The rope that tied Gerrard Price to the tree cut into his skin and numbed his hands, but that was nothing compared to the white hot pain of his cracked ribs each time he took a breath. For all of their pomposity, the Faelen could still organize a solid beating.

  Drone-del lumbered out of the shadows. The hulking Faelen, designated Price’s personal jailor, had a face like a lumpy squash and looked like a fat pink cook in a uniform. The other Faelen scorned him, mocking his poor manners, slow speech, and his feet that pointed inward. But none of them could match Drone-del for mindless brutality.

  “Up,” Drone-del drawled.

  Price ignored him, focusing instead on his barrier to the leyline, so long in the making. It was an impossibly tall edifice of black rock, like the peaks of his home, so solid that he couldn’t even feel the pressure of the leyline beyond it. He knew each twist and turns of the mountain pathways, and he opened the trail and let the leypower trickle in, soaking into the barren channels in his body, sweet and vile.

  He’d weaned himself off of the power before and would do so again, but for now he needed it. He’d killed Riley with Tarir-del’s own sword, and the High Faelen would punish him.

  Drone-del untied the rope and seized a handful of Price's hair, dragging him through the small camp. The Faelen cavalry sneered and spat at Price as he passed, before he was thrown down beside a crackling fire.

  The High Faelen, Tarir-del twisted a riding crop in his long fingers. A vein pulsed on his temple, and the muscles of his jaw flexed as he clenched them, his anger close to the surface.

  Price knew to draw that anger out, to unbalance his enemy. “You’re going the wrong way. The Leybound are the threat, they need to be eliminated. I saw Riot with them, he’s the sergeant–”

  Tarir-dal backhanded Price, a stinging blow that rattled his teeth. “Silence worm. You are not here to advise, you are here to answer for your slights against me. You laid your hand on my own blade and sullied it with your filth, and you killed my prisoner.”

  “Without me, you never would have found the emissary. You had them in the palm of your hand, and you lost them,” Price spat.

  “You give me nothing. You obey me!” The riding crop cracked into the side of Price's head, the leather keeper on the end biting into the raw, burned flesh on his neck. “You have nothing but that which I give you.”

  Spittle flecked from Tarir-dal’s thin lips and the riding crop descended once more, a glancing blow on Price's back that crossed two stinging lines from previous beatings. “That you still carry yourself with pride sickens me, and I would have you broken. You are the property of Bimil-pal, and though I cannot kill you, I will have obedience.”

  “I belong to no-one,” Price growled. The words would bring pain, but wounds heal.

  “Abomination!” Tarir-del shrieked. The riding crop rose and fell, a blistering attack on his head and shoulders.

  The leyline called to Price through the high mountains, whispering a promise of power, but he blocked it out. He could certainly kill Tarir-del and perhaps Drone-del as well, but then the others would overwhelm him. Fight only on the ground of your choosing, his father had said. Fools fight for pride, victors fight for survival. Wait for the moment, then strike without mercy.

  The last blow of the riding crop caught Price on the side of the head and sent him to the ground.

  “I want him out of my sight. Get ready to move,” Tarir-del panted, sweat running in rivulets through the thick powder on his face.

  All day they journeyed under the iron grey sky until they reached a village that sat on a rutted track that led to the southern coast. The bells of the Priory gave a forlorn clang as they approached. The air here was thin and miserable, much like the people who fled into their houses at the sight of them.

  Around twenty of the townspeople remained outside, all skinny, all cold. Children hid behind the dirty apron skirts of their mothers, while fathers avoided the gaze of the Faelen riders. Each of them had the tops of their heads shaved and wore the same tattered brown cassock tied with rope at the waist.

  Religious fanatics suffering to please a pitiless god. Their religion had failed to take root in the high places. After all, who knew more about suffering than the people of the Black Peeks? They were no friend to the Faelen, and he could hear it in the disgust in Tarir-del's voice as he addressed them.

  “There is a group in the hills that passed through here, traveling towards Helgan’s Rest. They wear the crest of the Sun Tower,” Tarir-del announced.

  Silence captured the tongues of the sorry-looking group leaving only the sound of the wind, whipping around the miserable streets as if it could sniff out liars.

