sky. She held on to consciousness even as the Thinblade slipped from her grasp, burying to the hilt in the stone floor.
At the same time, two more dragon-men breathed frost at Magda and Corina, forcing them to defend against the attack long enough for the beast carrying Abigail to escape. She watched the ground fall away as the beast gained altitude. It flew to Zuhl, perched atop the guard house on the last remaining tower of the fortress.
“Very good,” Zuhl said as he took Abigail and secured her over his saddle in front of him. He whispered a few words and she felt suddenly warmer, though she was still unable to move. Zuhl pulled a fur blanket over her and launched into the sky, followed by the remaining nine dragon-men.
The last thing Abigail saw before she lost consciousness was Mage Dax launching a bolt of lightning at the trailing dragon-man. It hit the creature, lighting it up with crackling power, then arced through the night to another and another and another and another after that, burning a hole through the chest of each as it leapt from one to the next, each falling from the sky in turn.
Chapter 9
She woke in a round room with a single barred window and a trapdoor in the floor. She was lying on a pallet with several furs covering her. The air was cold … she could see her breath in the dim light streaming through the window. Aside from the pallet and furs, the room was completely empty. She checked her boots and found her knives were gone.
She was defenseless.
Still wearing the clothes she’d been dressed in during the meeting with her advisors, she stood and wrapped a fur blanket around her to ward off the chill air. From the tiny window, she could see the ocean below, bleak and foreboding, low clouds blanketing the world to the horizon. Light snow was sporadically whipped into a frenzy by sudden gusts of frigid air.
She went to the trapdoor and tried to open it but it held fast, as she knew it would. She knocked on the door, but got no response, so she sat back down and tried to think of a way out of her predicament.
An hour later, she heard the sound of boots on stone from below, followed by the scraping of metal on metal, and then the trapdoor opened. One of Zuhl’s brutes eyed her with a menacing grin and grunted while motioning for her to follow him.
With a sigh of resignation, Abigail wrapped a fur around her and followed the big man down the corkscrew staircase to the level below. There were four guards in the chamber. Each stared at her in open challenge—she ignored them.
The brute led her through the halls of a keep until he came to a large set of double doors, which opened to a sparsely furnished and somewhat cold room, though warmer than the little tower room where she’d awoken. Zuhl sat at a table with an assortment of foods arrayed before him, all served on fine porcelain dishes.
“Good morning, Lady Abigail,” he said, dismissing the soldier with a gesture. “I trust you slept well.”
She scanned the room, looking for a weapon or an opportunity to escape, anything she could use against Zuhl, but found nothing. She decided to be bold. The temperature of the room didn’t warrant the fur blanket, so she shrugged it off, letting it fall to the floor without a second look. Then she walked to the table and sat down.
“Well enough, considering,” she said as she took an empty plate from a stack and started piling food on it.
He almost smiled, but not quite.
“I have a number of questions for you,” he said. “Most are simply matters of curiosity, a few are of strategic importance. You will answer them all, one way or another.”
Abigail shrugged as she took a big bite of biscuit dripping with blackberry jam. “Maybe,” she said around a mouthful.
He stopped and looked at her, not a simple glance, but really looked at her as if seeing into the essence of her being. Abigail was reminded of Alexander and the way he could look into a person and assess their true nature.
“What were you thinking when you jumped from your wyvern and attacked me in midflight?” Zuhl asked, his penetrating gaze searching her face intently as he awaited her answer.
“I was thinking it was the only way to kill you,” Abigail answered, preparing another biscuit.