The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars 5)

Their reply comes in a hum so low that at first no words can be distinguished, but the pebbles all along the shoreline vibrate and actually begin to roll, grinding one against the other, slipping and shifting. Rocks tumble down from the high rock columns all around them and crash into the waters. Wind screams through the rocky inlet as the storm shoulders in. Rain falls in sheets, so cold and sharp that it opens a tiny cut on Erling’s cheek as he hunkers down, drawing his cloak over his face for shelter.

“Revenge.”

“He’s blind and mute, Captain.”

“Is he deaf, too?” Laughter followed. Men might laugh at drowning animals in such a way, not caring for their suffering but amused by their struggles.

He became aware of smells and noises and a cold draft rising up from below, the breath of the pit.

Where was he? How had he come here?

Distantly a hound barked, but the laughing man’s voice drowned it out.

“All the better, Foucher. We’ll put him on the deepest wheel where it will make no difference if he can see or no. No need for chains. Rope will do for him. How’s he to escape if he’s blind?”

“Are you sure he can work? He looks soft in the head.”

“He looks strong enough to me.”

“If he’s too stupid to know what to do?”

The laughter sounded again, this time mixed with the smell of onions that flavored the man’s breath. “Prod him like a beast. He’ll figure it out. Walk and he’s let be. Stop and he’s whipped.”

“I hate you.”

The comment caused a stir. He heard men whisper all around him. They were too many to keep voices straight, but their fear had a prickling scent that needled his skin.

“God Above, we’ll need chains for that one,” said the one called Captain. “They call him Robert. He’s got an ugly look in his eye. We’ll put him down with the blind mute. What the one can’t see and hear, the other can’t make trouble with.”

“You think the blind lad will last a week with that madman, Captain? He’ll get shoved off the treadmill. He’ll get et alive.”

“They’re all dead men anyway, Foucher. What are you worrying for?”

“The duke is displeased we didn’t meet our quota last year.”

“Due to the flooding. These wheels should fix that.”

“With all the troubles in the border country and the civil war in Salia, the duke wants more this year. More iron. More weapons.”

“Then get them down there and to work! What else did you bring me?”

“Criminals. The usual ruffians and wandering good-for-nothings. Thieves, mostly. I’ve sent them to the quarry master.”

“We may need more in the shafts to clear out those two rockfalls.”

“Better them than us. I fear that whispering, I don’t mind telling you, Captain.”

“I won’t send you down into the deep shafts, Foucher. You’ve served me well. Your bones won’t be gnawed by the goblins!” He laughed again, so hearty a sound that were it not for the comment that had preceded it one might be tempted to join in.

Such cues gave him, the one called Silent, little enough to go on. The haft of a spear or staff prodded him in the buttocks, and he stumbled forward as the men around him roared to see his confusion. He was pushed to the brink of an open hole out of which air poured with a sharp, dry scent that he had smelled before.

What memory teased him?

Creatures scuffling in the dark.

He brushed his fingers over the bronze armband, his only possession, and images flared like lamplight illuminating a black cavern:

He drags Kel and Beor back from the brink of a gaping fissure while a searing wind rushing up from the abyss stings his eyes. His beloved Adica lives, and they have rescued her from the Ashioi, who stand cursing them on the other side of the fissure. In the shadows beyond the shifting light, skrolin chatter in whispering voices as they vanish into the rock. The bronze armband throbs against the skin of his upper arm; when darkness falls, it lights with the uncanny gleam of magic.