The Sun of The Elyn

by Kracken

A copyrighted work. Any distribution of this work for profit, or using whole or parts of this work in any other work, will result in legal action.

This is a story that I wrote many years ago and never decided just what to do with it. It is an unedited version and copyrighted material. Anyone attempting to plagiarize this work will face my father in law's grumpy lawyer, who has a copy on file.
I am giving this work away for free, but any donations are welcome.
Della Boynton, P.O Box 3847, Ft. Myers, Fl. 33918 or see my paypal account. Thank you and enjoy.

Warnings: Male/Male sex, graphic sexual content, violence, NCS, abuse. It does have a happy ending.

(New parts will be highlighted in bold)

Chapter One

Dari ran. Rain pelted down on him in a freezing torrent peppered by sleet, soaking his homespun robe and making it tangle about his legs as he scrambled over rocks, well ahead of his pursuers. They were only concerned for his safety, he told himself, but their hands could be hard when they punished his disobedience, and Dari had never been this disobedient before. He dreaded what they would do, astounded by his own rebellion.

They needed him. They were old men, unable to take care of the simple tasks of day to day life. They meditated, argued endlessly about their gods, and reminisced about the good old days when men were eager to join them in their seclusion and learn their wisdom. Given to them at a young age when his mother had died, Dari hardly remembered any other life. Yet he had yearned for what he didn't know and had longed to see the world outside the old stone walls. He especially had wanted to see his people, the ones who were only tantalizing wisps of memory that held nothing but kindness.

The old men had feared that Dari would leave them and never return, if he were ever allowed go outside of the temple walls, so Dari had been forced to live the life of a prisoner, denied any knowledge or glimpse of his land, except through slats in heavily blockaded gates The old men had seen enough novices give up their austere life and return to the village. They couldn't afford to lose Dari as well.

In the midst of his first experience with a rainstorm, wearing clothing and shoes meant for dry stone halls, and freezing to the marrow of his bones, Dari was still not ready to go back. He was determined to reach the other side of a tall tumble of boulders, the stone barrier that one of the elders had assured him kept the villagers from straying on to their temple grounds and disturbing their peace.

Dari slipped and went down, sprawling and sliding almost over the edge of a flat rock, to a nasty fall into darkness. A knee screamed pain, robe torn and skin rent by harsh stone. Dari huddled around it for a moment, hissing and rocking, but then he heard the old men calling him again, and it propelled him to his feet faster than anything else could have. He was close, so very close to his goal. He refused to heed the worried voices and continued on, large green eyes using every bit of the ragged beams of moonlight, peeking through dark storm clouds, to find his way safely.

Dari's feet finally touched rocky ground. He could see a flat road leading unerringly into darkness. His people. They were there at the end of it, Dari was certain. He grinned as he wiped long, sodden, golden hair out of his eyes and began to follow it.

A hand slapped over Dari's mouth, so hard it split his lip, and an arm pulled him back against a hard chest. A rough, male voice snarled low in his ear and then Dari was born backwards, dragged harshly for several yards, and then flung down onto stone. Metal flickered before his astonished eyes and a short blade rested against his throat. It pricked skin there and a trickle of blood flowed hotly to join the freezing rain.

A dark figure was at the end of that blade. Covered in a brown , oiled cloak of leather, the face was well hidden, water pouring off the brim of the hood in a steady waterfall. Dari felt regarded, weighed, and a judgement made, and then a fist closed in the front of his robe and hauled him to his feet. The rough voice gave some order and Dari was prodded forward, urged to walk ahead of the person now behind him. The blade pricked his kidney's, a clear warning not to disobey.

Dari was at a loss. Violence was out of his realm of experience, yet the sharp tip of the blade was clear enough to him. Refuse and it could find a deeper home, it threatened, one he might not survive.

"They're looking for me," Dari said into the rain. "Where are we going?"

The blade tip dug and drew blood. Dari trembled, his shock too deep for him to think of what to do. He could only plead and ask, like a child, "Please stop, it hurts. Can I go back to the temple now? I know that what I did was wrong, but I beg forgiveness."

He had broken a rule that had been the bedrock of his life since he had become aware of such things. Never go into the world. Never leave the temple. Perhaps the punishment for such a transgression was far worse than anything that he had experienced before? Perhaps it merited sharp blades and a stranger forcing him into the night for an even more severe punishment? Dari felt a whimper at the back of his throat and his eyes tried to pierce the darkness, wanting to know desperately what his fate would be.

More hands grabbed at him and more male voices were speaking all around him. Cloaked figures with faces hidden, and intentions unknown, were more than Dari could stand. He began to weep. When a fist lashed out and caught him across a cheek, he went sprawling into a puddle of cold water. An argument between the men broke out immediately afterward and they stood over him, shouting back and forth as Dari tried to comprehend what had just happened to him. He wept even more, shuddering and trying to make himself small, while shock set in and the pain blossomed and throbbed across his cheek.

The argument ended. A rope was brought out and Dari's hands were tied behind his back. They lifted him up, then, and put him on a stinking, wet beast. It snorted and started as Dari was tied to its elaborate saddle. A fist lashed out and caught it in the head. It whinnied plaintively, but settled obediently. Reins and harness jingled. A man swung up behind Dari and held him close as the beast was urged down a narrow, rocky trail.

The sun was warm on Dari's face as he came back to himself. Towards midnight, he had fallen into a deep sleep that had been mostly a reaction to shock, but had been aided by exhaustion and the steady downpour as well. Curled up on stone now, and not the swaying, stinking back of a strange beast, he ached in every bone and muscle. He was afraid to move, though, afraid to open his eyes and find out that his abduction was not simply a very bad dream.

Freezing water poured over Dari's head. He started up, eyes blinking rapidly, as he wiped at his face, spluttered, and tried to make sense out of a huddle of cruel looking men in leathers and furs, a jutting, corridor of dark rock crowded by hobbled beasts, and a small, almost dead campfire made of dung and peat.

Someone standing over him made an almost unintelligible comment. Dari looked up, puzzling over it, and then realized that they were words he knew, but heavily accented. "Good, you're alive."

The man's expression looked far from glad, though, and Dari shivered and hugged himself in fear, making a small, tight ball of his body and peering up at the man through the drying tangles of his golden hair. The man was short, with broad shoulders. Scars made a pattern on his face and his black eyes were almost slits over a broad nose. His hands were very large, with black hairs on the backs. They seemed strong and very capable as they hooked into Dari's robe and pulled him roughly to his feet.

"Why the Priestess Kiral wants the likes of you...," the man grumbled. He looked Dari over, his nostrils flaring as if he couldn't stand the smell of him, though the man stank himself, a noticeable layer of dirt and grease on his swarthy skin.

"Just be glad that it's not you she wants," another snorted as they all rose and began readying the beasts to ride.

The eyes of the man holding Dari widened like a fearful beast, but then he controlled it and pretended otherwise. "We are her chosen," he said, "She blessed us herself to protect us against these demons."

"Demons?" A tall, lanky man with a thatch of dark hair, sneered. "Look at him. Like a starved mouse. He doesn't have any evil magic in him, Torval. It's only tales to frighten children."

"And our god is a tale as well?" Torval snarled. "Watch your tongue, Regan. None of us will stand for your blasphemy."

The tall man grinned. "I'm your guide, remember? I don't have to believe in your god, I just have to get you back home alive."

Torval gripped the hilt of his sword until his knuckles turned white, but then he hissed an oath, powerless in the face of that well stated truth. "Don't overestimate your worth,"he warned.

"I want to go back to the temple," Dari interrupted in a voice he hardly recognized as his own. It was hoarse, barely above a whisper, and full of his fear. "Please... I'm sorry I ran away."

Torval looked down at him with eyes that were as hard and as unsympathetic as the rocks around them. He didn't reply, simply dragged Dari to a beast and tossed him on. Dari's bound arms were numb, the cords cutting into flesh, his stomach was a tortured knot of hunger, and he could feel bruises and raw places where the beasts's harness had worn skin. He hung his head and closed his eyes against a sun that was too bright in the face of his suffering.

Something was missing. Dari became aware of it, as insistent as his hunger in wanting his notice. As they negotiated the trail down from the mountains, they kept Dari hungry and cold, making him needy and weak for their own purposes. This other hunger hovered near his heart, though, and was no less painful as it grew, by leaps and bounds, until Dari cried out and turned to clutch at Torval riding the beast behind him.

"I need...," Dari began, but floundered as the man glared at him, realizing that he didn't know what it was that vied with his hunger.

"You'll stay hungry. I don't want you strong, just alive," Torval told him tightly.

Something flickered over Torval's skin, an aura that was like a shadow of fire. It licked at Dari's hands, clutching at the man's clothing, and then danced along his arms towards Dari's heart. Dari recoiled and almost fell, something instinctive knowing that the strange fire should not touch him there, whatever the cost.

Torval grabbed at Dari and slammed him back into the saddle, thinking that Dari was trying to escape. His fist rose up and the black fire gathered there as he brought it down into Dari's face. The blow shattered the world and Dari fell into darkness.

Dari wanted to stay there, and he fought consciousness with all of his failing strength, but it wasn't to be denied. He woke again towards evening and found himself tied, hand and foot, to the saddle of his beast. The ropes were far stronger than the thin ones of before. Those ropes were tied to the saddle prow, as if they weren't to be wasted even broken as they were. No one held him in the saddle now. Dari was alone on the beast, the lead held by Torval, who was looking back at him nervously from the back of his own beast..

"Break your bonds again and I will make you pay for it," Torval warned when he saw enough sense appear in Dari's eyes. The black fire was gone, but Dari could sense it, a tingle of 'wrong' that made his chest ache in a counterhythm to his heartbeat.

Dari's wrists hurt and the skin was cut. His new bonds were making them bleed in a hot trickle that spotted the ground. Freeing himself had been an unconscious thing, but not without cost to himself. The violence of Torval's threat, the pain, and the knowledge that he was even farther from home crashed down on him, a perfect despair that caused tears to flow and his mind to enter a state of numbness, a shock that sprang from his inability to understand or accept what was happening to him.

"He's beautiful," Regan said aside to Torval, looking back at Dari's pale, trembling face and wide green eyes.

"Touch him and I will cut off your balls," Torval warned in an ugly tone. "The Priestess wants more than a used piece of meat. She wants a magical Elyn demon."

"Your ignorance is blinding," Regan retorted sourly."He's just a boy, a very pretty boy. We'd do better to sell him in the slave market. Someone would pay a hefty price for that hair. Green eyes as well. Have you ever seen green before? We could live the rest of our lives off the profit, Torval, if you would just forget your ridiculous superstition."

Torval's sword stabbed out, quicker than a striking snake, and it took Regan in the side with a sound that was chilling and final. Regan clutched at the blade, eyes wide in shock as he realized his own death, and then Torval was jerking out his bloody sword again and kicking out a boot. It hit Regan hard and sent his corpse from his saddle. He landed in an ugly sprawl and Torval continued on with a satisfied smile.

Dari stared at Regan as his beast passed him, uncomprehending of what had just happened. The man's blood was leaving him, steaming in the cold, and he was twitching in his death throes, eyes wide and staring up blindly. The other men were unconcerned, offering no comment to the violence, as if they were well used to it.

Dari shrieked, a pathetic, strangled sound, until Torval pulled his beast back even with his beast, pulled a dirty piece of cloth out of his furs, and jammed it into Dari's open mouth viciously. Dari stopped screaming, choking instead as the cloth went too far down his throat. Torval tied it into place with a strip of leather.

Torval's large hand patted Dari's head in mock sympathy, his eyes glittering with malice, perhaps proud to have shocked a demon, and then he was riding ahead again, while Dari tried to breathe around the rag and his sobs.

Torval had killed, easily and without regret. Ragen was dead; his spirit fled and his life wasted and pouring out on barren stone in a thick pool of deep red. It was incomprehensible to Dari. He couldn't understand why it had happened, not believing, until then, that it could. He remembered Torval's blade pricking his skin, threatening just such a fate for himself; a threat that he hadn't understood until that moment. He could end up as dead as Ragen. His imagination was too sharp at envisioning that blade piercing him, to intelligent not to understand that this was not about punishment and breaking rules, and that it had nothing to do with the old, kindly men who had cared for him for most of his life. These men were not his people and they were not taking him to the village. He was being taken elsewhere and, perhaps, if he wasn't careful, the road there would end abruptly in his death.

They were afraid of him. Dari felt it as the days slipped past in a painful haze. He ceased to beg and ask where he was going. They never replied, just gave him those wide eyed, wary looks and fingered their weapons. Torval alone seemed confident in his protection against Dari's supposed evil, yet even he rarely allowed Dari free of his bonds, to eat or take care of his needs, without a weapon drawn. Their fear was unfathomable to Dari. He offered them only soft words and entreaties, did as he was told, and was himself afraid of them.

"More obedient than any slave I've ever seen," one of the men spat aside as they sat around a campfire and Dari huddled in the one ragged blanket that they had provided him. "I bet he'd do anything you told him...anything."

Another man grumbled at that. "You saw what that kind of talk did to Ragen. I'm surprised that you dare, Poln."

"I'd dare a lot for that pretty face," Poln chuckled appreciatively and rubbed at his crotch.

Another man spat aside and moved away. Dari didn't understand. He hadn't been afforded any opportunity to discover sex in a temple of old men. He had found out how to relieve the pressure of his own needs, but didn't have any idea that the same pleasure could be had with someone else. His ignorance was plain and Poln pointed and laughed at him.

"He's a virgin, I'm sure of it," Poln snickered. "A virgin demon. The priestess will reward you well, Torval for such a prize."

"Demons are not virgins," Torval shot back as he sharpened his blade on a wet stone. "They are born corrupted." He pointed the tip of his blade at Dari. "He plays with you all, fools, pretending such innocence. He will eat your young and drink your blood as soon as you drop your guard. This form he shows you is counterfeit. His true form is terrible."

They all stared at Dari. Dari blinked back at them. "I am what you see," he said, trembling. "I don't understand what you're saying. Why are you taking me from my home?"

Torval motioned to Dari in disgust, "Explain to the demon his fate, Caru."

A grizzled, heavy set man looked nervous and almost angry to be given the task, but he explained, " You are Elyn. Our god desires your sacrifice. The Priestess has read it in the runes."

"Only demon blood is strong enough for our god," Torval added and he whipped out his sword as he strode to Dari. With the tip resting against his throat, Dari was looking up that glittering length of steel to the man's eyes, which were flickering with the dark aura. Dari trembled in fear as the man explained chillingly, "You will be hung, upside down, from the sacred tree, and then you will be bled. Once you are drained dry, the Priestess will offer that blood to our god. It will assure our power. It will defeat our enemies."

Dari tried to imagine such a thing and tried to comprehend that these men intended to do this terrible thing to him. "I...I..."

Torval looked him up and down and said in derision, "Weak... pretty like a girl... and your evil magic has fled before the powerful charms of my Priestess. Your people are only good for sacrifice."

The blade lowered and Torval turned away as he shouted at his men, "Get your asses back on your beasts. We must be at the grove by the next full moon."

Dari felt hands on him. He was numb, eyes wide, tears catching firelight as they trickled down his cheeks. He was dimly aware of those hands smoothing over him and then one dipping into his lap. It squeezed what it found there before falling away.

"Just making sure you weren't a girl," Poln whispered in his ear, licked the lobe, and then pulled Dari to his feet. "We'll have fun later, when Torval isn't so afraid of your people rescuing you."

Rescue? Dari tried to imagine the frail old men of the temple negotiating the trail. It was only a little easier than imagining faceless villagers coming so far to save him at the bidding of those old men."They won't come," Dari sobbed. "No one will come."

"So I told him, "Poln said as he brought Dari to one of the saddled beasts. "What do demons care for saving other demons?" He smiled down at the top of Dari's head and crowded Dari against the side of the beast. Dari felt something hard press against him from behind and rub.

