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eBook Category: Dark Fantasy/Fantasy
eBook Description: "Wonderful reads, well written, dense and richly evocative!" that's how Lyn McConchie, Muse Award winner and co-author with Andre Norton of Beast Master's Quest describes the dark fantasies of Janrae Frank. The tension and peril have never been greater than in this, the third volume of her Journey of the Sacred King quartet. With each volume weighing at around a quarter million words, the quartet, when finished will be a monumental work, nearly a million words of today's cutting-edge dark fantasy. Now Talons Trollbane, the assassin, whose frequent interventions had saved Aejys time and again, is trapped in a dangerous situation of her own, as Lord Hoon's ally, Gylorean Galee has set snares for her to prevent her ever helping Aejys again. Talons "Trollbane" Gee is the last surviving heir to the paladin king of Creeya, the Grand Master of the Assassins' Guild that serves the Nethergod, Hadjys the Dark Judge. She fell in love with the godling, Dynarien who wanted to carry her off to his father's sacred realm as his bride. However, Creeyan politics intervened, and Talons was forced into a betrothal and the bed of a man she hates, a man whose powerful father, Lord Wrathscar, may be allied with the forces of darkness. Hadjys the Nethergod will not allow Dynarien to take Talons from Creeya. Pregnant by Dynarien, Talons passes the children off as belonging to her betrothed. Gylorean Galee, a fallen goddess who is now a vampire, is poisoning Talons. She plans a coup to take over the kingdom and restore her worship. The only one who can hope to save them is a mysterious woman known only as the Black Swan. Discover why Lyn McConchie raves that "Janrae Frank's books are always something I grab the moment I have the chance. They are wonderful reads, well written, dense and richly evocative She makes the reader see the worlds and characters which she has created and want always to see more of them as well. Her work is brilliant, hard-hitting, and the sort of thing I for one tend to be reading still at 2 a.m. since I can't put it down until I know how things are going to turn out. Warning: graphic violence and some sexual content. Must be over 18 to purchase this title. Cover: Kaolin Fire

eBook Publisher: Renaissance E Books/PageTurner, Published: 2006
Fictionwise Release Date: January 2006

This eBook is part of the following series:

• Janrae Frank's Journey of the Sacred King Series

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Words: 225218
Reading time: 643-900 min.
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Duty is where one finds it.

Creeyan proverb.

To question is to hesitate,

To hesitate is to become lost

To become lost is to die.

Guild Proverb

My Dear Alysyn,

It is extremely important that you return to Havensword. Bring your units into the city. After thirty years, I have reason to believe that the vampire has returned. While I fully understand your reluctance, it is time to put aside your personal concerns. The heir's life is in danger and so is your husband's. Come at once.

Eshraf,

Patriarch of the Nethergod,

Hadjys the Dark Judge

High Temple, Havensword, Creeya.

My Dear Eshraf,

I can't. I simply can't. The proofs you have sent me, do suggest a vampire. But not necessarily the same vampire. I will, however, bring my riders nearer the city.

Captain Alysyn Larkwind,

Riders of Hadjysymi

Arruth huddled under the bushes on the Stalking Grounds, which lay within the wide spread walls of Ishladrim Castle on part of the palace compound made up by the Hadjysheen Temple University, the palace, the ancient libraries, and the High Temple itself, forming a quad on the spire of the mountain like a crown jewel with the city of Havensword wrapped around and beneath it. Hiding was not as easy as it had once been, since the twelve years old's sudden spurt of growth had turned her into a gawky six-footer. The bushes clutched at her like a thousand sharp fingers, catching at her sleeves and pants legs as they wrapped her in their shadows. The scent of pine dominated the air around her, overpowering the lighter fragrances of the wood. Dirt and bits of brush clung to her wavy black hair. She dug her fingers into the moist, black soil, softly breaking the rotted crust of leaves beneath its shallow blanket and disturbing the insects dwelling there, which then skittered away from her.

