Stalking Darkness

on you. Not an unjustified reaction, considering the trouble you and your friend have put us to over the past few months. It was I who prevented him from doing so. ‘Why, he’s nothing but an impressionable boy,’ I said many times as we stalked the two of you through the streets of Rhíminee.”
    “Many times,” the necromancer said with a poisonous smile. “Sometimes I fear that the softness of my Lord Mardus’ heart will lead him into harm.”
    “And yet how else am I to feel when I see such an intelligent and enterprising young man fallen in with such company.” Mardus shook his head sadly. “A renegade Aurënfaie spy, outcast from his own people to whore for the queen of a decadent land, and a wizard admitted even by his own kind to be a mad fool? ‘No, Vargûl Ashnazai,’ I said, ‘we must first see if this poor lad can be saved.’ ”
    Mardus grasped Alec by the shoulders, slowly pulling him close enough for Alec to feel the man’s breath on his face. His eyes seemed to go an impossible shade darker as he asked, “What do you think, Alec? Can you be saved?”
    Trapped in the intensity of Mardus’ gaze, Alec kept silent. Despite the implicit threat behind those honeyed words, there was something dangerously compelling in the man’s manner, a force of personality that left Alec feeling powerless.
    “This one has a stubborn nature,” the one called Vargûl Ashnazai muttered. “I fear he will disappoint you.”
    “Let’s not be hasty in our opinion,” said Mardus. “This Seregil of Rhíminee may have some claim upon his loyalty. You did say, after all, that you believe young Alec here has Aurënfaie blood in his veins.”
    “I am certain of it, my lord.”
    “Perhaps that’s the impediment. There were so many conflicting rumors around the city. Tell me, Alec, is he by chance your father? Or a half brother? Age is so difficult to gauge with these Aurënfaie and they are by nature deceitful.”
    “No,” Alec managed at last, his voice sounding faint and childish in his ears.
    Mardus raised an eyebrow. “No? But friend, certainly. He may have called you his apprentice during that unfortunate masquerade in Wolde, but your circumstances in Rhíminee belie it. So then, friend. Perhaps even lover?”
    Alec felt his face go hot as the soldiers snickered.
    “I recognize loyalty when I see it,” Mardus said. “I admit I am impressed to find it in one so young, even if it is blind loyalty to a man who abandoned you.”
    “He didn’t!” Alec snarled.
    Mardus gestured around them at the ship, the empty sea stretching away on all sides. “Didn’t he? Ah, well. I suppose it’s of little consequence to me what you choose to believe. Still, you might wonder why this trusted friend of yours chose to leave you to your fate when he might have saved you.”
    “You lie!” Alec was trembling now. He still couldn’t remember anything that had happened after his arrival at the Cockerel.
    “Are you so certain?” Mardus’ smile was tinged with pity. “Well, we’ll speak again when you’re less overwrought. Vargûl Ashnazai, would you be so kind as to assist Alec with some calming meditations?”
    “Of course, my lord.”
    Alec tried to flinch away, but the guards held him still as the other man pressed cold, dry fingers against his cheekbone and jaw. For an instant Alec was overwhelmed by a thick, rotten odor, then a terrible blackness engulfed him, plunging him back into a morass of illness and pain where he couldn’t escape the mocking echo of Seregil’s long-forgotten warning,
Fall behind and I’ll leave you, leave you, leave you—
    Alec awoke in the dim confines of a tiny cabin. Still panting from the residual terror of the necromancer’s trance, he sat up in the narrow bunk and tried to make out his surroundings. There was no lantern, but the weak light filtering in through a grate in the cabin door was enough to illuminate the foot of another bunk against the opposite wall. Above the rush of water against the hull, he heard the distant, muffled sound of someone weeping loudly. The smell of rich broth wafted in from somewhere nearby,and he realized that he was hungry in spite of the lingering effects of the necromancer’s magic.
    Throwing off the thin blanket, he climbed out of the bunk, then froze. Now that his eyes had adjusted to the dim light, he could see that the other bunk was occupied. A figure lay stretched there under a blanket, face hidden in the shadows. Clearing his