Shadows Return by Lynn Flewelling Page B

on the deck overhead, and voices. When he finally made out a few words, his heart sank even lower.
    They were speaking Zengati.
    So, he was on a slave ship, and Alec wasn’t with him.
    Seregil clenched his teeth against the iron plate, using the shivery pain to fight down a burst of panic. He couldn’t afford any distractions. He tried to tell himself that Alec could have escaped, but memories of the ambush in the forest won out. Whoever his captors were, they had killed anyone they didn’t mean to take.
    And Alec wasn’t here.
    Panic won, and he thrashed in impotent rage, until he was bloody and too weak to move.
    For the first time in a very long time, he was helpless.

CHAPTER 9

    Hobbled  
    A LEC WAS DEEP under dark water, unable to breathe. He could see a light glimmering far overhead, and he tried desperately to swim up to it, but his body was heavy and his arms didn’t work right. An undersea swell tugged at him and filled his ears with its soft roar. The more he struggled, the more he sank. Giving up, he used the last of the air in his bursting lungs to cry out for Seregil-The unpleasant scrape of metal against his teeth brought Alec out of one nightmare and into a new one. The sound of the sea was still in his ears, and the world was still moving, but daylight smarted his eyes. He was in a cramped, plank-walled room. A tiny window showed only a square of blue sky and a few white seagulls. Even without that, he could tell by the rolling motion of the room that he was aboard a ship under full sail.
    How in the name of Bilairy had he gotten on a ship?
    Badly disoriented, he looked down to find that his wrists were locked in wide metal bands, and a long bar was fastened between them to keep his hands apart. One end of a heavy chain was fastened to the middle of the spanner, and the other to a heavy metal staple in the wall. His fingers found metal straps between his eyes and around his head.
    Someone had put him in branks, like the one Thero had worn when they were captives together on that Plenimaran ship. The same sort of wide, silvery bands of metal encased his wrists. Someone had mistaken him for a wizard and taken serious precautions.
    Otherwise, he’d been made comfortable. He lay on a narrow bunk, warmly swathed in blankets. His clothing was gone, he noted uneasily, but otherwise, he seemed unharmed.
    For now. Mardus and his necromancers had taken good care of Alec, too, as long it had suited them. How in hell had he come to be in the same damn situation twice?
    He closed his eyes. He remembered the ambush, and something black and horrible rushing at him, surrounding him with numbing cold and a breathtaking stench. And Seregil yelling…
    Panic rose again, stronger this time, as it sank in that he was alone.
    He slid off the bunk and staggered unsteadily toward the window, but the chain wasn’t long enough. He could get off the bed to stand, but no further. He climbed back onto the bunk and stood up on it to give him a different view out the window.
    There wasn’t much to see-just some taut ropes and a section of rail, and beyond that, open sea.
    He couldn’t find the sun to judge the hour.
    A chill, salt-laden draft caressed his skin, bringing gooseflesh out on his arms. He sat down and awkwardly dragged a blanket up over his knees with one hand.
    The bunk was built into the wall-just bare boards under a thin mattress stuffed with wool.
    There was nothing loose lying about except two small wooden buckets on a shelf at the end of the bed. The empty one stank of piss, and was clearly meant for a chamber pot. The other held water. He leaned over and sniffed it suspiciously, but it seemed clean. Thirst overrode caution and he sucked up what he could, trying to wash the metallic taste from his mouth. Resuming his vigil, he tried to ignore the fear blossoming in his belly.
    Where is Seregil? The thought throbbed in his mind like a heartbeat.
    He could hear sailors talking somewhere nearby but couldn’t make