Cyrene furiously rammed her slim elbow into Farkarrez's groin. The Reakmor was slightly unsteadied by the blow, but his grip on her remained firm.
He smiled down at her with his double mouths. 'You weren't paying attention,' he smirked. 'Things like that don't affect me any longer.'
Turning away from Cyrene's ineffectual attack, Logan scanned the animated cadavers surrounding them. There were over fifteen enclosing them in a half-circle, a cliff at Logan's back. Many of the corpses looked like soldiers Logan and his companions had run into. Yes, he even recognized the crossbowman Moknay had killed in Barthol's chamber. The dagger wound in his face was marred with green, black, and yellow flesh.
The skeletal thief gathered together Logan's and Cyrene's supplies and clothing and carried them away. With a violent shove, Farkarrez threw Cyrene toward Logan and stalked back to his men. He ordered his soldiers to guard the hillock, and the half-circle of cadavers moved closer. Then the sadist leader faced his captives.
'We're going to wait now,' he told them, mockingly. 'Very soon my scout will reach Vaugen, and the Imperator himself will soon be on his way here. Until he gets here, I suppose we'll just have to find some way to amuse ourselves.'
There was a twisting in his stomach as Logan watched the Reakmor's grin widen.
Like a living piece of shadow, Moknay glided out of the darkness and into the midmorning sky, his grey eyes as grim as death. He kept his cape wrapped about him, concealing his strap of daggers as he skated through the cobblestone streets of Gelvanimore. Cautiously, he scanned the area about him before ducking into a building. His steel-grey eyes glistened in the torchlight and locked on the massive form flirting with a barmaid.
Moknay's boot connected with Thromar's rump and got his attention.
Thromar blinked. 'Oh, it's you,' he said. 'What is it? Have you found the thief?'
'Have I found the thief?' the Murderer repeated. 'What about you? 'Taverns are excellent places to learn information' and 'I'll just talk to wanderers stopping in for a drink. Maybe they'll know something.' Have you found the thief?'
The huge fighter stroked his reddish brown beard. 'After extensive prying and espying, I can rightfully say-no.' His beady eyes flickered. 'What about you?'
The Murderer's dark figure seemed to flow into a chair. 'Yes,' he replied, 'in a sense. I ran into someone coming from Frelars and he saw a horrible glare in the Hills yesterday. Ran like a Demon to get here before the sky crashed down upon him. It sounds like our thief.'
Thromar scratched his head. 'The thief we're chasing glares?' he wondered.
Moknay threw up his arms. 'No, but the Jewel does, you thistlebrain! That must have been the Jewel flaring up again.'
The fighter nodded. 'So the thief was hiding in the Hills, but that's the way friend-Logan went. Do you think he'll see it?'
'I would think so,' responded Moknay. 'The man I talked to was at least a league from the Hills and he still saw the flare-up.'
'So I suppose I'll have to leave this wonderful little information center?' queried Thromar.
'We told Logan we'd meet him in Prifrane in a week, and that gives us less than two days to get there. I just hope he's recovered the Jewel.'
'I think that should be the least of your worries, Murderer,' Thromar suddenly declared, spearing the air as he pointed to the tavern doorway.
Moknay pivoted to see the squad of uniformed men entering the bar. There were well over ten of the Guards now inside, and Agellic knew how many outside!
The lead Guardsman stepped forward, his eyes aglow with triumph. 'Moknay the Murderer and Thromar the Rebel, you are hereby under arrest by order of His Ultimate Paramount, King Mediyan, for assisting an Outsider dangerous to Sparrill and her Ruler. If you resist, you shall be slain.'
A quartet of archers flanked the lead Guard; Moknay and Thromar moved.
The arrows flew.
A shambling corpse pulled the unclothed couple apart and dragged Cyrene over to one side. The smell of the animated dead was unbearable, and the one that had just taken the blonde looked like someone had crushed its skull with a heavy wooden club. Logan swiftly turned to Druid Launce's staff guarded by the undead Reakthi and knew how some of them had been slain.