"You are going to be so sweet," Poln chuckled when Dari gave a startled flinch away from him. He took a firm grip on Dari, then, and lifted Dari into the saddle.

It was beginning to snow. The beasts moved nervously, feeling the men's trepidation. A snowstorm in a harsh place like that could spell disaster for them all.

"Ride," Torval barked and they took the trail downward faster than was wise.

Dari felt the snow settling on his hair, on his face, and on his shoulders, wetting him and freezing his skin as it began to blow in flurries. His mind whirled away with the snow as it fled away from too many unimaginable horrors and a fate that would be the end of his life in a way that was more terrible than any nightmare.

Chapter Two

"Will he live?" Torval's voice grumbled as Dari slowly came back to himself in the heat of a hearth fire and the warmth of thick furs.

"Yes," a woman's voice replied testily, "but not because of anything you've done. Did you drag him, face down, all the way down the Towers?"

"I kept him weak to keep him under my control," Torval explained as if to a halfwit.

Gnarled, dry fingers touched Dari. It reminded him of the old men and his eyes flew open, hoping against hope to see them. Instead, he was looking into the very sharp, bird-like face of an old woman. She wore furs from crown to heel, her face peering out of a fur cowl with surprise.

"Demon green!" she hissed. "So, it's true. You did manage to capture one of the Elyn." She clutched at a bone pendant at her throat fearfully. "I'm surprised any of you are still alive, Torval. It's said that their powers are terrible."

"Our Priestess has strong magic," Torval boasted. He took hold of a handful of Dari's hair and pulled Dari close to him. He glared into Dari's eyes and then released him. "He's been out of his mind these past days because of it. Her charms spelled him so that he was powerless. He seems awake again, though. Drug him with your herbs and give me enough for a few days more. After that, it won't matter whether he walks in dreams or in reality under the sun His soul and blood will belong to our god."

He strode away, but not far. They were in a wooden hut, mostly dominated by a large hearth, and the men and their supplies filled it.

The woman snorted disdainfully as she pulled some herbs out of a leather packet and sniffed them critically. By her feet there were coals and a small pot of water boiling and steaming. "If his Priestess is so powerful, her charms wouldn't have failed this close to home," she muttered sourly.

Dari blinked and shrunk fearfully when her small, dark eyes darted to him. He felt raw, burned and worn thin by wind, rain, and cold. He felt like a spirit, ready to be blown away by an unmindful breath. Tears started but they didn't fall. He wondered if he had cried himself dry already or whether he was still in the throes of shock.

Her gnarled hand snagged a bit of his golden hair. "So bright and beautiful, even knotted and dirty," she whispered admiringly."It is a waste and a shame, what they intend for you. I wish I could save you, little one, but I'm too old and weak. They'd kill me. Can't you use your magic? Strike them dead? Free yourself?" She looked into Dari's shimmering green eyes and looked disappointed. "Perhaps demons so young aren't powerful enough?"

Dari shivered and managed in a hoarse voice, "Thirsty."

She sighed and dropped her herbs into the steaming water. "I'll give you this to drink in a moment, and then hunger and thirst will not matter to you." Her eyes darted to him again. "Forgive poor Jabela, sir demon, if you manage to free yourself, or your kin comes for revenge. Remember that I didn't wish you harm."

There was a bright little blue flame licking about her furred head. It was pleasant, but electric. Dari watched it uncertainly and then shrank back into his furs. Behind her the dark aura danced over the men seated near the hearth and her small blue flame was powerless against it.

Jabela used a thick cloth on the handle of the pot to pour the liquid into a wooden cup. "Drink," she urged as she held the cup out to him. When his hands shook too badly, she held the cup herself, placing it against his lips. Dari thought of rebelling, afraid for the first time in his life of something so simple as herbed water, but her hand at the back of his head was compelling and her sure words. "Best not to know, demon, what happens now. The herbs are a blessing. Trust me, I know."

Dari drank and the herbs and the heat of it soothed his raw throat. He drank the cup dry and she let him go then, tucking the furs around him and helping him to eat a thinned soup. The drugs began to work halfway through his sixth spoonful. Dari drifted and his head lolled, out of his control. He felt hands settle him down and a regretful sigh from Jabela.

Dari slept, but there were small moments of blurry consciousness that were disjointed and hardly discernable from his dreams and nightmares. He rode. He sat. He was fed. He was cleaned roughly. A body held him against heat and did things he didn't understand. He felt pierced, impaled, forced into a rocking sickening rhythm on a spike of pain, while a voice whispered and panted unintelligible words. It was a nightmare, he thought, but wasn't certain. It came more than once, and the tongue and the lips lapping at his neck, at his ear, and trying to invade his mouth, seemed so real...

"The herbs are losing their power," a voice growled and someone pried Dari's eyelid open. Sunlight pierced his eye and he flinched and blinked rapidly.

"It doesn't matter," Torval said close by."We will be at the grove tonight and he will go into the Priestess's keeping then. Tie him well and get him on his beast."

Dari felt the world tip and spin as hands lifted him. His legs opened to straddle a saddle and there was a sharp pain searing up his spine at the contact of rump against padded hide. A body pressed up close and arms held him possessively. "Our play is done unless I can rescue you," Poln said softly in Dari's ear. "I love you too much to give you over to a false god who can't appreciate your tight, sweet charms."

Dari's eyes cleared as he tried to understand, but he was overwhelmed by the deep dark forest all around them. The tree trunks were larger than eight men abreast and they shot up into unimaginable heights far above them. Ferns and a deep forest loam cushioned every fall of hoof. Birdsong rang out all around them and flickers of dappled light played about everything.

"Where... have I died?" Dari whispered and could barely speak. This was surely the place of final repose, the paradise the old men had spoken of.

"Not yet," Poln chuckled.

It was impossible to think, his mind still hanging on the edges of the drug. Dari could only drift and wonder at the new world around him, his coming fate something that was less real and too horrible to bring to mind.

A sparkling stream wound in a lazy, serpentine, path into the deeper forest. The men stopped, groaning with weariness and tossing off heavier clothing. It was warmer and Dari felt himself sweltering in his thick clothing.

"Wash him," Torval ordered Poln. "I won't present him to the Priestess filthy."

Poln nodded and slid off of the beast. He pulled Dari down with him and held Dari up when his knees would have buckled. Strengthless and numb, Dari was mostly carried by Poln to the river bank, where he stripped them both and then took them into the shocking cold water.

Dari had never bathed in anything other than a warm tub of heated water. A small stream , even knee deep, was cause for panic. He clutched at Poln, shivering and stuttering words that he couldn't make into anything coherent. Poln held him tightly and chuckled. The man's big hands made a show of forcing him into the water, but they were roaming too, rubbing and feeling where ever the water hid them from the other men. When Dari felt a finger push at his entrance, he floundered and tried weakly to get away from him. Poln was too strong, though, and the finger found entrance and shoved in deep into a place already sore and well used. Poln grinned and bent over Dari, one arm circling his waist and holding Dari against him as the finger shoved in and out with a lazy, assured motion.

"When it gets a bit darker, and the trees more tangled," Poln said in his ear. "I'll let our beast slip away from the others. I know this forest well. They won't find us. Do as I say and you'll live Elyn."

"S-s-stop," Dari stammered at last, his first clear word, strained and low. "Stop!"

"It's just a finger," Poln snickered as he kept working Dari with it.. "I've had more up there already, demon... ah, but you didn't know? Jabela's drugs work well and Torval and his men sleep heavy."

"But we aren't deaf, Poln," Torval's voice snarled and there was a loud, kachunk! Metal slicing into meat. Poln's finger jerked out of Dari and a large object plopped into the water, filling the clear stream with red. Dari stared in shock as the thing rolled and Poln's face, eyes wide and startled, showed in the dappled sunlight before the current dragged it under again and took it downstream. Poln's body, bereft of its head, toppled off of Dari sideways, twitching and spewing more blood all around his feet.

Torval grabbed Dari by the hair and pulled him into clearer water. "Wash yourself or join that fucking pervert," he ordered.

Dari collapsed into the water and went under, the freezing cold water filling his lungs as he tried to voice his weak screams. Torval pulled him back out and he choked and coughed. The man slapped Dari hard in the face, but Dari was past pain or reason. Orders were given. Another man took Poln's place and washed Dari as Dari emitted strangled cries over and over again, his eyes riveted on Torvals' bloody blade. The thing was still drawn, a clear threat.

"I want to go home," Dari cried weakly as they finally pulled him out of the water and put him in a clean white robe that they had seemed to be saving for the occasion. "Please, can I go home? Please..." He clutched at who ever was in reach, continuing to beg in a stammering, gasping voice, but they shrugged him off or nervously stepped out of reach.

Torval put Dari on his beast alone and tied Dari's hands to the high pommel. "You'll go home," he said at last and that stilled Dari's hysterical pleading. "After the rite. Do as your told and we'll send you home."

"Thank you," Dari wept and bowed his head, body shaking with sobs of relief and mind melting into the drugs and shock. Poln's words and his invasion of Dari's body were confusing and frightening, but a smaller thing compared to watching the man 's head fly from his body.

Torval walked away to get his own beast and one of his men said, low and laughing. "He believes you. Perhaps he is a demon simpleton?"

Torval grunted. "The god doesn't care for his wit or that Poln rode him. He wants his power. A few more hours and it won't matter what the little demon thinks."

Night fell and the full moon flickered through the canopy of trees. The men lit torches and they seemed relaxed and in a festive mood, happy to be home at last and under the hand of their priestess once more. Dari looked forward into the darkness, eager for them to reach their destination now, and they were the ones who had to catch at his reins and hold him back.

They gave Dari odd looks. Clean and hair washed, the darkness seemed to skip off of him. His skin looked as if it were drinking the moonlight. He glowed and shimmered, gold hair a sparkling curtain down his back. His green eyes were bright, eager for his ordeal to be over and for his promised return home. They were finding it hard to believe his naivete and they checked the ropes that bound him more than once, expecting some trick.

"We have returned!" Torval announced loudly and they entered a very large clearing dominated by an old oak tree. Fires smoked and flickered in the darkness, illuminating white robe figures, who came forward to greet the newcomers. There was a wave of sound, joyful cheering and song. A drum started pounding a beat and a flute made a wild counter point.

A woman came from behind the tree with attendants at each elbow. She wore a deep blue robe that pooled about her feet; velvet that shimmered in the fire light. Her hair was long and black and as straight as flowing black water down her back. Her eyes were dark, lined in kohl, and full of triumph. She was beautiful, Dari thought, as she motioned and Dari was brought before her.

Dari stared up at the taller woman with wide eyes. She was not very young, despite her dark hair, but she carried her age with a straight backed dignity and her face was fine boned and not deeply lined yet. Her eyes appraised Dari, a small smile on her ruby lips, and she seemed astonished now and moved by some strong emotion.

"You have done very well, Torval," the woman said without looking at the man. "Your reward will be great."

"My reward is in pleasing you, Priestess," Torval replied with fervor.

The Priestess reached out a slim hand and tentatively touched Dari's cheek. "So soft," she murmured. "And cool to my touch. I've been told that demons burn from the fire within them. Your beauty does not disappoint, though. It is said that it can be maddening to mere mortals. I can well believe that."

Dari didn't understand her words and didn't attempt to. He reached up, instead, and touched her hand, gripping it with some desperation. "Can I go home now?"

She blinked at him, let her gaze travel over his head to Torval, and then back down at him again. Her smile was forced. "Of course, child. As soon as our rite is completed, you will be allowed... to go home."

"Thank you," Dari breathed with emotion so strong that he could barely contain it. He waited, trustingly, as the priestess turned to her people and spoke briefly.

"The rite has begun. Prepare yourselves," she intoned and raised hands, palms outward, towards her people as if in blessing. When she lowered them, she bowed her head and turned away.

Taking hold of Dari's elbow, the Priestess lead him into a hide tent behind the tree that was decorated with symbols. Soft furs, flickering candles, and odd charms filled the small space. The priestess turned to Dari and lifted his robe up and over his head. She tossed it away and licked lips as she looked over his body.

"So thin," she said regretfully. "Torval wasn't taking proper care of the god's sacrifice. Still, you glow, little one, like moonlight, just like a proper demon should, and you are man enough for this part of the rite, I see. Come." She took Dari's hand and pulled him down into the furs.

Dari shivered, in no way understanding what the woman wanted. She seemed nervous, her hands, working at the fastenings of her own robe, shaking slightly. There was a scent on the air that seemed one with the scented candles, permeating everything and sticky sweet in Dari's nose. It made him dizzy, warm, and suddenly wanting in a way that had him blushing, confused, and more than a little afraid. He was new to these urges, unsure what they were for or how to deal with them. To have them here, without cause or a clear way to deal with them, left him shrinking into himself, hands covering the growing erection in his lap and trying to push it back down into submission.

"You may burn me with your demon seed," the Priestess was saying, as if she were fully prepared for that and brave in her devotion to her god, "but others are ready to finish the rite. The priestess will be mated with the power of the demon, and that power will pass into our sacrifice, into our people, before the god has your blood and soul as his own.

Her robe dropped. Dari, who had only seen robed old men up until that time, was shocked. It killed his erection and the power of the drugged air as he recoiled in a panic. She had hold of his wrist, though, and he was afraid of pulling and hurting her. She seemed a soft thing, like the doves the old men had kept. The breast she put his hand on was even softer than their feathered breasts.... and warm. She made him cup it and feel at the erect nipple. Her smile was edged, bordering on desperation. She wasn't going to accept failure or a reluctant Elyn in her bed.

"Please, let me go," Dari breathed, trembling more than she was.

She frowned. "I don't please you? Are your demon women so beautiful and desirable then?"

"I... don't..." Dari made another small attempt to pull away , but her nails dug into his skin.

The priestess looked suddenly disgusted. "Are you a lover of men, then? Are you one of those abominations? " Her sneer was ugly. "A demon is abomination. What else should one expect?"

The priestess studied Dari, as if she hoped that he might yet calm and find her tempting. She leaned in, showing him the large globes of her breasts, but Dari looked away and huddled into himself tighter. The drugged air was stirring his body again, but it had nothing to do with the ripe body so close to his own.

"Make it stop," Dari whimpered. "It's hurting." Not a true pain, not after what he had endured, but a torment all the same.

As if coming to an unpleasant decision, the priestess said coldly. "I can cure you."

She took hold of both of Dari's wrists and then she bowed over and took Dari's weeping erection into her moist, tight, mouth. Dari thrashed, afraid at the intense sensation and the answering thrust of his body into that heat. She held him fast, though, and his confusion and the overwhelming sensation in his groin, kept him from any action or thought, but how to release the rising pressure inside of him.

Dari had brought himself to orgasm more than once. This was far more intense and horrifying. He cried out, choking on sobs, and felt helpless as he pumped his seed into the Priestess. She swallowed and sucked with a single minded intensity until there was nothing left.

Releasing Dari at last, the Priestess stood and wiped her mouth, glaring down as Dari sobbed and shuddered. "I am not dead from your powers, but I have swallowed them whole. I can feel it burning in my belly." She pulled on her robe and fastened it as she said in derision, "Time for the rest of the rite, poor excuse for an Elyn. Time for my god to have you too."

The Priestess called her attendants. Dari's hands were bound behind him and he was led, naked, outside of the tent and to the front of the tree once more. As the attendants tied leather cords to his ankles, the priestess faced her people again and raised her hands.

"I have taken his power!" The Priestess announced and the cheer that went up from the gathering was deafening. "Now for the sacred rite of blood."

The drum began beating rhythmically. The flute sounded like a bird, fluttering about it. The assembled gathered in a close knot before the tree. The priestess ran her hands through Dari's golden hair and then whispered, "Die well, Elyn."