  A man stepped forward, marginally better outfitted than the others. “My Lord, we are followers of the Prior, and we live simple lives of servitude and sacrifice. We have nothing to offer you. The Mazral forces came and took everything. Without the winter grain, we–”

  Tarir-del cut the man off. “Their sigil features a tower with a sun rising above it. Whoever provides information will live, the others will die,” he shouted.

  “Our suffering is part of the plan of the Prior.”

  The woman who spoke was young, with the ruddy, honest face of a hill and dale women.

  “Did they come through here? Will they come back? Tell me this and the name of the one who leads them, and I will spare you,” Tarir-del shouted, his face pinched in annoyance.

  “Piety, purity, and the strength to scrub away the stains of avarice. These are the values of the Prior,” the woman shouted to the frightened nods of those around her.

  “There is honesty in poverty, and poverty begets honesty,” another dirty villager called.

  The woman who spoke clasped hands with the man next to her, who reached for his neighbor, until the villagers were joined hand in hand before Tarir-del, whose face grew red under the thick white powder.

  Drone-del grunted and stepped forward, but Tarir-del stopped him with a raised hand.

  “Religious simpletons,” Tarir-del spat. “You have harbored the enemies of Emperor Mazral. I need you to send a message to the leader of this group. But you do not have to be alive to do so.”

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  The gentle red glow in Tarir-del’s hand threw the sinister lines on his face into sharp relief and Price counted under his breath, until the two-inch red dart was flickering in the Faelen captain's palm.

  Twelve seconds. Twelve seconds for Tarir-del to form a working. Could he break it once he started? Price wondered. Unlikely, a skill like that took patience and discipline, and Tarir-del seemed a spoiled, petulant creature.

  “Those who bear their suffering with grace will come to the Prior. Those who suffer and die in the name of the Prior will be placed above all. The hand that strikes at the Prior shall be cut off.”

  The hand that strikes at the Prior shall be cut off. Price would remember that. Perhaps the only redeeming feature of their doctrine, but not enough to save these fools.

  The ethereal whine of the Faelen dart was followed by the gurgle that escaped the mouth of the woman as he dropped to her knees and then fell slowly onto her face in the mud.

  As it had been a signal, doors flew open all around them and around fifty villagers stormed out, screaming at the top of their lungs. They were armed with an assortment of weapons, rusted billhooks, old spears, meat cleavers, and kitchen knives, and all of them hurled themselves at the Faelen.

  Drone-del jumped from his horse and the rope tied to Price's wrists went with him, pulling him bodily out of the saddle to land on the cold ground, the wind driven from him.

  Horses reared up, kicking at the air with their forelegs, and the Faelen grunted as they struck with their sabres. Price hauled himself to his hands and knees as two figures surged past him to attack Drone-del. A young man jumped on to the big Faelen’s back and plunged a hunting knife into his shoulder, while an old woman with a face like a puckered potato hacked away at his legs with a carving knife.

  Price ran, ducking around the dirty hovels as the Faelen cavalry recovered from their initial shock and charged around the village. They whooped and hollered as they took their attackers to pieces and the angry shouts of the villagers quickly turned to strangled cries.

  The Priory was a ramshackle wooden building at the far end of the village and Price hurried toward it. The door was barricaded, but he put his shoulder to it and forced it open enough to squeeze through. A heavy stone font squatted in the entranceway, and he put his weight against it, grunting with the effort until it toppled over and crunched against the heavy door, blocking it.

  Inside were six simple wooden benches facing an altar of dark stone. A movement at the rear of the small space caught Price's attention, and he let the leypower bleed out through the long scars, hating himself for the pleasure it gave him. “Come out,” he barked.

  The friar was as skinny as the other villagers, with a wispy beard and overgrown, bushy eyebrows. His brown cassock was much repaired and tied at the waist with a piece of rope. Like others of his order, the top of his head was shaved bald in a neat circle, leaving a crown of wiry hair.

  Outside came howls of despair and screams of terror, the shriek of Faelen darts, and the thunder of horses hooves.

  The friar’s face drained of color. “Are they…?”

  “They are suffering, as you taught them,” Price replied.

  “You have to help me.”

  “Do not fret, there will be enough suffering for you. You know how the long ears feel about the Prior,” Price replied.

  The sounds of killing gradually fell silent in the village, and only shouted orders could be heard.

  “You have to kill me,”

  The friar made to grasp Price, but he stepped carefully backwards.

