“The possibility of torture,” Alberich had said on that long ago afternoon, “is something we cannot afford to ignore. No matter what it is that the stories say, anyone can be broken by pain. There are mental exercises that will enable one to escape, but they are not proof against the worst that man can devise. All I can advise you if you find yourself in the hopeless situation is that you must lie; lie so often and with such creativity that your captors will not know the truth when they hear it. For the time will come when you will tell them the truth—you will be unable to help yourself. But by then, I hope, you will have muddied the waters past any hope of clarity. . . .”

But Ancar did not want information; he was getting that in plenty from Orthallen. All he wanted was to make her hurt. She was damned if she’d give him satisfaction before she had to.

So the “fascinating things” failed to drive a sound from her, and the Prince was displeased.

He proceeded to more sophisticated tortures, involving complicated apparatus. He handled all of this himself, his long hands caressing the bloodstained straps and cruel metal as he described in loving detail what each was to do to her helpless body.

Talia did her best to keep herself shielded, and to retreat behind those mental barriers to pain and the outside world she had long ago learned to erect, but as he continued his entertainment, her barriers and shielding gradually eroded. She became nauseatingly aware of every emotion he, Hulda, and the nameless magician were experiencing. The intensely sexual pleasure he derived from her pain was worse than rape; and she was in too much agony to block it out. Hulda’s pleasure was as perverted, and as hard to bear. In fact, both of them were erotically aroused to a fever-pitch by what they were doing to her, and were a scant step from tearing the clothing from each other’s backs and consummating their passion there and then.

Twice she tried to turn her agony back on him, but the magician always shielded him. The magician was deriving nearly as much enjoyment from this as Ancar and his “dear nurse” were, and Talia wished passionately (while she was still thinking coherently enough to wish) to be able to strike out at all of them.

After a time, she was no longer capable of anything but screaming.

When they crushed her feet, she was not even capable of that.

They dragged her back to her cell when her voice was gone, for the Prince did not derive half the pleasure from her torture when she could not respond to his experiments. He stood over her, gloating, as she lay unable to move on the straw where they’d left her.