Dari started and looked back at her, wild eyed, but it was already too late for realizations, for any sense of betrayal. As Dari cried out, he was jerked off of his feet and lifted by his ankles above the ground by a rope attached to a low limb of the tree. Swinging, his hair sweeping down and along the ground, the blood rushed to his head and scalded his face along with his tears.

The darkness licked over the crowd. In Dari's dizzied sight, he could not only catch glimpses of it, but felt its malevolence like dark oil on his skin. When the Priestess approached him with a slim dagger, that darkness was in her eyes, flaming about her like a black light from within, and Dari cried out in fear and struggled.

Hands steadied Dari from both sides. They kept him still, made him face the Priestess, upside down, as she lifted the knife to make a cut across his heart. Dari flinched and wept, as he felt the cold edge of steel.

The gathering began to chant words that Dari didn't understand. As the blade split his skin in a very shallow cut, a large, silver bowl was placed underneath him to catch the blood that made it's slow progress down his body towards it.

What happened next was the stuff of nightmare. A black horse leapt from the darkness, nostrils red and eyes white ringed. The firelight caught on it's metal tack and flickered, making it look as if it breathed flame, as it's iron shod hooves came down on the roots at the base of the tree and gathered for another great stride that would take it beyond it. A blade arced. Cords were cut, and a great arm swept Dari into a rock hard chest, as the horse snorted and made it's leap.

Voices cried out, but there wasn't enough time to react before Dari was flung face down over the pommel of a saddle, and beaten bloody by the passage of tree branches, as the horse galloped full tilt into the forest. The force of the pommel driving into Dari's guts, the shock, and the realization that he might be in the grip of a real demon god, was enough to take his senses away from him.

"Wake up," a voice growled.

Dari started awake , flinching and remembering terrible things, but he was surprised to see that he was in a sunny clearing in the forest, a slow moving stream almost at his feet. A black horse cropped the sparse grass nearby, saddle and bridle discarded on the ground, and a man crouched close, staring at Dari with dark eyes that were intense in their regard.

The man was thin, haggard looking, and filthy. Dressed in dark brown leathers, his black hair tangled and caught back in a short braid, he looked as if he had been riding a long time. When he saw that Dari was awake, he growled, "The light was uncertain. I thought you were a girl."

Dari flushed and huddled in on his nakedness.

"It's obvious now, that you aren't," the man continued, as if Dari had purposefully tried to deceive him. "You wasted my time."

He stood and turned to his horse with purpose. He grabbed up saddle and bridle and began putting them on the beast. There were sores on the horses sides, galls from wearing it's harness for too long. It flicked back ears and stamped in protest as the weight of the padded saddle settled on them once more.

This man had rescued him and now... he was leaving. Dari had a feeling that the man wasn't planning on taking him along. He was acting as if Dari had ceased to exist. Dari looked around him at the forest. It was dark under the branches and able to hide anything... or anyone. The thought of those men returning, to reclaim him, brought Dari to his feet. He approached the man tentatively.

"Sir," Dari began in a small voice. "I'm alone. If you could-" His hand touched the man's arm as he began to plead, bare flesh covered in dark hair and tanned from the sun. The dark aura was there, waiting to spring. It flowed up Dari's fingertips, flashed over his arm, and tried to burn its way into Dari's heart.

It was too painful to even allow a scream. He clutched at the man, grabbing at him to beg for the pain to stop, for the darkness to release him, but instead, the man fisted hands in the back of Dari's hair and shook at him to get him off.

"I have to go!" the man snarled."Get off and get out of my way!"

It happened then, a instinctive reflex inside of Dari, one aimed at saving his life. He felt a flash of heat, white and pure, coursing through him and into the man he was still in contact with. He heard the man cry out, but he was crying out as well and they were both falling. He hit soft grass and a thick carpet of ferns and old leaves. The man thudded down beside him and they were both still.

It was hard for Dari to breathe, to see, to want his heart to beat again, but it did, regaining it's rhythm and bringing him back out of his near faint. He felt as if a hole had been opened up though, and part of himself had poured out. He felt light as air and weak.

The man was sitting up, hands at his chest, and a bewildered look on his face. He looked around them in confusion and then looked at Dari. "Who...?" He turned completely and saw his horse. "Tao," he said, and the beast cocked ears at him, shivering and skittish. "What am I doing here?"

"I... I don't know," Dari replied and his throat hurt from screaming.

The man looked at him again, more keenly, appraising him with a mind beginning to work, but still caught in some confusion. "You're eyes are green. Who are you?"

"Dari... an Elyn," Dari replied. "You saved me."

"From who?" The man's hand went automatically to a sword at his side.

"I don't know," Dari confessed and then bent over, rubbing at his aching head.

"You're ill?" The man came towards him and then started, making a curious sign in the air with a finger. "You... you don't have a navel... What are you?"

The man stood and looked ready to flee. Dari held out supplicating hands and begged, "Please, don't go! I'm alone... lost... those men... they took me from my home. I don't know how to get back there."

The man raked his dirty hair out of his face nervously. "Elyn are said to be demons..." He looked Dari up and down, at his over thin and frail looking body. "You don't... look dangerous... or... like a demon, though Why were you kidnaped? Are you an important person?"

"No... I don't know," Dari replied. "They said that I was going to be given to their god." He touched the cut over his heart.

The man spat aside, "Mandovarens, sounds like. That's bold for them, though. They've been banned from human sacrifice for years, by order of the emperor. Maybe they thought demon blood was exempt? You're lucky that you were saved... by me? I don't remember... Why don't I remember?"

Dari shook his head, as confused as the man.

The man paced and then went to his horse. He saw the state the beast was in and cursed as he pulled off it's tack. "Tao! Poor beast! What in Heaven... Why was I riding you so hard? Where was I going?" He dug into the saddle bags and found rolls of maps, money, and rations for a long journey. He stared at them, at a loss, and then let them drop into a pile as he turned and began caring for the horse.

"It looks like we won't be going any where for a few days," the man said as he worked a salve into the beats' wounds. "More than enough time to figure out what to do with you, sir demon Elyn."

"I don't...I don't think that I am a demon," Dari replied, hope stirring that maybe this man was going to choose to be kind.

"One thing you'll find out about me, Morgan Televar, is that I don't hurt women or children." He cast a look over his shoulder at Dari. "You're not a child, I suppose, but you don't look a man either." He touched the blade at his side. "Use any demon spell on me, though, and I'll forget that kindness and you'll taste steel. Are we in an understanding?"

"Yes," Dari replied, because he thought it was required, not because he truly understood.

"I know the Emperor," the man continued. "I was his embassador for three years . Perhaps I can take you to him and he can decide what should be done? Then I can find out what I was about as well and why I don't remember any of it," he said in a worried tone.

"Thank you," Dari replied and his voice caught on a sob of gratitude.

The man grimaced at the display. "Here, now! Be a man about it." He tossed a shirt to Dari. "And put that on. The gods frown on having to look at human bums from their lofty perches in the heavens."

Dari slipped it on and it reached to his knees. Morgan watched him, uncapping a water skin and taking a long drink without his eyes leaving Dari. "How old are you?" he finally asked as he capped the skin and slung it from a low tree branch.

"One hundred and eleven cycles," Dari promptly replied as he touched the unfamiliar, soft material of the shirt. It was very different from his rough robe and the leathers and furs of the men who had kidnaped him.

"How long is that?" Morgan wondered with a grunt as he put feed into a nose bag and strapped it onto his horse.

"I...," Dari didn't know how to put it any other way. There were times for certain rites and he had lived through that many cycles of them.

Morgan scratched at his dirty hair. "I'm twenty two summers old," he told Dari. "Everyone I know counts by the seasons." As he bent and began unlacing his boots, he said thoughtfully, "I think you're at least seventeen seasons old. You're small, but your face isn't so much a child's."

Dari didn't know for certain, but he nodded all the same as Morgan undressed completely and gingerly went into the stream. The man spluttered and shivered from the cold, but then he gritted his teeth and washed his filthy body.

Morgan was lean, despite his wide shoulders and chest. Scars marred a shoulder and one side, but other wise he was well muscled and relatively hairless. He exuded good humor as he hummed a tune and scrubbed with river sand. After he had ducked his head under the water, taken his braid out, and used his fingers to rake out the tangles and dirt in his hair, he revealed himself to be a handsome man underneath the filth of neglect and long travel.

"That feels much better," the man sighed at last and then left the stream to dry off with a rag he pulled from a saddle bag. After he had dressed in cleaner clothes, a loose white shirt, and soft leather pants, and settled to make a fire, he smiled at Dari and motioned him to come closer. "As soon as I get this going, I'll cook some food. I feel like I haven't eaten for awhile and you look nearly starved."

Dari reached out tentatively with every sense he owned, trying to feel for the black aura that had attacked him earlier, but he felt nothing but kindness and a curiosity in the man. Morgan took his hesitation to mean something else and he frowned in sympathy and a bit of anger as he said, "Those people... they didn't...?" He didn't like his next words and chose different ones. "If they hurt you, I'm sorry, but I'm not like that. You don't have anything to fear from me."

Dari hugged himself, remembering half dreams and a cruel invading finger, but it wasn't enough to keep him wary when the Morgan was so obviously trying to be kind. He sat close, then, and felt contentment when the fire finally began crackling cheerfully and the man placed dried bricks of some sort of soup into water in a small pot. He stirred with a wooden ladle and looked as if he were nearly asleep, eyes half closed, as he watched the soup boil.

"Maybe I've been ill?" Morgan mused softly. I could have been going to the Hurande, they lie South of here. There's been trouble lately... some unrest... but I don't remember the Emperor ordering me to go there. I feel shaky... stretched thin... I feel... "He looked very thoughtful and then he shook his head and yawned as he chuckled, "Tired, I feel tired. I think I'll need to sleep after we have our meal." His eyes flicked over at Dari. "You don't talk very much, do you?"

Dari shivered. "I don't know what to say. Everything is... strange..I've been so afraid..."

"I can understand," the man said as he ladled the soup into a wooden bowl. There was only one. He ate his fill and then filled it again and handed it to Dari. Dari's eyes filled with tears of gratitude as he was finally allowed to eat as much as he wished.

Dari handed the empty bowl back to Morgan and then said with great emotion, "I was afraid that all men here were like the ones who kidnaped me, or that I was being punished for breaking the rules."

"What rules?" Morgan asked, as he banked the fire and then sat back into a bed roll and his saddle.

Morgan braided his hair as Dari explained,"I was told to never leave the temple."

Morgan looked almost stricken. "That seems a harsh rule. I'm not surprised that you rebelled. I hope that you don't think being kidnaped was a punishment for having the common sense to leave a place like that?"

Dari flinched, "Isn't it? I was told that bad things might happen."

Morgan rolled eyes at him. "The gods usually strike with lightning and plague, not with long trips in bad company."

It was a relief to be reassured. That relief was so plain on Dari's face that Morgan was incredulous.

"You are more of a child than I thought, to think that the gods care so much about our affairs," Morgan snorted. He turned on his side and seemed to sleep then.

Dari watched him, the steady rise and fall of his side as he breathed, until he felt the soft nose of the horse bump his shoulder. He looked into large liquid eyes and then cautiously patted the animal. "If the gods were punishing me," he whispered to it, "then I must now be forgiven to put me in this man's care."

The dark aura was a fearful unknown, but Dari couldn't sense it anywhere just then. All was peaceful and quiet... and hopeful. As he curled up near the fire, he began to believe that he might see his home again.

--------------------------------

Morgan awoke to firelight and the low voices of men. He felt disoriented as he blinked and tried to sit up. He found himself bound, though, hand and foot, and he couldn't even manage to sit up. By the fire, three men in rough leathers stared down at a naked Dari at their feet. Morgen tensed against the ropes that bound him, afraid for the boy. Dari's golden hair was molten in the firelight, spread out around him as his green eyes stared up at his captures fearfully.

"Green eyes," one of the men said appreciatively and crouched to feel Dari's hair. "It's like Eastern silk. My friends, luck has smiled on us today. This boy is worth gold in the slave markets."

A squat, swarthy man, spat aside. "The man has a good amount of coin. That's all we need. I'm not selling flesh."

"Then I'll take him," the first man said. "And do as I please. You're a fool for not wanting a share." He was bald, with a small, black pig tail and a crooked nose. A gold earring glittering in one ear and a tattoo of a dragon snaked out of the collar of his leathers. His arms were broad and he easily grabbed one of Dari's ankles and twisted the boy onto his stomach. A big hand felt Dari over.

The third man seemed to be thinking, tall and whip thin, he had a long face and narrow eyes. Those eyes were staring full at Dari, watching the first man's hand rub Dari's ass. When he poked a rough finger at Dari's entrance, Dari whimpered and tried to curl away.

"He's easy, no fight to him at all," the first man grinned, visions of wealth swimming in his eyes. "A perfect slave. I'll be able to ask any price I like!"

"I want my share," the third man finally said.

The first man frowned sharply, but said agreeably, "All right. They'll be more than enough to go around."

"I want part of my share now," the third man demanded.

The first man scowled as he straightened, releasing Dari's ankle. "What are you talking about?"

"Like I said, now..." The third man kneeled and grabbed Dari while one hand fumbled at his pants. In one smooth motion, he jerked Dari underneath him. Spit was the only preparation he made before he began to push into Dari with hard thrusts of his bare hips, his pants around his ankles.

The other two men grunted and turned away. "Always the first in, man or woman," the first grumbled. "Get that coin and let's split it up."

Dari's shrieks of panic and pain didn't bother them at all as they sat, poured a strong drink into cups, and began counting out the coins. The only comment the first man made was to snap, "Shut his noise! I can't hear myself think!

Morgan was horrified. He watched the third man stuff a rag into Dari's mouth and heard the boy's muffled cries as the man's bare hips kept up a snapping, harsh motion, his face twisted in pleasure.

"Stop! He's just a boy, damn you!" Morgan shouted. He struggled violently against the ropes that held him and they bit into his flesh. Hot blood ran down his wrists. His mind felt disjointed, as if he were hovering between that place and another, yet living the same experience. It was the same horror, only the victim was young, a girl, and had hair as dark as his own. She cried out as well while a large man pumped into her with laughter and cruelty. His sister! How could he have forgotten? Morgan screamed and thrashed against nightmarish memory unfolding from the darkness of his mind.

The second man tossed a rock at Morgan and it glanced off of his forehead. "Shut up you! You're lucky we're not murderers. Groa will get his fun and the boy will go to the slave markets with only a sore ass to show for it."

"He's good and tight!" the third man groaned. "Sure you don't want a turn?"

"I like screaming girls not blubbering boys," the second man replied as he spat aside."Less messy."

Dari's cries ended abruptly and the third man chuckled. "No blubbering now. Looks like my manhood was too much for our little golden flower." He groaned. "Gah! Now I can get it all the way into his tight bud."

The third man began to thrust in earnest and then he felt something heavy tap his shoulder. He blinked and grinned as he turned his head, saying, "So, you changed your mind? Wait your damn turn, stupid- " He stopped in mid word as a sharp blade slid up under his chin and took him through the throat.

The man gurgled as Morgan's boot thrust against his twitching body and sent him sprawling off of Dari. He looked up as his blood ran out of him and saw Morgan looking down at him, a white mindless fury in his dark eyes and his face as pale as the death that was swiftly over taking him. Broken rope hung from Morgan's bloody wrists and his blade was covered in blood as well from the other men that he had just killed.

"They killed her!" Morgan shouted down at the man's glazing eyes. "They told me if we did what they said, that they would leave her alive, but... they didn't. They robbed us, raped her, and left her for dead. It was Chin Sou's men! They left their mark on her body, revenge for an insult I gave him. I was..." He shuddered." I was chasing them. I was going to kill them and then find Sou.... but... I forgot... I forgot..."