The shadows had lengthened with the approach of sunset and the air was turning cold. She did not wear a cloak because the warmth of midday had been pleasant when she fled. A sudden breeze chilled the sweat along her arms and neck. Arruth shivered. Her ears strained for the smallest sound of booted feet. She knew the Wrathscar soldiers were out there. If she moved, they would find her. Her heart drummed loud in her ears, matching the sound of her breathing. She fought to control her panicked breath, her panting; fought hard to breathe as quietly as she could. Yet it all seemed loud in her ears. Arruth had recently reached that awkward stage in adolescent growth, when the rapid changes tended to interfere with coordination so that sometimes it seemed like she was all arms and legs. Arruth had lost much of that street child quickness, which had served her so well all her life, and she was painfully aware of it--it seemed as if her body had to struggle to find a new center of gravity.

She prayed again that the Wrathscar myn chasing her would not catch her. She desperately wanted to go home, wanted to be back in Shaurone. The grand adventure had turned into a nightmare and she had no one to talk to.

"And it is my own fault." Arruth covered her mouth with her hands, realizing she had spoken aloud. She froze like a deer, listening, ready to run. She resisted the tears pressing for release at the edges of her eyes.

Talons had given Arruth and her sister, Jysy, two rules when she brought them to Creeya as her prot�g�s: no stealing and no kissing. They kept the no stealing rule. That one went without saying. The kissing rule did not immediately make sense to Arruth. In Shaurone, less than one in four children was born male and the attitude toward sex was "have a good time." Innocent prepubescent sexual exploration was regarded with affectionate indulgence and the females were the sexual predators.

Coming to Creeya, Arruth had never seen so many males in one place before in her life, so she had romped through like a sprite in a candy shop at first, which drove Talons to distraction, finally making her very angry. "Creeya is not Shaurone! It is dangerous to just go around kissing strange men. Promise me you will not break the rules anymore." Arruth had promised, but she had not kept the rules. By the time she understood what Talons meant, it was far too late to mend it and she was too ashamed to tell anyone: in Creeya the sexual predators were male. Which was why she was hiding in the bushes.

The densely forested Stalking Grounds, much of it left half wild to increase the difficulty of traversing it, was for those Assassins' Guildsmyn who were taking the roles of hunter and prey in the training exercises. Arruth had hoped that she could lose Lord Wrathscar and his myn here, but even now she heard them coming closer. Lord Wrathscar was Bryndel's father, soon to be Talons' father-in-law. Weeks ago, in a playful mood, Arruth had kissed him and learned why Talons made the "no kissing rule"--Lord Wrathscar raped her.

That afternoon, Wrathscar sent two myn to bring her to him, and instead she ran into the depths of the Stalking Grounds, going farther and farther until she was completely lost. Queiggy, the little chief clerk at the Guild Wing of the palace, had once told her there was a secret gate that would let out onto the mountain itself. So, thinking that if she could find it, maybe she could get away, Arruth had plunged deeper and deeper into the undergrowth, heedlessly traveling places she had never been before. Arruth listened. It sounded like there were four of them. That meant more were coming. Why wouldn't he leave her alone? Why? She turned, pivoting slightly on the balls of her feet, ready to spring up and run.

"Hello, Arruth," said a deep masculine voice.

"No," her voice cracked, a hoarse breaking sound, and they had her. Wrathscar had anticipated her and been waiting in the Stalking Grounds all along.

"They ... they raped me," Arruth sobbed to the little pinch-faced healer as he finished Reading her. Solance wore black robes, which made a soft swishing sound as they brushed the tops of his tall boots. He sashed the robe with a length of magenta silk in a curious bow to vanity while his purses and pouches hung from a narrow leather belt beneath it. He was the only healer available in the infirmary annex so early--dawn was still an hour away. His examination room smelled of oleander, caster beans, and rhododendron, although no greenery was present.

