minions ringed her, creatures roused from graves, and two with ophidian eyes and
lipless mouths whose skins had a greenish cast.
She began to tell him softly the things she wished to know. For a time he only
shook his head and closed his ears and tried to flee his flesh. If he could
retire his mind to his rest-place, he could ignore it all; the pain, the screams
which split the night; he would know none of what occurred here, and die without
the shame of capitulation: she’d kill him anyway, when she was done. So he
counted determinedly backward, eyes squeezed shut, envisioning the runes which
would save him. But Tamzen’s screams, her sobs to him for help, and Janni’s
animal anguish kept interfering, and he could not reach the quiet place and
stay: he kept being dragged back by the sounds.
Still, when she asked him questions he only stared back at her in silence:
Tempus’s plans and state of mind were things he knew little of; he couldn’t have
stopped this if he’d wanted to; he didn’t know enough. But when at length,
knowing it, he closed his eyes again, she came up close and pried them open,
impaling his lids with wooden splinters so that he would see what made Janni
cry.
They had staked the Stepson over a wild creature’s burrow – a badger, he later
saw, when it had gnawed and clawed its way to freedom – and were smoking the
rodent out by setting fire to its tunnel. When Janni’s stomach began to show the
outline of the animal within, Niko, capitulating, told all he knew and made up
more besides.
By then the girls had long since been silenced.