Morgan whirled on Dari. The boy was sprawled on his back, gold hair tangled and naked body bloody from his rapists attentions.

"You demon! You made me forget, somehow. You did something to me!" Morgan lifted his blade. "Those murderers are getting away and it is all your fault!"

In a blind rage, madness taking his reason in an instant, Morgan was ready to deal death. His blade was up, poised above Dari. He marked out the spot with his eyes where he would plunge it down and exact his revenge.

Dari coughed and came back to himself. He reached up weakly and pulled out the gag. His lips were bruised and bleeding from it. His green eyes were full of pain and confusion as he sobbed, tears welling up and trickling down his cheeks in heavy drops. Morgan blinked rapidly, seeing visions of his sister, seeing her broken and wide eyed in confusion as she died.

"Why...?" Dari breathed and choked on a soft sob. "What... what did he do? Why did he hurt me like that?"

Morgan groaned, his hands tightening on the hilt of his blade. Her words almost exactly, the words of an innocent virgin, violated and dying from it. It was as if something dark was urging him on, 'Kill him!' it whispered eagerly, yet there seemed to be soft, warm hands on his, frantically tugging to stop the blade, wanting him not to kill. 'Brother!' It was his sister's cry, a last echo of breath, but enough to make Morgan curse and lower his blade as if it were suddenly too heavy to hold.

It couldn't be so simple, so forgiven, Morgan thought, the dark madness unwilling to release him, unwilling to simply ride away and leave Dari's crime unpunished. Death was too easy for the crime of allowing murderers to escape him. If his sister's memory was too strong to allow him to kill, then he would make Dari pray for it, Morgan's madness reasoned.

Morgan sheathed his bloody blade, reached down, and pulled Dari up by his hair. The boy was clutching at his stomach, the blood on his legs making a lazy trail down to the loamy earth. Gold hair was in his face and his great green eyes were peering between the shimmering strands, begging for help, begging Morgan to tell him why such a thing had happened to him.

Morgan pulled Dari very close to his glittering eyes and he said through gritted teeth, " I am going after murderers. You will say nothing. You will do everything that I say. You will suffer everything that I do to you. When I feel that you have suffered enough for your crime against me, demon, then we will see what final revenge I will exact. You may hope that death comes sooner to you than that."

The darkness in Morgan crouched behind his eyes, wanting to kill still, but unable to, thwarted by a sister's memory. As Dari looked up into Morgan's seething face, as the man found his shirt and forced it onto him with harsh motions, ignoring his cries and his pleading to know what had happened, and when Morgan backhanded him to stop his voice, Dari began to believe that he was in the dark place the old wise men had told him about, the place where the unworthy and the lawbreakers were punished.

"Tao!" Morgan called and the horse came limping over to them, trailing reins and a half foiled hobble rope.

Morgan saddled the animal, heedless of it's half heeled wounds, and then tossed Dari up into the saddle, uncaring for Dari's cry of pain as well. He gripped the boy around the waist and then sent the horse into a breakneck gallop through the trees. Lost time pounded in his mind along with the jolts from the horse's gallop.

Dari bent over the searing pain of his rape and felt the darkness in Morgan trying to flow from the man into his own body. He fought it weakly and won, just, but his head reeled and the shock was too much for him. He had nothing left to cleanse the darkness from Morgan again. It was too strong now, feeding on death and anger, and Dari could only defend his own heart and wonder at what horrible fate was in store for him now..

--------------------------------------------

They entered a city in pouring rain, wet through and the horse laboring hard. The streets were mud and people were scarce. Morgan was satisfied that they weren't attracting notice, but the realization that he couldn't go any further was making his madness burn. Dari hung limp in the saddle before him, saying nothing. His sobs had been clear over the rain several times, but then he simply exhausted himself and went into a type of mental shock, eyes closed tightly against his pain and the rain.

Morgan's hand went to his sword hilt and he fingered it, wanting with all of his heart to end the demon's life and cast him from the saddle, yet, his madness had a strange clarity, following a reasoning that had little to do with reason. Dari had caused him to lose precious time. He needed to suffer for that. Death was preferred but... Morgan couldn't pass a certain reluctance to do the deed. He shivered superstitiously, wondering if it was the demon's power or some faint ghost of his gentle sister that was staying his hand. Where ever it sprang from, he wasn't going to allow that reluctance to allow the demon to escape his punishment.

A smithy was easy to find, a fire's glow peeping through the wooden double doors. Morgan dismounted and pushed through, leading his horse and Dari behind him. A man was working the bellows while he held a piece of metal in tongs over a flame. He looked up at them with a frown that was neither friendly nor suspicious. He was used to travelers.

"I have work for you," Morgan told him as he dragged an almost catatonic Dari from the saddle. Tao lowered his head, dripping water at every point, and wickered wearily for feed. Morgan ignored him as he let Dari fall by the smith's feet.

"He's my slave. Collar him," Morgan ordered. Free men had rights and laws to protect them. A slave was nothing and under only one law, his master's. If Morgan hoped to resupply and rest Tao in the town, he couldn't have anyone questioning his right to use Dari as he saw fit.

The smith set aside his work and rubbed at his chin as he looked down at Dari. "He's young... and fair. Where did you buy him?"

"He was payment for a debt," Morgan lied easily. "I don't know which slave pen he was born in."
The smith grunted. "I don't enjoy such work. If you're looking for a branding as well, you'll have to look for another smith."

"You brand animals, don't you?" Morgan wondered as he nodded to a rack of brands with that could be shaped to suit. "I want it on his face, where he can't hide it."

The smith had been sorting through a collection of iron collars and locks. He stiffened and turned, glaring. "I said, I don't brand people. I meant it."

The smith turned and began trying out several collars on Dari. Dari whimpered and tried to avoid his touch. The smith looked concerned, saying soothing things. As he worked, Morgan looked over the brands. One was an M in a fanciful circle burst. He took it and slipped it into the fire.

"A long chain with another lock as well," Morgan said as he turned the brand in the fire, watching it grow cherry red.

The smith grunted in acknowledgment as he found a light collar and put it around Dari's neck. "This will do. Strong, but not heavy enough to make sores." He locked it into place and then moved away to find a long chain.

Morgan pulled the brand from the fire and took that opportunity to approach Dari. He aimed for Dari's left cheek, the brand sizzling and smoking from the wet dripping down his hand. He glared and steeled himself against a breath of hesitation, a feeling of a hand on his arm.

"Not this time, sister," he whispered harshly and began to bring the brand down.

Tao, anxious for food, took that moment to nudge Morgan's elbow with his broad nose. It foiled his aim and the brand landed partly on Dari's back and upper shoulder. Morgan made the most of it, knowing that he wouldn't get a second chance as Dari shrieked and writhed away.

The smell of burned flesh filled the air as the smith whirled and grabbed Morgan. He struck out with a ham of a hand and sent Morgan sprawling. With the brand in one hand, he shouted, "Bastard!" as he used his free hand to up end a water bucket onto Dari's burned body. It stopped the cooking heat, but couldn't stop the pain or the mark from forming, livid, against Dari's pale skin. Terrified, Dari was still shrieking and clawing at the mark as if he could defend himself against some attacker.

"The chain and the lock," Morgan said as he stood up, rubbing his sore jaw.

The smith chucked the bucket aside and it landed with a clatter as Dari attempted to crawl under a work table to escape. The man hefted the brand as if he were contemplating using it on Morgan. "Get out of my smithy!" The man snarled. "Before I forget that I am a law abiding man."

"The chain and the lock," Morgan insisted as he reached under the table and jerked Dari out by his ankle. Dari's face was red and awash with tears. He was trembling violently and his wide eyes were blind with his panic. Hay was caught in his gold hair and his wet skin and clothes was turning the dirt on the floor to mud.

"No! No!" Dari shrieked. "Not again! Please! P-Please! Not again!"

"How can you live with yourself?" The smith growled, wiping at his face as if he was horrified. "He's just a boy!"

"You don't know what he's done," Morgan retorted as he stepped on Dari's hair to keep him still. Searching through a wooden bin, he pulled out a length of chain with a lock and key attached to the end. "I'll take this."

Dari was panting and moaning, his hands fluttering at the burn mark, afraid to touch, but frantic for the pain to stop. Morgan was blind to it as he bent and locked the chain to the collar. Wrapping the slim chain around one fist, he jerked Dari to his feet with it and then held him up by the collar. He dug in his pocket and tossed coins at the black smith.

"Is that enough?" Morgan asked calmly.

"Never enough for what you're doing," The smith snarled. "Leave!"

Morgan frowned as he took Tao's reins and dragged Dari and the horse out of the smithy and back into the rain.

Dari cried out as the rain hit his burn. He twisted against Morgan's hold on him, small hands gripping Morgans' in entreaty. "Please don't hurt me any more! " Dari cried.

Morgan gave him a dark look, the black aura flickering in his eyes. "It's just begun, Elyn, and now no one will stop me."

Dari huddled in a corner of the small room, trying to stay small, and trying not to do anything to attract Morgan's attention. For days, the man had paced, eyes fevered, and hands twitching as if he longed to do violence. The innkeeper brought them food, leaving it outside of the door, and took away the chamber pot that Morgan placed there. Sometimes, Morgan remembered to retrieve the food, but often, he didn't. Starved, Dari ate whatever the man left, creeping to the picked at remains after he was certain that the man had truly fallen asleep.

Dari longed to flee, but his chain was often wrapped in Morgan's hand or locked to the man's bed post. The man hadn't offered him any violence yet, but he threatened, pulling him close periodically and just glaring into his eyes as if contemplating his hate and his perfect revenge.

The pain of Dari's rape healed, but it left fear behind. His incomprehension as to why it had happened, and why Morgan had suddenly turned violent toward him, caused him to tremble and cower away when ever Morgan raised a hand or tried to take hold of him. His whimpers of fear seemed to please Morgan and his smile was tight and vicious.

Morgan was stretched out on the one single bed now; exhausted and succumbing to the inevitable need to sleep at last. His face was relaxed, though his eyes were shadowed and pinched with grief. One arm was flung out and the other was held close to his face, curled up near his cheek. He looked very different when he slept, like the man Dari had first met, the one who had been kind and had promised to help him go home.

Dari fingered his brand. It was swollen and still an angry red. The burn had gone deep and the pain throbbed all the way to the bone. It was early morning and the one window showed Dari a tantalizing view of the flickering leaves of a tree in a slight breeze, and patches of blue sky and white clouds beyond. They were on a second floor, sequestered away from the world. When Morgan slept, it was peaceful and a chance for Dari to gather strength to go on, to endure another day and night of Morgan's madness, and to try to make sense out of what had happened to his life.

There was a timid knock on the door. Morgan slept on and Dari was too frightened to answer it. When it opened, he cringed and made the space under a chair his dubious hiding place. A thin, old man peered in apologetically, blinked through wire rimmed glasses at the sleeping Morgan, and then slowly came in with a stack of fresh clothing, some papers, and a bulging saddle bag. He placed them on the one narrow table and then began to make a silent retreat.

Dari breathed a sigh of relief. It made his chain sway against the floor, making a soft dragging sound. The man turned, startled, and that's when he spotted Dari under his chair, large eyed and golden hair a mess of tangles.

"It's all right," the man whispered. "I'm the innkeeper." His eyes were sympathetic as he crouched a little to see Dari better. "Poor thing," he whispered. "Don't be afraid of old Jihv. I've brought the things your master requested; the bill for the vet, the stable, and the room, clothing, and supplies for a long journey." His eyes glanced at Morgan cautiously before he said, "I heard from the Smith how he branded you and that you might have other hurts."

The man dug out a small stoppered jar of salve from the pile on the table and placed it on the floor near Dari. "That will help them heal. Put it on your wounds twice a day, if you can."

The innkeeper glanced at Morgan again as he straightened. "I'll pray for you, little one. Your master is not a sane man."

Dari swallowed hard and then found his voice. "Thank you," he whispered and the man smiled sadly, nodded, and left the room.

Confirmation that there were kind men in that world did little to comfort Dari. He had seen how he could be lied to, how that kindness could easily change, and how men could become dark and violent. He took the jar and rubbed the salve into the brand. The fire of pain, and the beginning of infection, cooled immediately and he let out a low sigh of relief.

The collar galled at his skin. Dari touched the long chain tentatively, but didn't dare move any closer to Morgan to give himself relief. Slave. He was branded and chained and they called him that. He belonged to Morgan, but it was different than when he had been with those other men. This wasn't a kidnaping, this was something else that seemed darker and more permanent.

"I promise never to run away again," Dari whispered to the still room. "Just let me go home again."

If there were any ears to hear, no one answered, but Morgan stirred in some dream, sighing and frowning. "Kira," he whispered and sounded in pain.

Dari was huddled in his corner again, afraid, but he held that name in memory, hoping that it would help him understand Morgan. Kira. Morgan's heart was in that name. His emotions vibrated in the sound of it, his longing, and his grief. It was the key to Morgan's hatred of him, his need to punish him.

"Kira," Dari murmured to the air between them and Morgan sighed again and the hand near his face clenched. There was something there by him, Dari saw, like a sunbeam or the faintest of mists and then it was gone.

"Kira," Morgan sobbed in his sleep and then passed into a deeper dream. The dark aura sizzled along his skin and then was still as if something besides Morgan's dream had disturbed it.

That was the enemy, something instinctive inside Dari pronounced, and Dari knew it for the truth. It wasn't Morgan. It was this darkness, generating throbbing hate, that was making Morgan violent and making him mad. He had conquered it once, driven it down until Morgan and his kindness had surfaced, but it was strong and Dari was afraid to try again, afraid that Morgan's retaliation would be a raping punishment far worse than the first one. Better to be quiet and to do as he was told, Dari decided, rather than face that again.

Morgan suddenly sat up and Dari cringed, cowering under the chair. Morgan blinked at the sparsely furnished room, as if focusing scattered thoughts, and then he was on his feet, remembering his purpose again. He saw the things on the table and nodded, pleased. Sorting through the clothing, he decided on a leather shirt, pants, and a sturdy pair of old boots for Dari. He tossed them over to the chair.

"Get dressed," he grated. "We are leaving."

Dari trembled and did as he was ordered, putting on the unfamiliar clothing with difficulty. When he was dressed, Morgan suddenly jerked him in close by his chain. He peeled back Dari's shirt to reveal the brand.

Twisting the brand with his fingers, so that Dari cried out in shock at the pain, Morgan said, "Time to pay, demon Elyn. Time to chase the black winds blowing out of the East and face the devil himself. When I am done with you..." Morgan's eyes glittered and he left that sentence unsaid, enjoying the prospect of allowing Dari to imagine his coming punishment.

Morgan grabbed the supplies and jammed them under one arm. Wrapping the chain around one fist, he dragged Dari out of the room.

Outside, there was an old, rawbones white mare tied by Morgan's black. Morgan tossed Dari onto its back and locked his chain to the pommel. Taking a lead, he tied it to his own horse's saddle, mounted, and led the way out of the town.

When forest enveloped them, and the cool shadows of the trees played about them, Dari found himself watching Morgan's back. The man seemed in a better mood now that they were moving, but Dari had learned not to trust in it. He ran a finger under his iron collar. It stung. When he withdrew the finger, it came back with blood. He shuddered and then wiped his finger on his pants.

The white mare snorted and tried to eat leaves from a bush. Morgan glared back and jerked on the lead to bring her back to order. She proved stupid and uninterested in the journey, giving Morgan trouble at every opportunity. He finally shouted, "Kick her with your heels when she slows!"

Dari flinched, but did as he was told, and spent the day fighting the animal at every other step to keep her moving and out of Morgan's wrath. When Morgan finally decided to camp, he was trembling with exhaustion. After unlocking him from the saddle, Morgan tossed Dari's chain to the ground and left him standing as he made a fire and checked supplies. Dari knew better than to move or sit. Morgan had painfully taught him that he was to wait for his commands. Morgan was not minded to give any though. He drank from a skin, ate his meal, and then stared into the flames of the camp fire.

