Alessia waited. Moans of fear washed over her. Cries of denial. Calls for mercy. She stayed curled up in the straw until she was sure the earth beast had lost interest in tormenting her. Once she was sure it had gone, she pushed slowly into a sitting position and leaned against the wall.

  When the creature stayed gone, she focused her attention inward, trying to block the effects of the sounds washing over her from outside the cell. As she did, she tried to find that strange well of magic she had tapped when trying to escape.

  She was still unsuccessful when she heard footsteps come to a halt outside her cell.

  Knowing they signaled the start of another ceremony, she held her breath, praying that tonight was not the night the king had called her name. When Sophriel did not at first answer, Alessia thought of shouting the goddess’s name out loud.

  Before she could try, she heard Sindra cry out in fear, followed by Xanthia’s scream of denial, and knew it was too late. She knew, then, that the priests would come for her, just as she knew that her voice would end the tortured chorus that sang power to their unholy lord.

  Pulling herself up from the straw, Alessia stood and brushed the dry stems from her blouse and adjusting her tunic and leggings and wishing she’d been allowed to keep her boots. She was peeling dried slime from her clothes as she listened to the priests taking the prisoners from their cells.

  Outside, the shouts grew louder, followed by a terrified sobbing, but… It took her a few heartbeats to realize the sobbing stopped almost as soon as it could be heard clearly in the corridor, almost as though the person making the sound suddenly calmed.

  When she heard the key turn in the lock of the door to her cell, she lifted her chin, and waited.

  Behind her, the cell wall rippled, and the hideous head of the creature guarding her grew out of the stone. It watched with red-rimmed eyes and slightly parted jaws as graveled slime slid from its mouth and dripped slowly to the floor.

  At the sound of the first drop hitting the floor, Alessia’s composure threatened to break. When she saw the faces worn by Walshira’s priests her composure shattered. Gaunt and pale, with red-rimmed eyes glowing with unnatural intensity, the priests’ faces were oddly still and devoid of emotion.

  They’re masked, Alessia thought. They have to be masked. No man can hold that expression.

  She discovered how wrong she was when the priest looked at her and his lips lifted in a leering grin. Tucking her horror behind a blank expression, Alessia watched as he looked her up and down, then nodded in greeting.

  Rather than acknowledge him, she selected a point on the wall beyond him, and fought to keep her face blank. When he took her chin in his hands and turned her head until she faced him, she did her best not to meet his eyes.

  He smiled at her resistance, and Alessia felt her courage falter. Up until that point she had been determined to face down whatever fate the king had planned, but the priest’s smile… It reminded her there would be no peace beyond death, that Walshira would take her soul from Sophriel, and torment it until he had whittled it down to nothing.

  When that happened, she would cease to exist, in the afterlife, or any other form of life that could be had beyond the realm of death. Worse than that, Walshira would use her essence for his foul purposes, and the thought of serving him even that much made her shudder.

  She would be a prisoner of something whose evil so permanently marred the faces of its followers that they could be mistaken for the dead.

  I would rather die, she decided.

  With an effort of will, she stopped the next shudder that tried to run through her, and tried seeking the well of power she had found before. Somewhere, deep within herself, she had sensed a spring, a means of calling magic that did not require a spell, or the ritualistic gestures that focused her ability to draw magic from the world around her.

  She knew it was there. She had found the well only yesterday…or the day before…or however long ago it was, and she was desperate to find it again. Magic need not be taken from the world around her, but from somewhere else, a well-spring that contained so much more than her surroundings could ever possess.

  She wished she had known of it before the soldiers had come to take her. She wished…

  Movement caught her attention, one of the priests, leaving. As he moved out of the doorway, another of his fellows filled it, and Alessia tried to focus herself enough to continue her search. The internal spring of magic had burned dry with her initial demand. She only hoped it had begun to flow again, while she had been ‘resting’ in the cell.

  The priests responded to her apparent calm by reaching for her arms.

  Behind her, the twisted face of Walshira’s elemental stretched further from the wall. Its rough, stone body twisted this way and that as it inspected her, and its nose wrinkled as though scenting something of interest. It snuffed the air, its questing nose drawing in great, snorting breaths as it searched.

