tensed as he waited in the coolness of the evening breeze.
Merlin set his jaw and tried to brace his body.
Behind him, Erbin test-snapped the whip as he chatted with Tregeagle.
Dear God, help me, Merlin prayed.
Crack!
Merlin let out a painful cry, then shut his mouth. A great welt burned from his left shoulder blade down to the middle of his back.
Crack!
Merlin lurched but held his tongue as the gash crisscrossed the previous one.
Ca-chack!
Merlin let out a ragged breath. Another blazing welt, this time lower down. He imagined Erbin leering as he swished the whip around.
Crack!
The whip opened up a long cut straight down the middle of his back, and Merlin’s body recoiled, his legs trembling. All of the other welts opened, and blood wept down his back.
“Lord Jesu … help,” he whispered.
Crack!
Ca-tchow!
Crack!
The strikes felt like hot knives slicing open his flesh, and his knees buckled. Blood flowed down his breeches, and he cried out in great gasps.
Through the haze of a light rain, he heard Prontwon call on God’s mercy.
He could hear his father yelling for Tregeagle to stop.
Tregeagle’s cold voice answered, “You think I am harsh? Count him lucky. The tally will be nine. Do not tempt me to raise it.”
His father said no more.
Merlin shook his head to clear it and pulled himself up. The rain slicked the rope, and he gripped it tighter for the final two strikes. “Father in heaven,” he called, but he kept imagining an adder behind him ready to strike.
Crack!
Ca-wrack!
He dropped to his knees, all his muscles in a spasm. Vaguely, he heard the sobbing of a girl.
Dybris rushed to untie him. “So sorry …”
Merlin fell to his side, and his father wiped the blood that leaked from his wounds. Merlin felt his head lifted from the ground, and Garth was there.
Tregeagle’s voice echoed through the air. “Get your rabbling son out of here. My coach must be fixed and in perfect condition before it is returned to me. You have two weeks.”
Merlin fought to sit up, the world shifting and swirling around him.
His father’s voice faded until just a sigh remained, flitting away on the wind. His blurred sight exploded with light and colors, all hurtling toward him and pouring into his head. There was green and darker green and blue above that. His vision sharpened until he could see everything perfectly.
Strangely, his back didn’t hurt, and the whipping post had disappeared.
He gaped in shock at the clear sight of tall weeds growing among grayish-red cabbages, whose pungence filled his senses. Sharply defined bees floated on thrumming wings, and a delicately feathered robin chirruped as she paraded through … garden paths? Merlin’s trousers were rolled up, and his knees were pressed into the coolness of the soil.
This was his family’s garden. He had sat here for hours on end throughout the last many years, weeding by touch. The smithy stood to his left, and oaken roof timbers jutted out from its conical thatched roof. The granite rock wall was lichened green. Beyond the smithy squatted his family’s house, smaller, with its low door closed and silent.
Where had everyone gone? How had he come to be here?
The sun rolled across the sky and fled away. Stars appeared, so bright that Merlin gazed upward in wonder. And he could focus on them.
But how can I see?
Then clouds rolled in, hiding the stars. Searing light flashed before his startled eyes. Deafening thunder struck at his ears.
Wolves howled in the distance, and Merlin jerked his head to look at the dark woods across the road — but no creature could be seen through the trees. He put a hand on his dirk and prepared to get up and run.
Then he smelled smoke. Hearing a crackling roar, he turned to see flames leaping from the roof of the smithy. Heat rolled over him and stung his face and arms. He started to rise, pushing off the ground with his hands, but his knees and fingers pressed into a sticky, dark liquid, which clung to him along with clods of dirt. He tried rubbing it off, but he could see now that it was blood.
The twisted body of a man lay facedown before Merlin. He wore a green robe, and a deep wound had been sliced between his neck and shoulder. The man’s blood still seeped from the gash and into the soil around the now-crushed cabbages.
Merlin stiffened. He tried to shout but barely managed to rasp.
The sky lit up. Between him and the corpse, another man appeared, this