Shadows Return - Lynn Flewelling [77]
“Alec. S’name’s Alec.” Seregil mumbled, anger cutting though his daze. People had called Alec that in Aurënen, too: mongrel. It was the worst of insults, and he wasn’t surprised to hear it on Ilar’s lips. “Where—?”
Ilar gave him a sour smirk, then stood and waved to his escort. The men pulled the blankets from the pallet, fastened a heavy chain to his collar, and dragged Seregil unresisting from the room.
Walking was out of the question. He could barely hold his head up. His bare feet scraped over cold brick as they passed along an ill-lit corridor outside. At the end of it they carried him up a narrow stair, and through a very fine courtyard paved with a black-and-white mosaic. As they passed a long, rectangular fountain, he caught sight of a veiled woman with two small children, watching him from the far side.
She was ’faie and Khatme, too. There was no mistaking the clan markings on her face above the veil. How had the slavers gotten hold of one of that clan? Perhaps she’d been a traveler, or a merchant.
She pulled the children close as they passed, but Seregil didn’t miss the slight nod she gave him. Perhaps this was his night visitor?
He tried to flex his limp arms and legs as they dragged him down a broad stair into a different court, but his body was dead weight in their hands.
They stopped at the door of an outbuilding and Ilar grabbed him by the hair again. “I’m going to do you a great favor. In fact, I’m probably granting your most heartfelt wish. I do hope you’ll show me some gratitude afterward.”
Seregil’s heart beat faster as they took him through a large, sunny workshop. The large athanor dominating the center of the room and various alembics steaming away on a table suggested alchemy. He didn’t have time to form much of an impression otherwise; his handlers wrestled him roughly through another door on the far side of the room and down a staircase. It stopped at a landing where there was another door, then continued down into a cellar below.
It stank of damp earth and blood here, and something else he couldn’t identify. It was sweet, but with an underlying stench of decay, like moldy apples.
The men lowered him to his knees, but kept a grip on his arms, holding him upright. His head lolled limply, but his eyes quickly adjusted to the dim light cast by a single lamp, and he saw that part of the dirt floor had been disturbed. There was loosely mounded soil there and, as he watched, a drop of something dark and glistening fell on it. As the droplet sank in, something underneath the soil moved.
“Ah, I see you’ve brought your friend to visit,” a deep, cultured voice remarked from somewhere across the room. The words were Aurënfaie, but the accent was Plenimaran.
“Yes, Ilban. Thank you for allowing it,” Ilar replied.
Ilban. That was the Plenimaran word for master.
Seregil turned his head slightly, wanting to see what sort of man owned Ilar. He managed a glimpse of a tall, robed figure on the far side of the disturbed earth—the alchemist, perhaps—and another, taller man in black.
The loose earth heaved again, and Seregil was suddenly afraid of what might be about to emerge.
“Why…?” he managed to croak.
“I was hoping you would ask,” Ilar rasped. “Let him see.”
His keepers released him and Seregil slumped forward in an ungainly heap. The cloying stench of the damp earth against his face was overwhelming. He gagged, then let out a startled grunt as they turned him over onto his back. He found himself staring up at some sort of grillwork suspended from the beamed ceiling. No, he realized as his eyes adjusted to the light; a cage.
Ilar lifted a torch close to it and Seregil let out a low whine.
Alec hung there, splayed facedown and naked. His eyes were closed and his face was slack and deathly pale. He was thin, too. Seregil could count his ribs through the bars.
Oh Illior, he’s dead! Seregil thought in despair, but then saw that