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A great roaring filled her ears, the fog enveloping her like a shroud. The bed, the room, the world dragged ever downward until nothing remained but a void of endless black.
The roaring pressed against her brain. Squeezed her organs. Rattled her bones and shook her blood. She sought to clamp her hands to the sides of her head. Felt the heated grip of Brendan’s fingers once more threaded with her own.
She opened her eyes, but the roaring continued. Only now she recognized it for what it was. Screaming. On and on. An endless, anguished howl battering her mind, the fiery unblinking eyes of a serpent stripping all before it, coils wrapping round and round as walls crumbled, ramparts collapsed, retreat impossible.
This was the end.
How long had he been unconscious? Long enough for someone to drag him here. Dump him on the bed to recover, but the rank odors emanating from the thin, soiled sheets made vomit rise into his raw throat. Gagging against the spasms, he forced himself up to shaky feet. Scrubbed a hand over his face as if he might wipe away the shame.
He closed his eyes, knowing he’d sacrificed the last and most precious memory he possessed and still it had no
t been enough. Sabrina was lost to him. And he had failed her.
He peeled back his sleeve. The brand burned as if a million stinging ants lived beneath his skin. He dug at it until blood welled from the long rakes left by his nails, but the crescent pierced by the broken arrow remained visible. Nothing could erase Máelodor’s mark of ownership. Nothing could tear the mage from his mind where his serpent’s fangs had now sunk deep enough that only death could shake him loose.
“Douglas remains stubborn.” St. John lounged in the doorway, spearing Daigh with a lecherous smile, his gaze sliding over him with greasy enjoyment.
Daigh clenched his teeth and ignored him. What did it matter now? “Douglas will die rather than surrender the location of the stone. His honor demands no less.”
“He’s a traitor,” St. John snapped to attention. “He has no honor.”
“From one who knows.”
St. John’s face went pale, his eyes sharp as cut glass. “My loyalty is to my race. That is the only trust that matters. Arthur’s return will bring about a new celebrated chapter in a history gone sour and forgotten.”
“Or it shall bring death and destruction and an end to any chance for peace between Other and Duinedon.”
“Enough conversation.” St. John tossed the billhook upon the bed. “You may need this yet. Máelodor commands your presence immediately.”
Daigh bowed his head. “I am his to order.”
“If you don’t want more of the same, you’d do well to remember that, my beautiful beast.” St. John’s smile returned, brighter than before, his lips brushing Daigh’s cheek as he passed.
He never even flinched. “It is all I can remember. All I have left.”
Máelodor gazed upon the tapestry spread out before him, staring at the interwoven flowers with a frightening light in his eyes. “You’ve done well, St. John. I’m more than convinced you will make a most competent lieutenant for the new king’s reign. He shall come to value your support as I do.”
St. John gave a brief bow. “I’m honored at the confidence you’ve placed in me. I vow to serve my new king as I have served you, Great One. With all my being.”
Máelodor’s lips peeled back from his mouth in a reptilian grimace, his hand fondling the head of his cane. “With the Rywlkoth Tapestry in my possession, there is but one final missing piece. And that too shall be ours soon enough.” He hobbled toward the stairs. “Come.”
Daigh fell in behind them, his mind alive with an oppressive feeling of impending oblivion. The presence swelled to a crackling roar. Drowned out his questions with certainties of its own. Scoured his mind clean of doubt. Of compassion. And finally—of humanity.
The upper passage lay scattered with refuse, one gaping doorway revealing a chamber filthy with blankets, old food, a bucket catching drips from the leaking roof in a steady stream, the scattered remnants of a dice game. St. John passed it by with barely a glance. Came to the next, jamming a key into the lock. Opening the door with a screech of rusty hinges.
This chamber reeked with vomit and piss. Only the breeze whistling through the badly chinked walls and a cracked window kept the air from growing suffocatingly foul.
Daigh kept his eyes off the woman huddled on the rough straw pallet, though he felt her presence like a knife pressed to his throat. Instead, he focused on Douglas. His bruises had been added to since Daigh’s last visit, the marks vivid against the chalky white of his face. An arm rested close against his side, his splinted hand black and purple and curled clawlike into his palm. But his eyes when they fell upon Máelodor narrowed with deadly intensity.
“Back so soon?” he chided from a swollen, bloodied mouth. “I’d have thought you and your pet Amhas-draoi might have some new fun planned. Drowning puppies? Beating up grandmothers? The possibilities are endless.”
Máelodor’s wreckage of a body straightened. Shoulders thrown back, head high. Shedding for a few brief moments, the age and infirmity as he regarded Douglas with a contemptuous sneer. “Always the jokester. That tongue shall get you in trouble if you’re not careful.”
“I’ll risk it.”
Máelodor’s gaze shifted toward Sabrina. “But shall you risk your sister?”
Brendan blanched.
