Liljana held one hand protectively over Daj's heart, while she gripped her gelstei in the other. She watched the thirteen Grays take their place inside the circle with Morjin. She said, 'It is they. I'm almost certain it was they who gave us away.'
Hearing this, Maram whispered, 'Then perhaps our friends are still safe. Perhaps they'll find a way to -'
'Hold your noise!' Kane snapped at him. 'And guard your thoughts!'
The leader of the Grays, a tall man with a pitiless contempt stamped into his stony face, turned his cold gaze upon me. A terrible fear suddenly pinned me back against the pillar as if a dozen lances of ice had pierced my body.
And then Liljana brought her little figurine up to her head, engaging his mind, fighting him and his dreadful company for all our sakes, and the lances suddenly snapped as I felt a new life returning to my chilled limbs.
'Liljana,' I said, looking at her. 'Can you hold them?'
Liljana stood valiantly facing the Grays. Her wise, willful eyes fought off their soul-sucking stares. Sweat poured down her deeply creased face. And she gasped out, 'I think I can… for a while.'
Mighty was the power of the blue gelstei, I thought, and mighty was the mind of Liljana Ashvaran. A surge of hope shot through me then. But not for us: I could only pray that Atara and the others would discover that we had been taken and that Liljana's valor would give them time to flee Argattha.
And then, as if Morjin could read my mind, he turned toward the still-open gate. His gloat of victory disfigured his fine face. My heart almost broke to see two guards dragging Atara into the throne room in chains. Another likewise led Master Juwain toward the ritual area. And then five men, each pulling at long chains like leads on a mad dog, strained to jerk the furiously struggling Ymiru into the room. Five more men followed him with chains pulled tight around the shackles binding his huge wrist, neck and waist. His black Saryak's robe had been stripped from him. Blood stained his fur where the shackles cut into him. It took all the strength of these ten large men to control him and move him toward the circle where Morjin stood with his priests, guards and the terrible Grays.
Seeing the guards manhandle Atara, I lifted up Alkaladur and took a step forward. Its blade radiated my hate. And then Morjin, his eyes fixed fearfully on my bright sword, finally spoke to me. His words rang out like steel into the hall: 'If you come any closer, Valashu Elahad, she will be killed.'
The Red Priests swarming over Atara, I saw, had jeweled knives fastened onto their belts. And the Grays, of course, had their knives drawn: gray-steel daggers as sharp as death. The guards deployed around the circle pointed their swords, halberds and spears at Kane and me.
'Chain her!' Morjin commanded his guards. He turned his golden eyes upon Master Juwain and the raging Ymiru. 'Chain them, too!'
Guards came forward with hammers then, and beat at our freinds' chains with a dreadful clang of metal against metal. They bound them to the iron rings sunk into the standing stones. With the cruel chains pulling their arms straight out from their sides, they could barely move.
My fear for Atara – and for Master Juwain, Ymiru and all of us -almost chained me back against the pillar. I could only gaze helplessly into Atara's clear blue eyes as I held my sword at my side and waited for Morjin to speak.
The Lord of Lies seemed steeped in thought as he paced around the circle. He had ordered Ymiru's club and Atara's bow and arrows, like the key to Daj's shackles, placed on the floor just beyond their reach. There too lay Master Juwain's varistei, Ymiru's purple gelstei and Atara's crystal sphere. Now Morjin came over and held his hands above the gelstei as if to draw up their power. He glanced at Ymiru's great, iron-shod club and nudged it with his boot. He bent to slip a feathered arrow from Atara's quiver; he stood staring at the sharp, steel point. Then, as if remembering other times when he had held court here, he looked down at the dark etchings in the floor. I suddenly took keen note of what I had so far scarcely perceived: that the stonework of the ritual area was carved with a great coiled dragon. The dragon's head formed the very center of the circle, and its mouth was open as if to swallow the blood that must run through the grooves in the dark, sticky stone.
'All right then,' he called out as the doors closed, 'we may begin.'
