“I . . . don’t remember.” She didn’t, and that worried her.
Growling, he grabbed her by the upper arms, pulling her up off the bed. “Where is the Mages Guild located?!”
“I d-don’t know!” she stammered as he shook her. “I don’t know of any Mages Guild!”
“Bah!” Thrusting her away from him, he let her drop back down onto the thin, wool-stuffed pallet that served as the cot’s mattress. “You’re pistoning useless—you’re not even good for a pistoning, you useless little pile of goat manure—sit here, eat your food, and obey the rest of my orders from earlier,” Elcarei snapped, gesturing for the silently watching apprentice to hand her the bowl. “You will keep yourself healthy and well until we’re ready to sacrifice you. Stupid Gods-be-damned renegade mages . . .”
Forced to accept the bowl, Rexei watched the archbishop storm out of the cell. With a heavy sigh, Torven followed, and the dark-haired apprentice, the one whose name she couldn’t remember, followed. She remembered her time in the Servers Guild spying on these priests, but not all of them had served in the public areas where guildmembers were allowed to go . . . and she couldn’t remember why she had gotten a job cleaning the temple.
She couldn’t remember why she couldn’t remember, either, which was unnerving. Rexei remembered most of her life in great detail, but this? There were now gaps in her brain and an ache in her heart. And in her bottom. She didn’t know why she had a sore bottom, yet could not remember being violated in any way by the priests, beyond being captured, dragged down here, and slapped by the ex–Archbishop of Heiastowne.
Why is my bottom feeling a little tender? Did I eat the wrong food at some point? That thought brought her back to the compulsion laid upon her. Stooping, she set the cup on the ground, then gripped the handle of the spoon and dug into what she thought was a stew. It wasn’t, at least not in the traditional sense. Stews had vegetables and gravy, sometimes some grain, and meat. This glop, from what she could tell, was all meat in a bit of rich gravy. That’s odd. Why would they serve me something as expensive as meat? I’d think the mage-prisoners would be fed on cheap grain and vegetable pottage with only a little bit of meat now and then, not pure meat. Why would they feed a demonic sacrifice meat?
There were too many things about the world, about magic, and about monsters which she simply did not know, but the collar compelled her to put the first spoonful into her mouth and chew anyway. Rexei was hungry; she remembered she hadn’t had her midday meal yet. Doing what Archbishop Elcarei wanted did not make her happy, though at least it was something she could do.
There was nothing in this room to distract her from her predicament but the cot, a chair directly under the suncrystals in the corner—she didn’t remember where she had learned what they were called, but that was what they were—the refresher, the sink, and her cup and bowl. And a cockroach sitting on the corner of her current bed.
It wiggled an antenna at her. She resisted the urge to squish it, feeling surprisingly sympathetic toward the repulsive little scavenger. Mainly because she would have traded just about anything to have been a Cobblers Guild apprentice once again, dealing with roaches by the dozens. Resolving to ignore the bug, she kept feeding herself what tasted like a mix of beef and ham stew. There were hints of pepper for seasoning, but mostly it was a rich reduced broth coating fall-apart-tender meat.
Her thoughts whirled with the need to figure out how to escape and regret she hadn’t brought someone else along to meet her brother, or at least had them follow at a discreet distance since she would not have wished a second capture on anyone else. And despite the flavorful, expensive-for-a-captive meal, her stomach felt sour with the sinking feeling she had forgotten something very, very important just now. Something very specific, because there were fuzzy spots in her memory of the archbishop’s interrogation and of several other points in her recent past. That worried her deeply.
SIXTEEN
The linens room on the bottom-most level was large, but the presence of one Aian mage and fourteen ex-Mekhanan priests, most ranked bishop or higher, made it feel crowded.
Torven shook his head. “I’m sorry, but I still cannot find the source of those scrying-spell auras. Some sort of blurring spell makes it vanish the moment I try to focus on more than one quarter of a room where they are. They move occasionally; they don’t just sit still. And yes, I have checked for spells placed on insects. Nothing alive shows any signs of magic, and when I applied a toxic gas spell to a warded area, I found bugs and even one mouse dead when it was through, but the scryings have continued. We are just going to have to accept that we are being spied upon, save in this location, or by relocating.”
“We cannot relocate quickly, and if we do, we will be vulnerable,” Archbishop Elcarei stated. “I have Hunter Squad members still loyal to the priesthood trying to find traces of this ‘Master Tall’ but we may just have to be content with ridding the world of this stupid youth who dares call himself Guild Master of the ‘Holy’ Guild—he should be enough of a sacrifice. Don’t demons enjoy defiling the pure?”
“Some do. Others prefer to have them pre-defiled by the persons offering them,” Torven admitted. “Based on what we have discerned through interrogating the lesser residents, this ‘Lesser-Prince Demon Nurem’ of the seventh Netherhell we contacted prefers to defile his victims himself. I wouldn’t even have suggested feeding the boy meat, save it will depress the ability every peasant yokel has to cast a last-moment curse. If we try to move to a scrying-free location, we run the risk of being stopped.”
“Then we need to act fast,” Archbishop Gafford said. His voice was smooth, his words reasonable, his appearance almost charming. The men in the linen closet with him knew of his ruthless reputation, however. “If we act now, we can sacrifice, bind, and have a major power in our back pockets within the hour. From there, we can cross-bind lesser demonic powers with ease. With our sanctum secured with that much might, we can work in safety on turning this Nurem into a chained God bound to our will and rule once more. Build the fortress, gentlemen, and then you can send out raiding parties. With this Lesser-Prince under our thumb, your ‘Master Tall’ will be rendered impotent, which means he will be easily caught, caged, drained, and gutted. Does anyone disagree?”
Gafford and Elcarei looked to Torven while the other twelve men exchanged glances and shook their heads. The Aian mage rubbed his chin in thought.
“I think we should set up just a few extra precautions, before we begin,” he finally said. “I’ve made you those casks of Gating powder—strictly for travel within this world, not cross-dimensionally. I know it’s a risk to bring them into the power room, but I cannot help but think of all those horrid adventure tales from the Tower wherein the heroes arrived just in the nick of time to ruin their enemies’ plans.”
“I see,” Archbishop Gafford said, raising his brows in mild respect for the foreigner. “We’re supposed to be spaced out around the wardings to help contain the demon with our powers. If we position mirrors around the chamber, with little pots of Gating powder, anyone breaking in would not be able to stop all of us from escaping.”
“Yes, but escaping to what?” the bald-headed Bishop Hansu asked. At the confused frowns of his compatriots, he explained. “It’s all well and good to leap out of a burning building to save our lives, but are we leaping into an equally flaming haystack, into a dockside river, or into a pile of rusty farming equipment? I, for one, would rather have a landing that would put out the fire in my clothes and carry me downstream, far away from trouble. Where are we to direct our mirror-Gates? As far as I know, one can only direct them to a place one actually knows, and then adjust the view to somewhere within a mile or two of that starting point.”