She had been here before, she remembered with an annoying vagueness.
Finally they stopped, and two burly guards lifted the wooden hatch that was set in the floor.
Oh, yes. Father Nelyk had considered this place suitable punishment for his crimes.
“Have you heard of Level Thirteen, witch?” the emperor asked sharply.
“Yes.” Isadora peered into the darkness below. In that moment, she was truly afraid. The terror was like the happiness she had felt when she’d thought the emperor was escorting her to Lucan. Deep, intense, dreamlike.
“You should not have betrayed me,” the emperor said as he reached out for her.
Isadora knew that she was going to fall into the darkness below, she realized his intent just before the emperor’s hand touched her. As his hand—still adorned with the blue ring Lucan liked so much—touched her, she reached out her own hand and splayed her fingers against his chest.
If she could think clearly, she could curse him in some way, but the words would not come to her. Her mind was so disjointed the language of the wizards was lost to her, and besides...Liane was her friend, and Liane loved her husband. As much as Isadora had once loved Will, as much as she loved Lucan. There had to be something good in the emperor somewhere, however small, however lost to the sight of others, for Liane to love him so much. As Isadora looked squarely into the emperor’s eyes she saw not hatred, not evil, but pain.
She had sworn not to kill again...
All she managed to say was “Don’t...” and then the emperor shoved, and the darkness swallowed Isadora whole.
Chapter Twelve
Isadora fell for a moment and then landed hard. The impact of her body against the hard ground stole her breath. Again the world swam, and this time it threatened to go dark. She fought her way back from unconsciousness, knowing that to succumb now would be bad. Very, very bad.
High above she saw the emperor’s apathetic face for a moment, and then the hatch closed and she was left in complete darkness.
Her heart pounded too fast, and she was confused. Her brain refused to be still, and her thoughts were erratic and rapidly shifting. The emperor had drugged her. How long before the effects of the drug wore off? How long would she have to lie here before her wits returned and she could figure out how to escape from this dark hole in the ground?
She closed her eyes, reaching for a calmness that would not come. Nothing made sense; nothing was as it should be. Where was Lucan? He would know what to do.
It was a long moment before Isadora realized that she was not alone. She heard the shuffling of movement in the dirt, she heard raspy breathing, and then she felt the tug of a hand against her skirt.
She screamed. She had never screamed in her life, not like this. The shriek of terror was ripped from her very soul. Her scream scared away some of whatever those things approaching might be, but not all of them were frightened. What felt very much like a hand made of leather found her cheek and caressed her clumsily.
“Soft,” a hoarse voice whispered near her ear.
Another hand grabbed her ankle and started dragging her. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness, which was total but for the hint of light that worked its way through the crack in the hatch above. It took her a moment to realize that the things surrounding her were not things at all, but men. Thin, wild-haired, desperate men.
If she could make her mind be still, she could send them away with a spell, but her mind would not be still. She fought against them physically, pushing and slapping, but since she was on her back and being pulled across the ground, it was difficult to fight with any strength.
A face swam above hers, malicious and thin and mostly hidden in a long, untended beard. She knew those eyes. She had seen them before. With a start, she realized who glared at her with such hate.
Father Nelyk was not dead.
“Do you have any food?” a hoarse voice rasped in her ear.
“Panwyr,” another voice added from the other side of her head. “We need more Panwyr.”
“I don’t have anything,” Isadora said. “Where’s Lucan?” She tried to push the men away, but there were too many of them, and their hands were everywhere, and the drug had addled her mind so that she could not think. She slapped at a hand that wandered near her breast. “He will come for me, and you will be sorry if you hurt me. He won’t like it, he won’t like it at all.” She gathered what senses she could and prepared to strike back. Not to kill—even now she did not wish to kill—but she could stop them. Couldn’t she?
She reached out for the closest man, but before she could touch him, someone dragged her swiftly away. The next thing she knew the man was straddling her, and her hands were pinned to the ground. She looked up and did her best to see in the dark.
Nelyk. “She’s a witch, the witch who put me here. Don’t let her touch you. She is a vile, untrustworthy woman, and she knows heinous spells that will do you grievous harm.” Father Nelyk was stronger than the others, not quite so thin or wild-eyed. Of course, he had not been given the drug which was currently befuddling Isadora’s mind. She kept waiting for the effects of the drug to wear off, but looking around her she wondered...would it? Ever?
“You!” Nelyk cut his eyes to another man and nodded sharply. “Hold her hands.”
The man backed away. “I don’t want to touch a witch. You said she has bad magic.”
“She needs her hands to cast a spell, if my memory serves me. If you pin her down I can choke the life out of her, and she won’t cause us any problems. Filthy witch,” he muttered.
Only three men came to do as Nelyk ordered. They held her legs and her arms to the ground so that she could not move at all. Lightheaded and shaking and confused, Isadora waited for the hands at her throat and the end of her life, but they did not come.
Nelyk placed his face close to hers. “I prayed that I would see you once again, witch. When I thought I could not survive another hour in this place, when the darkness and the screams crept beneath my skin, I prayed for revenge. I’m tempted to simply choke the life out of you, but such a rash act would merely release you from your new home. You deserve to experience true suffering for what you did to me.”
