The Wise One stepped back and the guards grabbed Sarah's arms and jerked her down the corridor. "Let me go - the Zyrgin will kill you for t-this." She tried to act brave, but she wanted to curl up in a corner and block out the world until Zaar came for her. If he came for her. That insidious thought slipped through her defences. And in her mind, a refrain played over and over: not again, not again. Never again.
She fought them all the way down the palace corridors and down through twisting and winding, and ever narrowing passages until they reached dungeons that smelled like sour milk, old sweat and urine. Like the Reverend's basement. Like the tents in the raider camps.