02 War in Tethyr by Forgotten Realms

Author:Forgotten Realms [Realms, Forgotten]
Format: epub
Published: 2010-04-10T15:08:15.087000+00:00

With a several-voiced whistle and a resounding smack, the knotted rawhide thongs bit into Zaranda's bare flesh. Clenched teeth barred a scream, but a groan escaped her throat. Her body twisted clockwise from the force of the blow, then turned widdershins, toes dangling two inches from a drain set in the slimy stone floor. Her whole weight depended from her arms, chained to a hook in the low, round-vaulted ceiling. Manacles bit her wrists like the pincers of a giant scorpion; her shoulders burned from unnatural strain. When she could trust herself to speak more or less steadily, she moistened her lips and said, "I hate to disappoint you, but I don't really have any vital secrets to withhold from you. So there's not. . . much point... to this exercise." Shaveli Sword-Master laughed hoarsely. He swung his cat-o'-nine-tails so its thongs sang savagely. Zaranda shut her eyes and clamped her jaw, then winced as the lash struck stone flagging with a crack. "Clearly you don't understand, Countess," he said cheerfully. The glare from a brazier, in which various iron implements nestled yellow-glowing heads among the coals, cast entirely redundant, fiendish highlights over his face. The dungeon stank of mold and hot metal and all the scents of fear. "You know nothing that could possibly be of the slightest use to my masteronly how to inconvenience him, which I fancy you'll not be doing any more. As to" Not looking at him, Zaranda had begun to move her lips soundlessly. Shaveli's rat face twisted in rage, and he lashed her so cruelly that she could not help crying out. He laid the whip's handle to her cheek and forced her face toward his. "Casting spells, were we, witch?" "I was merely . . . sending a prayer to Lliira," Zaranda said. "I don't feel as if my life has enough . . . joy ... in it right now." The Sword-Master put his head back and laughed. Then he struck again. "Very clever. Very clever, indeed. I can tell we're going to have a most diverting relationship." He tapped the handle against her cheek. A trickle of blood ran from the corner of her mouth where she had bitten her lip. "You should know, though, that none of your magic will help you now. Into the very mortar of these dungeon walls was worked powdered fragments of the bones of the gods who exploded in the magic-dead realm of far Tantras. No dweomer can penetrate here, so chant away at your futile spellsit pleases me to punish you for doing so." That would account for the dull but constant throb between Zaranda's temples; she had heard of such an effect from others who had passed through the rare dead-magic reaches of Toril. Magic was woven into the very fabric of the world, in all the creatures who walked upon it, swam its seas, flew above it or delved the Underdark below. To be cut off from sorcery, from dweomer, was an unnatural condition.

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