Winterlands 4 - Dragonstar by Hambly Barbara

Author:Hambly, Barbara
Language: eng
Format: epub

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The chamber had been a bedroom once. There was still an old bedstead there, a canopy-ring depending from the faded red-and-blue stampwork of the ceiling. Gareth lay on the bare ropes, his hands and feet manacled to the wooden bedframe. Jenny heard his breathing change as they came into the room, and the thin, desperate sound that came from his throat. He twisted his head around, as if he could see them through the blindfold that covered his eyes. He was gagged, too, but he struggled to pull away from them as he heard their footsteps approach. Jenny knelt beside him, pushed the blindfold up as John bent to examine the chains.

“Bugger it, we'll have to cut your hands and feet off, lad.”

Gareth gasped, “Do it if you have to,” though he'd heard the jest in John's voice. His shortsighted gray eyes were wide with terror and shock. “Millença—”

“Is safe.” John was already looking around the room for something to pry the chain links with. “How's your lockfoxin', love?”

Jenny ran her fingers over the wristlets. “I can try. These aren't spell-warded.”

“Gie sloppy of somebody.”

“John, there's a lot I can't …” She raised her head sharply at the far-off closing of a door. Voices …

“… Sindestray will preside. But I'll give a lot to be there when our boy here confirms the sentence.”

Jenny's eyes cut to John, saw his face blank, uncomprehending. Demon voices, speaking demon speech. Gareth gasped, “Don't leave me!” frantic as John caught Jenny's wrist and pulled her to her feet. The feet were near, and the guttural foulness of a demon's gloating laugh nearer still. John dragged Jenny behind the great cascade of rotting silk that dangled from the canopy ring to the floor behind the bed, instants before the door opened and the wizard Bliaud entered, followed by a hard-faced, pink-haired gnome.

Jenny recognized the gnome at once, though she had never seen him before. In a way even the seamed face was familiar. A vision, she thought, a dream she had had while in her dragon form. She remembered the twist of his heavy lips, the thickjeweled rings that studded his fingers. Fingers she'd seen turning over and over the blue jewel in her dream, the jewel in which Ian's soul had been imprisoned.

Folcalor. She knew it. As she had known John, with his dyed hair and scruffy beard in the inn-yard. There was no chance of mistake.

“Well, it's a clever boy, is it?” Bliaud had dropped all the fussy mannerisms he'd imitated to fool those who'd known him as a diffident little gentleman whose only use for magic was to keep his gray hair from thinning, and to chase the aphids from his roses. There was no one present but Folcalor to see them, Folcalor who had known this demon—whoever he was—from eternity. His eyes glittered with the horrible demon-light as he prodded the gag and the blindfold with the tip of his knife, then jestingly poked it at Gareth's eyes.

“And did anyone come? No? Oh, too bad … I hoped they would.

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