hammering her back a second time. She fell away from the blow like a rag doll, and all the light and sound went out of the world.
Ten
In a second, much darker world, in a stronger, more heavily warded Keep, in a place and time where life was measured by the thickness of sinew and iron and the durability of hope was as ephemeral as mist, another attempt at escape was hanging by a thread.
Grianne Ohmsford lay motionless on the floor of her cell, a ragged, broken creature, listening to the sounds of an approaching Goblin’s heavy breathing. The guard it had come to relieve was dead, and in its place, sitting cloaked and hooded not ten feet from her cell door, was Weka Dart. Her would–be rescuer and the one creature in that wretched world who had demonstrated any compassion for her, he was also her betrayer and a liar of such monstrous proportions that it was impossible for her to know his intentions from one moment to the next.
Grianne Ohmsford, Ard Rhys of the Third Druid Order, had been reduced to a place in life where reliance on betrayers and liars was the best she could expect. How she had come to that end was still something of a mystery, although she knew the identities of those responsible. She knew, too, what was at stake, and it tethered her sanity and resourcefulness directly to a driving need to get clear of the dungeons and find her way back to her own world.
But once the Goblin caught sight of the poorly concealed Weka Dart—which it surely must—the alarm would be given and her last hope of ever escaping would be ended. She could not let that happen. Whatever her misgivings about the Ulk Bog, however uncertain his loyalty, he remained her one chance. Her expectations were reduced to little more than gambling on the mercurial nature of a creature she barely understood. It would have to be enough. Weka Dart would have to do.
She stirred, deliberately drawing the Goblin’s attention. It turned toward her, hearing her scuffling sounds, her whimpers, her sudden gasps, watching her attempts to rise from the floor on which she had lain by then for the better part of three days. It grunted something at her, taking hold of the bars to the cell, leaning forward and peering in. She was an amusement that could keep it entertained during the long hours ahead, a curiosity to be enjoyed and, perhaps, even teased. She could see it in the Goblin’s eyes. She could read it in the look on its face.
Then a shadow slipped behind the gnarled figure, swift as smoke on wind, and the Goblin inhaled sharply as a knife blade thrust through its throat and pinned it against the bars. Weka Dart held the Goblin in place until it was limp, then dropped it on the dungeon floor and kicked the body aside.
« They should all go the same way,” the Ulk Bog hissed. There was a look in his eyes that Grianne hadn’t seen before and wasn’t sure she wanted to see again.
She pushed herself off the floor and limped over to the cell door. Her mouth was dry and her head was pounding. Her vision was blurred from too many days of no food and water and no real sleep. She was still impacted by her ordeal with the Furies, her impulses still governed by her need to be one with them, to mewl and spit and snarl. She fought those impulses, but the effort was debilitating.
« Open the door, Weka Dart!» she snapped at him. «Let me out! Hurry!»
She did not mean her words to sound so urgent, did not intend to appear so desperate. But her needs overpowered her intentions, and the truth escaped before she could contain it. She would do anything to escape. She would give anything to distance herself from the horror she had endured as the Straken Lord’s prisoner.
But instead of opening the door, Weka Dart glanced sharply at her, an uncertain look in his yellow eyes.
« What are you waiting for?» she snapped. «Do you have a way to free me or not? Is our bargain still good? Will you honor it as you have said you would?»
« Our bargain is not complete,” he growled. He reached into his pocket and produced an iron key, holding it up for her to see. «My end of the bargain is here—the key to your cell door. I can take off the conjure collar, as well. But what of your end of the bargain? What of the service I require of you?»
« Forgiveness? You already have that. I have told you that by telling me the truth, you have gained that forgiveness. I don’t want revenge on you. I won’t harm you when I’m free. You have my word!»
His strange, wizened face scrunched down farther on itself and the yellow eyes glittered. «Your forgiveness was the price for my truth. That bargain is made and done. This bargain is new, Grianne of the Straken Lord’s jails. If I give you your freedom—from this cell and from the collar—you must give me what I need in turn.»
She stared at him, realizing suddenly that he had failed to reveal as yet his reasons for coming back. Coming to her aid was not something the little Ulk Bog would do out of the kindness of his heart. He had abandoned her, cast her off as useless to him when she had refused to allow him to lead her where he wanted—which was right where she had ended up anyway. But he had lost his chance at reinstatement as Catcher with Tael Riverine, a loss that left him homeless and shunned. He had come back because he expected her to do something about it.
« I can’t give you anything,” she told him. «It isn’t within my power to give you anything.»
« Ah, Straken, you underestimate yourself. You are exactly the one who can help me, and it is for that reason that I will help you. A favor for a favor. I don’t want much. I don’t want anything more than what you want for yourself. Freedom. From these prisons and from this world. I want you to take me with you.»
Take me with you.She stared at him. Take him out of the Forbidding, he meant. Take him back with her into her own world. Voluntarily release a creature that had been locked away by the Faerie world since before the dawn of Mankind.
« You want to come with me?» she asked him, still not certain she was hearing him right. «You want to leave the Forbidding and come back with me into my world?»
He licked his lips and nodded eagerly. «When you find a way to get free, you must free me, as well. I know that you were brought here against your wishes. I know that you are trapped. But I have seen what you can do. I think that you know a way back—or if you do not, that you will find one. I have seen how resourceful you are, much more so than any other Straken I have ever encountered. You may be a match for Tael Riverine himself!»
« I am a match for no one,” she countered. «I don’t know if I can help you. I don’t know if I should.»
He bristled at her words, stepping back from the cell door and hissing at her like a snake. «Then I don’t know why I’m wasting my time! I don’t know why I bothered coming here at all! You would rather stay in this cell than escape back into your own world? You would rather die here? Better that than help someone like me? Is that what you are saying? That I am not worthy of your efforts, that I don’t deserve your help?»
He spit at her. «Free yourself, then!»
He wheeled and started to walk away. It took everything she had to refrain from calling out to him, from begging him to come back to her. But if he thought she needed him more than he needed her, she would be in his power, and that was a price she could not afford to pay.
He was halfway down the hall when he wheeled about, his face contorting in fury. «I came back for you!» he screamed so loudly that she jumped in spite of herself. «I risked everything to come back for you! I came to save you, and now you won’t help me? One little thing I ask of you, Straken! One tiny, little thing!»
He came rushing back down the hall, sobbing uncontrollably, his shoulders shaking. «Nothing, for someone with your power! Nothing! Why won’t you do it?»
She took a deep breath. «I can’t be sure of my power here. I can’t be sure of what it will do. What if taking you out of the Forbidding is more than I can manage?»
He shook his head slowly from side to side, as if her words made no sense. «Don’t you understand, Grianne of the cat sounds? I was driven from my tribe for eating my children! They will never take me back! No Ulk Bog door will ever be open to me again! Losing the protection of Tael Riverine closed every other door, as well. Now all creatures are my enemies. I am shunned by everything that breathes. I have nowhere to go and no one who will take me in. Better I was dead than to try to live like this!»
« But why bother with me, Weka Dart?» she pressed. «If you just wait, won’t this demon that Tael Riverine has dispatched to my world break down the Forbidding and free you anyway?»
« Free me from what?» he screamed at her. «Free me from one prison so that I can go into another? Free me from one world in which I am outcast so that I can be outcast in another? I don’t want the Straken Lord to
