Dark Thane

Her right hand flicked up and forward, the blade winking in the dim light of the room. Zen ignored the feint and struck down with all his force, snapping the bones of her left wrist as she sought his belly with her blade. Her dagger clattered to the floor as Marith sank to one knee. Biting back her agony, she lashed out with her remaining weapon at the draconian's exposed knee. But her blow went astray as his claws sank into the back of her neck. He lifted her bodily from the floor, legs kicking, no longer silent, shrieking in agony and panic, dangling like a doll from his fist. Her small, wiry frame felt like a toy in his hands. He flung her across the small apartment, headfirst into the stone wall. She struck with a dull thud and slid between her bed and the wall, her screams cut short. She lay folded behind the bed, stunned and moaning.

Zen jerked the bed away from her, and she fell forward. She lifted one arm as though to ward off his next blow, but her hand hung limp and at an impossible angle from the jagged bones of her wrist. Blood tricked down her forearm to her elbow. He caught her around the throat and lifted her into the air again. Still dazed, she clawed weakly at the hard fingers tightening around her windpipe. Holding her aloft by the throat, he bent over and righted the bed, then flung her down on it. He stood over her a moment, admiring the awkward beauty of her limbs, even the shattered one with its bones sticking out of her flesh.

Glancing around the chamber, Zen spotted a bottle of dark brandy standing on a bookshelf. He jerked the cork loose with his teeth, poured half its contents down his own throat, then knelt beside her on the creaking bed. He pried open her jaws and slopped some of the brandy into her mouth. She gagged, coughed, then swallowed. Revived somewhat by the fiery Daergar brew, she glared up at her captor, all the pain and shame distilled to boiling hate in her dark eyes.

"Why don't you kill me?" she asked.

"In time," Zen said, his voice as cold as a wind off the Urkhan Sea. "But first, we shall have a talk. Look at your beautiful broken wrist, how delicately it hangs from the last tattered strands of your flesh. Your wrist and I will have a conversation. I shall ask it questions, and it will answer. If it doesn't answer, you must answer for it. Do you understand?"

With a snarl, she tried to rise, her lank legs kicking wildly. Frowning, he pressed her back into the bed and then gave her wrist a tweak that instantly stilled her protests. "That was not the correct answer," Zen said. "I shall ask it again."

"Brandy!" Marith gasped. A dribble of blood trickled down her chin; she had bitten through her lip. Zen obliged, pouring a gout of dark brandy into her open mouth, then emptied the remainder into his own. The empty bottle thumped on the floor.

"More," Marith said. "I need more. There's another bottle… " Zen retrieved it from the bookshelf, pulled the cork, and held the bottle to her bloodied lips. She drank its contents greedily, her throat rising and falling with each swallow, then flopped back on the bed, sated and exhausted.

"Now," Zen said, setting aside the half-empty bottle, "let us talk about you. Let us talk about Ferro Dunskull. But most of all, let us talk about you and Ferro Dunskull."

"You're going to kill him, aren't you?" she asked, writhing on the bed. The blood from her wrist soaked the sheet. Zen watched in undisguised admiration. This sweet morsel would wash the last vestiges of gully dwarf from his mouth.

"I am going to kill him, with your help," the sivak draconian corrected.

"I wish I could be there to see you spill his rotten guts, she moaned.

"You will be, my dear," Zen said, reaching for the bottle of brandy. He took a long pull, then wiped his reptilian mouth with a bloody corner of the bed sheet. "You will be."

24

Tarn sat up in bed, hearing the last echoes of a cry. "Tor?" he wondered aloud. "Crystal, did you hear…" But Crystal was not beside him on her side of the bed. Maybe she was with the baby. He swung his legs out from the covers and stood, feeling the cold stone floor beneath this feet.

"Where's the carpet?"

"Where are my slippers?"

Tarn glared around the room, all his senses suddenly alert. He reached for the dagger beneath his pillow, but it, too, was not there. And this wasn't his pillow. It wasn't even his bed! And this wasn't his bedchamber either.

Or was it? It looked vaguely familiar, like something out of a dream. It was his bedchamber after all, for there in the corner hung a suit of chain mail that he had worn when he was a young lad of only twenty years. His old battle axe hung on the wall by the door, too. But the door was on the wrong side of the room, as was his bed. The bed was too small.