp to meet Tealah, who was holding horses for them down the road.
An enemy shaft nicked Zir in the shoulder as he swung up into the saddle. Tobin took an arrow through the heart before he'd reached his horse.
Beka saw him fall but there was nothing she could do but look after the living.
"Retreat! Come on, before they get their horses back," she yelled. A Plenimaran swordsman charged at her, only to fall with a Skalan arrow in his back.