Fingers touched her throat but did not tighten. “I hear that sometimes Panwyr causes an erotic surge, especially among women.” His other hand slipped up her leg to her thigh. “Do you feel such a swell, witch? Is your body needful? Would you like me to satisfy your Panwyr-fed urges before I pass you to the next man, and the next, and the next? It’s been a long while since they’ve had a woman with whom they could entertain themselves.” The threat brought a new wave of terror. If she had her wits about her, she could fight...and she could win. But her hands were pinned to the dirt floor, useless and weak, and her mind was so befuddled she could not reason, much less plan an attack.
That did not mean she would acquiesce. “I’d rather die quickly than be touched by you.”
A few of the men around her laughed, but a glare from Nelyk silenced them. “Do you really think you have any choice in the matter, witch?”
Her eyes were playing tricks on her again. A soft glow tinged with purple crept into her line of vision and soon colored the once-black cavern that was Level Thirteen. Such a pretty gleam could not be real, not in this place.
Maybe it wasn’t a trick of her mind. The light seemed so real, and it was deeply welcomed, as if she knew it to the depths of her soul. As the purple glow grew brighter, a few of the men scattered, scurrying into the darkness like rats searching for a place to hide. Those who held her legs released her and ran away, if you could call their awkward half crawl running.
“Let her be,” a deep voice commanded, and the man who held her hands let go and made his escape. With a curse, Nelyk leaped from her body and ran into the darkness, like the other rats.
Isadora took a deep, calming breath. She was still not thinking clearly, so when the man with the long white beard and hair leaned over her and smiled, she considered h
im to be a delusion. Maybe she was already dead. He was surrounded by a cool, purplish light that seemed to emanate from his very body.
But when he offered his hand and she grasped it, he felt as real as Nelyk and the prisoners who had held her down. He felt solid and warm.
“Come along, child,” he said in a kindly voice that had no business in this awful place. “I won’t let them hurt you.”
Lucan waited two full days before sending Franco to the other servants to make inquiries as to Isadora’s whereabouts. Word had come the day before of the birth of the emperor’s son, a healthy child who had been named Nechtyn Jahn Calcus Sadwyn Beckyt, and would be called Jahn.
He gave Isadora time to see to the empress and the baby and to get some much-needed sleep...and still she did not come.
Franco arrived from his recon mission with a concerned look on his face.
“Apparently Isadora has left the palace.”
“What?” Lucan came up out of his chair with a shout that shook the walls.
“When the baby arrived her work was done, and so she went home. No one seems to know where that might be,” he added in a puzzled voice.
Lucan reclaimed his chair. Had she been lying to him when she’d said she’d join him in escape? He had not seen any deception around her, but then he had not been looking for deception.
“Something is not quite right,” Franco said in a lowered voice.
“How so?”
“One of the servants I have become friendly with in my time here was the empress’ personal maid, Mahri.”
The girl who had come to the door on the morning the empress went into labor. “What does she say about Isadora’s departure?”
“Nothing,” Franco answered. “I asked about Mahri this afternoon, but apparently no one has seen her since the empress had her child.”
“Perhaps she’s simply busy with all that’s happening on Level One.”
“I don’t think so. We had taken to meeting for a bite to eat and a bit of conversation in the afternoon, and I believe she likes me.”
Lucan lifted his eyebrows and studied the young man before him. “Have you been poking the empress’ maid?”
“No!” Franco answered defensively. “Mahri is a sweet girl.” He leaned toward Lucan. “I don’t believe she’s ever been with a man before. It would not be honorable to use her in such a way.”
“I suppose not.” He sighed. “Do you think she left the palace with Isadora?” His heart lurched as he spoke the words. Would Isadora have run away from him in such a cowardly way?
“If she did, then why didn’t she tell someone? She had friends among the servants, and none of them knows where she might be. They believe her to be busy with the duties associated with the new baby. It’s too soon for them to be concerned.”
“But you’re concerned.”
“As I said, she’s a sweet girl.”
Isadora’s sudden departure did not make any sense to Lucan, but then he had allowed her to blind him in many ways.
If she had left with the ring upon her finger, then she had taken his destiny with her.
“Arrange a meeting with the emperor, as soon as possible.” Sebestyen would know where Isadora had gone and how he might find her.
Isadora did not want him. That truth hurt more than it should, but he was a man not easily distressed by the vagaries of womankind.
But he needed the ring she wore upon her finger, and he would not allow it to slip away from him. His destiny was a lifetime in the making, and no woman would run away with his heart or his place in the Circle of Bacwyr.
Isadora slept—for how long, she didn’t know. But the sleep was deep, and she felt safe, and she was always surrounded by that purplish light in an abyss that should be total darkness. In this place, where the white-haired man had taken her, there were no rat-like men clawing at her, no Nelyk, no hands on her body and her clothes. She came to believe, as she slept, that all those things had been created by her imagination.
If she believed that to be true she could sleep, and she needed to sleep.