She gripped the wooden edges of the plain, unadorned chair until her knuckles whitened, her legs curled tightly around the bottom, ankles hooked together as if her body could deny the violation by clutching itself. The chamber was cold, sterile, and efficient. A desk and several tables with odd alchemist's equipment covering them: crystals for preserving tissue samples; bottles and beakers and tubes; a small oil burner for heating his concoctions. Many shelves of herbs, chemicals, bottles of powders and books lined two walls. All of it made Arruth that much more uncomfortable. Had any other healer been available she would have gone to them. But only Solance had been present in the healers' ell.

"Oh, I rather doubt that," Solance said, casually indifferent. "You broke the rules in the first place. Your reputation is well known. I doubt there is a male in Ishladrim citadel you have not at least brushed your lips across. You've enticed them all."

Arruth choked, stunned by his attitude. In Shaurone they would have placed a mace in her hands and gone after him, watched as she beat his head in and then cut his ears off so that she could wear them on a cord around her neck along with the tanned sack his balls had hung in. They would never have placed the blame on her. When Talons warned her that Creeya was different, she had never dreamed--never in her darkest nightmares--that it could be this different. This was what Talons had meant by 'the rules.'

"Considering your reputation. All you Sharani are whores and sluts," he said distastefully, staring down at her. "Lord Wrathscar can have any woman he wants. All of his mistresses are far prettier than you are. Why should he go to the trouble of forcing an over-sized ox like you?" He took a jar of cream from a shelf. "This will take the tenderness out, help the tissues to heal. Try acting like a proper woman and this will not happen again."

Arruth shrank away from him, her thoughts whirling in terrified, humiliated patterns. A proper woman. Broken the rules. Broken the rules. Broken the rules. A proper woman. I'm not a proper woman.

"You do want this, don't you?" he asked. "It will make it feel better."

Arruth snatched the jar from him and fled with a sob.

"Sharani!" Solance shook his head at Arruth's rapid departure. "The world would be better off without them." He closed his door, then went to a basin and began washing his hands. Solance disliked even being near them, must less having to touch one of them. "Filthy creatures," he muttered.

The door behind him opened. Gylorean Galee, first lord-lieutenant to the Grand Master, stepped through. Her expensive perfume, called Asphodel, wafted over him. Solance knew she had been listening to the entire exchange between him and Arruth. Galee was an intensely sensual woman with a wealth of straight, glossy, blue-black hair, nut-brown skin, and delicately pointed ears suggesting sylvan blood. She could not afford to have Arruth's story drawing the interest of certain factions. Power and influence in Creeya was a delicate and, at times, precarious balancing between the Guild, represented by the Paladin-King--called the Grand Master--and his three lieutenants; the secular landed nobility with their Council of Lords on which the Grand Master and his lieutenants sat; and the Church led by Patriarch Eshraf. Galee was close to gaining the dominance she needed and refused to see it torn from her grasp by a promiscuous child and a lecherous ally who liked to break his women. They both knew that if forced to it, she would simply eat the child. She allowed her fangs to descend just enough to run her tongue across them.

That habitual gesture made Solance queasy, though he never dared tell her. To say to her that anything she did made him uneasy was inviting worse. She delighted in torment and torture and, like all of her pawns, Solance feared her. And wanted her. He did not know a male in all of Ishladrim castle who had not, at one time or another, wanted her.

"Keep an eye on that one, Solance. I don't want anyone taking her accusations seriously."

"They won't, Galee." Solance dried his hands off on a towel and turned to face her. "I've been sweeping Wrathscar's depredations under the carpet for years. That's why he pulled me out of the gutter and placed me here. Arruth's greatest fear is that Talons will find out she broke the rules. I've found some very interesting tomes on the Sharani. I would love to test the limitations of the Tinkerer's pets." He spoke as if the Sharani race were simply bugs to be placed under glass and examined. They were not human to him; they were 'other'.

Galee's lips curved into a languorous smile as she tongued her fangs again. "One day you shall, Solance. But only when I am ready to allow it. For now, you can stick to your reading. And be very cautious with this girl. She and her sister were part of the gang that helped Talons defeat Prince Mephistis' Gold Ravens at Armaten."

