The Hostage Prince by Jane Yolen Page A

him—and
on
him—in an instant.
    Think, Aspen, think!
he warned himself, but he was beyond thinking.
    â€œIt’s not their fault they screams,” said the growler. “Master Geck hurts them sumthin’ awful.”
    â€œI don’t
blames
them. I
hates
them.”
    I have to get away!
Aspen thought.
But quietly.
    For a moment, he felt proud for having a reasonable thought in such circumstances. But putting that thought into action was proving difficult. He turned to sneak away and in the darkness didn’t realize how close he was to the wall. The tip of his sheathed sword scraped against the stone. It wasn’t terribly loud. Just the soft swoosh of leather against stone. But it was loud enough.
    â€œWhat’s ’at?” the hissy voice asked.
    â€œHalloo?” growled the low voice, sounding a bit like leather against stone itself. “Halloo?”
    Aspen froze.
    â€œHalloo?” the low voice called a third time.
    The hissing voice had gone quiet.
    Suspiciously quiet,
Aspen thought.
    Then he heard a sniff, as if the guard, whatever creature it was, had gotten his scent, and after came the sound of the lightest of footsteps closing in from behind.
    Aspen ran, taking off liked a scared rabbit running from a wolf, racing back into the sightless dark. He tried to keep his hand on the wall, but it was hard to do while running, and painful, too. It felt as if he left a pound of skin on the corridor stone every time he reached out to try to stay oriented. With every charging step, he feared he’d crash into a wall or trip over an unseen obstacle, and he knew he would surely be overtaken by whatever horrific creature the hissing, sniffing hater was.
    They will probably take me to Master Geck for questioning.
He caught his breath. When he breathed again, it was painful.
And I will probably scream, too.
    Despite the short length of the conversation he’d overheard, Aspen now knew quite enough about Master Geck to realize he didn’t want to be questioned by him, and so he forced himself to run faster.
    Suddenly, there was another scream.
    More of a yell, this time,
he thought,
and definitely a different voice.
    Thinking about the scream rather than his running made his feet tangle up on their own, and he fell.
    â€œThere!” he heard hissed from not nearly far enough away. “We has him!”
    Aspen felt a little woozy as he came to his feet.
I wonder if I have hit my head.
There was no time to worry about it, though. He had to keep going.
    Reaching out for the wall to help himself stand, he felt something protruding outward and knew it at once.
    A torch!
    He pulled it from its sconce with the vague idea that light might help—if not to hide, then at least to keep him from falling again. And the torch could always become a weapon. Most Unseelie folk hated fire, just as they hated water. Perhaps he could keep the two hunters at bay with the torch fire long enough to kill them with his sword.
    And maybe I will grow wings and fly out of here.
    He knew that was a ridiculous thought: the royal Fey hadn’t had wings for thousands of years.
    But I don’t need wings to light a torch!
It was a simple matter for a full-blooded prince of Faerie to light a torch. So simple that it didn’t even require words. Aspen took a deep breath, formed a single fiery thought, and focused on the torch, and it burst into brilliant flame.
    Which presented a new problem. Because no amount of magic could prepare his eyes for the sudden bright light after being so long in blackness. If the creatures were blinded, he was, too, as blind in the light as he’d been in the dark.
    And now he was dizzy as well.
    Definitely hit my head when I fell.
    He reached for the torch’s empty sconce to steady himself. But instead of finding a firm handle to hold onto in the now-spinning corridor, he felt the sconce suddenly give way beneath his grip, almost like a lever.
    Aspen staggered in