  Alessia heard it move behind her, listening to the grate of its knobbly body against the stone work as it swung back and forth. She heard the great whuffing inhalations and her concentration broke. The spring within remained unfound.

  The beast nuzzled the back of her neck, smearing the graveled stickiness of its saliva through her carefully plaited hair. Alessia allowed its muzzle to push her to her knees, her breath catching in a sob of revulsion. When it lifted its head from her hair, she glanced up in time to see it curl its lips in a grin.

  That was not as disturbing as seeing the priest’s mouth curl in an answering grimace, at which the beast rapidly withdrew. Too shocked by the exchange to resist, Alessia allowed the priests to cup their hands beneath her elbows and lift her from the floor.

  A terrified cry from outside the cell made her flinch, and the grips on her arms tightened. The floor rippled beneath her feet, making her stumble out through the door and into the corridor beyond. She had not seen the metal-bound doors when she’d arrived; she’d been unconscious.

  Now, she saw both the doors and the double line of prisoners being led between them. Not all of those prisoners walked as docilely as she did. While she watched, one of the prisoners closer to the door suddenly flung herself back against her captors.

  She didn’t get very far. Three of the black-robed priests took a more secure hold on the woman, and a fourth stepped away from the resulting struggle. Extending a hand toward the captive, he snapped out a command, and Alessia saw a soft, yellow light spring about his hand.

  “No…” she breathed, then found her voice and pushed forward. “No!”

  Heads turned toward her, and she forced herself to come to a halt. The priests reaching to restrain her, lowered their hands as she took a deep breath and appeared to settle. Before they could realize what she was really doing, Alessia sank into herself, searching for the magical spring.

  This time, she found it, and felt the renewed flow of its power. It was her undoing that she had no spell in mind to leash it. Thinking only to disrupt the priest’s amber-lit enchantment, Alessia directed her intentions against them.

  The magic rebelled against her wishes, and Alessia knew from the moment she struggled to form the right words, that she had unleashed something she could not control. The magic boiled up from inside her, flooding out of her mouth in a screeching cacophony of sound.

  As the words poured over her tongue, she heard the elemental wrench itself free of the wall. It knocked aside the priests escorting her, coiling itself around her body and throwing her to the floor. The flow of magic jarred to a momentary halt as she hit the flagstones.

  The elemental made sure it would not start again by twisting into a roll that threatened to crush her in the process. Grayness washed against Alessia’s mind, and the flow of magic seeped back into its pool, waiting for when she would call on it, again.

  Darkness followed and she did not see what havoc she had caused.

  At the end of the corridor, the priest was frozen mid-gesture. He had become stone, like the wall behind him, and his companions had frozen as well. Beneath the solidified grip of their grasping hands, the captive had become a terrified statue—albeit one of flesh and blood instead of stone.

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  Together, they blocked the entrance to the temple proper.

  In the silence that followed, Alessia regained consciousness as the metallic clank of heavy footsteps echoed out of the temple proper and everyone looked in their direction. As though sensing she was awake, the elemental raised itself from the floor, lifting her upright as it did so.

  It raised her high enough to see the dark-armored form come to stand, silhouetted in the temple doorway. She drew a sharp breath as he spoke.

  “What?” he demanded in a strangely booming voice, “Is the meaning of this?”

  Even though it wasn’t directed at her, Alessia flinched at the reproach in his voice, and wasn’t surprised by the silence that answered it.

  After a minute, one of her escorts cleared his throat.

  “Wild mage, your Majesty,” he whispered, and Alessia wondered how he expected to be heard where the king stood. She also wondered whether the fear she heard in his voice would carry to his ruler.

  As the elemental slowly lowered her to the floor, the priest continued, “The master expected her, and you shared his hope.”

  He waved a hand toward Alessia, as she registered the threads of hope and relief in his voice. Alessia frowned. Perhaps he thought his news would save him from the king’s wrath?

  As he spoke, she felt the faint breath of a breeze she could almost see, and realized the priest used a spell she knew. Its whirling center carried the priest’s voice to his master, removing the need for him to shout.

