anyway. He’d already tried and failed to squeeze his fingers together and slip a hand free, or to grip a chain and pull it free of its moorings in the wall. He didn’t know what else to do.
On his left, Jhesrhi recited one incantation after another. Sometimes it sounded like she was giving commands, sometimes like she was coaxing, and sometimes growling threats. But however she tried it, she never produced more than a puff of displaced air or a momentary bitter taste on his tongue.
Finally he stopped pounding to catch his breath. That inspired her to pause as well. The darkness felt even darker without their noise to fill it.
He examined his shackles by touch. If his efforts were damaging the lock or knocking loose the hinges, he certainly couldn’t tell it. He cursed.
“I’m not getting anywhere either,” Jhesrhi said.
He tried to speak with his customary self-assurance. “Ah well, the chains are just a temporary inconvenience. Our escorts will remove them to take us back to Jaxanaedegor. Then your powers will return and you’ll set one of the wretches on fire. The light will enable me to strike down the others.”
She hesitated, then said, “Yes, I’m sure that’s just how it will go. But just in case it doesn’t…”
“Yes?”
Another hesitation. “I don’t know. I shouldn’t think like that anyway. We have to believe there will be something we can do.” Footsteps padded in the blackness.
Jhesrhi sucked in a startled breath. Gaedynn felt his muscles tighten, and exhaled to blow the tension out.
He only heard one person approaching. And he’d never heard the vampires at all until they laid hands on him. Was it possible that he and Jhesrhi really did have a chance?
The footsteps halted in front of him. Then something clicked against the floor.
“Food and water,” rasped a voice with a barbarous accent. “Dragon want you strong.” The guard sniggered. “Want your blood strong.”
The hope bled out of Gaedynn as fast as it had come. Because this wasn’t the escort who would unlock the shackles after all.
Still, he needed to quench his thirst and fill his belly. Crawling, he groped his way forward as far as his chains would let him go. There he found what felt like a ceramic bowl with a chipped rim. Inside it were water and a hunk of bread. The bread was soggy where the water had soaked into it and hard as rock elsewhere.
He forced himself to drink slowly. The water was lukewarm and tasted of sulfur. His parched body shivered with relief as it went down.
Meanwhile, Jaxanaedegor’s servant padded onward. A second clack announced that he’d down set Jhesrhi’s bowl.
Then there was nothing. No sound indicative of further motion. Evidently the guard was still standing in front of Jhesrhi.
Intelligent as she was, she no doubt realized it, and it likely made her as uneasy as it did Gaedynn. But she needed water as much as he had. Her chains clinked as she came forward.
Leather creaked. The guard was moving. The chains rattled as Jhesrhi scrambled backward.
“You pretty,” said the guard. He paced after her. It was horribly easy to imagine him pressing her up against the wall.
Arms outstretched, Gaedynn moved left to the limits of his chains. There was nothing within reach.
From beyond his straining hands came the sounds of grunting, clinking chains, slaps smacking a face, and blows thumping solid flesh. Then the guard yelped. Something big and heavy slammed into Gaedynn’s hands.
He’d thought himself poised to act if he got the chance, but in the dark the sudden impact caught him by surprise. It felt like the guard was bouncing back out of his reach before he could catch hold. He grabbed frantically. Gripped what felt like a brigandine and the body inside it.
He still didn’t know what sort of creature he was fighting. But the would-be rapist could obviously see in the dark, which meant he’d make short work of his opponent if Gaedynn gave him a chance. He heaved the guard off balance, threw him down on the floor, and dropped on top of him.
There he hung on with one hand and bashed with the other, looping a length of chain to use like a flail. As he made one such attack, something sliced the skin atop his knuckles. Apparently his swinging fist had grazed a fang or tusk.
Meanwhile the guard pummeled him in turn, while also trying to break his hold and squirm out from underneath him. Until the punching stopped.
Probably because the guard had decided to reach for a knife. Something about the way his body shifted told Gaedynn which hand was doing the reaching. He twisted. The guard’s arm brushed across his chest as the first stab missed.
The next one likely wouldn’t. Bellowing, Gaedynn put all his strength and weight behind another blow to the face. Bone crunched, and the guard went limp.
But Gaedynn could still hear breath whistling in and out of his foe’s nose. He groped, found the guard’s neck with both hands, and squeezed.
“Are you all right?” Jhesrhi asked.
“Fine,” he panted. “Just finishing up. How about you?”
“Just scraped and bruised, I imagine. I thought my only hope was to shove him to where you could reach them, but then I couldn’t reach him anymore.”
“Don’t worry about it. You gave me all the help I needed.” He loosened his grip. The whistling didn’t resume. “Let’s find out what sort of presents your admirer brought us.”
He patted his way down the guard’s body. He found the knife, the scimitar his adversary hadn’t been able to use fighting at such close quarters, and then the metal ring clipped to his belt. When he felt what was attached to it, he caught his breath.
“What is it?”
He slipped the key into the shackle on his left wrist and twisted it. The lock clicked and the heavy metal ring hitched open. “Proof that Lady Luck might actually love me almost as much as I deserve.” He rid himself of the other shackle. “Talk, so I can find you without bumping into you.”
“My name is Jhesrhi Coldcreek. I’m a wizard and an officer in the Brotherhood of the Griffon. The name of my own griffon is-”
“Good enough.” He reached and found that she had her arms outstretched. The key fit her shackles too.
She murmured a word of command and conjured a glowing amber ball into the palm of her upturned hand. At first it dazzled him and made him squint, but when his eyes adjusted, he could see for himself that she was disheveled but unharmed. He felt the urge to hug her but caught himself in time.
The light revealed that the guard had been an orc. By rights one such creature shouldn’t pose much of a problem for a soldier who’d stood against wraiths, nightwalkers, and the steel scorpion of Anhaurz, and Gaedynn grinned at the thought that this foe had given him one of the most desperate fights he’d ever fought.
“What are you smirking at?” Jhesrhi asked.
“I’ll tell you later. Look, somehow we managed to dance with the guard without overturning either of our bowls. So drink and eat. We’re going to need it.”
After he finished his own meal, he appropriated the orc’s weapons and-his mouth twisted in distaste-the brigandine. The reinforced leather stank of the brutish warrior’s sweat, but armor was armor.
As he buckled it on and found he couldn’t tighten the straps enough to make it snug on his lean frame, he asked, “Can you disguise us?”
“To a degree,” Jhesrhi said. “But we’ll never find a way out without light.”
“I know. But since Jaxanaedegor’s more or less a grandee of the realm, maybe he has servants or occasional visitors who need light as much as we do. If so, then using it won’t necessarily unmask us.”
“We can hope.” She set the orb of light afloat in midair as if she were setting it on a shelf. Then she murmured a rhyming incantation and stroked her fingertips from the midline of her face outward like she was streaking it with paint. When she did the same to Gaedynn, his cheeks and forehead tingled.
“There,” she said.
He looked at his hands. They appeared clean, pale, and devoid of hair. Tattoos peeked out from under the sleeves of what now appeared to be a finely made mail shirt with hammered brass runes and sigils riveted to the
