Shadows Return

should thank Khenir for leaving the spoon. But what if it had only been an oversight? He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. “If he’s got what he wanted from me, do you think he’ll sell me to someone else?” The thought had haunted him since he’d woken up.
    “Oh, I don’t think so. You’re far too rare. That’s good, though, really. You’re lucky your first master is a kind one. Be satisfied with that.”
    Never,
thought Alec, but he didn’t feel like arguing with Khenir right now.
    They talked a little, then Khenir wished him good night, giving him a quick kiss on the brow. Before Alec could react, he was out the door.
    Shaking his head, Alec levered himself out of bed again. He was still unsteady, but too rested to sleep anymore. After a few turns around the room, he settled down to read the book while the lantern burned, and shut his eyes when it finally failed.
    He did sleep then, and dreamed of Seregil again, coming to save him.
    “You always find me,” he said, throwing himself into his lover’s arms.
    “Not always, talí. And when I don’t, you take care of yourself,” Seregil whispered in his ear.
    Suddenly a scream ripped the air around them. Seregil was gone, and in his place stood Alec’s father, maimed and bloody as he’d been the day Asengai’s torturer finished him off.
    “Father!” Alec cried out, fifteen again.
    Another cry woke him and brought him bolt upright in the bed. It was coming from the workshop overhead. Terrified and disoriented, Alec shuddered uncontrollably as the cry came again, a high-pitched, ragged screech, like the sound of a wounded rabbit. But it was no coney Yhakobin was tormenting up there; it was the pale creature.
    He lay back against the pillow, heart hammering under his aching wound.
It’s not a person. It’s a monster. An abomination. It doesn’t matter.
    As the cries grew louder and more frantic, he pressed the pillow over his ears and curled into a ball, trying to stop the rising rush of horror and pity the sounds wrung from his heart.
    Unnatural the thing might be, but hearing anything suffer like that was unbearable! And what monster made sounds like that?
    The cries subsided gradually to childish sobbing, overlaid by Yhakobin’s low, dispassionate voice.
    Is it over? Please Dalna, let it be over!
    Another scream dragged Alec from the bed. He stumbled to the door and beat on it with his fists. “Stop hurting it, you bastard! Leave it alone.”
    Mercifully, the cries did stop. Alec slid slowly down the locked door and came to rest with his head on his knees, unable to stop shaking. He sat there on the cold stone floor, feeling more miserable and impotent than ever.
    Since I listened to my father dying…
    “No,” he whispered miserably. “It’s not human. It’s not even real—”
    But the whisper of the oracle stole into his mind again.
A child of no woman
…
    He pressed his fists to his temples, shaking his head. “No! No, no, no!”
    All went silent upstairs, but he stayed where he was, straining his ears for any sound. Presently he heard footsteps approaching and a key thrust into the lock. He crawled away as the door swung open. It was Ahmol.
    “Ilban say come.”
    Alec went cold all over, but he was too weak to fight as the man lifted him effortlessly and climbed the stairs to the workroom.
    The pale creature lay on the slate table, its slight body bound down with wide leather straps. The alchemist was washing his hands in a basin at the end of the table, still clad in his leather apron. The duke was there, too, looking rather ill. Two warders stood guard at the door.
    “Ah, Alec. I need you. I’ve had some unexpected complications with this one.”
    Alec approached slowly, apprehension growing with every step. He’d reached the edge of the table before he could make himself look down at the creature. When he did, all his worst fears were realized.
    At some point, Yhakobin had washed the filth from it. Its pale skin was a dull, dust grey. The matted white hair had been cleaned and raggedly shorn. What was left wasn’t white, after all, but the palest silver, like moonlight on sea mist.
    But Alec only noticed those details in passing, focusing instead on the atrocities that had been practiced on that little body. Where the left eye had been there was only a slanted, empty socket, weeping yellow fluid. Three fingers were gone from the left hand, and strips of skin had been flayed from its arms, legs, and chest. There was no