Mary Herbert - Clandestine Circle

Twilight fell over the city as they walked down Shipmaker’s Road toward the house near the bazaar. Ian didn’t try to kiss her or touch her while there was still light in the streets and people to see. He waited until they had climbed the stairs and walked into the front room of the apartment.

The room was dim with evening and hot with the summer’s heat. Swiftly Ian closed the door behind her and gathered her into his arms. “Come here, Green Eyes,” he whispered.

Linsha’s reservations faded to distant heat lightning, and she gave in to the desire of his embrace. Their lips met and they shared a kiss, timeless and prolonged, that led to more until their hands and tongues couldn’t get enough and their clinging turned to need. Laughing, Ian hooked an arm under her knees and shoulders and carried her to the bed in the next room.

Hours later, Ian Durne kissed Linsha softly on the cheek and carefully rose from the bed. She slept lightly on her side, her hand close to her face, her red curls springing everywhere across the pillow. He watched her for a moment and felt regret like a knife blade in the gut. Moving silently, he picked up his uniform and boots and carried them to the front room, where he dressed as fast as he could. He opened the door. The night was full and hid the streets and alleys in dense darkness, but across the street, a tiny light flickered once in an alley. Commander Durne beckoned.

Two men dressed in black loped across the street and met Durne at the foot of the stairs. “I want her out of this,” he ordered. “Restrain her, but don’t kill her. Do you understand?” His hand shot out and grabbed one man’s arm in a painful grip. “And, Jor, if you lay a hand on her beyond what it takes to tie a rope, I will flay you alive.”

“Yes, sir,” both men grumbled.

“Good. Meet me at the appointed place as soon as you are finished here.” The commander released his grip and strode into the darkness.

The first sign of danger Linsha became aware of was a soft creak of the floorboards near her side of the bed. The unexpected sound brought her wide awake, and her eyes opened to see two black figures lunging toward her. Automatically her hand reached for a dagger, but she had no clothes, no weapons, nothing. Hands reached for her. She erupted out of the bed in a tangle of limbs and bedclothes, screeching with fury.

The sheet pulled tight around her legs and threw her off-balance. She fell into the first figure and felt powerful hands grab her arms above the elbow and force them back until she moaned with pain. Without saying a word, the second figure clamped a hand like a steel trap over Linsha’s nose and mouth. A wad of rough fabric scratched her face and shut off her air.

She fought desperately to escape, but the two silent men were strong and efficient. A strange smell filled her nose from the fabric. It clogged her nose and drifted into her lungs. She choked and coughed and only succeeded in inhaling more of the noxious smell. All at once she became dizzy. Her strength drained away and her eyesight faded.

Where is Ian? she thought briefly before the world went black and she knew nothing more.

Mica closed the book he was reading and rubbed at the dull ache in his temples. This was useless. He was wasting his time trying to plow through all these books for some scrap of information that probably did not exist.

He had hoped the lord governor would send the squire back to help him, but apparently she had been kept busy somewhere else. Too bad. She was irritating and a Solamnic Knight to boot, but she could be useful. He thought it rather poor planning that the leader of his cell hadn’t bothered to tell him of the presence of a good Knight in the Governor’s Guards. While it was true the Legion and the Solamnics had little to do with each other if they could help it, he knew Calzon had a contact in the knightly order and it could have been useful to know who that contact was. Not that it mattered now. One way and another, Lynn’s identity had been revealed to him.

His biggest concern now was finding the key to the Sailors’ Scourge. He believed the disease was induced by magic, but now he had to prove it and, if possible, find something that would break the vicious cycle of the contagion. That was easier said than done. Mystic magic, his specialty, had very little effect on the disease, so it was probably based on something from the old magic of the gods, the magic that no longer existed on Krynn except in old artifacts and talismans of power.

He stretched his arms and neck. He was getting stiff from so much sitting. As he stood up, his eyes fell on the spine of a book half buried under a pile of tomes and scrolls. A ship’s name flashed into his mind. He snatched the ship’s log out of the pile and opened it to the first page that listed the galley’s crew. Lynn said it was a pity they couldn’t talk to the captain before he died.

Mica’s finger found the right name: Captain Emual Southack. “Well, Captain, maybe we can talk to you now,” the dwarf murmured.

He blew out his work lamp and went up the stairs two at a time. He sketched a wave to the porter, and before the man could ask questions, he hurried down Temple Way toward the city and the harbor.

In his rush, he didn’t pay attention to the trees around him or the road behind him. If he had, perhaps he would have noticed the furtive figure that followed him carefully through the shadows.

A dull, throbbing pain beat in Linsha’s head in time with the steady rhythm of her heartbeat. As consciousness slowly returned, she tried to groan and discovered the sound was muffled by a wad of fabric in her mouth. When she tried to spit it out, it remained held firmly in place by a strip of leather tied around her head. That fact surprised her. Opening her eyes, she saw little but darkness, yet the room and the vague shapes within it were familiar. Warily she lay still for a time and took inventory of her predicament.

She was lying, still unclothed, on the bed she had shared with Ian. A sudden thought occurred to her, and she looked frantically around for him. There were no bodies; she was alone. Did that mean he had done this to her and left her? Or had he been taken against his will?

She found her hands were tied together and fastened to the bedstead so tight she could barely move. There was no possibility of pulling or tearing or breaking those ropes. Her legs, too, were bound at the knees and ankles. Someone had even wrapped the sheet tightly around her. She was trussed like a fowl and left here. For how long?

For that matter, how long had she already been here?

Linsha closed her eyes, fighting to hold back the tears of rage and frustration. She was a trained Knight. How could she have let herself get into this? And Ian, where was he? What was happening while she lay here tied to the bed like a sacrificial virgin?

She couldn’t cry out for help. She couldn’t move or reach her weapons or do anything to get herself out of this mess. She needed help… and fast.

Varia, her mind thought wildly. Had Varia returned yet? She knew the owl was telepathic at short distances, but she didn’t know if Varia was clairvoyant enough to receive a cry for help from a long distance. It was worth a try.

She relaxed her body, letting each muscle ease into loose stillness until she could feel only her heart beat, slow and soothing, in her chest. She focused on the heartbeat, on the power within its steady rhythm, and slowly she began to pull that power to her will. Warmth pervaded her limbs, driving away the pain in her head and hands. Energy flowed through her in a tingling, invigorating surge.

She stretched out with her mind, sending her power outward in a call to Varia. I am here. Bring help. She repeated the words over and over, like a litany, and projected them as best she could in the direction of the palace and the barn. As time passed and nothing happened, her desperation grew stronger and her power responded, rippling out from the house in a steady flow like the beacon light at Pilot’s Point.