It was early fall, and I had been in the dreamworld for nearly six months. I had begun to establish a minor reputation by now, in the Red Mountains, and wasn't sure whether to be pleased or disturbed by it. On the one hand, I enjoyed the admiration and respect that came with celebrity; on the other, it was getting harder and harder to explain my success rate while keeping my true nature a secret. Each new adventure offered a new threat of exposure.
Once or twice I'd joined forces with other duals; but I found myself more comfortable working alone, on the fringes, where I didn't have to face the possibility of rejection. It seemed I still wasn't entirely comfortable with myself, still thought of myself less as a heroine than as a good-guy monster, a killer with a heart. It was a strange position to be in, and it worried me, but it didn't stop me from returning to the dreamworld again and again. I hungered for the atmosphere as much as the justice.
On this particular day I was walking along a wide mountain road--not flying, because the autumn foliage was best appreciated up close. Flame-colored leaves fluttered from the branches like sparks from a fire. The warm, tangy scent of mulch filled the air and tickled pleasantly in my nose. Far ahead, the jaunty clip-clop of horses' hooves warned me of approaching traffic, maybe a mile down the road. It was a wagon, judging by the faint undertone of creaking wood and rumbling wheel. I estimated that we'd meet one another in about five minutes.
When it finally burst into view, the wagon shone like a miniature sun. The horses that pulled it were enormous, angel-white stallions with harnesses of gold. Their driver was decked out in fine silk livery of red and blue with gold trim, a perfect match for the awning that shaded the body of the wagon. The bed itself was unusually long and seemed empty, except for a single passenger who sat enthroned at the rear: a stately-looking man of about sixty with long, unbound white hair and a white gown trimmed in two-inch-thick bands of gold embroidery. A thin circlet of gold crowned his head, and his expression was stern as a king's. Behind him, facing backwards, a trio of soldiers stood on the wagon's running board.
The riders saw me at almost the same moment I saw them. Then the man with the circlet raised a hand and called for a halt. The wagon glided to a stop bare feet in front of me, and I stepped forward, more curious than awed. Whoever this man might be, he looked wealthy enough to pay a nice commission. I wondered if he needed any "work" done.
As I approached, I noticed a strange pendant hanging from the front of the canopy: a lozenge-shaped amber stone, inlaid with runes, from the center of which protruded an obsidian spike. As I stepped forward, it rotated to follow my progress like a compass tracking north. This gave me pause for a second, but I did my best to ignore it. "Good morning," I said as halted beneath the old man's chair. I bowed respectfully.
"Yes, it is," he replied in a voice as cold as his face. He inclined his head slightly. "You are Kyriel the adventuress, are you not?"
So he had heard of me. A feather of anticipation tickled my stomach. "I am," I said, lifting my chin and doing my best to look bold. "And y--"
Before I could finish, he raised a hand and a burst of gold-orange light shot from his palm, wrapping me from neck to ankles in a field of force that clung like a wet sheet.
At first I was too stunned to be afraid, but the fear came soon enough as all my struggles to free myself got me exactly nowhere. In all my time in R2, I'd never been completely helpless--not until now. No one was supposed to have this kind of power over me! Instinctively I called up the Fury, consequences be damned. The black flames ignited, my stature swelled, the wings burst from my back--and the sorcerer's bonds simply expanded with me. I was caught as fast as ever.
Still struggling, more from fear than any hope of escape, I looked my captor in the eye and fixed him with the full force of my paralyzing gaze. If nothing else, I thought, it might shock him into letting go his spell. But the sorcerer only curled his lip into a mockery of a smile, as unperturbed as if I'd simply scowled at him. He hadn't spoken since asking my name, but only watched with cold disinterest; but now, still silent as stone, he gestured to the soldiers behind him. The three climbed down from the wagon --somewhat anxiously, I noted -- and shuffled toward me with a mixture of smugness and residual fear. Here was something I could work with, I thought. A sorcerer might be powerful enough to resist my paralysis, but there was nothing exceptional about these three. I speared them all in quick succession.
