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The Spell of Undoing
  • Текст добавлен: 6 октября 2016, 22:36

Текст книги "The Spell of Undoing"


Автор книги: Paul Collins



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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 8 страниц)

She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.

‘Well, you'd best be off then. You have a big day tomorrow and will need your sleep.’

Tab gave him a puzzled look. ‘What for?’

‘Well, naturally,’ said Verris, ‘you can't begin your training as an apprentice magician if you can't even keep your eyes open, now can you?’

Tab's eyes grew as big as plums, and there was a roaring in her ears. ‘A what?’

THE RAIDING PARTY

Hardly daring to believe her luck, an extremely nervous Tab reported for training at the Magicians’ Guild the very next morning.

She didn't know what to expect as she arrived at the Hall of the Initiates. Here a duty clerk peered owl-like over her thick glasses and mumbled, ‘Another initiate, eh? Name? Sponsor? Former address? Come along, girl, don't just stand there witless. I'm busy, as well you might be if you'd gather your thoughts. Dear me, I don't know where they find you all.’

Tab stumbled over her answers. After a harrowing time, Amelia, Philmon's cousin, was called to collect her.

‘Don't mind Mrs Haggerty,’ Amelia said as they walked between thick pillars. ‘I'd be rather short too if I had to sit in that hall day in and day out poking questions at every visitor. She calls us all good-for-nothings, you know.’

‘But the Navigators’ Guild is the most important guild in Quentaris,’ said Tab.

Amelia laughed. ‘That's just her way. Mind you, she doesn't talk to the magicians like that. Oh no, they'd turn her into a frog or something. But we're not magicians, not yet anyway. I mean, we don't have real powers.’ She suddenly gave Tab an odd look. ‘Maybe you do, though.’

‘Me?’ Tab shrugged. ‘I just have – visions… ’

‘Mmm,’ said Amelia. She led Tab along twisting corridors. Groups of students could be seen taking lessons in classrooms and in the leafy grounds. Magicians would look up annoyed as they passed, and Tab realised they were late for her first class. Amelia stopped outside a classroom door and knocked.

‘Come in,’ said a magician.

Amelia wished Tab good luck and hurried away to her own classes. Tab took a deep breath and entered. Several students looked at her with interest, even awe, though they were too busy copying something written on the blackboard to do more.

Tab stood just inside the door, not sure what to do. ‘You're late,’ the magician snapped. ‘Take a seat.’

Tab spied a seat at the back of the class and hurried to it. The students might think she was something of a hero for saving Quentaris, but it was clear the magicians did not or if they did, refused to give any sign. Perhaps they thought it would go to her head. Or maybe they were just peeved that she had seen something that they hadn't.

Tab sat beside a smiling girl called Seretha. In a hurried whisper she told Tab what they were doing. Tab got out a notebook she had been given – along with several textbooks – and started copying from the board. The class was on levitation, which didn't just mean making objects float in the air; it was also the method by which the magicians themselves flew.

Happy beyond belief, Tab settled down and started to work.

That day and those which followed hurtled along in a haze of lessons, homework, practice, breaks, friendships, and more homework. At the end of each hour, the initiates were shunted from one class to the next. As the days wore on, Tab learnt about magic lore, herbs, poisons and the rudiments of rift navigation. It seemed to her that being an initiate wasn't as much fun as she had imagined. Instead it was hard work, and yet she found a deep pleasure in that too, though she would have liked something more challenging. The fun stuff, like sending exploding bubbles of soap suds diving at your enemies, usually went on after school hours.

Tab soon began to believe she actually did have powers. At least that's what most of the other apprentices seemed to think. Wherever she went whispers followed, as well as pointing fingers. ‘That's the girl who saved Quentaris from Tolrush.’ Again and again she heard the words. Girls jostled each other to get a good look at her, and several times teachers had to scold students for trying to pass notes to Tab in class.

Tab thought back to her introduction to the Hub, that part of Quentaris that housed an icefire gem that powered the ire ore.

‘And there,’ said Quartermaster Dorissa, pointing, ‘is the fabled bloodfire beetle. See how the Seeker hums and strokes the creature?’

The initiates stared open-mouthed.

‘Note that its carapace is like a ruby version of icefire, hence its name. It feeds on icefire and so incorporates particles of the gem into itself. Look, it sparkles and glows like a ruby reflecting the flames of a fire,’ Dorissa went on. ‘When it's spinning in perfect harmony with our city and that of another plane, it sets up a harmonic humming that is integral to the process of sensing out the pathways to an alternative rift plane – looking for and predicting weaknesses, flaws, sensing where the next vortex will form, and when. It feels the raw fabric of space-time.’

