forest. Seizing the bronze axe he strode to the edge of the clearing and stood listening. It could have been anything— a deer or some other animal, or merely Sylvo falling over a root. But it did not come again and Blade did not like the silence. No birds sang and the rustling of small creatures had ceased.
Taleen joined him, huddling close. 'What is it, Blade? Your man does not return— does it take so long to catch hares?'
He put a hand over her mouth, his lips to her ear. She had lost the odor of chypre now and smelled only of sweet girlish flesh.
'Stay here and keep quiet,' said Blade. 'I will go look for Sylvo.'
'No! I will not stay in this place alone. I will come with you.'
'Quietly, then, and not too close. If there is danger I must have room to swing my axe.'
He had no chance to use the great axe. He and Taleen were not fifty yards into the trees, along a faint path, when the finely woven nets fell from above and enmeshed them. There was a sudden great shouting and men leaped from the trees and from bushes fringing the path.
Blade, his stalwart frame netted like any fish, could not free the axe for action. He heard Taleen scream once— 'Beata's men! We are taken!'
He butted and bellowed and made a rare fight of it while he could. He got his hands through the net and knocked heads together, swinging his massive fists like maces, sending half a dozen of his attackers sprawling. At the last, standing like one of the forest oaks, choking a man black-faced with either hand, Blade went down before a dozen men. He took three with him and kept pummeling them until a spear butt crashed down on his head.
At the very last, before the darkness, he heard a man scream a command: 'Do not kill the big one! Queen Beata wants him alive.'
Blade awoke in an oubliette. The slimy stone floor was covered with dank straw in which things crawled. A wick, guttering in a pannikin of fish oil, gave the only light. He was chained, hand and foot, to a ring bolt set into a wall. He itched intolerably and there was a great soreness at the back of his head. For a moment he lost control, slipped the habit of self-discipline built up over the years, and raged at the chains, tugging at them with fierce oaths and swinging and slamming them about.
'No use, master,' said a voice from a dim corner. 'We are well taken. The evil Queen Beata has us, and even the Lady Alwyth is merciful by comparison. I have been thinking hard, master, and my thought is that we are in a great deal of trouble!' There was a great rattling of chains as Sylvo shifted his malformed bones.
Blade, forcing calm on himself, squatted in the filthy straw. 'What of the Princess Taleen?'
He could not see the man's shrug, but heard the chains rattle again.
'Safe enough, master. At least not yet harmed, as I saw. Beata holds her for ransom from Voth, as before— I remember your telling of it— and so we are back to the beginning. Or the lady is. What happens to us may be another matter— and not one on which I like to think.'
Blade quietly tested one of the chains, his huge sinews cracking with the effort. The chain held.
'Keep your heart up,' said Blade. 'I will somehow get us out of this.' At the moment he could not have said how.
Sylvo's tone grew more cheerful. 'So you will, master. I was forgetting that you are something of a wizard.'
Blade, testing the chains again, scowled in the gloom. It was going to take a little more than wizardry to get them out of this. He began to question Sylvo; the basis of all effort, of all successful action, is knowledge.
'What is this place and how came we here?'
'A great castle called Craghead. On the Western Sea. As to coming here— I walked, the Lady Taleen rode, and you were carried on a litter. You were well drugged to keep you sleeping, master, as Beata's men were in fear of you.'
That accounted for his slight headache. He remembered the spear butt crashing down and fingered the wound on his head, swollen and sticky through the thick hair.
'They had nets in the trees,' Blade mused. 'I wonder how— at just that place and time?'
'Ar, master. I wondered also. I was taken like a minnow and stifled without a cry. But I think I have it— the Lady Alwyth must have sent word to Beata. They are in league, no doubt. King Lycanto would never have done it— he and the Queen are enemies.'
It was possible. Indeed it was probable. Lady Alwyth ran deep, was an intriguer by nature, and Blade had spurned her. Taleen was hated for her beauty, if nothing else, and Alwyth would have many tendrils to her web. She and Queen Beata may have been conspiring for years. Blade dismissed the thought. He must think of what would serve him now.
'Tell me of this Queen Beata, Sylvo. What manner of woman is she?'
Sylvo told him and Blade felt the prickles rise on his neck as he listened. Yet he doubted not a word. Such things were in this strange dimension he now inhabited. As real as life— or death.
'And that is all I know,' Sylvo concluded. 'She is a bawd, if the stories can be believed, and likes women as well as men in bed. Children also— it is said that she murders these afterwards so they cannot carry tales— and I myself have seen her cruelty to those who serve her. Most of the men lack an ear, the left one, and many of her women have their left breast cut off. As we entered the castle I saw men hanging on iron hooks on the walls, and was told they were the guards who let the Lady Taleen escape. One was still wriggling, poor bastard.'
'What is her age?'
Chains rattled as Sylvo moved. 'Who knows that? Some say fifty, some say five hundred. If she is a witch, as is also said, I doubt not that the last figure could be possible. All say she is beautiful, but none is allowed close to her and so it may be artifice. Women are full of tricks, even witches, and— '
A trapdoor opened in the ceiling and a face stared down at them.