Dari's legs trembled under him, threatening to rebel and buckle. His stomach felt as if it were gnawing on itself in its hunger. Eyes blurring, he tried to concentrated only on breathing and standing, until Morgan jerked on his chain and pulled him to a tree. Once there, he chained Dari to it and then retreated back to his fire.

Dari huddled on the ground, simply thankful to be allowed to sit, but then Morgan wrapped himself in a blanket and slept and Dari understood that he wasn't going to be fed or allowed water. He whimpered, but then kept that noise behind clasped hands. The horses were also restless. Morgan hadn't cared for them either. At least they could snatch food from the grass, the ferns, and the leaves around them, Dari thought, but he didn't have any such relief.

Dari wrapped his arms around his aching middle as the chill of night grew and insects began to crawl and buzz in the darkness. When he saw the small, glowing lights, he thought that they were bugs as well, at first, but then saw them move with more purpose. He also sensed a greater presence than from mere bugs. They bobbed about the clearing, almost landed on Morgan, touched the horses briefly, and then discovered Dari by his tree. They hovered very close, as if looking him over, and Dari was able to see that there was nothing at the center of the lights, except rarified air and a tension that made the night shiver as if from heat.

Dari felt it in his mind a sense of sadness and alarm. There was intelligence there that recognized him somehow, knew his race, and wanted him free. The lights followed the chain to the tree and the lock clicked open. The chain poured onto the ground, the links making loud clinks as they settled.

Dari whimpered and flinched, looking over at the sleeping Morgan, but the man didn't stir. The horses looked his way, ears cocked and eyes wide.

The lights made imperative thoughts. He was to follow them, he sensed, and allow them to guide him. There was a confusion among them, though, and that gave Dari pause. They were used to the animals that lived in the forest, but they were not physical beings with a knowledge of physical needs. There was a disjointed feel to their thoughts as if they didn't know where they would lead Dari or what would become of him after his 'rescue'.

Dari looked about at the darkness and felt the depth of the forest all around him. Where was safety? Where was home? These bright lights couldn't tell him and they couldn't promise him something almost as important, their protection.

Dari's eyes returned to Morgan and he shivered. If the man saw him loose, if he found him gone, Dari hadn't any doubt that the man would not only track him down, but hurt him terribly. He rubbed at the aching brand and then reached and locked the chain once more, ignoring the flittering lights. Curling up against the tree trunk, Dari closed his eyes to them and tried not to hear their entreaties. After a time, exhaustion won against hunger, thirst, and the insistent lights, and he fell into a deep sleep.

When sunlight came, Dari felt stiff and tortured by his body's needs. He found himself stretched out as far as the chain would go, resting in the loam of the forest, and as close as he could manage to where Morgan was just stirring from his sleep.

Dari recoiled as Morgan sat up, but not quick enough that the man hadn't seen. A frown settled on the man's face as he ate the rest of last night's meal and drank water from his skin. He gave the horses their grain and water, checked their hooves and legs, and then dragged Dari over to them after unlocking his chain.

"Saddle them," Morgan ordered.

Dari blinked. He'd seen Morgan do it, but accomplishing the task with his own hands was different. The saddles were heavy as well and his strength was uncertain. He hesitated and Morgan, hand still twined in his chain, brought it crashing down on his back.

Dari cried out and twisted away, the iron links leaving bruises and welts. When he saw Morgan lifting the chain again, he grabbed a saddle and weakly tried to get it on the black horse. He was sobbing, shaking, and reeling mentally from the assault. When Morgan impatiently reached out to help him put the saddle on, he cringed and ducked, expecting another blow.

Morgan seemed to enjoy Dari's terror. He helped him with straps and buckles and then tossed him onto the white mare. With Dari looking own at him with wide eyes, he asked, "Do you hate me, Elyn demon?"

Dari floundered, feeling the darkness behind the word, but not truly comprehending what it meant.

Morgan didn't wait for his reply. He grinned dangerously as he caught up the white mare's lead and said, "You will."

Dari's vision blurred after hours of riding. He watched Morgan eat, but wasn't offered anything. His throat was painfully dry, and streams beckoned, but he was too afraid of Morgan to get off of his horse to drink. When they finally stopped for the night, Dari fell from the saddle into a limp heap in the forest loam. The old mare slung a hip and nosed him.

Morgan grabbed Dari by the hair and dragged him to his shaky feet. "You will earn your life, slave. Take care of the horses."

Morgan moved to gather wood for the fire, his expression dark and closed. Dari fumbled with the feed for the horses. He was torn between looking longingly at the nearby stream of water and at Morgan, afraid of what the man might do next.

"He is a good man," a voice whispered.

Dari flinched and cowered. When a blow didn't fall, he looked fearfully for the owner of the voice. He saw a small cloud of blue that was barely discernable from the growing darkness of nightfall. It slowly took the form of a girl. Her wide, solemn eyes seemed more solid than the rest of her.

"Who...?" Dari breathed the word and then shivered. Instinct told him that he wasn't speaking to a living person. His teachers had always said to ignore the dead or they would never go to their rest. He turned his shoulder to the ghost and tried to finish feeding the horses.

"He is possessed," the girl told him. "Anger and grief make it easy for evil to enter the living."

Dari remembered a name. "Kira."

"Yes," she said. "I was his sister."

"Go away," he begged her. The dead couldn't help him.

Dari finished his task and knew his next without being ordered. He unsaddle the horses, struggling under the weight of the tack and his weakening body. He could feel the spirit close by, but she didn't speak again

Morgan dumped his load of wood onto the ground and made a fire. He grunted at Dari's completed tasks, but didn't make any other comment until he was done cooking and eating his meal. Dari whimpered, staring at each mouthful he took until it was all eaten. The man, once again, offered him nothing.

There were only small saplings around their camp. Morgan eyed Dari, gauging his strength, and then decided to chain him to one. Dari sat there and watched the man settle down for sleep. Thirst and hunger consumed him.

The ghost girl looked down at Morgan and then drifted over to Dari. "Don't worry," she told him. "He is stronger than this evil. He will conquer it and remember who he is eventually."

Dari lay down full length on the ground, shivering. He wasn't filled with hope or given any comfort. The dead were not clairvoyant. They were only shadows of what had been. They were like listening to the wind.

As if that thought had power, a wind began fingering through the trees and chilling Dari's skin. He curled tight, his abused back stinging and aching, and watched the ghost swept away like so much smoke. He closed his eyes then and tried to escape his misery in sleep.

It was too warm. Dari stirred and opened his eyes to morning sunlight. He found himself staring at Morgan's chest. Somehow, he had crawled there in his sleep. He shuddered all over, terrified, and tried to retreat from the sleeping man.

Morgan's eyes flicked open, blinking blearily at first, and then becoming sharp and burning as he realized that Dari was not where he was supposed to be. He thrust out a hand and grabbed Dari by his wrist.

Dari whimpered and curled up into a protective ball, his arms over his head as Morgan released him and stood up. He took up Dari's chain and reeled it in until he found the broken sapling at the end of it. He frowned sharply and then unlocked it from the chain.

"Were you trying to kill me?" Morgan wondered and then glared down at Dari's cowering body. "Did you have the courage for that?"

"No! " Dari cried out. "I don't know... I don't know how... I was sleeping!"

Morgan wound the chain in his hands and tested the weight of a length of it. "Are you saying that you sought comfort from me... in your sleep?"

"I don't... I..." Dari began crying.

"Are you simple?" Morgan demanded incredulously. "Are you brainless not to understand that you are only alive while I seek my revenge on you?"

The horses suddenly pricked ears and lifted their heads. The wind was picking up and growing colder, the leaved rustling all around them. Distracted, Morgan frowned. He placed a booted foot On Dari's neck and stepped down until his head was pressed to the Earth. He said, his eyes still scanning the trees, "Come near me again, or be where you are not supposed to be, and I will kill you in a way that will make this torment seem kindness. Understand?"

"Yes," Dari choked out.

Morgan ground his boot down and then he stepped off. "Get the beasts saddled. The weather is turning."

As they rode, the rain came down in a torrent and the land turned to swamp. They were forced, after a time, to dismount and pick their way carefully through a bog. Dari stumbled and struggled through ever deepening mud and the horses began to flounder. At last, the black hung its head and refused to move despite all of Morgan's curses.

They made camp and Morgan took the only patch of high ground for his own after he chained Dari to a tree surrounded by mud. Dari didn't have any choice but to huddle there, shivering and wet, with his hair plastered with mud and rain.

When the rain finally slowed to an intermittent sprinkle, Dari was too exhausted to care about hunger or dying in the mud. Despite his best effort to stay upright, sleep overtook him like a swift fall of darkness, and he didn't know anything more until Morgan kicked him awake again sometime later.

Dari sat up, covered in mud, and was only grateful that he hadn't drowned in it, before he saw the leeches clinging to his skin at every point on his body. "What are they?!" Dari cried out as he tried to pry them off. It was painful and they clung stubbornly.

"Leeches," Morgan replied as he drew his knife. He crouched by Dari and took great delight in picking them off. "His life is mine to take, leeches, not yours" he muttered. "Begone, all of you."

Dari flinched and shuddered as each leech was pried from his skin. When Morgan finally finished, he clouted Dari in the ear and rose to unlock his chain. "We ride," he said simply and turned to get his horse.

Dari moved in and out of consciousness as they rode, only coming completely awake when they entered a wide river and had to swim the horses across. Weakened by lack of food, he clung desperately to the saddle. He was nearly pulled to his death several times by the current before they reached the opposite bank. Once there, they were forced to dismount again while Morgan found their way through dangerous mud with a long stick.

Dari tried his best to keep up, but his legs were numb and he kept falling. Insects attacked him, sucking eagerly on his blood and sapping what energy he had left to him. At last, his strength ran out and he fell into the mud in a boneless sprawl.

Morgan strode back to him. "Get up," he ordered. When Dari couldn't rise, he thrashed him with the stick until it broke. He ordered again, "Get up, damn you!" He hooked a hand under Dari's arm and hauled him to his feet. "Walk!"

Morgan pushed Dari along and then wrapped the end of Dar's chain around the pommel of the white horse. If he fell now, the horse would drag him. Dari's full attention on putting one foot in front of the other now, Dari struggled forward and didn't see Morgan step aside from the trail to break another long branch from a tree. He heard the man shout in panic, though, and turned awkwardly to see Morgan sinking up to his waist in mud.

Dari stared stupidly, jerked along by the horse, but then he realized that Morgan couldn't get out of the mud and that he was sinking deeper. Dari felt a rush of adrenalin then. He lunged for the pommel of the white horse and scrambled up to unwind his chain . Freed, he slid to the ground again and made a stumbling run for where Morgan was trapped.

Dari didn't think, didn't consider that Morgan's death would free him. Instead, he only felt a panicked need to save the man. He fell at the edge of the mud and tossed the end of his chain at Morgan. It struck him, but he grabbed for it and wound it around his hands. He didn't voice that Dari was half his size, and that he would probably not be able to pull him out, but it was in Morgan's eyes, along with his hate and fear.

Dari began to slide into the mud after Morgan as the man began tugging on the chain. There was nothing to hold onto, nothing to brace himself with as Morgan gambled that he could climb out before Dari joined him. Dari's collar ground into his skin and cut deep as he choked and felt as if his neck was being broken.

Something ruffled Dari's hair. He felt the black horse very close to him, either looking to be fed or simply curious. Dari didn't hesitate in grabbing it's halter and holding tight when it jumped back in alarm at his sudden movement. Morgan's voice ordered forcefully, "Back , Tao, back!"

The horse put it's ears flat and then slowly began to back up. It's hooves sank in the mud and it had trouble with their combined weight, but the halter held and both Duo and Morgan were pulled to safety.

Morgan staggered to his feet and didn't let go of Dari's chain. He pulled Dari in close with it and demanded, his face beet red, "Why?! Why did you save me? Are you a dog that you fawn at your master's feet after he's beaten you? Slavery is too good for someone as low as you!"

Morgan kicked Dari hard several times and then hauled him to his feet again when he fell in a whimpering tangle of limbs. "Walk!" Morgan ordered. "If you fall, I will take my knife and cut something from you."

Dari huddled over the blooming pain from Morgan's kicks and felt as if something inside was bleeding. Choking on bile, and fighting to keep the ragged edges of consciousness, Duo walked, knowing that it wouldn't be for long and wondering, with sickening dread, which part of him Morgan would cut first.

"Wake up, yellow hair," a strange voice ordered.

Dari woke with a flinch, disoriented and cramped from his curled up position by a tree. He didn't remember when he had ceased walking, or why he wasn't dead for his failure. The knife at his throat, though, warned him that he wasn't entirely safe.

A man crouched by him. He looked to be about Morgan's age, but he was short and broad in the chest. His skin was a bronzed color, tattoos in lurid spirals down both arms, and his hair was shaggy and black, held back from his face by a leather bandana. He wore nothing but deerskin pants, thick soled boots, and the sheathe for the knife on one hip.

Dari wanted to recoil violently, his rape still fresh in his mind, but the prick of the knife at his throat warned him not to give in to the reflex. His eyes searched the camp site for Morgan., but saw nothing but the horses, already saddled and loaded with their gear.

"I am Kanu of the Conoba, and I am now your new master," the stranger announced importantly. He unlocked the chain from the tree with Morgan's key. The knife pressed harder into Dari's flesh and drew blood. "Be good and you will live. With that hair, I think that you will bring a good price at the market."

The man drew Dari to his feet and then looked him over. He frowned.

"Are you a girl or a boy?" His hand pulled open Dari's clothing and, when he found a flat chest and the damage done by so many days of travel under Morgan's cruel treatment, he shook his head in annoyance. "Keep your ugly body covered. Hopefully, the slavers will not look past your hair."

The man turned, yanking on the chain to pull Dari towards the horses.

"W-where is Morgan?" Dari managed to voice as his hands tried to keep the collar from strangling him.

The man was watching their surroundings warily even as he walked and he didn't reply. Still, despite that watchfulness, a beast, leaping from cover, still took him by surprise. The beast was squat, but heavy, taking the man down in a tumble of limbs and sending the knife the man held, flying. Dari saw teeth, claws, and the gleam of a predator's eyes before he was rushing forward without thought for his own life and grabbing hold of the beast. He circled a strongly muscled neck with his slim arms and pulled back, feet churning mud in a desperate attempt to keep his feet and stop the beast from tearing out the Comoba's neck.

Bone snapped loudly. The beast was able to turn to bite and claw, but it was in it's death throes. Dari felt a rake of claws across his face and down his side, before the beast dropped dead at his feet, blood pooling thickly out of its gaping mouth full of teeth.

Kanu scrambled to retrieve his knife. He stood over the beast in consternation even while Dari was gripping his wounds and sinking to the ground. "You killed it... how?" Kanu stammered in consternation. He looked at Dari, then, at the small, slim boy with the golden hair that the beast had greatly outweighed. Terror and adrenaline cooled and Kanu began to think,;began to realize that there was now a debt to be paid between them. Dari had saved his life.

Kanu's hand tightened on his knife hilt and he fleetingly thought of killing the boy and forgetting what custom dictated, but the wrath of the gods was to be greatly feared. He decided that it was better to be cursed in debt now than to suffer a life cursed by the gods.

Kanu took a needle and gut thread from a pouch at his side and crouched by Dari. Dari's eyes went fearful and his cringing made Kanu's stomach clench with disgust. To keep the boy from causing him any trouble, he pinned the boy to the ground, straddling him and spitting aside the bile that rose when he heard the boy whimper in object fear.

