Chapter 13

ATHERTON FLIPPED her facedown into the dirt and dragged her hands behind her back.

"Selendrile!" she cried as the Inquisitor twisted rope around her wrists. "Selendrile!"

But when Atherton finally got up, removing his knee from the small of her back, she was able to see the dragon-youth still sprawled motionless on the ground.

Backing away from her, his eyes shifting warily from her to Selendrile, Atherton approached his dropped peddler's pack. Be pretending, she thought at Selendrile as Atherton fished out another metal band, this one attached to a short length of chain. Grab him as soon as he comes near.

But Selendrile made no move as Atherton used the bands and chain to shackle his arms behind his back. Only when the dragon-youth was safely bound did Atherton nudge him onto his side. "Get up," he commanded. When a rough shake got no reaction, he slapped him hard enough that Alys winced.

Selendrile groaned and stirred, and Atherton sidled away from him.

"Coward," Alys jeered.

Atherton jerked her to her feet and shoved her at Selendrile. "Get him up and get him to cooperate, or I'll kill him here and now." Atherton pulled a short, broad dagger from his belt. He held it under her chin so that the point pressed against her skin just short of cutting. "Don't assume that as a man of the Church I'll stay my hand from doing it. I know what that creature is—spawn of Satan, evil incarnate. And your association with ...it... proves that you are the same."

Alys didn't pause to try to reason out how Atherton could know that Selendrile wasn't what he appeared. "You're more evil—"

He slapped her, hard. All her fifteen years, no one had ever hit her before. Even during the trial, even with all the roughness edged with the threat of death, no one had struck her.

Be careful, she warned herself. Atherton seemed dangerously close to mindless violence. At least for the moment he apparendy wanted them alive, and she had to take care not to change that.

With a deep breath she knelt beside Selendrile. What was she supposed to do, with her hands tied behind her back? She nudged him with her knee. "Selendrile. We're in trouble. Get up."

Again he groaned, then he caught his breath as though in pain. Still, she couldn't see any blood where Atherton had hit him. Maybe he wasn't too badly hurt after all.

"Selendrile," she repeated.

He opened his eyes slowly, gingerly.

"It's Atherton," she told him. "Atherton's here."

Selendrile winced, then kept his eyes closed.

Alys heard Atherton take a step closer. "Selendrile, get up," she begged, knowing that Atherton would consider driving the dagger into his heart as an act of faith in God. "I can't help you. He's tied my hands, too."

Selendrile forced himself to sit up, though he swayed dizzily.

Alys followed his gaze and saw Atherton pouring liquid from a vial into his hand. Now what? She jerked as he spattered it onto their upturned faces, but it didn't hurt. Water, she realized; and, a moment later, Holy water. If he was expecting that they would go up in flames or that their skin would peel off, he must have been disappointed. But no, he seemed satisfied that they'd both flinched, as though this proved more than that they'd been startled.

Do something, she mentally urged Selendrile, wondering why he was so sluggish, why he didn't transform into something big and powerful and fierce.

Atherton put the vial back into his pack and once again waved the dagger. "Up, both of you."

"Can't you see he's hurt?" Alys said. "With that blow to his head, he won't be able to make it back to Saint Toby's without help."

Atherton snorted. "Blow to his head," he sneered. "It's the iron shackles. Iron to bind the fey. He won't be able to take on other shapes until I remove the iron."

Alys looked to Selendrile to see if this was true. His teeth were clenched with what might have been pain or loathing or both, and his breathing was still ragged. She saw that his face was pale and damp with sweat. The last of her hope seeped out of her. "You should have told me," she said softly.

He looked at her but said nothing.

Atherton said, "Now get up."

Alys scrambled to her feet. Selendrile followed more slowly, still looking unsteady.

"And as for Saint Toby's," Atherton said, "I don't care one whit about that foul little place or anybody in it. We're going back to Griswold, where you'll publicly admit what you did and why. You'll bare your black little soul for everyone, and then they'll know how they wronged me. Then they'll see what you are. Then you'll know what it's like..." He'd grabbed the collar of her shirt and raised his hand, the one with the knife in it.

He'd forgotten he held it, she was sure, and he was only intending to hit her, but instead he was going to kill her and her arms were tied behind her and there was nothing she could do to protect herself. She shrank away as far as she could, which wasn't far enough, from the knife, from the crazed look in his eyes.