‘It's disappearing!’ an initiate cried.

‘No, child,’ Dorissa said. ‘Bloodfire beetles exist mostly in and marginally outside this plane, hence their flickering. It's a form of concealment and escape for them. They shift into alternate rift planes for short periods of time.’

Without thinking Tab tried to mind-meld with the bloodfire beetle. An unimaginable harmony came over her and, sensing the risk of being consumed, she immediately withdrew. ‘Until a predator has passed or given up searching for it?’ Tab said, slightly disoriented.

‘Well done,’ the quartermaster said. ‘The morphing is a camouflage.’ The magician frowned. ‘Are you all right, child?’

Tab felt her face drain of colour. ‘I'm fine,’ she said. ‘A momentary turn, that's all.’

Dorissa continued with the lesson.

Without realising it at the time, that first, albeit brief, mind-meld with the bloodfire beetle had been Tab's first real inkling of the part she might one day play in the Navigators’ Guild.

Tab held up her head. Although she was currently a minor cog in the Navigators’ Guild, she was still part of an essential organisation. Being able to move Quentaris from place to place was one thing. Knowing where to move her to was quite another. And hence the need for navigators. It fell to the Navigators’ Guild to find the way back to where Quentaris belonged. And for this they needed to navigate the rift planes and pathways. Once again, the icefire gem, coupled with ire ore, was the key – the catalyst. It could enhance the natural abilities of the magicians to ‘sense’ and ‘see’ these pathways. It even enabled some very powerful magicians to open vortices, rather than just to locate them by how they made the rift planes tremble.

Under the leadership of Chief Navigator Stelka a black-eyed, raven-haired magician and clever court politician – all the key positions in the Navigators’ Guild belonged to magicians.

Dwelling on the magnificence of the Hub, Tab fell asleep in her new room which she shared with Amelia. Later that night she suddenly sat bolt upright. She knew what had been needling her.

She felt – important. Bleary-eyed, she glanced down at the seed-gem that all initiates were given. Its lambent glow made her smile. How protective the magicians were of their little brood.

That first week flew past in a blur. Tab was dazed much of the time and had to keep pinching herself, half afraid she would wake back in Mrs Figgin's orphanage. Oddly enough, there were some similarities to her first home. The rooms, for instance, were very small and had to be kept sparkling clean. And there were rules. Lots of them.

Tab didn't mind really. She was living her dream.

They had classes in just about everything, though it would be months before the apprentices even began to think of specialising. Tab's favourite lessons were in levitation, foretelling, spells and charms, wind-working and storm-bringing, magical defence and attack, and most of all in rifting – that rarest of all gifts, the ability to hear the deep whispering of the rift currents, to locate the vortexes … and find the way home for Quentaris…

Most of her fellow students were ahead of Tab, having started their apprenticeships nearly two months earlier. Amelia was actually two years in front. The guild believed in pairing younger and older students, and the arrangement seemed to work out well for both.

Tab didn't see much of Philmon at first. Shortly after her arrival he had accused her of acting first and thinking later, which had stung her, for he had gained a promotion due to her. And Fontagu failed to turn up. Verris visited her a few times but he had no news of the ex-actor, and Tab slowly came to the belief that Fontagu had perished in the battle with Tolrush.

She went one day to the Hall of the Fallen, had Fontagu's name added to the Quentaran casualty list and paid to have a candle lit on the anniversary of the battle.

Here, in the echoing silences of the Hall, she whispered goodbye to Fontagu and wished him well.

And after that, life continued.

Tab's only real complaint in this whole period was that they never got to do serious magic. She mentioned it late one evening to Amelia, who was sitting on her bed, yawning, trying to read a thick volume called Levitating in Emergencies, which was one of Amelia's specialities.

Amelia groaned and closed the book with a snap.

‘I am so tired,’ she said. ‘I think my eyes are about to fall out of my head.’

Tab had to ask her question a second time. Amelia just shook her head.

‘You need to walk before you can fly. I know it all seems a bit of a mish-mash at first, but trust me, all those little bits build up into bigger bits. And suddenly they all come together. Like, a brick is nothing, yes? But thousands of them built this school. Millions of them built Quentaris. Once you can make a brick, you can make anything.’