Yahni was Sharani, like his sister, Maya. Creeyan born and bred, however. He put up with a lot of teasing about his name because it rhymed with his race. They were womb-twins of a peculiar type, coming from a pod marriage, and it had taken a highly skilled Reader to sort the inheritances and bloodlines out. Most Sharani mastered the kyndi to a fare-thee-well and had from near total to total control of their fertility--so long as they paid attention and did not get careless. Lord Taurlys and his identical twin, Oakwithe, were Sharani on their ma'aram and 'lasah's side and they did two things that outraged the Creeyan aristocracy. First, they got a special dispensation from the Grand Master that adjusted the inheritance laws allowing for their first borns, regardless of gender, to inherit titles and lands as a compromise between the customs of their sire where only males could inherit titled properties and their mothers' Sharani culture in which only females could inherit. Second, they formed what the Sharani called a pod marriage in which the two brothers held six Guildsmyn Sharani wives in common. Then they all forgot themselves one raucous Jarienday and ended up with four children at a single go. Cleat�, the stoutest of the wives, boldly declared she would carry them all and the brothers stood and watched mesmerized as she kyndied with the other four, moving the embryos to her own body. It scrambled the genes in a joyous manner and they all got drunk again.

Yahni and Maya belonged to Oakwithe and were closer to each other than they were to their other siblings. Yahni became Guild. Maya did not. Like many Sharani males, Yahni was slight of build and agile, lacking in facial hair and delicate of feature, almost pretty. There was a lot of sylvan blood mixed into the Sharani lineages, but it tended to show most conspicuously in their males. He possessed that ephemeral youthfulness of his long lived race and could easily have passed for eighteen despite being twenty-six. Maya and he had one thing that stood out as different in their dark bronze-skinned faces: startling blue-green eyes like pieces of polished chrysocolla, the stone of peace. Women loved looking into his eyes.

Maya threw a light wool cloak around her shoulders. Mornings were always cool in the far northern mountains. She did a turn in front of the mirrors, shaking out her dark hair. Lord Derryl and his wife, Leslie, adored her hair. She dressed for riding in a split skirt with a sword at her hip, walking a narrow compromise between the customs of her race and those of her birth realm. They were courting her and Maya enjoyed it. The scandal was all over Ishladrim castle. The palace and the grounds buzzed with it. Derryl jested that she would even out-scandal the bedroom legends of Gylorean Galee herself. Now that would be something.

Yahni watched her, sitting in a corner chair with his ankle propped on his knee and a tiny smile just slightly puckering his mouth. He wore his Guild uniform. In Creeya, and especially the city of Havensword and the Palace Compound, they served as a religious military order and their fighting units were the elite of the elite: Black tunic and trousers with the book and the blade in gold. People tended to think that Yahni was slow because his verbal responses came just half a beat off. But it was usually that he was simply thinking all the time in a slightly distracted manner and taking too many things in at once to sort them out fast enough. He never missed anything.

There were three branches to the Assassins Guild, each acting independently under the command of one of the three lieutenants, the lords of the Guild: The military wing that they sent out to make the kills fell under the leadership of Gylorean Galee and her commanders; the training wing, which fell under the command of Hanadi Majios; and the clerks who maintained the records and research who belonged to Mohanja Raam. The Grand Master, however, held the true reins of power and a veto over most items and decisions. He could choose to send out anyone he wished from any of them on a whim and did so frequently. Each of the lord-lieutenants had a vote in the Grand Council that oversaw the realm.

Yahni was in records and research, Mohanja's domain, and was one of Chief Clerk Queiggy's favorite assistants. No one who was not Guild entered the Guild Wing without Queiggy's permission or Mohanja Raam's. "You be careful, Maya. I don't want to see another broken heart. Derryl's a rake."

Maya snorted. "What if I'm the rake this time, Yahni? I've learned my lesson. I'm just going to have fun. Besides, Leslie is going to be there."

"Playing triad?"

"Maybe."

