From Darkness Won - Jill Williamson [68]
“Your Highness, Duchess Amal is in need of your immediate assistance.”
Achan glanced past Sir Eagan and out the open door. He could see the emerald sleeve of Duchess Amal’s gown in the corridor. “Certainly.”
Sir Eagan opened the door fully, and the duchess strode to the chair beside Achan’s bed and sat down. She held her own hands, fidgeting. “Your Highness, please sit a moment.”
Achan sat on the edge of his bed. “My lady, are you well?”
“I bring sad news. It has come to my attention that your friend, Miss Sparrow, has found herself in an unfortunate situation.”
Achan’s stomach seemed to slide into his boots. “What has happened?”
“She was captured and imprisoned in Sitna. Lord Levy holds her there for Esek Nathak’s bidding.”
“So Esek really is alive?”
“According to Vrell,” Sir Eagan said.
“She contacted you, Sir Eagan?” Achan felt passed over by Sparrow. But after all, Sir Eagan had helped her before.
“Regardless,” Duchess Amal said, “neither of us are able to contact her now.”
Achan reached out for Sparrow and found no sense of her. He forced himself to ask. “You think she’s dead?”
“I know not.” Duchess Amal’s voice was barely a whisper. “I hoped to discover whether you had ever been in the dungeons of Sitna Manor. I have not, nor has Sir Eagan, so neither of us can look for her… body.”
“I-I have.” Achan shuddered at the memory of Myet, Lord Nathak’s head torturer, flogging Achan in the darkness under the Sitna Manor keep.
“Will you look for her there?” Duchess Amal asked. “Tell me what you see, and I shall watch your body.”
“Of course, my lady.” He scooted back on his bed and lay down, eyes closed, unhinged that he had been hoping to seek out Sparrow in such a way, though under vastly different circumstances.
Arman, please let me find her. Please let her be safe.
Achan found himself in an open space at the foot of a stairwell that led up the southeast tower of the Sitna keep. Barred cells ran along every wall except the eastern one, which was solid stone and covered with various saws, knives, pikes, iron spiders, whips, cat tails, racks, and other torture devices. How he knew this place. Thankfully, Myet was absent. Achan did not want to see him again.
Achan drifted to the right, down the path on the southern wall. The thick smells of mildew, urine, and body odor made him gag. He passed a cell where a man keened, rocking back and forth, clutching his side. In the next cell a man slept. In another a man sang to himself, scratching his finger in the dirt floor. Achan drifted, scanning the ground for Sparrow. A large rat chased a smaller one across the corridor.
Achan reached the end of the row and circled down the next. Two men stood in the aisle halfway down where a cell door hung open. Achan drifted closer, concentrating on the men’s soft voices.
“Well, they’re diseased, aren’t they?”
“Even so, Reggio, she wouldn’t pass out instantly if a rat bit her. There is something about this I don’t understand.”
“Black knights?”
“Perhaps, though I would expect to be informed before they used their magic on my prisoner. Where are those blasted men with the litter?”
“Probably stopped to drool over some woman. I declare, Father. The peasants of Sitna Manor are the most wayward bunch. You should have seen them reveling last night. You should put a stop to it at once.”
Achan slowed his approach beside Lord Levy and his son, Reggio. Lord Levy was a man of medium height with small, brown eyes. He had short, white hair and a matching beard that he’d oiled into a point. Reggio, Levy’s son, hadn’t grown an inch since Achan had last seen him. Scrawny, brown-haired, and no older than thirteen years, the boy acted as if all Er’Rets was his to command.
Achan drifted through the doorway and into the cell. At first it appeared empty, until he realized he had glided right over a woman’s body that lay on the floor near the entrance. It was Sparrow, all right. He dropped down beside her, overcome at the sight of her still form. She wore a peasant’s dress of brown linen. Her hair had been braided in two short plaits. Both