"Listen, slave, "Kanu told him as he began sewing together the lips of Dari's wounds. "You saved my life. I am sworn to repay the debt that you have made between us. Do you understand?"

The words came out in a seething stream of hate and Dari sobbed, trying to get away from the punishing sliver of metal that was now closing up the long slash across one of his cheeks.

"Shut up!" Kanu snarled. He tied off his work and put his supplies back into his pouch, but his knife was out again in an instant when a man looking very much like him, stepped warily from the trees.

"Hir," Kanu greeted and resheathed his knife.

The man eyed the fallen beast. "That will make a fine pelt a good story to impress the women," he said in awe. "It's not easy to defeat a Kovo."

Kanu said nothing, but his jaw worked.

"We have the master," Hir told him. "He was a very skilled fighter, but even the fiercest animal can be taken down with numbers. He'll be killed for his trespassing in our lands and we'll take his woman for our own."

"He is a boy, "Kanu corrected him as he grabbed the reins of the horses, and the end of Dari's chain, and led them all after his companion into the deeper swamps.

Hir eyed Dari and then spat aside. "Perhaps we can take his hair and sell it?"

Dari cringed and balked, his hands going to his hair automatically. Kanu's yank on the chain kept him moving. "He's not to be harmed... for now," he growled angrily and didn't explain..

Hir looked surprised. "Why not?"

Kanu gave him his shoulder and hurried ahead, once again battling the urge to simply kill the boy and lie about what had happened. He had grown up on tales of the god's vengeance, though, and it kept his hand off his knife, though. That resolve didn't become any easier when he entered the thatched hut village of his people and saw them tormenting their new captive.

His people were fierce and hated weakness. In their land, a man who allowed himself to fall into enemy hands deserved every insult and form of abuse heaped upon him. On his knees, hands tied behind his back, Morgan did not look defeated, though, as he cast his furious, dark gaze on the people shouting in glea around him.

Dari rushed forward, taking Kanu by surprise and taking the chain out of his hand. As Kanu fumbled with the horses, pulling them along as he moved to catch Dari, Dari fell to his knees in front of Morgan. He bowed his head to the dirt as Morgan had taught him, shivering in fear and feeling strangely safe with this man who had tormented him so badly.

"Once again the beaten dog crawls to his master," Morgan sneered, but his eyes were taking in the blood and Dari's rent clothing with anger.

"Tell me to kill him and I will end my debt to you here and now," Kanu told Dari. Taking a life to repay the debt was acceptable and he was certain that a slave would jump at the chance to have his master murdered.

Dari flinched, though, and said nothing. Morgen laughed. When he could manage to speak, he wondered, "Has my slave made you indebted to him, Conoba? Have your people become so weak?"

Kanu drew his knife as his people fell silent in shock, all eyes on him. Then an angry muttering began rising and falling. He sheathed his knife again violently, knowing that whatever choice he might have had in the matter was over with now. His people knew.

"Tell me to kill him," Kanu urged Dari. "I promise that you will walk away free from here."

A pelting of mud came from someone's hand. Kanu swore and glared as it splattered him. "You wish to test my strength?" he shouted at the unknown person. There wasn't a response and Kanu drew himself up to his full height. He approached Morgan. The man radiated madness. It made Kanu suppress a superstitious shudder. Here was someone who was better off dead, like the wolves that went mad and attacked anything in their path.

"Say the words!" Kanu shouted. When Dari continued to kneel, he bent and shook at him. Dari fell over and sprawled, unconscious

Morgen chuckled darkly. "He's fainted. You've no choice but to release me and follow me, now, since he is mine."

"Until he asks for your death!" Kanu swore. "I do not think that will be long after he wakes."

"You think so?" Morgan laughed. "Bring supplies, Conoba, and don't slow me down. An extra sword I can always use, and a man who can get me through the tribes safely, but any delay and I will slay you, pure and simple."

"You can try," Kanu sneered. "There is not a better blade here."

"I am here," Morgan told him as Kanu cut him loose. He stood up, jerked his sword out of a man's unresisting hands, and slid it home into it's sheathe. "You're no match for me."

"We should kill all of you," a man from the crowd threatened.

"Not if we wish to avoid the wrath of the gods," a shaman warned. "Let them go and let that man take his evil with him." He made a warding sign against Morgan. "I would not have his blood cursing our sacred land."

Kanu reached into a squat house and retrieved some supplies. A shaggy, long legged pony, munched hay close by. He bridled it and sprung onto its back without a saddle. He felt his shame and felt a terrible anger against the boy who had ruined his reputation. When he returned to his people, he would have to prove himself to regain his place among them. Perhaps, he thought, he would do so by bringing back a mass of golden hair and the sword of the man who was the boy's master? Once his debt was paid, there would be nothing to stay his hand.

They rode in silence, Kanu taking the lead and making certain they traveled safe paths. It galled him, but irritation was hardly at the forefront of his thoughts. Morgan felt 'wrong'. It prickled superstitious hairs on the back of Kanu's neck. He could feel a black cloud about the man, a definite weight of illness that throbbed in the air. Even if he hadn't felt that, the man's deep set, haunted eyes, would have told him all that he needed to know. The man was cursed, somehow, he decided, and that made Kanu very uneasy.

As for the boy, he was a curious, weak thing, beneath notice except where it pertained to Kanu's debt. The more he studied the boy, though, the more Kanu was convinced that the slave was sick and starved and maybe not long for the world. The way that he flinched when ever Morgan made any move, made him wonder again why the boy had saved the man's life.

"This place is safe," Kanu announced as he dismounted and tied the reins of his pony to tree stump. It snorted and hung its head, not happy to be so far from home and among strange horses.

Morgan stopped and scowled at the dark terrain ahead as the sun began to set behind the trees. Madness to try and travel any further, yet Kanu saw him contemplating it seriously. Finally, he dismounted and Kanu saw him stagger and save himself from a fall by clutching at his horse. The man had reached the end of his strength.

As for the slave, he had passed out over the back of his animal, arms loose and swaying as the beast began snatching at plants to eat. Morgan lurched away from his horse to Dari's. Reaching up, he snagged a hand in the boy's collar and jerked him off his horse and onto the ground. Dari rolled limply and ended up in a tangle of limbs. His clothes had come loose. Kanu saw whip scars, deep bruising, and a line of ribs that stood out starkly.

Kanu blinked and started as Morgan began to harshly nudge Dari with his booted toe. Behind the man, he saw sudden flurry of lights, dancing wildly just over his head. Sprites, nixies, or ghosts of ancestors, Kanu had heard such things called by many names. It confirmed for him that Morgan was cursed.

Kanu muttered a protection against evil. Morgan left off his torment and glared at him. The lights disappeared in a light breeze through the trees as he whirled to see what Kanu was looking at. "You're cursed," Kanu breathed. "The dead lights follow you."

Morgan barked a harsh laugh that was devoid of humor. "Death does follow me. Still care to come with me?"

"Unless I wish to be cursed as well," Kanu retorted and then shrugged as he began taking his things from his pony. "They aren't here for me. They hang over your shoulder."

"Savage," Morgen growled. "I'm not so superstitious."

That made Kanu laugh. Morgan ignored him and started a fire. When he had a small meal cooked and skins refilled from a spring close to hand, Dari awoke, sitting up groggily and wiping at his face. His hands were full of dirt, though, and he ended up smearing it over his skin. That didn't deter him, when Morgan tossed several, almost meatless bones, over to him. He snatched them up and gnawed on them, dirt and all, until nothing was left.

"You're not dying yet," Morgan told him as he stood with a skin in his hand. He approached Dari, upended the skin, and poured water onto Dari's face. Dari moved his mouth to catch the water, cupped hands trying to catch more. He drank in gulps, but, like the food, it wasn't enough to satisfy his starvation. Morgan kicked him over and walked back to the fire as if he had ceased to exist.

"If you are eager for speed," Kanu observed dryly, "Then you would do better than to drag a half dead slave after you."

Dari cringed and huddled in on himself, eyes wide, but Morgan seemed not to have heard. He curled up in his blanket and went to sleep.

Kanu sneered at Dari. "He doesn't even fear that you will run away. You should have been drowned at birth."

Dari watched the man settle his back against a tree, wrap up in a horse hide blanket, and go to sleep. Watching his two sleeping companions for long moments, he waited until he was certain that they were sleeping, before he inched over cautiously and picked at the bones Morgan had left from his meal. There was almost nothing left, but he sucked on the marrow.

"It is good that he has a strong companion now," a female voice said.

Dari cringed, a hand raising reflexively to ward off a blow. When none fell, he slowly lowered it and saw Morgan's sister kneeling near him, looking over at Kanu.. She seemed barely substantial, as if she was forgetting what her human form looked like. Her face was blurred, her eyes the only clear thing about her. They were sad.

The lights flickered about her, touched her, and caused her to flick a hand as if shooing them away. They were as insubstantial as she was, though.

"If I were dead," Dari whispered, barely to be heard over the breeze. "I wouldn't want to stay here."

She didn't looked pleased by that, but Dari was past caring. Licking grease from his dirty fingers, he reluctantly moved away from the fire and curled up tightly in the dirt. He didn't understand anything. Chained and hurt repeatedly, plagued by presences who couldn't help him, and now given a reprieve from starvation, Dari almost wished that Morgan had not fed him, that the man had finally gone through with his threat to kill him. The pain was becoming too unbearable.

The cold fell upon them after the third day as they entered a barren, windswept countryside dotted by a few trees and covered in brown grasses. The sky looked threatening. Kanu put on extra furs and skins and Morgan huddled in his cloak. Dari was left shivering in his thin clothes and that made Morgan frown and consider him. Dari asked, unable to contain himself, "Are we going back to my home?" The cold had made him think so and the glimpse of larger mountains in the distance.

Morgan spat aside and didn't answer, but he had turned his horse to the left and angled it away from the trail they had been following.

"Where is your home?" Kanu asked. "What lands breeds such weaklings as you?"

Dari looked away from him as he replied, "I don't know.... I don't know where I'm from."

Kanu was puzzled by that. The boy was a simpleton, he decided, and that explained a great deal to him. As Dari rode ahead after Morgan, he imagined sinking a bolt between the boy's skinny shoulder blades. So easy to rid himself of the burden. The lights, though, could so easily become his companions, he knew, and shuddered. He would not risk the curse.

Dari grew weaker as the days passed. He ate little, even when Morgan offered him food. His body grew very thin and he seemed in a daze most of the time. Kanu watched eagerly, waiting for his duty to end, but Dari continued to live with a tenacity that made Kanu rage at unjust gods. Surely such a coward and weakling could not last much longer in his condition?

Morgen ignored them both. They were phantoms in his crazed mind, his eyes always on what was before them as he pushed them fast and furious. He didn't have a care for the growing cold, either, and Kanu wondered if he meant to beat the coming snows. It was mad to think that he could and Kanu began to worry about the prospects for his own continuing life. There were places were the snows fell killing deep.

Kanu tried to doze in the saddle, but sleep was elusive and fitful at best. After riding through the night, though, it became much easier to find his rest.

A wild screech almost made Kanu fall from the saddle. He snatched at his knife, every muscle tensing for battle, but the fight was over before he could blink his eyes clear. The white horse was still prancing in a panic and Morgan was drawing his sword from the body of a beast with claws and fangs. It had attacked Dari and taken him to the ground. The boy was trying to stand again, reeling and bleeding from claw wounds.

Morgan, bloody sword in one hand, was pulling him close by the arm, eyes raking him up and down as if he was noticing the condition of his slave for the first time. "What is wrong with you?" he demanded. "Are you trying to die?"

Dari stammered, blinked stupidly, and then replied in a bare whisper full of fear, "I... I don't want to die."

"I hate you!" Morgan shouted at him as if Dari were the symbol of all the vitriol in his life.

Dari flinched and reeled as if Morgan had struck him.

"You will not die!"Morgan shouted as if he could make that a reality by his mere order. He tossed the boy onto his still white eyed horse, but the animal was too well trained to bolt. It stood, shivering as much as the boy.

They began riding again. Kanu glared at the dead beast as he passed it. Morgan had saved Dari's life and denied him the chance. He cursed himself. It would have been so easy. The beast hadn't been much. That begged another question. Why had Morgan saved Dari when he did profess to hate him so much? He certainly wasn't bothering to dress the boy's claw wounds, now, to insure that he didn't die of them. They were stark and seeping through the slave's clothes.

Kanu urged his pony up even with Dari. It made his temper even greater to see that none of the claw marks looked mortal. "Why doesn't he slit your throat?"

Dari struggled to bring himself to focus on that question. great eyes dazed with pain and confusion. "It's not him," he replied at last. "He's not the one who hates me."

It made the hairs on Kanu's neck stand, the way he said those words, and he wasn't certain why. It made him pull his pony back and away from the boy. He wouldn't admit to fearing simple words, so he told himself that it was only healthy to avoid the company of one haunted by dead lights.

When morning dawned at their next camp, Morgan had reached the end of whatever patience he had possessed. When Dari couldn't rise, the bitter cold stinging them all, Morgan had tossed part of a bird, that had been their evening dinner, into Dari's lap. Standing over him with the slave chain balled in one fist, he had commanded, "Eat!"

Dari bowed his forehead to the dirt, trembling, his wounds and ribs standing out equally through the rents in his clothing. "I can't," he sobbed as the bird tumbled to the dirt. He made himself small, waiting punishment.

Morgan was livid with rage. "If you think that you will escape me in death, you are wrong! Eat or you will die now, and not easily!"

Dari sat up and looked up at Morgan. Slowly he took up the bird, dirt and all, took off a small bit, and ate it. He vomited it back up with black bile almost at once. He collapsed afterwards, looking as if he barely had the strength to breathe.

Morgan's jaw worked and then he cursed and shouted, "Damn you!" He went to his horse and mounted. Kanu saw him put hand to his sword and Kanu was certain that the man intended to kill the slave before riding out. He turned his horse as if to do just that.

Kanu gnashed his teeth together as Dari, perhaps guessing the same thing, gathered the last of his strength and made it, in a falling stumble, to his horse. He tried to mount, failed, and then tried again, sobbing all the while. Gut him, Kanu wished as Morgan half drew his sword. In another instant, though, Morgan was sheathing the blade again, reaching over Dari's horse, and pulling the boy into the saddle by a fistful of hair. Dari wailed, but he found his balance and stayed on. He didn't have any strength after that effort and simply hung over the pommel bonelessly.

Not long, Kanu promised himself, as they rode on. He couldn't keep hold of the horse like that, not at the pace Morgan set. He would fall and break his neck.

They passed through old battlements, mold and vine covered stone half buried from ages of neglect. The horses had to slow to navigate the pitfalls and sharp rocks and that uneven ride proved beyond Dari's strength. He fell at last and screamed when he hit the earth. Morgan glanced back, looked very dark, and then kept riding.

Kanu scrambled down from his pony, eager to see what Morgan surely guessed at, that the boy had broken his back, or something equally as fatal. He wasn't prepared when the ground opened up under his feet and he fell. He uttered a cry of his own. It was shameful, but the darkness suddenly swallowing him seemed too much like the gaping maw of some giant beast.

Kanu's fall ended abruptly and he heard Dari scream again, only this time almost in his ears. Dazed, he looked up into the boy's pale, pain filled face. Confusion reined as he swung, mind reeling as he realized that the small slave's hands were the only thing keeping him from a fall into what, he wasn't sure. He could guess at sharp rocks below him in the darkness and a bone crushing fall wasn't out of the question considering the depth of some wells and middens.

"Hurts!" Dari was gasping in a reed thin voice, eyes bulging and lips trembling. "Stop! Hurts!"

Kanu made sure that he was holding onto Dari with his stronger hands, but Dari's position, waist over the edge of the ragged lip of the pit and his unfathomable strength in holding Kanu at all, made his heart thunder in his chest. Death hadn't been defeated yet, not when Kanu couldn't comprehend why he was even now still alive.