  Alessia wondered if it was the same spell as the one she knew as ‘message wind’, and tracked it as it blew the length of the corridor, before reaching the king’s horned helmet and working its way inside.

  The king tilted his head as though listening, and then his visored helm turned in her direction.

  Alessia felt his gaze coming toward her, and started kicking against the elemental’s coils.

  The creature grunted in annoyance at her efforts, and squeezed until she found breathing difficult. She pushed a little harder, until the creature’s coils continued to tighten, and she realized it just might crush her if she didn’t stop—and then, when she continued to struggle anyway, it shifted its sinewy body around her, pinning her arms and legs until it held her immobile.

  Alessia gasped again, partly in fear at being helpless, and partly from pain. Held as she was, she could see the king at the end of the corridor, and felt his gaze settle on her. The sensation brought with it a compulsion to raise her head and meet his eyes.

  Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes and tried to fight it, but she was injured and tired, and could not stop the slow movement of her head or the opening of her eyes, as her body answered his command. No matter how hard she fought his magic, Alessia knew she was losing.

  “Mistress Mistlewood.” The king’s greeting was like soft, black velvet.

  It reminded Alessia of a funeral shroud.

  “I gather you have only just discovered your gift,” he said. “A pity.”

  For an instant, Alessia found herself relaxing in the face of his sympathy, but then he laughed, raising his hands above his head. His fingers traced a familiar pattern, and Alessia tensed.

  This was a spell she knew well: Girfring’s Instant Transportation. She’d used it to take Brianda, Aral, and Mika across the outer wall of Duke Hartender’s garden.

  As Alessia watched, the king disappeared from before the iron-bound doors, and reappeared in front of the earth weird. When he spoke, he addressed the creature in its own spittle-laden language, and received a grumbling reply.

  It loosened its coils, letting Alessia drop the two feet to the floor. She snatched at the elemental’s hide and missed, somehow still managing to land feet first without being able to control her fall. She hit the cobbles with a jarring thud, and the king’s gauntleted hand was around her arm before she could recover.

  With a cry of muted terror, Alessia pulled against his grip, trying to jerk her arm free from the burning sense of ancient evil emanating from the glove. The king tightened his grip.

  “I think, Mistress Mistlewood,” he said, “That you should enter, immediately, into my master’s house. You’ve caused enough delay.”

  He muttered the spell for Girfring’s, and Alessia felt a familiar wave of dizziness as the spell took effect and the world swirled around her, before vanishing in a momentary burst of black. When it returned, and the swirling stopped, the gauntleted hand wrapped around her bicep was all the prevented her from falling—and running.

  The king jerked her back to his side, before she could try to escape, again.

  “Come,” he invited, “My lord awaits.”

  Alessia looked around, trying to register what she saw, and her legs tried to run again, because she stood in the middle of a nightmare, but one she’d seen in her scry…and one Varan had described. They’d missed some of the finer details—the tiled circle in which she now stood, for instance.

  The pillars standing in a long line around the edges of the room were familiar. Some stood with waiting shackles, and others were already occupied by chained and manacled priests and wizards.

  “This way,” the king invited, turning her even as he indicated the blood-stained altar with the darkened trough around its base.

  It was too much, and Alessia sobbed a denial, trying to peel the king’s unrelenting fingers from her arm. As she struggled to free herself, all she could see was blood. The base of every pillar was surrounded by a raised step encasing a small gutter. Every pillar held loops of silvered iron from which hung chains of the same material.

  Alessia trembled at the sight, and the king wrapped his armored arms around her, drawing her against the breast plate covering his chest. One gauntleted hand cradled her head as he spoke.

  “You shall be the center of our attention,” he whispered, dipping his head so his lips almost touched her hair. “You shall be the culmination of our power and the gift that lies within you will gain the freedom we have long desired.”

  As he spoke, Alessia heard echoes of a second voice, weaving its way through the king’s tones, an older voice, one weighted with eons of power and unseemly desire.

  “No,” she whimpered. “Nononono…”

  The king’s arms tightened around her, until he kept one around her waist, then freed one and raised it to the visor that concealed his face. His mailed fingers fumbled at the catch beneath his chin, freeing it before raising the metal faceplate.

