‘Did Ma and Pa send you?’ he asked eagerly.
Bram’s face changed. ‘Lad—’ he said. ‘I have grave news, and no time being gentle in telling you.’ He explained about Rip’s parents, glossing over the details of their death, then rapidly assured him Lorrie was safe in Land’s End.
Rip collapsed against him; the tears didn’t last long, though. He’d done his fair share of crying since being taken, in the dark where nobody could see. After a moment he felt the children crowding around, and Bram’s other arm went around them too, as far as he could reach.
‘I want you to kill them!’ Rip said after a moment, wiping at his face with his palms. ‘They’re . . . they’re evil!’
‘That they are,’ Bram said. He clanked his chains a little, ruefully. ‘But I’m a bit tied up at the moment.’ His smile turned to a frown. ‘I still don’t know why they’ve taken you, or me,’ he went on. ‘Even a baron can’t do this sort of thing for long. Stealing children—there’ll be rebellion if it gets out. Parents won’t wait for the Prince’s Magistrate to come down from Krondor. Those who’ve already lost children will be the first to riot.’
‘They had kids before us,’ Mandy said in a small voice. ‘After a while they’d come and take them away and they didn’t come back.’
Rip swallowed. ‘I think . . . I think one of them is a magician,’ he said.
Bram frowned. ‘And the old man—
‘The Baron? I don’t know. Everyone does what he says, though.’
‘The Baron,’ Bram confirmed. ‘Baron Bernarr of Land’s End.’
‘And . . . Bram, there are . . . things here.’ Rip looked around at the shadows; he could feel them. ‘Wrong things.’
Bram nodded, and his voice went hard and grim. ‘So now we know what he’s been doing with the silver we sweated to give him all these years, bought with the good bread we didn’t eat and the cloth we didn’t wear come winter; not paying men-at-arms to keep us safe, or to hold court and give justice, or patch the roads. Yes, I felt it too. Even the cut-throats who brought me here did. There’s something bad here, something rotten.’
He looked up, almost bristling, bruised lips curling back from his teeth. A breeze they could all feel cuffed at their heads, stirred the dark air.
‘What was that? Who calls?’
Impressions blurred and memories returned.
The children!
They were not where she had seen them last. She didn’t understand the cycles she endured, pain, blackness, being in her body, being out. Forces tugged at her and sometimes she ached just to remain in oblivion. There were times she raged in frustration at her inability to interact with those around her, and she often felt confused by the sudden jumps from night to day and back, and the rapidly changing light outside the windows, sometimes the cold and foggy skies of winter common to this coast, other times the brilliant golden sun of summer. It confounded her senses as much as anything else, not knowing how long she had lingered in this state since the baby was born. She floated away from her body, looking for the children.
The girl, the one the others called Neesa, she was almost able to talk to Elaine, and Elaine hungered for some human contact. No matter how long it had been since the birth of her son, it felt as if she had not known the touch of a hand or the sound of a voice in a very long time. She sensed the children had moved to another room, and she hastened there. As she entered, she saw the black cloud, the spirit presence of some unnamed evil that had avoided her for so long. It hovered over the children.
Elaine swept toward the black cloud furiously, snatching at one of its tendrils. It pulled back, retreating slightly, then it fled. Rather than waste her energy chasing it, Elaine hovered protectively over the children, pleased by their presence, delighted with the littlest one, the boy, and feeling a connection with the girl.
Then she realized something had changed. There was a new presence! It was . . .
Zakry! Elaine called.
They had brought Zakry—chained him, beaten him. Her rage swirled about the man she loved, and they retreated before it, afraid, drawing back their looming presence like the fading of the stench of rotten meat.
Her anger was palpable, enough to ruffle their hair and stir the burlap sack on the floor beside him. Beaten! Chained!
Then she heard what the children called him. Bram. She looked—somehow, like this, she could look deeper into a man than she’d been able to do before, see the links between things.