Blood-Bound [ Lore of Penrua: Book I ]

25

Repulsed, Mhera drew back from the cell, taking the cup with her.

A rebel.

She stared at him. He had come to rest against the bars, his head still hanging down. As she gazed upon him, Mhera was struck by his weakness. It was as if all the life had been drained out of him, leaving a listless shell. Rebels were cruel, lightning-quick, tough, always bristling with weapons and stained with blood. Rebels spat upon their captors even as they knelt for their executions. Rebels raped women and kidnapped their children to raise them in smoky, frigid camps in the mountains. They had slaughtered countless Starborn people over the years.

Mhera knew not to believe every facet of the stories, of course, but she had heard enough about rebels to expect something more fearsome than this bedraggled man. He seemed less alive even than the woman he said was dying. Perhaps he, too, was dying.

Feeling another wave of pity, Mhera stepped toward the cell again. "Here," she said, offering him the cup between the bars.

She watched the stranger reach his left hand out for the cup of water, fingers shaking; she watched with mute surprise as those shaking fingers seized instead upon her own slender wrist. His grip was fiercely strong.

Shocked, Mhera dropped the cup and tried to pull away, but the prisoner yanked Mhera forward, hard. Crying out in terror, she fell against the door of the cell. Her face struck an iron bar and a blossom of pain unfurled across her cheekbone.

"Wait—please—"

The prisoner moved too quickly for her to grasp what was happening. Mhera felt another pain, a hot, brutal pressure, slicing across her palm through the fabric of her sleeve. She felt him grab hold of her wounded hand with his free one, his fingers curling tightly around hers, and she heard him raise his voice, heard his words ring out with powerful clarity in the echoing cavern, so loud that they could not possibly be issuing from the same broken prisoner.

"As a pulse in my veins,

"As the drumbeat of my heart,

"I claim your blood! I give mine unto you!"

Mhera's breath came thin and fast as fright warred with the physical sensation of heat and tingling pressure moving up her arm. A wind seemed to stir in the dead air of the chamber. Mhera recognized the distant sound of the dying woman's shrill, uneven laughter, and someone shouting somewhere behind her, or perhaps above. She pulled desperately, trying to wrench her arm away, but could not break his hold.

"Say it!" demanded the prisoner. Through the blur of her tears, Mhera glimpsed his eyes. They were intense and focused; the gleam of insanity shone in them. "Say it now! Repeat the words!"

"Let me go!" she screamed.

"Say it!" The prisoner raised his left hand from where he had seized her wrist, still holding her hand fast with his right. He reached through the bars in one quick motion to grab the neck of Mhera's habit, wrenching her forward toward him. She felt his rank breath on her cheek. "Say it now and live," he snarled.

Cringing away from the heat of his face, Mhera, in her panic, could not stop herself. Her lips and tongue and teeth moved to form the mystic command without her conscious consent. She was frightened for her life, scared enough to obey any command whatsoever, scared enough to do anything if only he would release her. She was too much in shock to cry, but her voice shook, broken by her gasping breaths, so that she could barely force out the words.

"As a pulse in my veins! As a d-dream—"

"A drumbeat!" rapped her captor.

"As a d-drumbeat in my h-heart—I ... I claim your blood—"

Both of them were forced forward. They fell together against the iron bars between them. He had not pulled her this time. What had, she could not guess. A dry sob racked Mhera's chest; as she struggled to pull in a breath, it came as a groan, aching in her throat.

The prisoner's grip on her had tightened further still, until she thought he would surely break the bones in her hand with his brutal hold. "Go on!" he snapped, shaking her with the fist he held tightly wrapped into her habit. Mhera heard the fabric tear.

She obeyed. "I c-claim your blood ... and g-give mine ... unto you!"

A queer calm fell for a moment. Mhera felt his breath on her brow. Then...

Prickling heat shot up her arm and kindled a flame in her breast where her heart should have been, a sensation she had never felt before and would not feel again in all her days, and then the heat raced down, coiling in her belly, slithering down her legs, through the soles of her feet and into the very floor, and her cheeks burned, and hot light seemed to shine from her eyes, from her mouth—it was a beam as bright as the sun and she felt it—felt it!—shining from her and from him, and she was crying, but she could hear nothing but the rushing of wind in her ears, and it seemed to roar in her throat and beat at her lungs and there was such fire in her blood— she knew such heat was impossible to bear and she knew she would die—

The prisoner had not released her arm. His grip was like a band of steel, calling into question who now was the prisoner. His eyes were closed tightly, his expression so intense that lines of concentration appeared at the corners of his eyes and his mouth. His teeth were gritted together, his lips thin and white, and his marke stood out starkly on his cheek. Mhera saw beads of sweat pearled on his forehead. His frame shook with exertion. She struggled to pull together the words to beg him to release her now she had done as he asked, but before she could ...

Silence.

The stone golems outside the doors were motionless, still gazing at the point in space which harmless, unarmed Mhera had occupied when she came upon them. The pitcher stood half-full on the stone ledge, the surface of the water within trembling slightly. The graven images of Katyander and her consort seemed to waver in the uncertain light above the dim cells, as if moving to reenact the scene of their triumph against darkness.

The prisoner's cell was empty. There on the cobblestones before the iron bars lay a swathe of gray: the fine lawn of a Daughter's veil. And within the cell, a broken clay cup had spilled water across the filthy stones so that it pooled in the narrow wells between them, glittering with the glancing light of a dozen flickering torches.