"Coward!"Kanu seethed as he felt Dari's hands loosening. He didn't think it was Dari's will, but his panic wasn't any less. The boy looked ready to faint with whatever ailed him and Kanu knew that he didn't have much time.

Taking a frantic grip on Dari's body, Kanu simply climbed it, scrambling and unmindful of the boys' sobs and sounds of pain. When he was safe and on firm ground again, Kanu then turned and found Dari still half in the hole, suspended in an unnatural way.

"What is it?" Kanu demanded hotly. Free, he couldn't understand why the boy wouldn't save himself, until he saw the blood running from the boy's leg. Reaching underneath, he found the broken spike of metal, perhaps the remnants of a well, that had imbedded itself into Dari's flesh. It had saved both of their lives, but at a cost paid by Dari alone.

Turning the boy over, Kanu pulled his leg off of the spike. It had ripped down almost four inches, leaving a wound that showed bone. Kanu wasn't a healer. He knew only to douse the wound with clean water from his skin and to bind it with gut and needle. He did so, dubious that it would save the boy's life, considering how weak he was already, but honor and the gods dictated that he attempt it.

The boy couldn't ride without help. Kanu secured his own pony to the pommel and then mounted the white horse with the boy in front of him. Morgan was long gone, he decided, and would have turned away and gone another path, but then he saw the lowering sky and the threat of weather. It came to him that Morgan might have had some plan, however mad he was, to foil it. It looked evil, roiling out of the North like a live thing, and it promised death for any who stood in it's way, Kanu felt.

The white horse seemed to want to rejoin Morgan's black. It was looking that way, nostrils flaring. There was a chance that it's sharper senses could find the man where Kanu couldn't. He gave it it's head and it quickly broke into a gallop. Kanu held onto Dari tightly, not looking at the blood seeping through his stitching, and trying to convince himself that he wasn't carrying a corpse.

The snow fell on them, coming down like a white, freezing blanket and quickly obliterating every landmark. Kanu swore at the white horse, wanting more speed, but it was beginning to flounder in the growing drifts. High ground, and cover, would save them, turning back now was certain death. Kanu knew better than to pray to his cruel gods for help. They were more likely to sneer at his stupidity and weakness and leave him to his well deserved fate.

When the walls of an estate loomed, Kanu almost panicked. The horse shot straight under the arch, leading into a courtyard, though, without his direction and aimed for the sweet smelling hay of a stable. The door was shut tight, but a light seeped through cracks and beckoned in the gloom.

Kanu kept one hand on Dari as he slid off the horse and tried the door. It opened easily enough and he found Morgan still unsaddling his black in the warmth of the stable. Snow shot in as the white horse shoulder Kanu aside and trotted inside. Kanu grabbed Dari off and held him awkwardly as he shoved the door closed again. The white horse thrust its nose into the hay and then heaved a sigh of relief as it began munching. The black pricked ears and wickered at it, but it was too exhausted for anything more.

Morgan glared as he tossed the saddle over a low rail. "You're all blood."

Kanu felt it, sticky and foul all over him and Dari. He lowered Dari into the hay and checked the boy's wound. It was bleeding sluggishly. Morgan's tone demanded an explanation. Kanu didn't want to give him one. It didn't matter, after all, that nightmare left in the storm. It was something between himself and Dari. "He fell. There was a well...." Kanu told him.

"The lady of this place is a healer," Morgan told him, accepting that explanation and wanting nothing more. "She gives hospitality. Don't offer her any offense or I will gut you."

Morgan was concerned for his own safety, Kanu knew, not about a woman's good opinion of them. Kanu didn't relish the thought of being ejected into the storm to die, either. He nodded, once, and then said, acutely aware of how they must look. "You will explain?"

"An accident," Morgan grunted and then stood over Dari and said to his unconscious slave, "Why don't you die? You are like a plague..."

"Why don't you kill him?" Kanu wondered angrily. "All of this could end at your sword's point."

"End?" Morgan sneered. "How will that end my pain, my loss? How will that get me my revenge? His pain... makes mine less."

"We are both being punished by the gods," Kanu muttered. "They laugh at all of our pain."

Kanu lifted Dari and carried him through a connecting hallway that led to the main building. After going through several thick doors, they found themselves in a stone hall with a high ceiling. A servant came forward, old and diffident.

"You came in good time," he said. "The storms here are fierce and last a long while."

Kanu wanted to laugh. A lady, protected only by an old man, wasn't anyone to fear. If she were good to look at, he might even taste her charms to pass the time until the end of the storm. Morgan gave a correct bow, despite his wild and sullen appearance, and spoke politely.

"Tell the lady, that we are honored by her hospitality," Morgan said. "Tell her that we will not trouble her, or her household, during our stay."

"That would be very wise, sir," the old man replied. "She is not without defenders, who would come to her defense if she were insulted in any fashion."

Kanu looked about nervously, but heard and saw nothing to indicate that there was any other living thing there besides themselves. A bluff? Yet, Morgan seemed convinced that there was a real danger.

"This way," the old man motioned towards a far wing. "Guest quarters. Food and drink will arrive shortly, but all else you must see to yourselves."

"Of course," Morgan replied and swept by him and down into the hallway indicated.

Kanu held Dari's weight easily. "She's a healer, this lady of yours?" he asked. The old man nodded.

"You are injured?"he asked.

"He needs salves and bandages," Kanu replied.

"I will inform, my lady," the old man promised, but then motioned to the hall again. "Until then, sir."

Kanu grunted, not liking the thought of waiting on women... or slaves for that matter.

He followed Morgan into a bank of rooms and didn't ask if he wanted his slave with him. The door Morgan slammed closed was answer enough. It seemed that Morgan had lost interest in what happened to Dari.

Kanu carried Dari into a small, narrow room and put him on the floor, not wanting to foul the bed. With a few, harsh motions, he ripped the remnants of Dari's clothing off and tossed them aside.

There was a basin of water, as if guests were always expected, and clean towels. Kanu used both, regretting ruining such fine cloth as he cleaned off blood and filth from Dari. The lady was wealthy, he guessed, wasting such cloth on cleaning.

Dari shivered with cold and Kanu paused long enough to make a fire in the room's hearth. It would take time to heat the cold room, but shifting the boy closer would keep him from dying of it before that happened.

Skin and bones, bruises and wounds, and that long hideous gash in his leg, Kanu had seen corpses look more alive. It was even hard to discern if Dari was breathing. He glanced at Dari's genitals, with a man's curiosity, and lifted a lip at how small they were, whether from cold, sickness, or Dari's age, he didn't know.

"He should be on the bed," a woman's voice said and silken skirts swirled near Kanu as a woman kneeled and opened a case.

"A slave should be on the floor," Kanu growled back defensively as he made way for her and stood up.

She had red hair and pale skin. Blue eyes were under fierce red brows. Not a beauty, or generous of body, but not hideous either. She was young, but confident in her skill as she began working on Dari's wound.

"As long as you are in my home, he will be treated equally," she finally said to Kanu as she pulled out his stitching, rubbed in salve, and then began re-stitching with a much neater hand. "There are no slaves here. If he wishes protection, I will give it. If you treat him ill, I will have you put out into the storm."

"I'm not his master," Kanu replied, not liking a woman to speak to him like that, as if he were lower than a servant. "It's the other man, Morgan, that will cut off your head if you try and take this one away from him."

"Then what are you?" she asked as she began to clean Dari up with more of the expensive towels.

"Oath bound," Kanu replied angrily. "Though, that isn't your concern."

He wouldn't be shamed by her. He wouldn't be made to feel uncomfortable. She was only a woman.

"Put him on the bed. Cover him to keep him from becoming chilled," she ordered briskly as she straightened with her dirty instruments in one hand and her bag in the other. "I will have Drage draw a bath and we will clean him better as soon as the wound stops it's bleeding."

"No, his place is on the floor," Kanu protested.

Red brows went up into her hair line as she looked down her nose at him, "In the bed... or else, boy."

"Boy?" Kanu echoed and scowled. "How shall you make me, girl?"

She held up a finger and Kanu stared at it curiously. "I have the power. This place bends to my will. Do as I say."

Power? Kanu felt his hairs stand on end as superstition won over pride. What power was she speaking of? Was she god gifted? Did she hold curses in her finger? How could he take the chance that she held nothing of the sort?

Kanu lifted Dari and put him in the bed. The boy didn't stir at all.

"Good," she said briskly in approval and then, "I am Katerin. Call for me and I will come to tend him, if there is need."

She swept out, muttering about barbarians, and Kanu glared after her wondering if the snowstorm might have been better.

_____________________________________________

Kanu didn't like stone walls, or playing nursemaid. He liked running into Morgan even less and being forced to explain to the man that they had to follow the orders of a woman.

Morgan was staring out of a lead paned window, at the blowing snow, and looking as if death was preferable to their delay. The darkness in his eyes was almost glowing and Kanu couldn't help shivering superstitiously.

"Powers?"Morgan repeated, after Kanu had told his tale. "You are a barbarian fool."

Kanu snarled back, "I see demons in your eyes. You are the fool for not believing in them."

"You see death, not demons," Morgan replied, staring out of the window once more, "Death for anyone who gets in my way."

_____________________________________________

Kira hovered, looking mournful. She seemed more solid, though, than the living woman that cared for Dari. The ghost lights had fled with the storm, unwilling to leave the forests, but she remained, silent witness to the battle for Dari's life.

"You're not human," Katerin said softly, as she bathed and worked the sickness out of Dari's leg wound. "Your body is different. Who are you?"

Her soft hands were pain, but her mind was a soothing balm, and Dari was eager to open to her, eager to fill himself with her gentleness, desperate for something besides the blackness that had become his life. She blinked in surprise, feeling the mental touch, the drawing on her emotions.

"How did they come to possess a child like you?" she wondered sadly, but then angrily, as she finished wrapping the leg wound in bandages, "I'll turn them out into the storm for this. It is monstrous, what they've done to you."

"No," Dari's voice was the barest whisper, Kira's panicked, ghostly face, was wide eyed with fear

"Save him, save him, save him," her voice chanted. "Don't let Morgan die!"

"Why not?" Katerin wondered. "Don't you wish to be free of them?"

Yes, no, Dari was torn between fear of being alone and fear of Morgan harming the woman. She seemed so delicate, so easy to hurt. The thought of Morgan turning his anger on her, and Kanu doing something terrible after, gave him strength to tell her again, "No, please, no."

Dari flinched, feeling a slight edge of contempt to her compassion now; contempt that he would want to stay a slave rather than try for freedom. Even after everything that had been done to him, though, he didn't want Morgan to die. He had seen the darkness that ruled the man and the heart underneath it. Morgan was ill and Dari couldn't, even now, blame the man for it.

Katerin was gathering her things and frowning. "They will condemn themselves, I think, even without you. They will do violence before the storm lifts, and I will put them out, then."

Kira wailed and faded away. Dari was glad. He felt the tug of the afterlife when she was there, almost as if a whirlpool were sucking at his soul, wanting it to join her. It told him how close he was to dying himself.

Katerin gave Dari a long look, trying to understand the mystery of him, but then she sighed. "Rest. I will be back as soon as a meal can be prepared. You need to eat, or all of my work will be a waste."

The pain was very bad, but the clean room, and it's soft bed, made that bearable. Dari closed his eyes, feeling almost as if he were dreaming. It didn't seem possible that he could be there, after everything that he had suffered. He expected to wake, face down in the mud, and Morgan standing over him in threat, at any moment. He rubbed at his chest, feeling Morgan's darkness, even through the stone of the keep that separated them. No, not a dream, he thought, not when the potential for more pain was so close.

____________________________________

"What drives you?" Katerin wondered as she stood a safe distance from Morgan and watched him pace before the large hearth in the common room.

Morgan glared, his eyes hot and dangerous, but he didn't reply, and he didn't cease his pacing. Two days into the storm, the roads were impassable, now, and their stay there was promising to last weeks.Though Morgan and Kanu had refrained from violence, it was obvious that they weren't far from it. Kanu, considered his duty done. He had saved Dari and now he wanted to go back to his home. The snow locked passes made that impossible, though. Morgan seemed barely leashed, barely sane, only the sure knowledge that he would die, keeping him from chancing the snow and traveling onward. Dari seemed forgotten by them both, recovering in his room and deciding to stay among the living for now.

Katerin, for her part, wished them all gone, and her peace returned. The old law of the road, to give shelter and food to those in need, surely didn't apply to such men, yet she had the heart of a healer, and doing murder, was beyond her, as much as she talked of doing the deed. For Dari, she had truly contemplated it, seeing what evil they had done to him, but he had saved her soul and her conscience and had stayed her hand. Why, she wasn't certain. Why would he miss a chance to be free, to see his master suffer as he had suffered? It spoke of a heart that was greater than hers.

Katerin said, daring, "You look like a man who is running out of time, eager to go and do violence. Tell me who is going to die, and why?"

Another glare. "They are getting away," Morgan offered, and nothing more.

Katerin frowned. "I've seen no one on the road in months."

Morgan turned to her, scowling, as if her words were not making sense to him. "They are ahead of me," he insisted.

It seemed dangerous to contradict him. His eyes were the eyes of a man in the grip of great fervor, a fanatic to whatever cause he pursued.

"Isn't it possible that they are snowed in as well?" she tried and felt as if she were prodding a wild beast with a stick.

She saw sense penetrate whatever held him in it's power, but it was small; a glimmer. "That... could be," he replied with difficulty. She wasn't ready for his darkness to fight that, to need fuel for it's hate. Morgan struggled, his expression showing some inner thought, and then he was turning to her. "Where is my slave?"

"Recovering," she told him, "but still unable to leave his bed. He very nearly died, and may do so still if he isn't allowed to heal."

Her words were meant to make him reconsider the violence that suddenly sprang into his eyes, but he ignored her and demanded, "Take me to him."

It was plain that he intended something cruel. She faced him bravely and said, "No. You will allow him his rest."

He pushed past her, putting a hand on her arm to do so, and then jerked that hand back when he felt a sharp, spark of electricity. She moved to block him again. "I am a healer, but I can do you some harm," she warned.

"A trick," he surmised.

"Is it?" she countered.

It was hard meeting those eyes. They would live in her nightmares long after. Whatever resided there was a coward, though, and it backed away before her threat, coiling and seething as the man frowned and fisted his hands in frustration.

She told him,. "He wishes to remain with you, out of fear, I suspect, but it is his will.Give him some reward for his loyalty; a little time to heal."

Morgan made a dismissing motion and stalked away, muttering,"Let him heal, then,so that I can exact more revenge on him."

Revenge. Katerin was mystified. What harm could such a boy do to a man so steeped in darkness?

_____________________________

"How do you feel?" Katerin wiped Dari's brow with a cool cloth. Sitting next to his bed, she could see that he hardly made an impression in the blankets.

His large eyes looked at her, clearly puzzled, in pain, and fearful.

"You can speak to me," she urged. "I'm here to heal you, not harm you."

His eyes seemed to flick over her shoulder, as if seeing something there, and then they flicked back to her face. "My master..."

"Is brooding and not a concern, as yet," she replied. "The snow keeps him bound here. It may stay long enough to allow you some healing."

His hair had been a tangle. She had managed to clean it, along with the rest of him, marveling at the bright color as she had combed it out. He seemed utterly alien, now, far too pure of face and line to be human, and eyes that seemed to drink in her soul.

"You must be bored, sitting here so many hours, with nothing to do," she said. "I have books, if you read, and a few board games."

The fear of punishment was ever present. Dari cautiously replied. "I read my own language."

"I could read to you," Katerin offered and reached over to pull a book from a nearby shelf. She showed him the worn spine. "This is one my father used to read to me, before he passed away."

"Passed away?" Dari echoed.

