Stalking Darkness

his eyes. What Micum saw there sent a black stab of dread through him.
    “Did Alec tell you about all this?” Seregil asked, far too calm for Micum’s liking.
    “The prophecy? Yes.” Micum approached him slowly, the way he would a maddened horse. “Where is he? What happened at the Cockerel?”
    Seregil held up something he’d been holding all along, a dagger with a long lock of blond hair knotted around it.
    “Is he—?”
    “I don’t know.”
    Micum sank into a chair with a stricken groan. “He was in such a lather to get back. He was worried about you, I think, but I should’ve stopped him from going back.”
    “Perhaps I can help,” Valerius said from the open doorway. Going to Seregil, he took the dagger and held it to his brow, murmuring a prayer or a spell.
    “He’s alive,” he said, handing it back. “That’s all I can tell from this, but he is alive.”
    “But for how long, eh?” Thin lines of tension around Seregil’s eyes and mouth showed darkly in the firelight as he took the dagger back, clutching it against his heart. “We know what these bastards are capable of. It
was
Mardus after all, you know. Nysander saw him during the attack. And I think it’s safe to assume that those were his men who came to the Cockerel, too.”
    “They found you.”
    Seregil’s lips quirked into a parody of his old grin that sent another chill through Micum. “In a manner of speaking,” he said, his voice nearly toneless now as he stared into the fire. “Alec walked into an ambush. I didn’t show up until it was all over.” His hands were trembling visibly now as he leaned against the mantel.
    Giving Micum a compassionate nod, Valerius slipped quietly out.
    “They killed—They killed everyone,” Seregil whispered. “In my rooms. Except Luthas. Wethis has him. It’s burning now, the whole place. Everything.”
    Micum shook his head as the horror of it sank in. “But Cilla, Thryis?”
    “All of them.”
    Seregil’s face seemed to crumple in on itself like a parchment thrown on a fire. “I did this, Micum,” he gasped raggedly, clutching his head in both hands. “I brought this down on them, led the bastards to them. They were—”
    Micum said nothing, simply put his arms around his friend and held him tight as Seregil shook helplessly with harsh, strangled sobs. In all the time Micum had known him, he’d seldom seen Seregil weep, and never as violently as this. Whatever he’d seen at the inn, whatever had been done there, it had wrenched something from his very soul.
    “You couldn’t have known,” he said at last.
    “Of course I should have!” Seregil shouted. Jerking away, he stared at Micum with wild, desolate eyes. “All the years they protected me, kept my secrets. Slaughtered!
Slaughtered
, as if they were animals, Micum! Then the shit-eating carrion scum—They cut off—”
    He sank to his knees, burying his face in his hands as another fit of weeping rocked him.
    Micum knelt, one hand on Seregil’s shoulder, and listened with mounting horror and outrage as he choked out the details of what he’d found, what had been done to the bodies of those good people.
    When he’d finished, Micum gathered him in again, unresisting now, and held him until Seregil had cried himself limp and silent. He remained there, leaning against Micum, for a moment longer, then sat back on his heels and wiped his face on his shirttail. His eyes were red, but he looked calmer now.
    Micum’s knees ached from kneeling. Sitting down among the strewn papers, he stretched one leg, then the other. “Tell me more about Alec.”
    Seregil held up the black and silver dagger, which he’d been clutching through the whole outburst. “It’s his. They left it for me so I’d be sure to know they had him. From the looks of the room, they killed the others, and then waited for some length of time, hoping we’d show up. I found his sword under a table. He gave them a fight before they brought him down; there was blood on the edge of the blade.” He took a deep breath, fighting for control. “I showed this to Nysander when I got here this morning. I think he knows where they’re headed. He was trying to tell me when he fainted, but I think I may have figured it out.”
    Seregil retrieved a map from the scattered pile by the chair. As he spread it on the floor between them, Micum recognized the outline of the Plenimaran peninsula, but the spidery writing that covered it was unintelligible.
    “What is