They stepped back, staring through the bars of the dungeon where a lean man with close-cropped brown hair was chained to the wall, his arms and legs outspread. He snarled at them through the bars, but the sound was muffled by his gag.

“And you have to gag him?”

“He was muttering something that sounded suspiciously like a chant before I did. Unless I’m questioning him, he stays gagged. Doona venture down here without me, lass.”

“It just seems so . . . barbaric, Drustan. What if he’s not even involved in this?”

Drustan collected the assortment of personal possessions he’d removed from the man’s pockets before restraining him. He’d divested him of two lethally sharp daggers, a cell phone, a length of cord, a large amount of cash, and a few pieces of hard candy. The man carried no wallet, no identification, no papers of any sort. He tucked the phone, cord, and candy in his pocket, palmed the blades and wrapped an arm around Gwen’s shoulders, guiding her away from the cell toward the stairs.

“He is. I caught him lurking outside the study doors. When he saw me, he looked as if he recognized me. Then he looked puzzled and finally shocked. I’m fair certain he thought I was Dageus and didn’t know Dageus had a twin. Further, Dageus told me that Chloe told him her assailant had a tattoo on his neck. Though Dageus had no idea what kind of tattoo, ’tis entirely too coincidental that our intruder also has a tattoo on his neck. Aye, he’s involved. And though he’s not talking, he will,” he vowed with grim determination.

“None of this makes any sense to me. Why would anyone want to hurt Dageus or Chloe? What could they possibly want?”

“I doona ken,” Drustan growled. “But you may rest assured we’ll be finding out.”

Chapter 21

21

It was stuffy in the chamber library and Dageus shifted restlessly in his chair, then dropped to the floor and leaned his back against the cool stone wall. He glanced at Chloe and smiled wryly. Her mere presence made it damned hard for him to concentrate on the work at hand.

She was sitting cross-legged on a pile of cushions in a corner of the underground chamber, poring, as she had been for some time now, over the fourth Book of Manannán. A few days ago, he’d swapped her for the fifth volume, so he might search that tome himself, since she was slower translating than he. Much to her extreme and oft-voiced consternation, she was unable to read most of the lore in the chamber. Scribed in forgotten dialects, using archaic alphabets compounded by grossly inconsistent spelling, the majority of them were impossible for her to decipher.