To my horror, not a one of them even slowed his steps. It was impossible! No ordinary human had ever been immune to my power; what was so special about these three? Then I saw the amulets on their breastplates, and made the connection with the pendant I'd seen a moment ago. It was all the old man's doing--he'd tracked me down with one amulet and given his soldiers protection from me with another. But why? I thought wildly. What did he want with me?
Whatever it was, I was going to do my best to be sure he didn't get it. Still glaring, still struggling, I gave the soldiers my best Fury roar and let the snakes fly free, hissing and snapping at the air, daring the men to take another step. But the sorcerer, with a languid wave of his hand, brought the cocoon up over the top of my head, effectively cutting off my last defense. A moment later, then soldiers had picked me up and levered into the wagon, where I was chained, cocoon and all, to the floorboards.
The Fury wasn't meant to be pent up like this. My bones had begun to ache with the accumulation of unused energy, so I sucked it back into myself as the wagon got under way. "Why are you doing this?" I managed, when I had my voice enough under control to speak.
"An intelligent opening remark," the sorcerer observed, giving me that fraction of a smile again. "More useful than asking who I am, or begging me to let you go. Presumably, you know that's not an option."
I glared even harder, and when he saw I wasn't going to rise to the bait, he spoke again. "My name is Shoachim. I only tell you that to begin with because you might have heard of me--from Aedros, perhaps. No? Well, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. He was too vain and too cowardly to admit the existence of a power superior to his. I might have destroyed him myself long ago if I'd thought it was worth the trouble."
Shocked at the extent of his knowledge, I gritted my teeth and fought to hold my poker face. He had enough information about me without my giving anything else away.
Shoachim let slip a tiny smirk, then quickly got control of himself. "But your question was, why am I doing this? Well, Kyriel, it seems you injured a friend of mine, a woman who called herself the Sultana."
At that name, my belly turned to ice. I knew I should have killed that woman when I had the chance; in fact, I'd raked myself over the coals about it often enough in the past. But I'd never thought anyone else would come to punish me for the mistake.
"Simona called me the moment she returned to R1," Shoachim continued. "I wish you could have heard the things she had to say about you. If she'd been able to find you there, she would have flayed the skin from your back and forced it down your throat a piece at a time. Unfortunately for her, you were easier to track in this world than the other, so she'll have to make do with a secondhand account of your destruction. Still, I must say it will be my pleasure to fill in for her. The irony of the situation is absolutely irresistible: wreaking revenge on vengeance incarnate."
"I'm going to be a lot harder to kill here than in R1," I growled. But Shoachim seemed to know as well as I that I could be killed, and he had already proved he was powerful enough to do it. A traitorous thought slipped into my head: if worst came to worst, I could always wake myself up, just as I'd forced the Sultana to do. But I thrust that idea away as soon as it materialized. I wasn't ready to give up yet.
"Hard to kill?" Shoachim raised an eyebrow in delicate amusement. "Not very. No, the hard part has already been accomplished: deciding how best to make you suffer before your death. If not for that little detail, I would have destroyed you the day after you banished Simona."
He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. "Imagine for a moment, Kyriel, the work that has gone into your capture: hours puzzling out your nature and the best ways to overcome you, days of weaving spells and creating amulets, months of tracking your footsteps and methods of operation. And most important and pleasurable of all, the time spent deciding how best to torture a Fury."
"I'm touched." I sneered, my bravado growing in direct proportion to my dread. "And all this for the love of a woman, I suppose."
That brought the closest thing yet to a smile from Shoachim. "Love? No. Lust, perhaps. The mutual respect of dragons. And, of course, she's paying me handsomely. But I believe I would have done this work for free, just for the opportunity to see how a Fury dies. Do you suppose your dagger will be left behind afterward? I plan to do everything I can to preserve it; its magical properties must be extraordinary."
"I'll make sure you have a chance to examine it up close." Within my bonds, I didn't even have enough mobility to clench my fists. But my fingers longed to close around that iron hilt, to heft its weight and feel it slice through bone and flesh on the way to Shoachim's heart. It had been too long since I'd wielded that scarlet blade. It hadn't manifested itself during my capture; the Fury's weapon only materialized when there was a potential for slaughter. A strange and lonely ache settled in my heart, and the first twinges of hunger pierced my gut.
