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“No, please!” came Eudias’s voice.
“Listen to him beg!” Tychon laughed, and a chorus of other young men joined him.
Lio stalked through the shadows in their direction. Figures were silhouetted in a patch of sun, bent over something—or someone. Lio glided past Tychon and the two youths in apprentice robes who flanked him. In the shadows, Eudias lay cowering amid a pile of scattered books and scrolls. On his other side, four more apprentices stood in the light, blocking his retreat. An entire war circle of apprentices against one.
Lio made a quick immobilizing strike at the war circle’s minds. His senses could not fix on any of them. All he could feel were Eudias’s terror and humiliation.
“There is only one mind here—the one in which we battle.” The Collector spoke from among the war circle.
Lio glanced at each of them, but could not tell who had spoken.
“I am here.” Now the necromancer’s voice came from the shadows on the ground by Eudias. “I can give you the strength to teach them a lesson.”
“No!” Eudias’s voice broke. “No, please!”
Lio would use what he’d learned from Mak and Lyros on the war circle, then. He made a lunge at Tychon. The closer he came to him, the farther away the apprentice seemed to be.
“Memories require precision,” the Collector said. “You wouldn’t know anything about that. You lack my lifetimes of experience.”
The war circle hoisted Eudias between them, dangling him from his arms and legs. His head snapped back, and he whimpered.
“I’ve done everything you asked!” Eudias’s bleeding tongue slurred his words.
“Where is your influence now?” Lio demanded. “Where is the strength you promised him? You’re just going to let them take him?”
“He is learning a valuable lesson,” the Collector replied.
Tychon laughed again. “You really think you can ever prove yourself?”
“What have all the tests been for?” Eudias cried. “I haven’t failed a single one.”
Tychon grabbed Eudias by the hair and shouted in his face. “You’ll never be good enough! To the bathhouse with this pathetic excuse for an Aithourian.”
As the war circle carried Eudias off, he said not another word. Lio could scarcely bear to hear another of Eudias’s piteous pleas, but his resigned silence was worse.
Lio followed them through a blur of misery to the next scene of the memory. The war circle carried Eudias into a muggy bathhouse. Eudias’s personal torture chamber was appointed with towels, warming bricks, and jars that smelled of therapeutic oils. Steaming benches where comrades could relax surrounded a bathing pool in the center of the room. The war circle dropped him to the tiled floor and wrestled him onto his belly.
“Eudias,” Lio said. “I’m here to help. Will you let me?”
Eudias didn’t acknowledge Lio’s presence. What would Lio’s appeals even mean? He must sound just like the Collector to Eudias’s embattled mind. Lio watched helplessly as Tychon and his war circle stripped Eudias naked.
“You must enjoy this part,” one apprentice taunted.
“Do you sleep on your belly?” another mocked.
Eudias didn’t make a sound except for his stifled breathing.
“Why don’t you reach for your magic?” the Collector asked. “Now is your chance to strike.”
Sweat trickled down Eudias’s body, and he began to shiver. The world around Lio trembled with Eudias. The young mage’s mind and body were under far too much strain to muster the concentration and Will to formulate a spell.
The war circle hurled Eudias over the side of the pool. Anthrian warding magic chased him into the water and filled him with a sense of inevitable terror. Glyphs of Anthros gleamed around his wrists and ankles. The apprentice warders’ spells shackled him in the pool on his belly with his arms and legs stretched out, facing away from them. He craned his neck to keep his head above water.
“Don’t try any lightning now, Eudias,” one warder warned.
“That wouldn’t go very well for you, would it?” the other warder sneered.
It was going to happen again, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