Yahni shook his head. He loved his sister and felt intensely protective of her. "Too many folks, think we're toys. Exotics like Lord Channadar and his Fae. They treat us like fetishes. When they get tired of us, they throw us away. You be careful."

Maya sighed. She did not want to admit it, but Yahni was right. That was exactly what had happened with her previous lover, Karl, and they both knew it. They had no secrets between them. Yahni, possibly because he was male, had never experienced the kinds of difficulties that she had--it seemed to her that only the female Sharani were treated as exotics and then discarded when it grew boring. "I will be. But Yahni, Derryl is different."

"I hope so."

Arruth curled up on her bed, pressing herself into the corner of the walls, dragging the blankets around her. She felt depressed and tired. Her sleep had been filled with nightmares of Lord Agasthenez Wrathscar and his soldiers. They had held her open for him. She could still hear him telling them to hold her legs wider, wider, until she felt that her hips would be torn from the sockets. An old glove had been shoved in her mouth and bound there. She could still taste the leather. And then he had entered her and ... Arruth closed her eyes, leaning hard against the walls, feeling dirty.

When they first came to live here the two sisters, Arruth and Jysy, had moved their beds into the same room together, making it as near to the way they had had it at home as possible, finding comfort in the closeness. Their large apartment on the west wing was like having a house to themselves and just seemed to swallow them up after years of living in a crowded extended family home. They had been put on this wing of the palace because they were the heir's prot�g�'s. Talons had not been the heir then, but she was the favorite grandchild of the Grand Master and she had wanted them close. There were three rooms at the top and two at the bottom.

Jysy entered the room, grabbed a handful of Arruth's clothes, and balled them up. "Get dressed," Jysy said, throwing the clothes at her. "We've got classes."

"Not going," Arruth said, dully.

"You have to go. You can't start skipping classes." Jysy pulled her kinky tangle of ringlets back, tying them. Jysy's shoulder length black hair was a dense nest of tight curls, her skin a reddish chocolate midway between her ma'arams' Sharani bronze and her Jedruan sire's deep black-brown. Arruth looked far more like her ma'arams, bronze-skinned, a slender nose and broad cheekbones that formed a delicate heart with her tiny chin, her black hair more wavy than curling, and already showing signs of having their height, being a head taller than her older sister. Jysy was like their oldest sister, Birdie, who was a priest of Dynanna the God of Cussedness, and took after her Jedruan sire, Zarim, getting her smaller than usual stature for a Sharani and curly hair from him. She grabbed at the blankets and Arruth slapped her hands.

"Don't touch me!" Arruth twisted away from her sister.

"What am I to tell Master Yukiah?" Jysy demanded, irritatedly. "He's the likeliest to demand an explanation." The armsmaster always demanded to know why one of them did not show up.

"Tell him it's my menses."

"Have you started getting them, Arruth?" Jysy asked, abruptly interested. Most Sharani started at ten, but Arruth appeared to be a late bloomer. They also were never the least bit incapacitating, no cramps like the outlands women complained of--however, both of the sisters had been quick to catch onto using them as an excuse to escape chores on occasion.

"I'm bleeding, yes." Arruth shrank even deeper into her blankets.

"You have some rags?"

"I borrowed yours."

"That's great! That's really great! I'll tell Master Yukiah."

Jysy ran out of the room. Arruth held it all in until she heard the parlor's door into the corridor click shut. Then she balled up and began to sob.

"I am going to kill them. I am going to kill them. I don't know how, but I am going to kill them. I will wear their ears on a chain around my neck."

A knock on the door made Arruth look up. Thinking that Jysy had returned, she hastily wiped her tears on a corner of the blanket to hide them. Then she heard the slight squeak of the wheels on Cass' cleaning cart.

Cass, the servitor, who cleaned the west wing suites, was clearing out the dishes from the previous day. She was a large matronly woman with five children--two of whom had been accepted into the school--and had been taking care of the west wing for as long as any one could remember. She also wiped noses, comforted broken hearts, and bandaged skinned knees for the younger occupants of the wing. Arruth liked Cass. Everyone did. Everyone trusted Cass.