‘I know all that,’ said Tab, ‘it's just that I'd like to -’

‘Be a natural, like Nisha or Stanas,’ Amelia interrupted. ‘Wouldn't we all, Tab? But they had to learn how to control their raw power. Nothing's ever easy, even though we'd like it to be.’

‘But I feel as though I have something in me, Amelia. I -’

But Amelia was already snoring softly.

Tab scowled with frustration. Here she was, the girl who had saved Quentaris almost single-handedly, and she was learning how to levitate pins, or remove warts. She wanted to do something big, really big. Something that would make people sit up and take notice of her, that would make the magicians take notice of her.

Tab slumped back on to her bed.

She was tired, too, but her growing frustration stopped her from sleeping. Even her visions – her mind-melding with animals – seemed to have faded away, though that might be in part because the magicians’ school was warded by strong magic, which perhaps suppressed her abilities.

Desperate to sleep, Tab wove a relaxation diagram in the air. She had learnt the rudimentary spell during an enlightening lesson that day. Being the first layer of a set of ten, it was a minor spell.

Apart from a tingling sensation, Tab felt nothing. Perhaps she hadn't drawn the diagram particularly well. She tried again, this time adding a few curlicues. A fluorescent sheen morphed in the air then dissipated. ‘Oh!’ Tab gasped, sitting back. She watched the miniscule specks of twinkling magic fall like a shower.

Tab was tempted to try the spell one more time. But Dorissa had warned her students that magic didn't like being messed with. If it wasn't working, then leave well enough alone. There might be a reason why it wasn't forming.

However, Tab eventually drifted off to sleep.

Around midnight she woke suddenly. She was ‘in’ a dingy room lit by a single shaft of daylight. Three Tolrushians slept on the bare ground. Another stood watch by a broken window. A cloth was draped across the gaping hole. A burly Tolrushian grunted, climbed to his feet, and peered out the window. Tab started. Before the Tolrushian dropped the cloth back into place she had glimpsed the mainmast off in the distance.

The Tolrushians were right here in Quentaris!

Tab studied the room. A wolfhound stirred, got to its feet, and came towards her, nuzzling her. So she must be seeing through the eyes of a second wolfhound.

The other wolfhound stepped back and growled at her, as though it could sense her presence.

‘Settle,’ the Tolrushian at the window whispered. The wolfhound padded across to a bundle on the ground. ‘Leave it,’ said the man gruffly. He knelt and stroked the wolfhound's wiry coat. ‘You'll have more food than you can eat soon, Slezzer.’

The mound of rags stirred. Tab made the animal move closer. Someone or something was tied up there, but the hessian wrapped about the body made it impossible for Tab to tell who or what it might be.

‘All right you lazy lot, get up. It's time.’ The two Tolrushians still stretched out on the floor groaned, blinking. ‘Bruta, Carris, you mind that bag of slag. Once we get what we've come for we're off this pile of rock.’

The meld faded.

Tab sat up. Across the room, Amelia slept peacefully, still clasping the thick tome on levitation. Tab felt a chill. What did the Tolrushians want? And how had they managed to sneak on board Quentaris? She had sensed their tension, had smelt their nervous sweat.

Something bad was about to happen, Tab knew.

‘Amelia,’ Tab hissed. She reached over and shook the girl, but Amelia didn't stir. Tab was about to shake her again but stopped.

Maybe this was her chance to do something that even the magicians would have to acknowledge. If she foiled the spies’ plans they would see she had true power after all, not just beginner's luck. Maybe she'd even get put up a class or two.

There was another reason too. Florian Eftangeny. She had run into him a week after the battle and was stunned to see him wearing the scarlet robes of the Magicians’ Guild. Somehow – probably by bribery, she thought – he had become a personal apprentice to a magician. She herself was wearing the black and silver tunic and cloak of an apprentice in the Guild itself.

Florian sneered. ‘Well, if it isn't the little rift girl, made good.’

‘You can talk,’ she retorted.

‘Oh, I earned this – saved a magician, I did, just as a Tolrushian was about to cut off his head.’

‘They don't give you an apprenticeship for that!’

‘Quite right,’ said Florian, ‘they don't. So it must be the magic spell I used to stop the brute. I must say, it surprised me nearly as much as the Tolrushian. Blasted him over the battlement, it did. The magician was so appreciative. Said I had real talent, unlike the kind of dumb luck certain others seem to have… ’

Tab said hotly, ‘It wasn't dumb luck. I can see things!’

‘Yes, but it's not really magic, is it? I mean, it doesn't do anything.’

‘It does!’

‘Is that a challenge, then?’

