“He’s my liege lord,” Matilda said. “Now…will you surrender?”
Emily summoned her magic and threw it at Matilda, splitting it into two streams; one to slam into her wards directly, the other to attack the ground under her feet. The noblewoman laughed–Emily shivered at the sound–and jumped up, spinning through the air like a Jedi Knight. Emily barely had a second to react before Matilda slammed a hex into her wards, throwing her back…and over the edge. She fell, trying desperately to catch herself with magic. But all she managed to do was land on her feet…
Emily screamed as she felt her leg break. She tottered, trying to cast a healing spell despite the risks of using such a spell on herself. But it wasn’t enough…she fell, crashing into the ground hard enough to hurt her arm too. She wasn’t sure if it was broken or not, but it didn’t matter. The haze of pain was so overwhelming, she could barely keep herself from blacking out. Her mental disciplines didn’t seem to be working.
“You fight well,” Matilda said. Emily was vaguely aware that she was nearby, but she couldn’t tell where. Her body was aching, her thoughts starting to fragment…she wondered, just for a moment, if she was dying. “But it’s over.”
They made it out, Emily thought, vindictively. They’d succeeded. She might have been killed–or captured–but they’d succeeded. They’d broken someone out of an inescapable prison. The world would take note. Alassa is free and her father will tremble.
Something slammed into her jaw. There was a flash of pain, almost unnoticeable in the sea of pain that was trying to drag her down, then…
Darkness.
Chapter Thirty-Two
SHE WAS DREAMING, WASN’T SHE?
Someone was talking, someone close to her. She could feel hands touching her, but…but she felt no alarm. She was adrift in a sea of…something, washing around her as she moved in and out of sleep. Her entire body felt as if she was sleeping, her thoughts calm and composed and…
Emily snapped awake, her mind falling back into her body with what felt like a physical impact. Her memories caught up with her a second later. They’d freed Alassa and Imaiqah, but…but she’d been captured. She tried to keep her eyes closed as she assessed the situation. Her body ached all over, making it hard to tell what was real and what wasn’t, but she was fairly sure that she was sitting up, pressed against a wooden board with her hands manacled behind her back. Her ankles, too, were chained together. And there was a foul taste in her mouth.
She reached for her magic. Not entirely to her surprise, it didn’t come.
Potion, she thought. She’d been knocked out…and someone had fed her magic-dampening potion while she slept. The taste of Durian was almost overwhelming. It was impossible to believe that anyone actually willingly ate the fruit. Where am I?
Cold water splashed over her. She yelped, her eyes snapping open. She was in a stone cell, illuminated by a faint light that filtered down from high overhead. A woman–Matilda–and a man stood in front of her, the latter holding a wooden bucket. Emily looked down at herself and wished she hadn’t. Someone had removed her clothes and replaced them with a long white dress that was alarmingly translucent. The damp cloth was clinging to her skin. Her leg looked intact…
I broke my leg, she thought, dazed. Didn’t I?
She looked at the man and wished she hadn’t. He was grinning, a sadistic grin. His face was rough and ready, his teeth blackened and foul. She knew, instinctively, that he not only wanted to hurt her, he was going to enjoy himself hurting her. He wore a belt lined with tools that looked like they could have come out of a medieval dentist’s office, but she knew they weren’t designed for anything so benevolent as removing rotten teeth. Her lips twitched as she desperately tried to distract herself. The line between medieval dentist and torturer was so thin it practically didn’t exist. No anaesthetic, no sterility…only the truly desperate went to a medieval dentist. The kingdom’s torturer probably moonlighted as the kingdom’s dentist.
A distant bloodcurdling scream ran through the air. Emily flinched, despite herself. Ice washed down her spine. Someone was getting tortured, someone was getting hurt…she swallowed hard, remembering Lady Barb’s lectures. It wasn’t uncommon for captors to try to psychologically break their captives before they started physical torture. The scream might not have been real…worse, it might have been real. Someone might be being tortured simply to encourage her to talk.
The man snickered. Emily looked up at him and shuddered. He looked…odd…even by the standards of the Nameless World. His flesh was cracked and broken, one hand looked to have been badly scarred…and he was a dwarf. She couldn’t help feeling a little sick. The proportions were all wrong, as if he were a twisted child rather than an adult. She didn’t want to even look at him.
“Well,” Matilda said. Heavy irony hung in her voice. “Welcome.”
Emily shifted, testing the bonds. They were expertly designed, preventing her from moving without cutting off blood to her hands and feet. The wooden board behind her was utterly immobile, as far as she could tell. She’d need to push it harder, when there weren’t so many watching eyes. She could feel her bracelet against her bare skin–Matilda hadn’t tried to remove it, for better or worse–but she couldn’t make contact with the spells holding the snake in place. She gritted her teeth in frustration. She would have an ally if only she could free him from the spells.
She must have placed new spells on the bracelet, Emily thought. I can’t release the snake!
“We took the liberty of healing you,” Matilda added. Her short companion giggled, unpleasantly. “You were quite badly injured by the fight.”
“Oh,” Emily said, sourly. Somehow, she was sure they hadn’t done it out of the goodness of their hearts. “How long was I unconscious?”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,” the dwarf said. “Or where you are, for that matter.”
Emily scowled. The dwarf had a sing-song voice that grated on Emily’s nerves. She wondered, sourly, where Randor had found him. A dwarf would have little hope of gainful employment–or even survival–unless he had magic. Zangaria wasn’t quite as harsh as the Cairngorms, where a child with a birth defect would be left out in the snow to die, but a dwarf would be lucky if he was employed as anything more than a court jester. Perhaps that was where Randor had found him. A man who spent most of his adult life being treated as a figure of fun–or pity–for something beyond his control would make an ideal torturer. He’d certainly have plenty of reasons to want to make people suffer.
She looked down at herself. The garment was still partly translucent, allowing her to see her legs. They looked intact, as did her arm. Matilda had either healed Emily herself or had summoned a proper Healer. Emily wondered, absently, which one was worse. Matilda might have picked up a few advanced healing spells of her own–Emily was living proof it was possible–but it was also possible that Randor had a Healer who was skirting his oaths. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t offer vast rewards to anyone who rationalized their way around an oath that should, technically, kill him.
The dwarf took a step forward. “Do you know what we could do to you?”
He plucked a device that looked like a screwdriver off his belt and held it up. “You’d be amazed at all the ways someone can be made to suffer with this, my dear. I could take out one of your teeth, or insert it into one of your orifices…oh, the possibilities are endless. And then we would heal you and start again. Or…”