Harshini

Neither Brak nor Dace answered her.

“I needed to turn them back,” she added defensively. “It seemed like a really good idea at the time.”

“Gimlorie's songs are dangerous, R'shiel. They can twist men's souls around. You should never have taught one to this boy.”

“I didn't teach it to him. Gimlorie did. He didn't seem to mind when I asked him.”

“Of course he wouldn't mind. Every soul who hears it hungers for him. But it's what it has done to Mikel that you should be concerned about.”

“Are you saying Gimlorie is the one who turned Mikel into an assassin?”

“No,” Dacendaran said. “Gimlorie wouldn't do that. But what you did do was leave Mikel vulnerable to Xaphista.”

“Humans need faith to believe in the gods, R'shiel,” Brak added in a lecturing tone. “What you did was take away Mikel's freedom to believe or not believe. You destroyed his free will and made him a creature of the gods. Any god.”

R'shiel turned to the boy and stared down at him impatiently. “Is that what happened, Mikel? Did you go back to worshipping the Overlord?”

Mikel shook his head silently, too distraught to speak.

“Then why? Who told you to do this thing?”

“The old man,” the child replied in a voice so low even Dacendaran had to strain to hear him.

“What old man?” Brak asked.

“The one in Hythria. At the palace. He told me to give the demon child a gift. He said it would help her see the truth.”

“What old man is he talking about?” R'shiel asked Brak.

“It was probably Xaphista himself,” Dace shrugged.

“Can he do that?”

The God of Thieves gave the demon child a withering look.

“Oh, well, I suppose if you can do it, so can he.” She turned and studied the miserable figure hunched on the cushions for a moment then turned to Brak. “Why Mikel?”

“Because he's young, he's impressionable, he's feeling guilty for turning away from his god in the first place, and,” he added with a frown, “you left him wide open to manipulation when you opened his mind to Gimlorie's song.”

“Well, how was I supposed to know it would do that? The Harshini sang it all the time in Sanctuary. It didn't seem to bother them.”

“The Harshini are already a part of the gods, R'shiel. But even they will only share it among themselves. No Harshini would ever share the song with a human.”

“So what do we do with him?”

“I don't know, but we've got about half an hour to make up our minds,” he reminded her grimly.

“Dace? Can't the gods do something?”

The god shook his head. “You can't unteach him, R'shiel, and he's done the Overlord's bidding. None of the gods has any interest in saving this child.”

“But he was your friend, Dace!”

The god stared at her. His smile faded and for a moment he let R'shiel see the true essence of his being. The lovable rogue was gone and there was simply Dacendaran, the God of Thieves, powerful, implacable and concerned only with his own divinity. Brak had seen it before and the knowledge of what the gods were truly capable of was at the core of his distrust of them. But R'shiel had never been confronted with it until now and it stunned her.

She took a step back from Dacendaran in fear.

“Do what you want with the child,” Dacendaran said in a voice that chilled Brak to the bone. “His fate is of no concern to the Primal Gods.”

Dace vanished, leaving them alone in the tent. R'shiel appeared to be having trouble breathing. Mikel had still not moved, resigned to his fate - perhaps even welcoming it. He would soon be dining at the Overlord's table.

Damin Wolfblade would see to that.

* * *

They came for him on the hour, three heavily armed Raiders who were there to stop them from trying anything heroic, Brak suspected, rather than any real need to escort an eleven-year-old to his execution. They did not try to prevent the men from taking the boy, even with magic. It would simply have angered the High Prince. The bind that Damin Wolfblade had placed them in was untenable: go to the rescue of those in the Citadel or stand back and watch a child put to death for the crime of being easily manipulated.

Adrina was waiting outside with Damin. Her eyes were swollen and she had obviously been fighting with him. Damin's eyes were bleak and unforgiving. Behind Adrina were the Harshini who had come to aid the Hythrun in their quest to relieve the Citadel. Glenanaran stood at the front of the small gathering of Dragon Riders. Brak could feel their pain from the other side of the clearing. This was a vicious way to reintroduce them to the world of humans.

One look at Damin and Brak knew that Adrina had not changed his mind.

“You can't order this, Damin,” R'shiel told him as Mikel was escorted across the clearing to stand before the High Prince of Hythria. “You can't ask a man to execute a child!”

He looked at her. “I don't ask anything of my men I wouldn't do myself.”

“Damin, no!” Adrina cried in horror. She ran forward and grabbed his arm, but he shook her off impatiently.

“You don't have to watch, Adrina. Nor do you, Divine Ones,” he added, looking over his shoulder at the horrified Harshini. “This is none of your concern.”

“Damn it, Damin, be reasonable!” R'shiel yelled angrily as he began to walk away with Mikel and the guards in his wake.

Damin stopped and turned to her, then he walked back to confront her, his eyes blazing in the torchlit clearing among the tents.

“Reasonable?” he snarled. “Define 'reasonable', demon child. Is it reasonable that I let this child live so he can turn on you again? It is reasonable that I let an assassin reside in the heart of my family? Suppose Adrina had taken that cup? Suppose Brak hadn't noticed something was wrong? What the hell do you expect me to do?”

“You cannot murder an eleven-year-old boy for something that wasn't his fault. He's a child, Damin, a tool. If anyone is to blame, it's me.”

Her calming tone did nothing to deter him. “R'shiel, I have lived with assassins all my life. I grew up afraid of the dark, because for me, the darkness was likely to conceal danger. I will not have my child raised the same way. I will not have him sleep with armed guards standing over him. I want him to grow up playing with children his own age, not learning how to take down men twice his size in case he's attacked. I want the whole damned world to know what I'm capable of if they dare to threaten me or mine. This ends now.”

“He didn't threaten you, Damin, or your wife and child. He was trying to kill me.”

“You're my friend, R'shiel, and he did it under my roof. It amounts to the same thing.”

“Do this thing and we won't be friends any longer, Damin.”

Brak watched him hesitate for a moment, but the implacable rage that consumed the Warlord was not something so easily swayed. Even faced with the horror of what he was about to do, Brak found himself sympathising with Damin. He'd been alive for seven hundred years and seen worse things done for lesser reasons. He did not know how many men had tried to kill Damin as a boy, but he could see now the scars that it had left on him. He was willing to do anything, literally, to save his unborn heir from the fear he must have lived through as a child, not realising that in order to slay the monster, he would become a monster himself.

Brak saw the look of horror in Adrina's eyes and the pain of this confrontation emanating from the Harshini