‘Yes!’

They stood near the edge of the harbour on Spray Lane. All around them stood stalls selling fish. ‘Let's see what you've got then,’ said Florian. He removed a magic wand from under his robes and brandished it. Accomplished magicians didn't use wands; they preferred words, and hands, to weave spells.

But Tab didn't know many spells yet, not real ones. And levitating pins wasn't going to impress Florian. He was already conjuring something. A basket of fish guts and scales trembled. Tab realised that he was trying to fling it at her, but was having some trouble.

Angry, Tab grabbed the basket. Before Florian knew what was happening, she had dumped it over his head, plastering him with stinking fish innards.

‘I'll get you!’ Florian screamed.

Tab didn't wait around to find out what he would do in retaliation. She fled. Two streets away, she could still hear his howls of rage, and couldn't stop grinning. A little later she wondered if she had gone too far. It served him right, though. He had only got what he had meant for her.

But the incident left her feeling moody.

Florian could do genuine magic, and she couldn't. It wasn't fair. What use was mind-melding with animals? It hardly seemed like magic at all.

She wanted to make things happen. She wanted to control water like old Stanas once did, she wanted to cast fire, like Nisha Fairsight. She wanted…

More than anything right now, she wanted to beat Florian.

She made up her mind. She would capture the Tolrushians by herself. Even Florian couldn't do that.

She got up, dressed quickly, and tip-toed down the long corridor outside her room. Moments later she was outside in the street. High above, two moons peeked through the upside rigging. In the distance a city watchman strode across a square and disappeared into a shadowy street.

She would have to be careful. First, she must find the spies. Only then could she rouse the City Watch: if the spies hid or escaped without being seen, nobody would believe her and then she would truly be in trouble. The magicians might even kick her out of school.

For a second she hesitated. Maybe she should wake somebody…

She had just convinced herself that this was the right thing to do when Florian's words came back to haunt her. She flushed again. No. She would do this herself. She could handle it. After all, she was the girl who had already saved Quentaris once. She would do it again.

The streets were reasonably quiet. With fewer people since the Rupture, Quentaris had changed: life had become more peaceful – or it had been till Tolrush attacked. Tab passed a few night watchmen. They glanced at her as she hurried past but her initiate's clothing saved her from closer inspection. No one really wanted to get on the wrong side of the magician-dominated Navigators’ Guild.

Tab skirted Idler's Gardens. Like the Thieves’ Quarter, it was one of those places where shady characters plied their trade. Tab stopped in the shadows beneath a monument to some long dead magician, and opened her mind. She was a little nervous. She had never deliberately tried to re-establish contact with an animal she had already been linked to. Tab sat at the foot of the monument and concentrated. She wasn't entirely sure she could make it happen; usually, the mind-melds just sprang upon her, often when she slept or dozed.

She tried to remember what it felt like to be the wolfhound: the sense of sinew and strength in its long-limbed body; the panting need for breath; its beating heart… and the excitement, the anticipation, that soon there would be action, fighting, blood… She felt a sudden swooping urge to howl at the sky and with an audible click she was back inside the hound…

She frowned. ‘Where are you?’ she whispered, then all at once she recognised the Square of Dreams. Two Tolrushians moved with stealthy purpose through the shadows, pausing and listening. The other two, plus one wolfhound, were missing.

As a wolfhound began to growl, she broke contact and ran out of the park to find the raiding party.

Tab arrived at the square out of breath. With her heart hammering against her ribs, she slid into the nearest shadow. She tried to meld again, reaching out with her mind…then something hit her from behind and she crashed forward into darkness.

KIDNAPPED!

Tab woke several times. A buzzing sounded close by, and wind buffeted her. When she tried to move her hands she discovered she was gripped by claw-like pincers. A herb-soaked cloth was strapped around her mouth – that accounted for her drowsiness. Her head nodded and she lost consciousness again. In that brief moment of wakefulness Tab had seen she was hanging from a flying machine. And though she couldn't see the land below, she knew it was a very long way down.

The next time she woke, she wished she hadn't. The hard bunk beneath her, the harsh lighting, and the metal bars told her all she needed to know. She tried to sit up again, but her head felt as if it had been split with an axe. Her vision swam, and she slumped back on her bunk. She must have fallen asleep because she woke several more times in the night, but each time she heard horrible noises and screams from somewhere nearby. She stuffed her fingers in her ears and curled up tightly, more frightened than she had ever been in her whole life.

Finally, Tab woke and she knew it was morning.

