Paks could see that the blow had caught his eye, but somehow Ambros had kept hold of his sword. He fought on, with less skill now, his movements jerky. Paks sawed frantically at the web, cursing again when it touched her bare skin; it burned like fire. The priest said something, a string of words she did not know, and the web moved, shifting around her, so that the cut strands were out of reach. Ambros called to her.

"Paks—call on Gird! With me—" he gave a sharp cry of pain as the priest's gray whip touched him again.

Paks opened her mouth to say something else, and found herself yelling, "By the power of Gird Strongarm, and the High Lord, and all the gods of right—" Ambros, too, was yelling, holding his Girdish medallion now with one hand, as he flung himself on the priest. Light flared around them; Paks could hardly see, in the flurry of movement, what happened. Then the web lay still around her, and nothing moved in the heap of robes behind the chair. And the rest of the party, suddenly freed, ran forward full of questions and noise.

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Seventeen

Suli grabbed the web strands that bound Paks, then yanked her hand back as welts rose on her palm. Arvid ran past Paks to look at Ambros and the priest.

"He's dead," he said shortly.

"Both?" asked Mal.

"Yes. Both." Arvid sighed, then turned back to help Paks and Suli hack the web apart. "Lady, that's a dire trap you're caught in."

"I know." Paks could hardly speak for mingled anger and shame—Ambros was dead, and she had not been able to fight. She kept cutting grimly, until finally she could step out of the web. Her clothes were charred to rags, and Arvid looked at her mail with respect.

"That's . . . very good mail you're wearing."

"Yes—" Paks touched one of the burns on her face gingerly, and went to look at Ambros's body. The priest's gray lash had laced blistered welts across his face. Together, she and Mal straightened his body, wrapping his cloak around it. Arvid and the other yeoman stood watch at the door, but no sound came from the corridor. Paks suspected that with their master dead, and his control broken, the men they'd fought had fled, either to the surface, or to deeper hiding places. Suli roamed the room idly, staring at the tapestries, then stooped over the dead priest's body.

"Look at this," she said, lifting a silver chain around the dead priest's neck. "It's got—"

"Drop that!" Paks remembered the Achryan's medallion in Rotengre. "It's magic."

Suli looked startled, and dropped it less quickly than Paks intended. But nothing happened.