'We're going to play a little game,' Farkarrez rasped, his emotionless eyes roving up and down Cyrene's naked body, 'just to pass the time along.'
'You whoreson,' Cyrene snarled, squirming in the corpse's grasp. 'I swear I'll see you dead.'
The Reakmor sighed, and Logan's stomach churned as the release of air came from his slit throat. 'I grow tired of explaining,' he gargled. 'I am…'
Cyrene's struggles increased. 'You have to breathe, don't you?' she shouted. 'I'll rip your lungs from your maggot-filled chest!'
Farkarrez leaned back on the grass, smirking. 'Oh, that may cause problems, but I'm sure I'll manage. The only reason air passes through me at all is so that I may think and speak for myself.' He waved a hand. 'Only spellcasters know the secrets of our bodies, and breathing is necessary for the nurturing component of the air to reach my mind and to also activate a special portion of my throat so that I may make sounds recognizable to you. That is the only reason I breathe. My men, on the other hand, can neither speak nor think for themselves. That is because Groathit did not feel it necessary for them to do so.'
Hideous! Logan's mind screamed. There was a certain aspect of physiology to Groathit's magic! How, then, was Farkarrez's brain kept alive with no blood? That was probably where the real magic came in.
A second cadaver shuffled up to Cyrene, and Logan froze. The Reakthi had no sword arm, and the young man remembered the soldier who had given him his own wound upon his left arm. In a blind rage, Logan had wheeled about and severed the man's arm from his shoulder. Thank God only Farkarrez could think, or else a number of the shuffling corpses would seek revenge on the young man.
The one-armed Reakthi handed Cyrene her dagger and ambled off. The corpse holding her let go and also lurched off to one side. The sun gleamed off the girl's hair and flesh as she stood there, legs spread slightly as she stanced herself for battle. Her blue eyes hungrily peered at the blade she held tightly in her hand.
Farkarrez withdrew a bundle and unwrapped a number of daggers. Once again Logan thought he saw emotion flicker in those dead eyes as the Reakmor glanced up at the nude blonde stanced before him.
'I think you'll find this game quite entertaining,' he rasped, picking up one of his daggers. 'You see, what you did just before you slit my throat was something I've never seen anyone do before, and Reakmor Farkarrez never makes the same mistake twice. So, as a bit of education for both of us, we'll just have to see where your weaknesses are in that little dagger-deflecting trick of yours.'
Apprehension grew as Logan watched the Reakmor's blade glint in the sunlight. Cyrene's deep blue eyes were flashing from side to side, attempting to formulate an escape plan. They had given her back her dagger, and, by Brolark, she was going to use it!
The mountain air shrieked as Farkarrez's dagger hurled out at the blonde. Still looking for a route to freedom, Cyrene knocked the whizzing blade aside. Logan smirked in sympathetic triumph, but Farkarrez readied another dagger. Cyrene easily batted the second weapon away as well.
'You're quite good,' Farkarrez complimented her. 'You'd have to be-you killed me. But I have the feeling you can't keep this up forever.'
Helplessness and fear filled Logan with a mixture equalling dread. Farkarrez, he knew, was right, and the Reakmor was no longer alive, so he would never tire. Cyrene, however, had had three days of torturous riding plus one day of narrow escapes. She wouldn't be able to last long in the Reakmor's game.
The next dagger nicked Cyrene on the finger as she knocked it to her right, and the fourth she had to dodge. The half-circle, of silent corpses unnerved her, and she was concentrating more on escape than on immediate survival.
Farkarrez's fifth dagger creased her hip, and the blonde staggered. She barely deflected the sixth blade that screeched for her head, and the seventh knife's hilt struck her knee, knocking her to the ground.
Logan's muscles instinctively tensed as he watched the blonde go down, his mind fiercely trying to think of a