She caught brief ‘glimpses’ of the world outside as a series of rapid mind-melds flashed through her brain without any effort on her part: she was a rat poking its whiskery nose cautiously from a jutting drainpipe; a cat prowling a battlement, questing for food; and a hawk-like bird of prey gliding past a filthy, tattered sail that flapped in a light breeze; then she was back inside her dismal cell. With a sinking heart she knew she was on Tolrush.

Unsteady on her feet, Tab carefully crossed her cell and clutched the bars. She craned her neck to peer up and down the corridor but could only see more cells. The cell opposite hers was occupied, though she couldn't tell by whom.

‘Hey, you in there,’ she hissed. ‘Can you hear me?’

Somebody stirred, sat up briefly, giving her a look of pure terror; it was the boy from her vision. His eyes held such desolation that Tab gasped. Then he buried his face under his thin blanket.

Keys jangled and she heard footsteps coming along the corridor. Tab moved away from the bars and sat down.

A guard unlocked her cell. ‘Stand up in the presence of the King,’ he growled. He went to kick her but years of experience in Mrs Figgin's orphanage had given her swift reflexes. She dodged easily.

The boy-king she had seen in her mind-melding with the rat swept into view. Kull Vladis didn't seem as imposing in the flesh as he had in her vision. He was not more than five years older than her. But there the similarity ended. He was already massively muscled and a monster in the making. His brutal face and small darting eyes revealed treachery and cunning.

Kull eyed her up and down. ‘Answer my questions and you will live,’ he said. ‘Where is the magicians’ icefire gem?’

Tab blinked at the boy-king in surprise. Before she could open her mouth, the guard slapped her, hard. Tab grunted in pain, and her ears rang.

‘You will answer immediately and truthfully,’ said Kull, bored. ‘I'm told you're the thief who stole the gem from the Magicians’ Guild. You then pursued a fellow by the name of Fontagu Wizroth and were present when the Spell of Undoing was itself undone.’ He paused, and seemed to be mocking her. ‘I have it on good authority that the icefire was not recovered by your magicians. Indeed, no one has seen that particular gem since it was stolen, though the ruins of the slaughterhouse were thoroughly sifted. So let me repeat my question -’

‘I don't have the gem,’ said Tab. ‘I -’

Another blow knocked her to the ground.

The guard snarled, ‘Answer when spoken to, not before.’

Kull smiled. ‘I believe you returned to the slaughterhouse, found the icefire, and hid it. My advisers suspect that you then used it to hurl Tolrush into this,’ – he spat fiercely – ‘this demon-riddled hell! So I ask you once more. Where is it?’

‘I don't have it.’

‘Brand her. We shall see if she knows more than she's telling.’

Tab woke screaming.

She clutched her left hand to her chest, but no matter how hard she pressed, the pain wouldn't go away. Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to unclench her fingers. Pain seared through her arm, and made her gasp. When she could see again, she stared at her hand. The palm was ruptured and blackened like charcoaled meat. Crying, she dipped it in a pail of water…and fainted from the excruciating pain.

Dreams came to her. The branding was just one part of the torture. They had flogged her, hung her upside down from a high beam by her feet and tried to drown her by shoving her head repeatedly into a barrel of ice-cold water. The torture had gone on for hours. As she slept she jerked and cried out, cringing away from unseen horrors.

Tab woke hours later. She was no longer in her own cell. She raised her head. She now shared the cell with the boy she'd seen when she had first woken to find herself in this hellhole. Two swarthy-looking men sat slumped in the cell she had previously occupied.

Her mind, still groggy from pain, became more alert then. She forced herself to sit up. The boy's bunk was hard against the other wall, barely an arm's reach away.

Tab knelt by the other bunk. Very gently, she shook the boy's shoulder, aware of how stick-thin his arm was. The boy suddenly recoiled in horror, kicking and screaming. His foot caught Tab on the jaw and knocked her backwards. The boy scrabbled as far away as he could, whimpering.

Tab rubbed her jaw and got back on her knees. She could see the terrified boy watching her from a gap in the blanket.

Ruefully she said, ‘You've got a kick like a mule, did you know that? Owww!’ She tried moving her jaw from side to side. It hurt, but nothing seemed broken. ‘How many guards have you brained by now?’

The boy said nothing, but his tiny whimpers had stopped. He continued to gaze at her with enormous brown eyes.

‘My name's Tab. I'm from Quentaris.’

Nothing.

‘They kidnapped me and brought me here – last night, I think.’ Nothing.

