lying and then turning away would have been the gravest of insults. “You swore you wouldn’t be enslaved again. You won’t be a slave-at least, not really.”
“Once I’m inside, I’ll be a slave.”
“Until we rescue you,” Komir said. “Zabaj, this will work. We’ve never let you down before, have we?”
“There’s always a first time,” he muttered.
Feena walked up to Zabaj and stroked his cheek. She had yet to remove her gaze from him, nor had she ceased to project her feelings onto him. Aloud, though, she only said one word. “Please.”
They stared at each other for several seconds.
Zabaj finally looked away. “Very well. For you, my love, I will do this.”
“Thank you.”
After kissing the mul on the cheek, she turned back to the others. “I picked up from Calbit that they need more guards.”
Karalith regarded Tritcht’tha. “Time to bring Chrids’thrar out of retirement?”
“Why not?” Tricht’tha chittered. “Haven’t hunted with her in a while.”
Feena shook her head. Where the others all referred to their schemes as “the game” and “gaming” people, to the thri-kreen it was a hunt. That matched with the usual mode of thri-kreen, a predatory race for whom hunting was the primary means of survival.
But Tricht’tha had been the last survivor of her clutch, the rest having died during a particularly brutal sandstorm. Many a thri-kreen would have killed themselves, but Tricht’tha simply sought out another clutch. No other thri-kreen would have her, but she found satisfaction working with the emporium. She claimed to never be suited to the type of hunt that her own people engaged in-the impression Feena got, both from her psionic abilities and from Tricht’tha’s own conversation, was that her clutch might well have starved to death had the sandstorm not gotten them due to their mediocrity as hunters-preferring the type of challenge brought on by the game.
Karalith got up and moved toward the shelves on the left, specifically the one where the spices were kept. “Of course, Chrids’thrar goes nowhere without her flask, and this flask will be full of something special …”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
At first, everything had been fine for Drahar. The soldiers brought Mandred and Douk to Destiny’s Kingdom, the king’s compound that included his palace, the King’s Academy, and more. Both prisoners were locked in one of the king’s dungeons, which both Drahar, as the king’s chamberlain, and Tharson, as the commander of the Guard, had full use of. Their task was to figure out how to exploit whatever it was that made Mandred so mighty.
Then the next morning, Drahar’s assistant, Cace, came into his office. “I’m sorry, sir, but I have some bad news.” She spoke in her usual calm tone-bringing him tea, telling him an appointment had been canceled, passing a message from his wife, passing a message from the king, telling him they were being invaded, Cace always delivered the news with the same soothing affectation.
Distractedly, Drahar asked, “What is it?” He was going over some shipping manifests that didn’t track with what was actually delivered.
“Mandred broke the dungeon door down.”
That got him to look up from the manifests. “Excuse me?”
Cace repeated: “Mandred broke the dungeon door down.”
“That would be the
“Yes, sir.”
Drahar put his head in his hands. “Where is he now?”
“One of the psionists was able to subdue him, but he said it would only last a few hours.”
That prompted Drahar to put the manifests down and run to the dungeon.
Looking through the small window that allowed air into the cell, he saw Mandred lying on the floor.
Or at least something that resembled Mandred.
His flesh was no longer covered head to toe in pustules, but his entire epidermis was now a reddish gray color. The only exception were his shoulders, which still had the red-tinged lesions-and the flesh under them was fully red and pockmarked. His body hair had disappeared entirely, and his head and beard hair had thinned considerably.
The otherworldly magic was doing more than making him stronger.
He glanced at Cace. “Get one of the psionists over here-Frocas, maybe, or Danvier.”
“Danvier was the one who subdued him.”
Drahar nodded. That was why he kept Cace around, to remember details like that. “Fine, make it Frocas. I want a constant watch on him-control if necessary. Have Frocas go at it for eight hours. By then, Danvier should have recovered enough to take over. Mandred isn’t to make a move that isn’t controlled by a psionist, is that clear?”
Cace nodded.
The next morning, Cace ran into his office at the exact same time. “Something’s happened to Frocas.”
Again, Drahar ran down to the dungeon. There he saw Frocas lying on the stone floor, convulsing, while Danvier was on her knees, concentrating harder than Drahar had ever seen her do.
“Can … barely … hold … him.”
Drahar’s own psionic ability was nowhere as strong as that of a proper psionist, but he was able to help in some ways. Placing a hand on Danvier’s shoulder, he was able to bolster her own psionic talent with his own. His own participation was passive, but it served to strengthen Danvier’s ability to hold onto Mandred.
And then he felt it.
Chaos. Aggression. Hate. Violence. Brutality. Murder.
Never before had Drahar considered those characteristics to be palpable, but they were strong enough to
It threatened to overwhelm him, and he was getting it secondhand through Danvier.
Focusing all his concentration, he added every erg of power he could to Danvier’s own efforts.
The voice receded after that scream, but Drahar could still hear it.
“Maybe not,” Drahar muttered, “but you
Then he collapsed.
He woke up in his own bed, surrounded by Cace, two healers, and one of the king’s page boys. The latter ran out of the room as soon as he awakened, no doubt to inform the king that his closest advisor was no longer unconscious.
“What happened?”
Cace quickly filled him in. “Danvier is in her chambers as well. Three other psionists are now standing watch over Mandred.”
“No, not Mandred. Whatever’s taking him over,
Drahar started to sit up, but one of the healers-the young man-put a firm hand on his shoulder. “You need rest, Lord Chamberlain. This will keep.”
Gently, Drahar put the hand aside. “No, it won’t.” Then he sat up fully, at which point the room started to jump around in several directions at once, and Drahar’s breakfast started to surge upward from his stomach to his
