Stalking Darkness

throat nervously, Alec reached out to touch the person’s shoulder.
    “Hello. Are you—”
    A hand shot from beneath the blanket, grasping his wrist in a ferocious, ice-cold grip. Alec lunged back, but the other man hung on, lurching up as Alec tried to pull free.
    “By the Light,” Alec gasped. “Thero!”
    The young wizard was as naked as Alec, and a set of branks had been fastened around his head. Iron bands encircling the lower part of his face held an iron gag piece in his mouth, while another passed tightly over the top of his head between his eyes to join the first in the back. An opening for his nose had been left in the vertical band and the whole thing was secured under his chin by a chain. When Thero tried to speak around the gag his voice was hardly intelligible. Saliva dripped from the corners of his mouth to collect in his sparse beard and Alec guessed from the look in his eyes that he was either insane or terrified.
    “Ah’ek?” Thero managed, still gripping his wrist with one hand as he brought the other up to touch Alec’s face. Wide iron bands inscribed with symbols encircled his wrists.
    “What are you doing here?” Alec whispered in disbelief.
    Thero gabbled thickly for a moment, his desperation clear. Then, releasing Alec, he beat his fists against his head until Alec had to restrain him.
    “No, Thero. Stop it. Stop!” Alec shook him roughly by the shoulders. Thero’s pale, bony chest heaved with emotion as he shook his head violently and tried to pull away.
    “You’ve got to calm down and talk to me,” Alec hissed, caught somewhere between anger and terror himself. “We’re in one hell of a mess and we’re going to need each other to get out of it. Now let me try and get this contraption off.”
    But the branks were locked securely in back and he had no tools to open it. He searched the cabin with the scant hope of finding something—a nail, perhaps, or a splinter of wood—to use as a makeshift pick. He found nothing except a bowl of broth by the door. Hungry as he was, he left it untouched in case it wasdrugged or poisoned.
Perhaps that’s what’s wrong with Thero
, he told himself as his stomach rumbled. The drooling creature cowering on the bunk bore little resemblance to Nysander’s reserved assistant.
    Giving up at last, he sat down beside Thero on the bunk. “There’s nothing here. You’ve got to tell me what you know. Go slow so I can understand you.”
    Still wild-eyed, Thero nodded and said slowly around the gag, “ ’Eye’ander’s ’ead.”
    “What?” Alec gasped, praying he’d misunderstood.
    “ ’ysander dead. Dead!” Thero wailed, rocking violently back and forth in misery. “My fault!”
    “Stop that,” Alec ordered, shaking him by the shoulders. “Thero, you talk to me. What happened to Nysander? Did you see him killed or did Mardus just tell you it happened?”
    “Carried me ’Own, ’lack creatures—through walls, floors—!” Thero hugged himself, shuddering. “ ’tacked ’rëska—’sander on the floor, they made me look. My fault, mine!”
    “Why is it your fault?” Alec demanded, shaking him again. “Thero, what did you do?”
    With a low moan, Thero wrenched away and curled deeper into the corner. There were long, curved scratches on his back and sides, and little crescent-shaped bruises along the tops of his shoulders.
    “It was Ylinestra, wasn’t it?” Alec asked, a vague, half-formed memory shifting uneasily at the back of his mind. “She did something, or you told her something?”
    Thero nodded mutely, refusing to look at him.
    Alec stared at him a moment longer, then rage exploded like a blazing sun in his chest. Grasping the iron band at the back of Thero’s head, he yanked the young wizard out of his corner and shook him like a rat.
    “You listen to me, Thero, and you listen well. If it does turn out that you betrayed us and got Nysander killed, then by all the Four I’ll kill you myself and that’s a promise! But I’m not sure about anything yet and I don’t think you are, either. They’ve done something to your mind and you’ve got to fight it. Fight their magic and tell me what it was you said or did. What she did!”
    “ ’on’t know,” Thero whispered hopelessly, spittle running from the corners of his mouth. “She kep’ me with her ’at night.When black ’uns came, she ’eld me with ’agic. ’en she thanked me and she laughed—She
laughed!”
    Releasing Thero in disgust, Alec