Sword Brother

"So you're saying your 'colleagues' were clumsy enough that he realized what they were doing that far ahead of time?"

"No, that's not what I'm saying. The fact that they didn't see him doing it means he must have prepared the i

"That's ridiculous!"

"Of course it is. But it's also what must have happened. Without his knowing this location so that he could anchor the second glamour to it, every time we checked his location through the chink he 'accidentally' left in his outer glamour, we'd have gotten a different distance reading-a fixed distance from the observer. The same fixed distance, whether it was one of us, right here, or one of our colleagues elsewhere. And the fact that we could have compared our distance readings would inevitably have shown us what was happening, since he couldn't actually be the same distance from both of us. The only way to avoid that problem for a moving glamour is to anchor it to a specific, previously known and located physical location. In other words, he needed to index the spell here to be certain that the distances we got were consistent."

"But there's no way he could have done that," Cherdahn insisted. "He may be a wild wizard, but my Master is a god. No wizard could penetrate His concealment. Not, at least, without our knowing he'd done it. No, Tremala, the only way he could have come to this location was following you, exactly the way he was supposed to. Although," Cherdahn showed his sharp teeth, "he wasn't supposed to be here just yet, was he?"

"No, but-"

"Excuse me," Rethak broke in, his voice sharp. Both of them looked at him, and he grimaced. "Does it really matter how he and that thing out there managed to get here without our realizing how close he was? He's here now, he's managed to rescue the Bloody Hand, and the two of them are about to decide what to do about us. Don't you think we might do better to be worrying about that than arguing over whose security measures were at fault?"

Tremala and Cherdahn glowered at him for perhaps three heartbeats. Then the sorceress inhaled sharply.

"He's right, you know," she told Cherdahn. "Don't forget, this is Wencit of Rūm we're dealing with. The gods only know what he's capable of, or how he may have done what he's done. But what matters right now is that he and the Bloody Hand are here, and your Servants are all destroyed."

"No, they aren't," Cherdahn said grimly. "As a matter of fact, the most powerful of the Master's Greater Servants is still within."

"It is?" Tremala's eyes brightened, but Cherdahn barked a harsh laugh.

"Indeed it is. Unfortunately, it's a true Greater Servant. It's far more powerful than the ones which have been destroyed, but it can be bound only once, and only for a limited time. To send it after Bahzell will take some time. The sacrifice must be performed properly, without dangerous haste, or the Servant will turn on us, instead of the Bloody Hand and Wencit."

"If it's more powerful, why wasn't it used in the first place?"

Cherdahn turned towards Garsalt quickly, but relaxed-at least a little-when he realized the wizard's question was a genuine one, and not simply a thinly veiled criticism.

"As I said, it can be bound only for a limited time. For now, the Scorpion's will holds it pent, but once that will is relaxed to allow us to command it, the period in which any mortal could hope to control it will be brief. We dared not bind it to our service until we knew when Bahzell would arrive. And by the time we knew that, we also 'knew,' thanks to the reports from your scrying spells, that Wencit was far behind him. The five Servants we already possessed, employed as we'd already pla

"Fair enough," Tremala said. "But the question now is how long the sacrifice will take?"

"No less than half an hour, and possibly longer," Cherdahn said. "We dare not rush the death, or the binding may not take. And each Greater Servant is different. It may take somewhat longer to generate sufficient pain to satisfy this one's need."

"So we need to keep Wencit and the Bloody Hand busy for at least half an hour."

"You say that like you think it will be easy, Tremala," Rethak objected. "That's Wencit of Rūm out there."

"Yes, it is. And I know exactly what his record is, Rethak. But do you have a better suggestion?"

"But-"

"I'm not going back to Kontovar to tell Her I decided to run away rather than face him," the sorceress said flatly. "Wencit's combat magic can only kill us, you know."

Rethak's jaw worked for a moment. Then he jerked a nod.

"In that case," Tremala said, "let's go make our visitors welcome."

Trayn Aldarfro's eyes opened in the Stygian darkness of his tiny cell.

It didn't make any difference, of course, so he closed them again, wishing he could close all of his other senses as readily. His cramped ke

Someone was sobbing in despair and horror. Someone else-someone whose ordeal had pushed him over the edge of sanity-was talking to himself, or perhaps calling to a son or daughter he knew he would never see again. His long, rambling sentences were interspersed with bouts of screaming laughter, or howls of rage, and someone else was pleading with him to be quiet, to stop, even though the person behind that voice had to know her pleas were futile. And layered throughout those sounds, counterpointing all of them, were the moans and whimpers of children trapped in a waking nightmare and the handful of adults seeking uselessly to comfort them.

The despair and hopelessness crushing down upon Trayn in that darkness had driven him to the point of mindlessness. Driven him to the very brink of a mage's final retreat into the mental shutdown which would lead inevitably to the body's death, as well. Yet even there, in that black pit of horror, the training which made him what he was-and some i

Now, though, he sensed something even worse. Sensed the stirring of an even greater malevolence, an even greater evil. He sat up, the chains on his ankles clanking, and his face went bleak and hard in the blackness as he heard something else-heard the voice of a young woman, sobbing, pleading, fighting as she was dragged from her tiny cell. She couldn't possibly have sensed what he had, yet she seemed to know anyway.

Trayn could hear her, feel her, as she was dragged down the corridor outside the closed door of his own cell, and he knew where she was bound. He knew what sort of death awaited a sacrifice to Sharnā, knew what the unspeakable appetite behind the malevolence he'd sensed wanted from her. And he knew no one could possibly save her from it.