Realm of Light - Deborah Chester [158]
“As you wish,” Tirhin said coldly. He pulled her close to him, and his eyes bored into hers. “As soon as we are wed, your usefulness to me is finished. You will be quite free to kill yourself then if you please.”
He released her, shoving her back with enough force to make her stumble. She righted herself, mute and shivering, feeling as though she walked in a dream.
“Now you may wear his blood to bed,” Tirhin said cruelly. “Sweet dreams, my dear.”
He lifted his voice to call for the guards.
Elandra turned her back to him. The room was spinning worse than before. She felt as though pieces of her were floating apart from each other.
“Caelan,” she murmured, and fainted.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Caelan came back to consciousness as the dagger was drawn from his back. He struggled up, fighting the hands that pressed him down, and was forced to lie on his stomach, sweating and battling the scream in his throat. A man’s knee pushed against his back, bracing hard as the dagger withdrew slowly. It drew Caelan’s life with it, and he heard the blade scrape against bone.
Shuddering, Caelan pressed his face against the floor, and endured the agony until fingers tapped his shoulder.
“Easy, there,” said a gruff voice. “It’s out.”
The pain remained, throbbing and hot. Men spoke to each other in low voices over him. He felt himself being bandaged roughly but expertly.
“Sit him up where he can breathe.”
Pulled upright, Caelan sagged against the man supporting him and felt something placed to his lips.
“Drink,” he was told.
He parted his lips, still half swooning, unable to grab a thought for longer than a moment.
The liquid filled his mouth. He choked, and for a confused moment thought it was blood, drowning him.
“Damn! Tip his head back. Hold him before he spills the lot.”
Then Caelan swallowed, and tasted wine. His panic faded, and he swallowed more, gulping it until he choked again, coughing. They let him go.
Bending over, he slumped against the arm supporting him and fought to breathe. But the wine had helped. His vision cleared, and so did his mind.
He tried to lift his head, trembling with the effort. Sweat dripped off him, soaking his hair into strings, stinging his eyes. Squinting, he looked at his chest and found himself still whole.
A short distance away, the sergeant lay on the floor in a pool of blood, sightless eyes staring at Caelan. Mox’s body sprawled across the sergeant’s legs like a doll dropped and forgotten. Strangers with matted beards and ragged clothes stood around idly, talking to each other in low voices.
Caelan frowned at them, not understanding who they were, and looked up at the man holding him. Orlo, his bald head gleaming in the torchlight, met Caelan’s eyes and smiled.
“So you’re with us again,” he said. “Harder to kill than a Madrun.”
Caelan stared at him, soaking in the realization that he had been rescued. He remembered none of it. He must have lost consciousness before Mox started to cut him. Absently, he rubbed his chest, and Orlo frowned.
“That reminds me,” he said. “Pob, cut out a heart and take it to the prince’s villa.”
A dark-haired man with keen, intelligent eyes came over and crouched beside Caelan and Orlo. “Now?”
“Yes, now! Why in blazes did I just give you an order?” Orlo said grouchily. “Do it.”
Pob smiled lazily, taking no offense. “Sure,” he said, and drew his dagger. In a fluid motion, he rose to his feet and kicked the corpse of the sergeant over on its back. “Someone help me get this breastplate unbuckled.”
“See that you save the weapons and armor,” Orlo told them. “Then clean out this room. We don’t want to draw the demons this high into the catacombs.”
Pob and his companions nodded and turned themselves to their grisly task.
“Don’t worry,” Orlo said quietly to Caelan, patting his shoulder. “Tirhin will be happy with his prize, and it will take him that much longer to discover you’ve survived.”
Caelan wanted to speak, found the