"Still in bed?" Cass asked, inclining her head with a curious, concerned expression. "Not feeling well?" She pulled a pile of clean sheets from her cart.

Arruth shook her head.

"Have you seen a healer?" Cass left her cart by the door, placed the sheets on Jysy's nightstand, and sat down on the edge of Arruth's bed, patting her hand.

Arruth nodded. "The nasty one."

"You mean Solance? Want to talk about it?" Cass asked gently. "We've all had run-ins with Solance at one time or another. He's a nasty mon."

Arruth almost told her. Then she thought of Talons' and feared telling anyone lest it get back to her. The last thing she wanted to happen in the world was to see Talons disappointed in her. "No."

"All right then," Cass said patiently. "Can you at least move to the couch in the parlor so I can change the sheets?"

Arruth nodded and moved to the parlor, dragging the blanket with her.

Lord Agasthenez Wrathscar sat with his daughters, Philomea, Elomina, Darguarite, and Belyla, in the lower floor study of his large suite. Lord Wrathscar rose from his desk once Belyla arrived. He watched her settle her slightly plump body into a chair, running her eyes nervously around the room, from face to face before dropping her gaze to her folded hands. Wrathscar and his other three daughters had waited for her to join them before beginning the planned conversation.

Lord Wrathscar was a darkly impressive man, tall and broad through the shoulders, olive-skinned and black haired. He weighed two hundred and sixty five pounds; and none of it was fat. His deep-set eyes had a brooding cast, as if constantly measuring every thing he saw. He wore his thick black hair in a club at base of his bull-neck. A heavy square-cut beard, which covered the lower half of his heavy boned face, and the curling hair on his arms combined to give him a bearish look.

A small divan and three chairs made an island in the center of the deep green carpets. All were sparely padded, since Wrathscar did not wish people to become too comfortable in his presence. Only his own chair was padded to the point of comfort. It served his philosophy of dominance. It let his guests and associates know who ruled. His two oldest daughters, Philomea and Elomina, shared the divan, curled into the corners, watching him warily. Darguarite sat quietly in the farthest chair.

He rarely brought his daughters to court, keeping them carefully closeted at his manor, although they were allowed to visit their friends here from time to time. Many new shifts in power had begun taking place since the betrothal of his son, Bryndel, to Talons. So he brought all four of his daughters to stay in their West Wing apartments as pawns in his game.

"This is why I'm allowing you back to court," he said, running his eyes possessively over them. The oldest three were light-skinned blondes like their dead mother, but the youngest, Belyla was olive-skinned like himself.

Wrathscar walked over behind the divan, closing his hands on Philomea's shoulders, kneading them. Philomea leaned back against him for a moment. He smiled at that, a lips-only smile. His eyes never lost their hard edge.

"I want you to listen to the gossip and bring me all you hear." He moved about the room as he spoke, going from daughter to daughter. He stroked his fingers through Elomina's yellow hair and chipped Darguarite under the chin to force her head up. Each one nodded obediently at this contact and he came to Belyla last. Belyla was his only disappointment--other than her brother.

Belyla flinched when he ran his fingers desultorily along her arm. He gripped her arm, tightening it to the point of causing her pain. If she would not love him, then at least she should fear him. Belyla stifled a whimper and he released her, leaving a darkening bruise on her arm.

"But stay away from the Guild. I don't want you associating with Guildsmyn. They're too dangerous." Wrathscar dismissed them with a curt wave and returned to his desk.

Talons Trollbane sat on a balcony of the Music Chamber, a large cabaret and canteen maintained to keep the students and holy-assassins-in-training to the nethergod Hadjys the Dark Judge on campus until the priests could ascertain whether the deity would confirm them or not. The Assassins' Guild did not prey on innocents, but took their victims for a price within the strictures of their religion as an offering to their god. They were the holy avengers of their god who then claimed the souls of their victims, dragging them into his nine hells for purging and punishment.

