regretfully. “Forward, Dancer, the fire is waiting for you.”
“Good-bye!”
“No, until we meet again, and soon, Dancer! Remember that a djanga with shadows does not always lead along the right road.”
“Remember!”
“Beware!”
They shouted something else as well from behind me, but I could no longer hear what they said. The fire flicked its hissing tongues of flame at me, menacing me.
“You’re mine!” roared the crimson fire.
“You’re ours!” its ravenous tongues echoed.
I’m not much inclined to acting in a crazy, irrational fashion, but the time for it had clearly come now. So it’s not always possible to pass through the flame by dancing with shadows? Well, some other way, then …
The fire scorched my face and my hair started crackling menacingly. The skin started to crack on the hands covering my eyes.
The last time only the djanga, the wild, crazy dance that I’d been whirled into by the three shadows, had allowed me to pass through the flames of this inhospitable world and get back to Siala.
This time I was on my own, face-to-face with the ravenous fire.
“You’re mine!” the wall of heat droned.
“You’re mine!” I barked back.
And without thinking about it anymore, I jumped straight into the oven. The wall roared triumphantly as it embraced me. The pain from the burning unfolded into a crimson blossom, but my clothes and my hair didn’t flare up. The flame was left howling in disappointment behind me. Before the silence came crashing down on me, I had time to realize that I had managed to break through the boundary between worlds without the help of any djanga with shadows.…
My head was buzzing, a herd of hedgehogs had settled in my mouth, the back of my head was throbbing. I hissed louder than a boiling kettle and forced myself to open my eyes. Everything was swimming about, so it cost me a serious effort to understand where I was.
“Good morning!” said a loud voice, and I started.
“Is this what you call a good morning, Eel?” I asked with a wry chuckle.
“At least we’re still alive.”
“How long have we been here?”
“We’ve been stuck in here all yesterday and all night. How’s your head?”
“Don’t even mention it,” I told the Garrakian with a groan. “It’s buzzing like an angry nest of hornets. They belted me pretty hard in the cart.”
“I was starting to get worried. You had a fever and you were talking, but you didn’t come round.”
“I was having bad dreams,” I muttered, recalling the walk along the gloomy corridors of the Master’s prison and the mysterious fiery snow of the primary world of Chaos, which the shadows had said was on the point of death.
A dream! It was only the latest dream in a never-ending sequence of nightmares.
“How are you? You came off worse than I did,” I asked Eel.
“I’ll survive,” he answered laconically.
Well, if a Garrakian says he’ll survive, then he will.
I tried to move my arms, but nothing came of it—some rotten lout had tied them good and tight behind my back.
“Don’t bother,” Eel chuckled, noticing me trying to test the strength of the ropes wrapped around my wrists. “It’s art fiber rope, not that easy to get out of. I fiddled with it for an hour, but it didn’t get me anywhere.”
Art is a kind of tree—stunted, twisted, and nothing remarkable to look at. But when its fibers have been properly processed, they make magnificently strong ropes. You can cut through them or gnaw through them, but you have to be extremely strong or extremely supple to snap them or twist your way out of them.
“Have they stuck us in a cell, then?” I mumbled rather dimwittedly.
I just couldn’t shake off the visions of my dreams. I couldn’t believe that the long walk through those underground corridors and the conversation with the shadows were just a nightmare.
“That’s right. The Nameless One’s supporters don’t seem very keen to invite us to a formal banquet.”
I looked round, trying to get a clearer idea of our place of confinement.
It had gray walls and a little window with bars up near the ceiling, dirty straw on the floor, and a solitary torch on the wall. At first sight it was a perfectly ordinary cell, not a very attractive place for a permanent residence. But there was one thing about it that was strange—in all my life, no one who had been in jail had ever told me that a cell needed to have two doors.
“Is the second a spare? In case the jailers lose the key to the first one?” I asked, trying to joke, despite the roaring that still filled my head.
The first door, which was wooden, and bound with narrow strips of steel, was directly opposite us. The second, which was completely made of metal, was on the left-hand wall of the cell and, unlike the first, it had a bolt here on the inside, not on the outside like any self-respecting prison door.
“What kind of nonsense is that?”
He followed my glance and shrugged his shoulders awkwardly.
“I haven’t got a clue. Better pray to that Sagot of yours, ask him to help us get out of here.”
“I think we’ll be getting out of here soon enough, probably feet first.” I was in a grimly talkative mood. “What are the chances of the squad finding us before the Nameless One’s lads offload their surplus baggage?”
“If we were surplus baggage, they wouldn’t have bothered to snatch us, they’d have finished us off right there in the street.”
“True enough. They need us for something, but how long will that last? Kli-Kli got away, Sagot be praised, and I think enough time has gone by for Alistan and Miralissa to start doing something.”
We heard a cock crowing loudly outside the little window.
“We’re not in Ranneng,” said Eel, “we’re in the country, and Alistan is hardly likely to guess that he should look for us so far away from the walls.”
“What makes you think we’re in the country? Do you think there are no cocks in Ranneng?”
“Of course not, there are plenty, but I came round in the carriage, and before they knocked me out again, I managed to look out the window, and the landscape I saw was definitely not in a city.”
Aha. That’s nice to hear. Now we know for sure that the chances of finding us, in a cellar so far away from the inn, are nonexistent.
“You certainly know how to keep a man’s hopes up,” I sighed miserably.
All we could do was wait, hope for a miracle, and trust in Sagot and any other individuals who might be willing to help us. But the miracle was avoiding us, Sagot apparently couldn’t hear us, and those other individuals didn’t exist (at least, they were nowhere within a league of us). As the sailors from the Port City say, we had run firmly aground.
A bolt clattered and two men came in. The first was a short bald man of about fifty with broad shoulders, a purple nose, and icy blue eyes. He was wearing crumpled, grease-spattered clothes and a crooked grin plastered right across his repulsive face. The second visitor was … Loudmouth.
Alive and absolutely well.
For a second I couldn’t believe it was him, I thought it was some kind of apparition or ghost risen from the grave.
When Eel saw who had come to visit us, his face never even quivered. But his dark eyes narrowed.
“I’ll tear your heart out,” he hissed through his teeth.
“I shall try to be careful and not fall into your hands,” Loudmouth replied very seriously. “My apologies for the inconvenience that you have suffered.”
Still speaking in the same icy voice, Eel told Loudmouth to take his inconvenience and stuff it you-know- where.
“A pity,” the traitor said sadly. “I genuinely regret everything that has happened, but no one can choose his