  “Your suffering will put you in good standing with your master when you ascend, isn’t that what you preached to those people?”

  “Forgive me, I am not a brave man,” the friar wailed, tears springing from his eyes.

  “You are not a man at all, and you lied to those people,” Price retorted. “What use is suffering in the next life? Suffering is for this life. It molds, and strengthens.”

  There was a heavy sound at the door, followed by a furious pounding and the muffled shouts of Drone-del.

  “Please, they’ll burn me. I can’t.”

  Price pushed the friar hard in the chest, and the old man toppled backwards over a bench and sprawled on the floor. The ley power bled from the scars on his arms, and he cupped it as best he could in his bound hands before crushing it. Ten seconds. Slower than he had been, but still faster than Tarir-del.

  The door splintered apart, and Drone-del thundered in, followed by Tarir-del, his face a mask of fury.

  “Abomination! You will not use the leypower, it is forbidden,” Tarir-del commanded.

  “Please!” the friar shouted, his hands clasped before him.

  There was no crack as the arcane power was released. The skills Price had honed over the years were coming back to him. Instead, the charge of gray light whispered through the air and burned through the chest of the friar, leaving a dirty smoking hole a finger width wide. The scrawny man let out a sign and fell still on the flagstones.

  “Bring him to the forge,” Tarir-del said, his voice stripped of emotion by his cold rage.

  Bodies lay throughout the village, their blood black on the cold ground. The old woman who had attacked Drone-del had half of her head caved in and the young boy lay close next to her, though his head was several feet away, blue tongue lolling.

  Price was forced to his knees before Tarir-del as Drone-del stoked the fire in the blacksmith's forge.

  The High Faelen took a moment to compose himself, smoothing his fine jacket and dabbing at his powdered face with a delicate linen cloth. “Do you know what a balehog is, abomination?”

  Price held his tongue and eyed the iron rod that had been plunged into the glowing coals. Hot irons in the fire. It would hurt, but he deemed that Tarir-dal lacked the imagination to really make it a memorable punishment.

  That was the problem with most people. They wern’t used to torture and so they could only concieve of the worst thing that could someone could do to them. It limited the imagination to only what they themselves might be able to withstand. It's why you can’t bite off your own tongue, or a finger, as much as you might try.

  You only really got good at inflicting pain when you thought of the worst thing that you could do to someone else. You needed a lot of hate for that, and only when you have it could you really descend into the savagery required to teach a lesson that went far beyond the initial act. Price had learned this long ago, and he would teach Tarir-dal, when the time was right.

  Tarir-dal rolled up his sleeves. “In the echo, my family controls the grazing area for the herds of the vile creatures that are owned by our faction. The hogs are difficult creatures, mean and spiteful, but they were all our enemies saw fit to provide us with when they sealed our prison. The animals came down from the high places, and at first they refused to eat, preferring to starve rather than be locked in pens. They were disobedient.”

  The metal rod came out of the flames, the end burning red hot. “To tame their willfulness, we branded them with a working. It was a crude employment of the Faelen ley lines, so unworthy of our art that wars were fought over its use.”

  The brand spat and hissed as light rain fell onto the hot metal, making dark spots that quickly returned to red. “Hold him down.”

  They grabbed Price's feet and hands, and his struggles were rewarded with a punch in the face from Drone-del that almost knocked him unconscious.

  “The working will not function here, of course, but I hope you will learn from the symbolism. The key is not to go too deep, just a few layers of skin. Of course your skin is thinner than a balehog,” Tarir-del said.

  The burning brand descended, and Price’s one good eye fixed upon it. The leyline called to him from beyond the high mountain, but he closed the trickle of leypower away.

  Feign weakness. His father had commanded. Hide your strength.

  Tarir-del wanted to break him, but he would survive, just as he had survived the Orcs, and the five years watching the red darts of the Faelen flay every army that stood before them. Just as he had survived being made leybound, and just as he had survived the hedron, he would survive this.

  His ragged shirt was ripped aside, and the brand touched his skin. The smoke of burning flesh was in his nostrils, and he tried to burrow into the hard earth with his shoulder blades as he screamed a wordless curse upon all his enemies.

  When it was done, a handful of snow was flung onto his chest, and he groaned as it hissed and bubbled.

  “Take him somewhere I cannot smell him,” Tarir-del ordered.