From where she sat, Talons could see nearly all of the central section of the castle grounds. Below her, the quad, a large green and gardens located in the center of the compound, sparkled with light from oil lamps hanging from tall poles along the winding paths. At any other time she might have enjoyed looking at it. The city of Havensword had been chiseled into the side of a tall peak in descending walled levels wrapped around and around it. Ishladrim Castle sat at the highest point. The castle grounds held the palace on the north side, forming a quad with the Guild school and university to the west; the library and the high temple of Hadjys to the south; and the Guild training grounds to the east. The training grounds included a substantial bit of forest called the Stalking Grounds, an equestrian section with lists and a salle as well as several obstacle courses.

She did not want to sit there in the Music Chamber, bored by the sound of harps and lutes coming from the interior. Bryndel, her betrothed, had insisted upon their coming here ... and she had promised her grandsire she would not hurt him for simply being obnoxiously male. Talons moved the candles around the table listlessly. It was supposed to be romantic, but she simply felt trapped.

"Hello, Talons." Gylorean Galee smoothed her blue-black hair as she took a chair beside the granddaughter of Takhalme Gee. The Guild's first lord-lieutenant claimed to be of Nordrei descent, but those who knew that sylvan race well would have found her hair and nut-brown skin a taste off.

Talons tensed. She had never been able to say exactly what it was about Galee that set her on edge. The woman was vain, with a bedroom reputation of immense proportions that only her standing with Talons' grandsire allowed her to get away with. Maybe it was simply that Galee seemed prepared to take anything between her legs that carried the proper equipment. The woman was a hedonist unrivaled in the court. The clinging fabric of Galee's ice blue gown left nothing to the imagination--as usual. Talons lifted her glass of wine in a casual salute and then sipped it. She had to be, at least, somewhat polite. If the Grand Master had not chosen to place her among his core elite, she would have found herself under Galee's command. Talons felt thankful that she was not and never had been one of Galee's agents.

Galee's slanted eyes, with their conspicuous folds at the corners, slid around the balcony and then over her shoulder into the main chamber as if making certain they were not watched. "And where is your betrothed? I thought you came here together."

"Bryndel is fetching us some food."

"Ah. Bryndel is such a nice boy." Galee turned, closing the small privacy doors. Galee's fangs slid from their sheaths and she thrust with a sudden rapier of fascination into Talons' mind, taking her. All Talons' will and focus faded from her grasp. Her arms folded across the table and she leaned forward, staring empty-eyed into the deserted quad.

Galee smiled, reached to stroke Talons' face, and noted that the heir no longer so much as flinched. It had become so simple after all these months. She stretched across the table, and murmured softly as if her words were the sweet nothings of lovers. "When I have destroyed the Guild, replacing it with my people, I will have crippled or possibly even slain Hadjys through the symbiosis. If that doesn't kill him, this will." Galee flexed her fingers, her nails became claws and venom oozed from the tips. "Your god will die and he will not be the first I have slain."

Deep beneath the upper layers of her consciousness, Talons heard Galee and her thoughts thrashed, screaming like a mon chained to the bottom of the sea, unable to break the surface and breathe. Dynarien! Dynarien, where are you? Can't you hear me? She called out to the mon she loved in desperate trapped silence and he did not answer. Tomorrow Talons would remember nothing at all of this, except the residue of her terror, which had been the pattern for months.

The vampire felt the way she struggled, inclined her head to watch Talons' face interestedly, and tightened her hold, causing Talons' mind to go still and empty. She drew a vial from her robes, pouring it into Talons' wine. "It is time to drink your death."

Talons raised the glass to her lips and drank it, smiling. "It tastes like cherries, Galee. I like it." Galee was so good to her, so kind and sweet. She loved Galee.

"I am glad you enjoy it, dear." Galee laughed softly. "You are a sweet cow who will give me the world."

"Thank you, Galee. To serve you is to love you." Had Galee asked her to, Talons would have put a blade through her own heart to please her.