  “Look at me, Mistress,” he ordered, placing a finger under her chin, and tilting her head so she looked into his eyes. “Look upon my face and know my power.”

  Unable to resist the spell of command woven into his words, Alessia looked—and saw another face cast across the features of the king. Pale as night, and ivory skinned, with eyes that luminesced with blues and greens of every hue, the face was narrow and finely chiseled but neither elven, nor human.

  “Obey me,” the vision commanded, continuing when Alessia felt herself agree. “Walk with me to the altar and yield to the chains I shall put around you.”

  Alessia bowed her head at this command, relaxing in the king’s arms until he released his grip on her waist and set her feet back on the floor. She placed her hand on his arm when he offered it, then stepped lightly beside him as he walked her to the far end of the room.

  Inside her head the battle raged for control, even as feelings of contentment tried to overwhelm the terror she knew she should feel. She didn’t even notice when they left the tiled circle, or when the king reached up to close his visor with a muted click.

  Sounds of terror came from beyond the main doors. The king ignored it, guiding Alessia to the red-drenched altar before his master’s glamor wore away. Once he had reached it and lifted the wizardess to its bloodied top, he signaled the temple servants forward to secure her chains.

  The glamor held, until they’d secured the second chain—and then the wizardess screamed.

  “Hush, now,” the king soothed, laying the steel palm of his gauntlet alongside her cheek. “It won’t be long.”

  Seeing her gather herself for a second shriek, he grimaced, his face echoing the displeasure radiated by his master.

  “Such a rich source of terror and emotion going to waste,” his god observed, and that was all the encouragement he needed.

  He murmured the words to hold the wizardess’s fear at bay. As the last syllable drifted to her ear, all the tension went out of her body. Quickly fastening the last of her chains, the king hurried back to settle the commotion rising in the corridor beyond.

  The priests petrified by Alessia’s last spell still stood frozen at the door. Their statue-like forms blocked all entrance to the temple, and would have to be cleared.

  With a growl of frustration at the power he was forced to waste, the king spoke the spell required to turn the figures back to flesh. Before the prisoner could continue her struggle, he stepped forward and took hold of her himself.

  “Peace, little sister,” he soothed, using another compulsion to still her terror, and resenting the loss of yet more power. He hid the resentment from his voice, forcing it to become reassuring. “There is nothing to fear beyond these doors.”

  Nodding to the priests who’d now returned to their fleshly forms, he handed the priestess into their care and raised his head to survey those remaining in the corridor. With a sigh of resignation, he turned and raised his hands.

  Projecting his voice, he spoke the words he needed to calm the rest of them.

  “There is nothing to fear beyond these doors,” he told them, making the compulsion strong enough to contain them all. Struggling to keep his tones soothing, he added, “Enter willingly into this realm of peace. Here, you will be safe.”

  The spell rolled down the corridor, draining the tension as it went. Prisoners ceased their panicked struggles, and walked calmly forward between their escorts. Only Walshira, the king and their priests could see the suspended fear and dread growing in a plane where the prisoners couldn’t feel it.

  But they will, the king thought to himself, and the harvest was going to be richer indeed for the greater terror the sacrifices would feel when all that stored emotion came crashing down around its source.

  The king stood by the door, waiting until they all walked past him, ignoring the horned helm and the ceremonial armor he wore. He watched as they stepped docilely to their assigned pillars and Walshira’s priests chained them in place.

  As soon as the last one had been secured, the king pulled the iron-bound doors closed behind him, and set the locking bar in its place. Walshira stirred, using his eyes to survey all he had gathered, and the god’s approval made the king smile.

  This was feast enough for Walshira to consolidate his strength. More than enough, since the wizardess really was a conduit to the elemental plane of magic. Her sacrifice would more than pay for the power they’d been forced to use to subdue her and clear the aftermath of her resistance.

  A cruel smile twisted the king’s features, and he was glad of the visor masking his face. If any of the prisoners had seen it, such a smile would have torn the calming compulsion to shreds, and chaos would have erupted, once more. It was a small mercy, and one for which he was grateful.

  With their captives secure, the king hurried to the tiled circle in the center of the temple. It was time to drop the wards and give his lord full access to the temple. It was time for the ceremony to begin.