‘I'm an orphan. Grew up in Mrs Figgin's orphanage. She was horrible. An old bat. Actually, bats are all right. She was more like an old she-dragon… Well, some of the time. She could be really gentle on her better days.’

The boy did not answer, nor did he look away.

‘You know, I'm a prisoner here too,’ said Tab, trying not to sound exasperated. She realised one of the boy's legs was poking from the blanket. His shin was painfully skinny and a large seeping sore was crawling with flies.

Tab wrinkled her nose. ‘Oh, what have they done to you?’ She blinked back tears and stretched out a trembling hand to move the blanket so she could see the wound better, but fretting, the boy jerked his leg away. He was crying now, silently.

Tab reached for his hand. The boy cried out like a frightened animal and covered his head with his arms, cringing away from her.

Tab froze, her arm in mid-air. Slowly, she drew it back.

Softly then, she continued talking about her life growing up as a Dung Brigader, not ever having known her parents; she talked about Quentaris and what it was like and how much she loved it, even though she herself had not been born there, but had stumbled from a rift cave one day, an articulate four-year-old who knew her own name but little else; she talked about meeting Fontagu and the Spell and the great Rupture, and how her life had changed for the better; and in an even lower whisper she told the boy how she had discovered her ability to mind-meld. ‘Somehow the magic in me was awakened by the icefire itself,’ she said, thinking back. ‘And that eventually helped me become an apprentice magician. I've had that dream from as far back as I can remember.’

All the while she kept her tone low and gentle, though the things the boy seemed to respond to most were her sudden smiles and the silly laughter which she tried to hold in but couldn't.

Tab realised later that it had probably been a long time since the boy had seen a smile that wasn't cruel, or heard laughter that wasn't at his expense.

She ended her story by bringing him up to date. ‘And they tortured me for hours, but I didn't tell them anything. They did this.’ She held up her burnt hand. She had actually managed not to think about it while she related her story to the boy, but seeing it again brought the horrible memories back, and the pain seemed worse than before.

She tried very hard not to, but suddenly she burst into tears, cradling her wounded hand. Wave after wave of pain throbbed along her arm.

Through the blur of tears she could see that the boy had crept forward to the edge of the bed. Tab didn't dare move, in case she frightened him again. Despite her tears she smiled at him, wanly.

As she watched, he reached out towards her wounded hand. Instinctively, she started to pull it away, and the boy froze. His eyes seemed to appeal to her. She swallowed, and tried not to move as he touched her hand.

Even that gentle touch sent a shockwave of pain racing along her limb, but she bit her lip and forced herself to remain utterly still.

Then, with a quickness which surprised her, the boy wrapped his hand around hers. She gasped in pain, went to jerk it away, but then a sliver of light shot out from between their two hands, and the pain ebbed, then disappeared.

Just like that, the burning sensation was gone.

Tab's free hand flew to her mouth. The boy released her hand and crawled back to the wall, not taking his eyes off her.

Tab looked down at her hand. It was still blackened and ruined, but the wound was now… old. As if it had happened weeks ago. She looked up at the boy. ‘What did you do?’

There was the tiniest of shrugs.

‘Do you… do you have a name?’ she asked, barely above a whisper.

Nothing. Then the boy's lips moved. Tab bent closer, and this time she heard it.

‘Torby.’

Tab sat back and smiled. ‘Thank you for fixing my hand.’ She wished fervently that she could heal Torby's wounds, knowing that healers couldn't cure their own injuries.

Tab woke later that night to find a small warm body pressed against her. Very slowly she rolled over. Torby whimpered but did not wake or leap away in alarm. She made sure he was covered with a blanket then slid her arm around his shoulders, and held him tightly as her eyes filled slowly with tears.

What's going to happen now? she wondered bleakly. Because one thing was very clear to her: she had to escape from this place, and she had to take Torby with her.

Shockingly cold water hit Tab's face. She sat up, gasping and spluttering. Immediately she was aware that Torby was gone. She looked about frantically. He was nowhere to be seen.

In a fury that took even the boy-king by surprise, she leapt off the bed and attacked him. Momentarily stunned, he took a step backwards, then regained his composure and laughed, holding her off with ease.

The next second a guard grabbed her from behind and threw her back on the bunk where she crouched, snarling. Kull clicked his fingers and another guard stepped into the cell doorway, holding Torby. Tab held out her arms and Kull nodded. The guard released the boy and he hurtled across the cell and into Tab's arms, burying his face against her shoulder, his body trembling.


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