he dared not move.
'There, my pretty,' Palatyne gestured to Byren. 'I said we'd bring you a playmate.'
Elina stared at Byren, her dark eyes blazing.
Byren's stomach turned over. Seeing her a captive of the Merofynian overlord had made him a coward. He was ready to fall on his knees and promise them anything, as long as they let Elina go free.
'Why did you come here, Byren?' she demanded. 'Why?'
Palatyne caught her chin in one hand and said something softly that made her shoot Byren an agonised glance.
'Don't listen to him,' Byren yelled. 'I'm a dead man anyway.' Then the back of his head imploded and the ground came up to hit him in the face.
Consciousness returned as they dragged him, none too gently, up the steps.
'He weighs as much as a full-grown wyvern,' one warrior complained.
'And smells almost as bad. Quit your griping!'
Byren let his body stay limp, pretending to be worse than he was, as they hauled him across the terrace. They shoved him through the double doors, dragged him past the great fireplace, and came to a halt.
He sagged between them.
Someone grabbed his head by the hair and threw a tankard of wine in his face. He spluttered, pretending to be groggy. It gave him time to look around Dovecote's great hall.
This was not an ancient hall with huge columns decorated with ancestral friezes like Rolenhold, but a well-proportioned long chamber with polished wood panelling, and exquisite hangings depicting famous scenes from Rolencia's history. He pushed away the memory of Lord Dovecote walking them around the hall as children, telling them the stories of their shared history.
Directly in front of him, a balcony looked down from the floor above, where the family's bed chambers were. From this railing, a great embroidered banner hung to the ground depicting the estate's emblem, the feather and the sword.
Byren looked at the elegant brass aviary which housed Lord Dovecote's fancy birds. No birds fluttered from perch to perch, no soft cooing came from the cage.
He knew that if he went closer he would find the doves lying dead and this told him more about his captor than anything else. Harmless, beautiful creatures killed for effect.
Byren glanced away, trying to think. To each side of the fireplace stood stone pedestals on which rested the family's treasured firestones. They were just close enough so that they glowed with a fiery inner radiance, yearning for each other like lovers.
Byren focused on Overlord Palatyne, who stood in front of a high table laden with gold ornaments, personal items of great beauty like tortoiseshell combs and mother-of-pearl jewellery. These things sat oddly amidst steaming dishes of roast mutton, goose and fresh-baked bread. A dozen lordlings roistered drunkenly, waited on by curled and perfumed servants. Byren suspected this was the cream of Merofynian aristocracy, who had come along to see Rolencia conquered. But where were the real warriors?
Two of Dovecote's servants hurried out with a huge chair, which they set up in front of the high table like a throne for Palatyne. Then Byren noticed silent warriors standing in the background, alert but relaxed, their hands resting lightly on their sword hilts. They wore the amfina crest on their surcoats and they watched everything. Palatyne's honour guard, Byren guessed, veteran spar warriors who had come up with their warlord as he rose in rank.
As for the overlord himself, he was perhaps as tall as King Rolen. No longer a young man, by the grey in his beard he looked to be in his mid-to late thirties. His nose had been broken and set badly so that it was flat from the bridge down, giving him a pugnacious aspect.
Palatyne grabbed a sword from the laden table and lounged in the great chair, the weapon resting casually on his lap. For a heartbeat Byren wondered why he bothered, until he recognised the Old Dove's sword, the one that should have been Orrade's.
Just behind him stood an old renegade Power-worker. He wore a necklace of wyvern teeth and, on the tip of his staff, a stone wyvern's head sat. His hair was completely silver and hung in a single thin plait from the crown of his head. His waist-length beard was loose and threaded with bones and things Byren didn't want to identify. Everything about him proclaimed his barbaric Utland origins.
'Your foretelling was right, Utlander,' Palatyne told him.
'Of course,' he countered. 'If you would only trust -'
'You sent for me, overlord?' A tall, iron-haired man, who wore the indigo robes of a