Shadows Return

basin.
    “What are you going to do to me?” Alec demanded, straining against the shackles.
    “It is time for you to serve your purpose,” the alchemist replied. He was carrying a small mallet rather than the knife. “I’ve told you many times how special you are. This is the final test.”
    Yhakobin took a drop of blood from Alec’s bound right hand and did the fire spell. This time it burned longer, in a bright fan of every color that shifted and shimmered like the nacre on the inside of a seashell.
    “That is the proof. You have been purified properly, and the Hâzadriëlfaie blood is ready.”
    “For what?” Alec gasped, struggling harder against the restraints.
    Yhakobin reached under his apron and took out what appeared to be tap and stopcock, like a tavern keeper would knock through a barrel bung to serve his beer. But this one was far too small for that, just a few inches long, and made of gold.
    “You’ve seen my refining vessels,” the alchemist went on. “But they are not always made of glass or clay. Your strong young body is the final alembic for this process. In you, I have carried out the seven steps.”
    Ahmol knelt and tipped the contents of the basin into the hole. It was the stomach Alec had seen earlier. Both gut holes were tightly tied up with black cord, and it was covered in black symbols, like the ones he’d seen on the amulets. There was something inside that made it bulge.
    “You must have thought me very odd, for gathering your various essences; now you see the purpose. In this bag, together with various mundane elements, are your tears, your hair, your blood, and the spendings of your loins, mixed with sulfur, salt, and quicksilver, the water of life.”
    “Kitchen magic,” Alec snarled, covering his rising fear with bravado. “It sounds like a foul pudding you’ve put together.”
    Yhakobin smiled as he stooped under the edge of the cage with the golden tap and the mallet.
    Alec could only hang there and scream as the alchemist drove the sharp end of the tap into his chest.

CHAPTER 23
    Treachery

    IT WAS TOO soon to look for his kinsmen’s return. Riagil í Molan had no reason for concern until a trader of the Akhendi clan named Orin í Nyus brought him a handful of bloodstained Gedre sen’gai, an earring that belonged to Aryn with a wizened bit of flesh still clinging to the silver hook, and a Skalan gorget.
    He rode out at the head of a search party that same day, with the Akhendi as their guide. The trader led them a day and a half up the coast, to a little ravine in a wooded pass. He’d seen the crows circling over it, he explained, and followed them to the pile of stripped bodies piled by a stream at the bottom.
    Aryn was there, with the rest of the escort. Of Seregil and his talimenios, however, there was no sign.
    “Could they have done this, Khirnari?” his cousin Nurien asked, with one hand over his nose to block out the stench.
    The old man bent to examine the bodies more closely. In addition to sword wounds, he found the stumps of broken-off arrows in most of them. He pondered this for a moment. Then, asking his kinsman’s forgiveness, he cut one of the broken shafts from Aryn’s body. The barbed, intricately incised steel head was unmistakable. “This is the Zengati work.”
    Nurien shook his head. “Slavers, this far inland, and this far east?”
    “It’s less than a day’s ride to the sea from here,” Orin í Nyus pointed out. “They could have put in at any of a dozen smuggler’s coves.”
    Riagil nodded and turned to wash his hands in the stream, already composing a letter to Queen Phoria.

CHAPTER 24
    A Change of Scenery

    “I MUST SAY , I liked my previous accommodations much better,” Seregil croaked, licking blood from a split lip. Ilar had finally made the mistake of thinking him tamed, not realizing how much of Seregil’s strength had returned. He’d visited him that afternoon without having his pet prisoner drugged first.
    Seregil had looked up out of habit as soon as the door opened, expecting Zoriel. But it was Ilar instead. Seregil was on his feet with his hands around the bastard’s neck before either of them guessed he was going to attack. In the blink of an eye, he had Ilar on the floor under him, digging his thumbs into the man’s windpipe under that golden collar and watching his eyes bulge.
    Looking back on it now, Seregil had to admit that it hadn’t been the wisest course of action. If it had just been the two of