Rod smiled, just to give the wizard something to think about.
'Wizard,' he added, as another spell washed over him, 'your doom is now inevitable. I was going to spare you, but now, I think not.'
Mere empty words, but perhaps they would worry Arlaghaun, and give him something to try to unearth. Or something else to waste his time on.
Another spell cracked and crackled over him. Rod yawned, and went to sleep again.
'What would you say to me,' Velduke Mistryn asked, over their third pouring of wine, 'if I said I was seriously debating whether or not to kill you, here and now, and take the crown of Galath for my own?'
'I'm not sure, Mard,' King Brorsavar replied quietly, his broad shoulders shifting not at all, neither of his hands heading for a weapon-hilt. 'Is it something you feel it's likely you'll say to me?'
Mardrammur Mistryn smiled. 'No. No, I don't think so. Not anymore.'
After a moment, he added, 'I can tell by your face that you're protected against the mranth.'
'That and the fact I haven't fallen dead on that face just yet,' the king said dryly. 'Pity to taint good wine with it, though.'
'For Galath, one must make sacrifices.'
'Indeed.'
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Rod was getting used to the pain. Arlaghaun didn't send his apprentices to the cell often, just to try casting spells on his wounds or severed stumps from time to time.
Yet the Doom of Galath seemed to have a small army of cruel, malicious monsters that delighted in breaking limbs, raking open skin, and even eating hands and feet right off Rod Everlar's living body.
Seeking to learn the secrets or limits of a Shaper's healing and magic-immunity powers, my left testicle.
And it had been the right one, too, from time to time.
It still hurt like sin when he was violated or had something torn out or chopped off, but he was getting used to it.
It was true. One really could get used to anything.
He was getting weaker, yes; he had no idea how long he'd been here, but there'd been no food. No water, either, but the various monsters often forced open his mouth-or broke his jaw, if he resisted-and relieved themselves down his throat. Most of their urine was like liquid fire, or worse, but some was nearly water. Close enough, it seemed.
He was tired now; he was always tired. He ached, too, in every waking moment. So much for being a Shaper, or a Lord High Archwizard…
Rod was lying on his back, on the patch of cell floor that had just enough of a hump to serve him as a sort of pillow. There wasn't much left of his right leg below the knee since it had been crushed to bloody pulp by a laughing, cursing monster with a face like crawling eels, but it was slowly healing, and there were, as he'd already reminded himself, no pressing social engagements that he had to hurry and be on his feet for.
He didn't bother to open his eyes at the sounds of lightly trudging footfalls, but couldn't help being mildly interested. Whoever was struggling with the door-bar was weaker than the monsters.
His soon-to-be-visitor was breathing heavily, now, and setting down a lantern on the floor. Rod heard an uncertain, wary male voice murmur a brief incantation, and then a face seemed to form in his mind, like patches of frost spreading across a winter-lashed window.
It was the fat young scraggle-bearded apprentice who'd once hurled spells at him.
And Lorontar the Archwizard reared up like a snake inside Rod and struck, lashing without warning through Rod's thoughts right into the fearful mind of the apprentice Klammert.
In a few terrified instants Rod became aware of the apprentice's name, that Arlaghaun had sent him to attempt the dangerous task of spell-probing Rod's mind because the Doom preferred not to risk his own wits, and that Lorontar had been biding his time down deep in Rod's memories for just such a chance as this.
And had now seized it.
Lorontar had ridden Klammert's probe right back into the apprentice's mind, overwhelmed him, and taken control of his body.
Rod opened his eyes in time to see Klammert turn and rush off down the passage. His contact with Lorontar faded with every running step, but he'd 'heard' enough to know the thralled Klammert was hurrying to try to slay Arlaghaun.
Leaving the cell door open.
Rod Everlar rolled over, found his right foot coming back to what it should be, got up awkwardly on that shifting clubfoot, and staggered out into the passage.
He had no idea where he was, or what was the way out, but he could hear the faint din of Klammert's headlong rush out of the dungeon, up ahead; it was easy enough to follow it.
'Even a fool like Rod Everlar can manage that,' he told the stone walls around him.
Politely, they declined to reply.
The gate of spikes would have slain Klammert in an instant, if the running wizard had merely been Arlaghaun's apprentice. Lorontar, however, knew secrets of Ult Tower that the Doom of Galath had never learned, and had chosen this route well.
He flung his fat, borrowed body under the first portcullis, and then drew back before the second with perfect timing, hearing Arlaghaun's gloating laughter peal out of the empty air at so easily trapping him.
Wasting no time on a response, he touched the second portcullis and murmured the command that would make it melt away and trigger the backlash.
When Ult Tower shook and Arlaghaun's chuckles became a sudden, raw scream, Lorontar did allow his borrowed body to shape a small smile.
In the instant before he vanished, taking himself magically to where he could blast the Doom of Galath personally.
After all, traps and trigger-spells were expensive things; there was no sense damaging them when they might well belong to him very shortly.
Ruling Galath seemed to involve a lot of traps, these days.
Rod climbed two sets of worn, bloodstained stone stairs before he was free of the dungeon and stumbled onto a floor of interlinked, furnished chambers. My, but there seemed to be a lot of other prisoners, he thought to himself, many of them things with hairy claws or tentacles protruding from their tiny cell windows.
By then, his foot was whole again, and the architecture of the smooth stone walls, the ledges and trim around the archways, and the lofty vaulted halls, was starting to look familiar. This was probably Ult Tower.
He started to move cautiously, recalling all the guardians. He had no idea where he should go, but if he found that row of glowing gates, almost anywhere in Falconfar would be better than here.
The great fortress seemed deserted, and no wonder. Every servant and guardian who had any wits to think was probably hiding and cowering right now. Anything that could make the whole place shudder and rock, as it was doing quite often, as he walked, was something to be avoided. A few stone shards and a lot of dust came raining down from time to time, but Rod could only shrug. If Ult Tower was going to come crashing down on him, there was nothing he could do about it. And after all the agonies of his imprisonment, he found that he didn't much care.
He turned a corner and saw a beaded curtain in an archway ahead. It was the first 'filled' archway he'd seen thus far, so he went over to take a look. When Rod parted it with his hand, lightning bolts stabbed through him.
Doing nothing, of course, though they'd probably have slain anyone else. He peered into the room beyond,