His voice, as I remembered from my nightmares, was clear and strong like the ringing of a silver bell. But now that we had finally met in the flesh, here in the fastness of his hall, he seemed to have abandoned all desire to charm or persuade me. His smiles were chill and full of malice, as little alluring as the stare of a snake.
His manner was brusque and cruel as if he had come to mete out justice with an iron hand.
'Stay where you are, Valari!' he suddenly commanded me 'I would speak with you but I don't wish to shout!'
He summoned twenty of his guards and his Red Priests to walk slowly toward us where we stood by the line of pillars. They drew up forty feet away with ten guards on either side of him. I knew that he wanted something from me.
'So,' Kane muttered, 'so.'
I could feel Kane's large body tensing to spring forward like a tiger's even as I trembled to hold back my own. His black eyes flashed fire at Morjin as he calculated numbers and distances. He held himself in check only because it was obvious that Morjin could retreat under cover to the circle before we could get at him.
Morjin turned to nod at the fiercest-looking of his priests, a man with the black skin of Uskudar and the dark, hungry eyes of the damned. He spoke to this priest, and to his other men, saying, 'Well, Lord Salmalik, it's as I've foretold. The enemy has sent assassins to murder me.'
He pointed a long, elegant finger back toward the circle at Ymiru and said, 'It's obvious that the Ymanish led them here. No doubt out of vengeance, bearing his people's false claim. Do you see what comes of the bitterness of believing ancient lies?'
'It be you who lies!' Ymiru roared out as he lunged against his chains. 'Argattha be our hrome!'
Morjin nodded at a guard, who slammed the butt end of his spear into Ymiru's face, smashing his teeth and bloodying his lips. He shook his dazed head slowly back and forth as Morjin continued to address him:
'Your people were paid good gold for the work they did here,' he said. 'And they did good work, it's true, but there is much we've improved upon.'
Ymiru stared down at the dragon carved into the floor, then cast his eyes upon the dragon throne. Finally he turned to look at the Red Dragon himself as he said,
'You've taken a hroly place and made it into something hrorrible!'
Again Morjin nodded at his guard. This time the man thrust the point of his spear into Ymiru's side, tearing open a bloody hole in his fur. 'Thus to assassins,' Morjin called out.
His golden eyes now fell upon Master Juwain. 'For ages, the Brother hoods have opposed us. And now the Great White Brotherhood sends one of its Masters – a Master Healer, no less – to slay rather than mend body and soul together.'
Master Juwain stared fearlessly at Morjin and opened his mouth as if to gainsay this lie. But, mindful of the guard's bloody spear, he decided that there was little point in disputing Morjin. 'If he touches him,' Maram said, looking at Master Juwain, 'I'll…'
His voice suddenly died as he looked down at the red crystal in his hand. The cracked firestone was now useless and couldn't summon forth even a wooden match's worth of flame.
Now Morjin pointed the arrow that he still held at Atara. He called out, 'Princess Atara Ars Narmada, daughter of the usurper of the realm that still belongs to us! The Manslayer who must have seen me dead beneath her assassin's arrows! Well, scryer, what future do you see now?'
I, too, wondered what Atara saw; she stared at the figures of the fallen Galadin carved into the walls, and her eyes were full of hor ror.
I recalled the last part of Ayondela Kirriland's prophecy, that the dragon would be slain. Well, the dragon named Angraboda had been slain, but Morjin must have feared that the prophecy really spoke of him. Could it be, I wondered, that he truly thought we were assassins? Was it possible that he didn't know our real reason for entering Argattha? He mustn't know then, I thought. At all costs, he mustn't know.
Morjin turned away from Atara toward us where we took shelter beneath the pillars.
He pointed at Daj, and spoke with great bitterness: 'Well, young Dajarian, I've been merciful, but this time for you, it's the cross.'
Daj pulled back behind Liljana, who was still fighting off the Grays. He began trembling as he cast his eyes about the room like a trapped fawn.
'And Prince Maram Marshayk,' Morjin said, looking at my best friend. 'Why you have joined this conspiracy is