Atherton didn't strike. He only repeated, "Then you'll know what it's like."

She didn't say that she already knew what it was like. "I'll tell them nothing," she said. "If you're going to kill us anyway, why should I cooperate?"

"For a fast death by fire," he told her, "rather than by knives, inch by inch for days and days. And days." He was breathing as unsteadily as Selendrile. "For this favor, you will tell them everything, and you will buy back my soul."

For a moment she thought he meant that her admission of guilt would buy back his honor, his reputation.

But then in one giddy realization she knew what he really meant.

And how he'd escaped the angry mob in Griswold.

And where he'd learned what Selendrile really was, and how iron would bind him.

"The witch in the glen," she whispered. "You sold your soul to her to get revenge on me."

"And when we get back there, you'll tell her that you'll take my place." Atherton flung her away from him so that, without her arms to balance herself, she fell down on one knee on the road. "Move," he snarled, indicating the direction toward Griswold.

WITH ATHERTON WALKING behind them, Alys didn't even try to squirm loose of the rope. What good would it do when, in the moonlight, he could see every move?

Beside her, Selendrile was shivering, and several times Atherton prodded him to get him moving faster. Once he stumbled and fell, and Atherton dragged him back to his feet by the hair. The second time, Atherton began screaming at him and strode forward so purposefully, with his dagger ready, that Alys threw herself to her knees behind him to protect his back. "Get up," she begged.

Selendrile leaned against her, and she thought he was too weak to go any farther. But possibly he drew strength from her, for he managed to stagger to his feet before Atherton could separate them.

The Inquisitor pulled her up by her shirt.

"Harm him and I'll never admit to anything," she warned.

Atherton just smiled at her, as coldly as Selendrile had ever done.

She thought he meant to walk all the way to Griswold that very night, but he stopped when they reached the hilltop where Alys had been condemned to die.

"We'll rest here," Atherton smirked, standing before the pole to which she'd been tied. "For old times' sake." He tucked his dagger into its sheath on his belt. Then, before she knew what was happening, he hooked his leg around hers and sent her sprawling.

From the ground, she saw him yank up on the chain that connected Selendrile's shackles, twisting the iron into his flesh. Selendrile gasped in pain and his knees buckled. Atherton yanked again, forcing him to fall into a sitting position, his back almost against the pole.

And suddenly, as Atherton reached into the leather pouch on his belt, Alys knew what he was doing.

He was counting on the dragon-youth being too overwhelmed with pain to resist being secured to the pole, but he'd made a mistake knocking her down where she stood rather than commanding her to move away and to keep her back to them. As soon as he unlocked the left shackle, Alys leaped to her feet and ran at him, head lowered like a goat.

With his own head bent down, concentrating on watching Selendrile, Atherton didn't see her till the last moment. He had time to turn to take the blow on his upper arm rather than his chest, but all three of them went sprawling in a tangle of arms and legs.

Having the use of both arms, Atherton recovered first and pulled himself to his knees. But rather than lashing out at either of them or going for his dagger, he did the worst possible thing: He hurled the key into the surrounding forest.

In another moment Selendrile whipped the loose chain around the Inquisitor's neck. The iron must have cut deeply into his own wrist and hands, but he tightened the chain and kept it up and kept it up until Alys, lying on her stomach with her face lifted up from the grass, realized that he wasn't going to let go. Certainly she had seen people die before, even her own father not four days since. But she'd never seen someone being killed before. "Selendrile," she said as Atherton's fingers scrabbled, weaker and weaker now, at the chain. "Selendrile!"

He looked up at her. His purple eyes met hers. Held hers. And still he didn't release the chain.

What had she done? As foul as Atherton was, she couldn't just stand by and watch him die. "Stop it," she told Selendrile. She scrambled to her feet, but by then Atherton's eyes rolled upward and he went limp against Selendrile.

Slumped over like that, he looked too much like her own father in Gower's storeroom.

"Stop!"

Still Selendrile didn't let go and didn't let go, and when he did, finally, it was only after giving the chain a final vicious tug, and—even if the Inquisitor hadn't been dead before—Alys heard his neck snap.

Now, slowly, Selendrile stood, too. The eyes that had looked so cool, so emotionless during the killing, now smoldered. "Stop?" he said. "Now? Isn't this what you wanted? Isn't this what you asked me to do?" He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her.

