–You dropped it–The question hung like a blade above Kirisin’s neck. A wrong answer and it would fall and his head would be severed from his body. But he had answered truthfully, and giving another answer now would do him no good.

“I dropped it,” he repeated, his voice dry and hoarse.

He waited for the end, but the old man turned away from him and looked once more at the minder.

–Keep him safe until I reach you. Do not question him further. Do not harm him in any way. But watch him carefully. I will speak with him again when I arrive–The old man’s image hung within the flames a moment longer, and then in a sharp burst of sparks it was gone. The fire fizzled and went out.

In the aftermath of its disappearance, Kirisin huddled by the cooling ashes and fought to stay calm. THEY LEFT HIM WHERE HE WAS, and he slept for a time, exhausted from his ordeal, happy to find any escape from his waking nightmare. But his nightmare followed him, a series of sharp images and frightening sequences that had him running and being caught and hiding and being found, always by things that were intent on his destruction.

He awoke in a sweat, curled into a ball on the hard earth, his hands and wrists aching and stiff from their binding. The heat from the leavings of the fire that had summoned the old man washed over him in suffocating waves. Using what strength he could muster, he rolled over so that he was facing out into the cooling darkness. He lay without moving for a time, letting his eyes adjust to the night, taking deep breaths of air to clear his lungs and mind. He was still traumatized by what the demon had done to him, how it had crushed him mercilessly with little more than a thought. He had been so helpless, unable to protect himself, a plaything for his enemy.

He closed his eyes as rage and shame washed through him. He would do anything to prevent a recurrence of such abject subjugation.

When his eyes reopened, he was thinking of only one thing. If he stayed where he was, that old man—that demon—would arrive and do much worse things to him in person than it had done through its avatar if it meant finding out exactly what he had done with the Loden. And Kirisin would tell because he wouldn’t be able to help himself.

He knew he had to escape before that happened.

He tested his bonds. To his surprise, the skrails hadn’t retied his ankles in the aftermath of the demon’s appearance. Cautiously, he tried moving his legs. The feeling was back; he thought he could stand if he needed to, and if he could stand he could walk. Maybe he could run.