Lis stepped back abruptly, releasing the spell. It rushed away from the old man’s body, tight and ugly.
Ileni recognized that spell. She had felt it before, in a sparkling white cavern far beneath the earth. Then, it had been Karyn wielding the spell, and Sorin had been the one screaming. It was a spell like the one she still held coiled within her: designed purely to cause pain.
Karyn and Lis were torturing the man.
The old man’s shriek ended in a gulp. He was trembling so hard that even the loose skin on his face shook.
“That won’t be enough,” Karyn said calmly.
Lis did not reply. She took another step away from the bed—this one slow and deliberate. Her hair, tied in a long ponytail, slapped against her back.
“You disappoint me,” Karyn said. Her voice was still cool, but the menace in it made Lis flinch. Karyn got to her feet abruptly, making the iron bedframe shake. “You’ll get only one more chance.”
It wasn’t clear who she was talking to, but both Lis and the old man hunched their shoulders. Karyn stalked away, across the room, and disappeared through a door in the far wall.
Lis reached back and pulled her ponytail over her shoulder. She stood for a moment gripping her own hair, and she looked so lost—so hopeless—that Ileni felt a twinge of sympathy for her. Then Lis dropped her hand and followed Karyn.
Ileni waited until the door slammed shut behind Lis before letting her own combat spell go. She sighed with relief as magic rushed harmlessly out of her, not even caring about the waste. “That’s what Sorin wanted me to see?”
Bazel’s scowl was as thunderous as Karyn’s had been. “No. It wasn’t.”
“Then why did you bring me here?”
“Because there’s more to see. But not now,” Bazel said, biting off each word. “We have to leave before your new friends come back.”
Ileni wrapped her arms around herself. Bazel’s clear fury frightened her—had she already grown unaccustomed to people who wanted her dead? But she peeked out and watched the old man slowly sink against his pillow, while in the bed next to his, a woman let out a sob in her sleep.
She reached out and confirmed what she had already guessed: every person in this room had power. Not a great amount, most of them . . . not enough to be worth training, probably, though they would have been competent mid-level sorcerers had they been Renegai.
There were a few with vast amounts, though. Maybe the Academy had another way of deciding who was worth training and who was just worth . . . harvesting.
This was what she had been searching for. This was where the lodestones’ power came from.
But if it was, how could Karyn and Lis have walked away?
“I know some healing magic,” she said. “I could help some of these people.”
“Yes,” Bazel said, through gritted teeth. “Maybe later.”
“It will just take a minute—”
“A minute in which you’ll be seen. Do you want to explain what you’re doing here?”
When Bazel started up the stairs, Ileni followed.
It was a relief to emerge into clean, cool sunlight and then climb up the stairs onto a street filled with noise and movement. Ileni let a deep shudder go through her before she turned to Bazel. “That’s how they fill the lodestones, isn’t it? Every sick person in there has power, and they’re just waiting for it to be tortured out of . . .”
The space beside her was empty. Bazel was gone.
Ileni swore. The street was narrow and dilapidated, filled with people whose gazes shifted away from her. She guessed she had to go up—that was easy enough, with the mountain rearing against the sky to her left, but she had no idea which street was best to take. If she set out on her own, she would probably run right into a dead end.
She should ask someone, but all the people passing by seemed so . . . disreputable. She turned in the direction of the next staircase going up.
And found her way blocked.
By Karyn.
The sorceress had her arms crossed over her chest, lips pressed into a flat line. There was no sign of Lis.
“What,” Karyn said, each word an arrow shot. “Are. You. Doing. Here.”
“I, um,” Ileni said. “I got lost.”
It didn’t sound convincing, even to her.
CHAPTER
15
They brought him in with his head covered by a burlap bag, his hands bound behind him. They thrust him to his knees so hard he lost his balance and, after a brief, humiliating struggle, fell over sideways.
“Gently,” Sorin said from his chair at the end of the room. “There is no need for excess.”
The two assassins straightened, but a flash of . . . something . . . preceded their obedience. Sorin wasn’t sure what it was, but he knew it was something the master had never seen when he ruled these caves.