"Yes," she said softly, and wondered: What have I done? Fly over the village, she'd told him, breathing fire and roasting them all, down to the last baby. She swallowed. "It's exactly what I asked you to do."

He seemed to suddenly feel the drag of the chain on his wrist and he let her go. Moving slowly, he got the dagger from Atherton's belt, holding it carefully by the wooden handle. Just how angry was he? Alys asked herself, warily watching his approach, afraid of him once more. She had talked herself into believing that—deep down—he was like her, thought like her, felt like her. She held her breath. But he only turned her around and cut through the rope that held her. Then, letting the dagger drop, he staggered several steps away before sitting down heavily on the ground. Too hurt to move? But he was running his left hand through the grass.

A moment later she realized he was searching for the key. Iron to bind the fey, Atherton had said. His death hadn't changed that. "You're not looking far enough." She carefully avoided looking at the body. "He threw it into the trees."

He glanced up at her but said nothing.

Alys went to the line of trees, where the branches blocked the moonlight, and she had to get down on her hands and knees to feel the ground. She found little stones, and leaves and twigs from autumns gone by, but no key.

Perhaps it had landed farther away than she'd thought. She crawled farther, and farther, past the point where it could conceivably have reached, to the left and right of where she'd seen it fly, and still no sign of it.

She looked up through the trees back into the clearing. Annoyed, she saw that Selendrile was sitting exactly where she had left him, which just went to show that the key couldn't be that important to him. "Well," she said, wiping her gritty hands on her breeches, "we'll wait until morning, see if it's any easier to find in the daylight. If not, we'll have to think of some story to tell the blacksmith in Griswold, and have him cut the shackles off."

By this time, she'd made it back to him, and he looked up at her with that same calm expression he'd had while killing Atherton. "By morning I'll be dead."

She would have accused him of exaggerating, except that his level tone was like ice down her back. Iron to bind the fey. She had seen that it was poisoning him and she had refused to acknowledge it. She knelt down in front of him. His wrists were bruised and raw, though she could see from his still-bound right wrist that the iron band was loose enough that it could twist around freely. Not loose enough to slip over his hand though. The mechanism could tighten by pushing, but needed a key to loosen. "Maybe if we ripped your shirt—or Atherton's—and wrapped the fabric around the iron to protect the skin—we'll start out for Griswold immediately—or Saint Toby's, that's closer, although I don't know what we'll tell them—or—"

"Alys," he said, and it was the first time he'd ever called her by her real name. It made her stop, wait, while he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "I can't change back into a dragon while I'm bound by the iron."

"Yes," she said.

"And I have to be a dragon come dawn or I'll die."

"Why?"

"Why?" He sighed, sounding more tired than exasperated. "Why can't you soar on the wind? Why can't you breathe underwater? Why can't you she'd your skin and turn into a butterfly?"

She didn't understand. But she believed.

"All right," she said. He couldn't die now. Not after all this. "The night's not even half gone. We'll walk back to Saint Toby's..." She drifted off because he was shaking his head, and in fact she could see it as well as he: He'd scarcely made it here; there was no way he could walk all the way back to Saint Toby's. "All right," she said again. "I'll go. I'll run back to Saint Toby's. I'll get one of my father's metal-cutting tools and run back here with it. I'll—"

"There's not enough time," Selendrile interrupted her.

He might have been right. Or not. She couldn't be sure. "Well, what should we do?" she demanded.

Selendrile shook his head. "I don't know." His voice was soft, hopeless. "I've run out of plans."

"I'll go to Saint Toby's, then. You can keep looking for the key." He started to protest and she talked over his objections. "You might find it. Maybe. It's better than doing nothing."

There was just a flicker of fear in the set of his mouth, and then he lowered his eyes, accepting her judgment. And that was when she knew that he didn't believe that she'd be back, or at least not in time; but he was too proud to ask her not to let him die alone.

"I'm not going to abandon you," she promised him. "I'll be back, and I'll be back in time." She threw her arms around him and gave him a quick kiss, too quick for him to be able to respond, even if dragons knew how. But he caught her hand in his, which was, she knew, as close as he'd come to asking her to stay. She wanted to linger, to reassure him, but knew she might need the time that it would take. She pulled away. "I'm sure I can be back," she told him.

But she wasn't sure.