The bed she slept upon was a ragged pallet on a packed dirt floor, in a room of stone walls and rugged stone ceilings. The food the white-haired man fed her regularly was bland but filling. On occasion she heard voices—women’s voices—drifting to her from a short distance away, but she soon relegated them to the same category as the rat-men. They were not real; they were illusions brought on by the drug Emperor Sebestyen had forced up her nose.
On occasion when she woke, to be fed or simply to inspect her surroundings, she saw dark shapes in the corners of the stone room, dark shapes that swirled and shifted but did not come near her. At first she had been afraid of the black shadows that seemed to have a life of their own, but they never came close. In fact, she suspected they were more afraid of her than she was of them.
Nelyk had been right in one respect, though she had not wanted him to know. Lucan had awakened her woman’s passion, and the drug that continued to affect her body teased that passion and made her feel as if she had no control. She dreamed of Lucan, and in her dreams he slaked the need. He held her close and made love to her. He made her scream, in her dreams, and the sensations of making love felt almost real. Almost. When she woke and he wasn’t there, she felt cheated and empty and alone. Most of all, alone.
At one point, when the man with the white beard and hair was feeding her what seemed to be a warm mushroom soup, she looked into his dark eyes and said in a disturbingly childlike voice, “Emperor Sebestyen is a very bad man.”
“Yes, he is, dear,” the old man said cordially.
“He’s mean.”
She received the same answer, “Yes, he is, dear.”
“I want to kill him, but I cannot.”
“No, dear, you can’t.”
She liked the way the old man called her dear, even though she did not know him at all, and it was very presumptuous of him to call her by such an endearment.
“You must get word to Lucan that I’m all right,” she said, anxious not to think about the emperor any more than she had to. “He’ll be worried.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“I still don’t want to marry him,” she said, and then she found herself pouting. “I have been a wife once, and that’s enough for any woman, don’t you agree?”
“Anything you say, dear.”
As she drifted off to sleep again, she heard one of those phantom female voices whisper, “Will you be able to save her?”
The old man answered, “I saved you, and you were in much worse shape than this when I found you. She has strength. She is the one I have been waiting for.”
Isadora drifted off toward sleep again. Maybe there was a drug in the mushroom soup that made her sleep, but she didn’t care. She didn’t care about much of anything.
Sebestyen made his way through the hidden passageways to Liane’s room on Level Three. Level Three with the other concubines, where she belonged. He did not dare walk the hallways. Lucan Hern had been insisting on a conference for days, and so far Sebestyen had been able to avoid such a meeting. By the time he told the Tryfynian that Isadora was gone, it would be too late for him to go after her with any expectations of actually finding her.
Sebestyen found his wife, one full week after delivering him two sons, resting in the bed he had provided for her. She was naked and restrained, as he had ordered, and she was not happy to see him when he joined her.
Gadhra stood at a worktable in the far corner of the room, mixing up some foul-smelling potion. She was the only one he trusted to see to Liane, at least for now. If not for her, he would have been betrayed by his wife and her favorite sentinel and her witch.
“You’re still fat,” he said as he looked down upon his wife. She was not horribly fat, as she had been when she’d been pregnant, but she had more curves than was normal for her, and she was fleshier. She was beautiful, though he would not tell her so.
“You’re still unspeakably
vile,” she responded.
He reached out and touched one breast, which was swollen and tender. No matter what she had done, he’d missed her. He still needed her. Liane tensed, but she could not move away from him. The silken bonds kept her immobile.
“It is too soon,” Gadhra said, without even turning to look at him.
Sebestyen slowly withdrew his hand, and then he leaned down and kissed Liane’s bare belly, letting his lips linger on the familiar flesh he could no longer trust.
“I want my babies,” she said, tears springing to her eyes.
“You don’t have babies,” he said softly as he lifted his head. “You gave up the right to have babies when you lied to me.”
She licked her lips. “I only wanted them both to be safe, that’s all. I simply took the decision of how to handle the problem of twins away from you.”
“So, you lied for my sake.”
“Yes!” She yanked against the silk scarves that bound her to the headboard.
He had been given to moments of unnecessary sentimentality lately, and he suffered one now, as Liane stared at him with tear-filled eyes. He had loved her more than anyone else; heaven help him, he still did.
“I want to hold my babies, and care for them, and feed them,” she whispered. “Don’t take that from me, Sebestyen. I will never have another chance. The potion I took for so many years to prevent conception ruined my womb. These babies we made are miracles, and I want them with me. Please, Sebestyen.”
“Our son, the rightful heir to the throne, is in the care of the priests. A nursemaid is feeding and caring for him and will continue to do so. Those are not proper duties for an empress, Liane.”
“What did you do with the other one?” she whispered. “Where is my second-born?”
He tried to harden his heart against her. Betrayal from within had always been his greatest fear, and she had been the one to bring that fear to life. He could not feel sympathy or love or loyalty to her. “I have taken care of the matter, Liane.” Before she could say more, he turned his attention to Gadhra. “Send for me when she is well enough to be of some use.”
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