We arrived at Shoachim's fortress in midafternoon. Lying flat on my back, with a red and blue canopy blocking most of my vision, I wasn't able to make out much of the architecture. Not that I was in a mood to appreciate it, anyway. But I did catch a few glimpses of high-flying arches and fantastic turrets, enough to identify the craftsmanship. Shoachim's home was yet another relic of that mystery architect whose work filled the Red Mountains.
Once inside the courtyard, I was hoisted from the wagon and laid on a stretcher, still bound in magic and in chains. A fresh set of guards, who had evidently been waiting for just this purpose, carried me into the castle.
Shoachim was silent as he led us inside, trusting the damp and gloomy halls to terrorize me without his help. And his castle was oppressive--more so than any of its cousins had been. We continued downward, and soon passed beyond the realm of natural daylight entirely, so that our way was lit by torches set into the walls. The air took on a marked chill, and before long I caught the odors of rats, insects, fungus, and human waste. Then the first of the cells appeared: iron-doored, with a single barred window maybe six inches square, and a narrow flap at the bottom to admit a food tray. Behind it, I could hear faint wheezing.
The halls rolled onward, branching, twisting, deep into the heart of the mountain. There must be room enough to cage a whole city in here, I thought--and Shoachim had done his best to accomplish just that. Some of the halls were near silent, their inmates worn down to sighs after years of imprisonment. Others housed fresher blood, men and women who began screaming as soon as they heard our approach, and whose pleas and threats still echoed long after we'd passed them by.
My stretcher-bearers made the most of the show, yelling back at the captives and taunting them by name. Shoachim, meanwhile, walked in a world of his own, straight-backed, oblivious, quietly reveling in his new acquisition. And I, more solidly trapped than any cellbound prisoner, closed my eyes and struggled with the Fury. It wouldn't do any good to release it now, I knew, but how could I hold back when every sight and sound and smell was a cry for vengeance? Shoachim had chosen my punishment well. Just being in this place was a torment to me. If he locked me up in one of those cells, as I had no doubt he intended to do, the mere weight of all that suffering would surely crush me flat...or drive me mad.
My cell, when we reached it, seemed identical to the others in every respect but one: its isolation. It sat alone at the end of the deepest, darkest hallway of the dungeon, where even the air seemed to groan under the weight of all that misery. Like every other hallway, this one had its own guard: a huge, black-bearded ruffian who leaped from boredom to salute the moment he saw his master. Toward me, however, he was unashamedly smug, waving his amulet in my face like a dare. Shoachim did nothing to discourage his behavior.
I had been silent since we entered the castle, partly from fear and partly from horror, but as the brute unlocked my cell, my bravado kicked abruptly into overdrive. Perhaps it was the foreboding that I might never have a chance to speak again. "Really, Shoachim," I drawled, as we crossed the threshold of the cell, "After all your talk outside, I was expecting something a little more inventive. Is this the best you and the Sultana could come up with after six months of preparation, a B-movie dungeon? I have to say I'm very disappointed."
Against the back wall was a long chain ending in an iron collar. Shoachim came close to smiling as they locked it around my neck. "Are you really? Your pallor and the tension in your face tell me otherwise. From what I've learned of Furies, I imagine you're experiencing a certain amount of anguish right now, having seen so much injustice in the halls above and knowing you're completely helpless to cure it. Isn't it your nature to right wrongs? As a matter of fact, I believe your kind craves vengeance the way human beings crave food. You must feel the hunger gnawing at you already."
He'd hit too close to home for me to find a snappy comeback.
"But still," Shoachim went on while the guards reached effortlessly through my cocoon and took my weapons, "you'd be right to feel disappointed if all I had planned for you was a solitary rot in a cell. Fortunately, all this gothic horror is just a prelude--or perhaps 'appetizer' would be a more appropriate term in your case. I'll return when you're ready for the main course."
Then he and the guards were gone, the cocoon of force finally dissolving as the door locked behind them. I was left alone with my chain and my hunger.
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