"Died," Katerin explained, feeling the sadness still. She quelled it by looking at the book again. "This about a man, who did great deeds in his life, as a knight to a famous king. The adventures are very delightful."

"A knight?" Dari didn't know what that meant.

"A brave man who fights for a king," she explained.

She studied Dari's wary eyes and realized that he wouldn't tell her whether he wanted her to read it or not. She decided on her own, but she watched his face to see how he reacted to it.

She kept it short, only a page or two, before she saw Dari picking at the blankets and looking troubled.

"What is it?" She asked him.

"So much fighting," Dari whispered. "So much blood. It was peaceful... and loving where I came from." Yet he had been foolish enough to run away, he remembered, and felt a wave of sorrow for that decision.

The collar was cruelty on his neck. There was a tight line by his lips, as he suppressed anguish. The room, the soft blankets, the peace that he had been granted, was going to be brief, he knew. All too soon, Morgan's madness would grow and he would brave the snow, dragging his slave behind him. This woman, who was being so kind, was going to be left behind, hopefully, unharmed.

"I should go back to Morgan," Dari told her. "He will come here, otherwise. I don't want that. I don't want him to harm you."

She smiled and closed the book, as she put it back on the shelf and chose another, she replied, "I am the one with power here, not your master. Please, give up this fear."

She opened the new book in her lap. "This one is an herbal," she explained. "Do you like plants? See, there are many paintings to look at."

He was drawn to the book, despite his trepidation, and she leaned close, to allow him a better look. As she read softly, he relaxed, and found a small part of him that truly hoped that she did indeed have some power to stop Morgan.
___________________________________

"The heat from the oil lamps melt the snow and the glass keeps the roses warm,"Katerin explained as she helped Dari walk the path between them in the upper greenhouse. Perched on a flat plain of stone, the potted roses seemed to be defying nature in growing while the snow raged outside.

Dari was pale and still shaky on his feet, but he was enjoying his first trip out of his bed since arriving there.He reached out to touch a pink rose, marveling at it's beauty and softness.

Katerin smiled at him. "You look as if you've never seen a rose before."

"We didn't have flowers... not like this," Dari explained. His golden hair flowed about him and framed his face as he bent to smell a clump of blooms. "They smell wonderful."

"Tell me about your home," Katerin urged. "Please?"

She settled him on a bench. Dari straightened out his wounded leg and rubbed at his aching hip. His rate of healing was amazing her. Away from Morgan and his darkness, and surrounded by her care and good will, his body was absorbing it, like the plants absorbing sunlight, and using it as energy.

"I was sickly, as a child,"Dari explained. "I was kept from the harsh weather of the mountains, and lived all my life, until now, inside walls. We did a lot of reading, a great deal of learning, and..." He remembered his frustration, his young body and mind wanting so much more. "I wasn't suited for that life, though," he started again. "I ran away. I thought... I planned to find a village, to see my people... my parents. I was taken away, by cruel men, instead."

"And sold to Morgan?" Katerin guessed sadly.

"Sold? No, he... he took me and called me his slave. I don't really understand," Dari replied. His hands worked in his lap, white knuckled. "He blames me... but it's not him that hurts me, it's what's inside of him."

"Inside?" Katerin wondered and then admitted softly. "I thought that I felt a darkness from him, an unreasoning insanity. Nothing that he has said to me has made sense."

She reached out and took Dari's hand. Her fingers were soft and gentle, not the hard, calloused ones he was used to having deliver pain."All the more reason to keep you from him, to free you from him. You must allow me to help you."

Dari looked into her eyes and imagined blood. His hand tightened on hers and then he let her go, looking away. "No, that's not possible. You don't know how strong he is, how the darkness takes hold of him."

"Let me try!"Katerin begged, but then, as he continued to deny her, she exclaimed, "You are frightened! You don't want to fight because of that. I will do as I think best, then, and free you despite your wishes. You will see my strength, then, and have your freedom from his cruelty."

She helped him back to his bed, tucked blankets around him, and then placed a pink rose on his breast.

"Rest, Dari," She told him. "You will be free when I return."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When Morgan appeared, instead, with the slave chain dangling in one hand, Dari could only voice the fear in his heart.

"Have you hurt her?"

"She tried to keep me from what was mine," Morgan grated as he strode forward and locked the chain to Dari's collar. Pulling Dari up, and looking deep into his eyes, Dari could see the writhing darkness there."I was stronger."

"The horses are ready," Kanu said from the doorway. "The sky is still spitting snow, but we can make our way through, I think."

"Even if we can't," Morgan replied, "It will be better to die than endure this place any longer."

"Does she live?" Dari dared, voice a bare whisper.

Morgan buried a hand into his hair and gripped tight. "Speak again, and I will cut out your tongue."

He pulled Dari, limping and staggering, out into a snow covered courtyard. His black horse was stirring restlessly, wide eyes on the open gate.The white horse slipped a hip and seemed resigned as Kanu snatched at the reins and shoved Dari up into the saddle. Morgan looped the chain around the saddle horn.

Kanu mounted the horse behind him. "My debt to your slave is paid, but I need to ride with you further, until we clear this snow. I will need better weather before I can return home."

Morgan glared. "You are of no concern to me as long as you don't hinder me."

Kanu lifted a lip at the suggestion that he was less skilled than Morgen. "Ride and see who hinders who."

It wasn't safe to gallop, though it was obvious that Morgan wished to. They kept at a steady walk, leaving the fortress in blowing snow and mists that quickly swallowed it from view.

"Is she alive?" Dari asked softly.

Kanu glared at him."Yes. Her servant was seeing to her. She tried her magic on Morgan, but his evil spirits were stronger. She fell into a faint." He snickered at Dari. "Was she skilled in bed, that you care for her life, slave?"

Dari blinked in confusion, feeling relief yet worry still. "I don't understand."

Kanu sneered. "Didn't think you would."

Dari didn't have the strength to wonder about Kanu's words or to even worry about a woman who had begun to seem like a friend.The ride was hard and he still needed healing.Kanu wasn't above pressing against him for warmth, but that warmth was coming at a cost that Dari's body could ill afford. If Morgan kept that pace, Dari wasn't sure that he could survive it.

Kanu dozed after awhile, a weight against Dari's back. Dari bore with it without complaint, but, when Kanu finally awoke again, the man was less than grateful, especially when Morgan looked back and seemed to pass some judgment in his dark expression.

"It was cold!" Kanu snarled back at the man.

ashrugged and rode ahead. Dari said, "I didn't mind."

Kanu's knife was out and at Dari's throat in a flash."You confuse my mind. Is that why Morgan hates you? Do you have some magic that turns men's minds to ...to..." He stopped, not wanting to admit to any weakness.

"I don't want you to hate me," Dari replied, feeling cold inside.

"You should be hated,dog!" Kanu exploded, startling the horse.

"I must be a terrible person, then," Dari concluded with a lowered head.

"You are!" Kanu agreed. "If you end your life it will make everyone happy!"

"It would not make me happy," Dari replied, almost not to be heard.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Morgan rode with only a brief stop to rest. His madness wouldn't spare the horses and certainly not his companions. Mountains reared up in the distance before a thick forest blocked them from sight. They traversed some foothills and crossed a wide ribbon of rock that stretched out of sight at both ends. Overgrown and set with huge blocks of stone, it looked as if it had once been a road for giants.

When night fell, the snow began falling in numbing flakes. The wood all around them was too wet to catch fire and freezing to death was becoming a real possibility.

"Pull the horses down!" Morgan ordered and yanked his own down onto it's side. Kanu had trouble convincing the white horse, but once it was down they threw blankets over them and sat between them for warmth.

Thrust out of their group, Dari sat alone, huddled on the ground with his bright hair hanging about his face. Kanu wished him to freeze to death, until he realized that he was in more danger of that, even in their 'cocoon' than Morgan's slave. Dari seemed hardly cold at all.

"Come here!" Kanu shouted at Dari.

"No!" Morgan shouted, hard on the heels of that. "I won't have that filth near me!"

"Then you can freeze to death!" Kanu snarled. "I will not. Come here!" he commanded again and reached out to drag Dari into their shelter.

Dari resisted Kanu's pull, looking wildly at Morgen's dark face. "Please," he begged. "No!"

"Will you see us all die?" Kanu demanded. "Come here!"

Dari allowed Kanu to pull him in. He put his forehead to the damp ground and shook all over in fear.

Morgan looked ready to do violence and then he settled, accepting what he must. "Be silent!" he commanded Dari.

Dari's heat filled the blankets and Kanu grinned fiercely in relief.

Morgan didn't answer and Dari was beyond words in his fear. It was a long night, but they survived it.

_____________________________

It was a vast bog, half frozen in ice, that they found themselves in by midmorning. A narrow trail meandered through it, skirting dangerous ground where tufted clumps of brown grass, and snow, hid treacherous mud and freezing water.

Bow clutched warily, and strung, ready for trouble, Kanu asked, "Does anyone live here?"

Morgen gave a short nod, growling in reply, "They do not like strangers."

The sky was iron gray and threatening more snow, but there weren't any sign, or telltale scents, of wood smoke hearths, or prints to show where hunters had used the trail. That didn't comfort Kanu. A good enemy didn't leave signs.

The day passed slowly, mud and ice splashing up the horses hocks and making beast and riders miserable. Kanu was wracked with shivering, and felt his head pounding with the telltale symptoms of some illness, towards afternoon. He was glad of the heat, emanating from Dari in the saddle before him, but it seemed much reduced from the previous night, and the boy looked as weary as Kanu felt.

Dari felt Kanu's shivering, and turned to look at him. His pinched face flickered with some concern. "Are you all right? You feel... ill."

Dari's concern both confused and angered Kanu. He replied sharply, "I'm not weak, like you slave, it is nothing."

He would have hoped for his death, if he were in Dari's place, Kanu thought with contempt. He would have been full of words of insult, not of concern, for a man who had given him only abuse.

When night began to fall, Morgen tried to press on, despite the danger, but then was forced to halt when his horse almost misstepped into the bog. When Kanu dismounted, more relieved than he dared to admit, that they would finally be stopping for the night, he nearly had Dari fall on top of him as the boy simply fell out of the saddle to the ground.

Dari rolled limply onto his back, breathing with difficulty, his skin pale and sickly in the fading light. A rough hand to Dari's forehead, confirmed to Kanu that the boy was burning with a fever.

"Weakling," Kanu swore. "Why didn't your people kill you at birth?"

"I don't understand," Dari managed to reply.

"You are a burden. A bad birthing," Kanu explained. "Such should not live."

"If I was meant to die, then I would have," Dari replied. "They told me... my people... that I had something to give, that death was not for me, not yet."

"What can you give anyone?" Kanu demanded derisively. "You fail, even as a slave of other men."

Dari's eyes seemed uncannily bright in the dim light of sunset. "I have given to you. To Mo- To master, haven't I?"

Kanu wanted to choke him, then, to pound his damned innocence into pulp. The boy shamed him by reminding him of his own weakness, his own need for a slave to help him.

Morgen managed a fire, that spitted and hissed with damp wood, and Dari crawled to it, huddling as close as he dared and shaking with sickness. This had saved him. This had shown a strength at all odds with a frail body. Watching Dari flinch and cower when Morgen moved too quickly near him, Kanu could only seethe in his own confusion. Kanu was not weak. He was well respected among his own people. The illness that added to Dari's weakness was a small thing within himself, easily conquered. This slave, that should have been killed at birth, should not make him doubt himself, should not, in any way, be of help to him. He was a hunter, a warrior of his people. He couldn't return with doubts, without reaffirming his worth. He had to solve Dari's mystery. He had to understand how the boy was able to be more than he was.

When morning light broke, on a clear, cold day, the fog of the bog lifting to show a dry, brown landscape of drooping, ice encrusted trees, Kanu rose and made a hot soup out of dried meat and a few roots that he managed to find close by. It was thin, but good for illness. Morgen took his share without comment, sipping from his cup, one handed, while he carried the tack to his horse with his free hand. It was clear that he didn't intend to waste any daylight.

Kanu waited for the man to feed his slave, but he doubted that Morgen intended to. His focus was on the trail, already, not on the coughing, shivering wretch that was trying to gather the strength to rise.

Kanu's hands moved, as if on their own, filled his battered cup with more soup, and handed it off to Dari's surprised shaking hands.

"Eat before he sees," Kanu warned.

Dari looked terrified, eyes darting to Morgen, but the man had his back turned. Keeping his eyes on the man, he sipped hurriedly at the hot soup.

"So, you do have some bravery," Kanu sneered.

Dari's eyes didn't leave Morgen, but he said around a sip, "Thank you for the soup."

Kanu regarded him, filth, bare bones under pale skin, long hair a ragged, golden mess around him, and eyes wide and feverish. The slave collar seemed far too large and heavy on his skinny neck. "Don't thank me," he told Dari harshly. "There is purpose in what I do." Though he hardly understood it himself, Kanu thought angrily.

Kanu jerked the cup out of Dari's hands, spilling some of what was left over the boy's hands, as he packed it and rose to get their horse. "Get ready to ride," he ordered. "Your master is almost ready to leave without us."

As Kanu readied their horse, Dari struggled to stand, the chain rattling and dragging the dirt. His healing leg made him unsteady and too slow for Morgen. The man grabbed his chain and jerked him up hard. Two great slaps to the face made Dari choke on cries, the red marks of Morgan's hand livid on his pale skin, as he cowered and found his feet.

"Get on your horse, damn you!" Morgen swore as he spun Dari and gave him a shove towards his horse.

The sound of men shouting, as Dari struggled again to find his feet, made Morgen draw his sword. That made him the first target as bows sang and arrows sped towards his heart. Dari simply straightened, placing himself between Morgen and the arrows, his eyes sad and resigned to his fate.

It was intentional. Kanu could see it clearly as he drew his own bow and turned to fire into the bog, hoping to hit one of their hidden attackers. When he looked back, he was shocked to see Dari sprawled, but alive, hands at his iron collar, as if he were in pain, and Morgen standing, unharmed, behind him.

Morgen was in motion, then, pulling Dari up and tossing him onto his horse, before an already mounted Kanu, and then flinging himself onto his own horse. They broke into a wild gallop, leaving supplies behind, and daring the dangerous bog to escape their attackers.

It was some time before they felt confident enough in their escape to slow down. The horses were breathing like bellows, by then, and steaming in the freezing air. Kanu pulled Dari around, then, and saw the marks on his collar. The arrows had hit it and deflected, saving Dari and Morgen's life. Kanu found himself making a sign against evil magic, not understanding how such a miracle could have occurred.

"Why did you do it?" Kanu demanded. "Why did you save his life?"

Dari looked sick and confused. "I don't know," he replied simply.

_____________________________________________

They stopped near a stream when the darkness became too deep and didn't chance a fire. Morgan paced, impatient to go on, while Kanu sat and sharpened his knife, ears alert for sounds of an enemy.

Dari kept quiet, struggling with his illness, and didn't dare move and draw Morgan's attention. When he was finally forced to relieve himself, he timidly waited until Morgan's pacing took him along the dark bank of the stream away from them. Struggling to his feet, he made it four paces towards the deep black of the woods before Morgan had a hand twisted into his hair and was shoving his back against the trunk of a tree.

The knife at Dari's throat drew blood as Morgan leaned in and snarled, "Why did you save my life?"

Dari lost control of himself and the smell was sharp in the air as he stammered, "I-I did not want to see you hurt!"

"Why don't you hate me?!" Morgan demanded, slamming Dari against the tree with every word. "What do I have to do to make you hate me?"

Dari was trembling so hard that the only thing keeping him upright was Morgan's grip. "I fear you. I-I can't hate you."

" I will make you hate me!" Morgan exclaimed. His nostrils flared as he caught the smell of urine and then he was swinging Dari around and tossing him into the river in disgust.

Dari splashed loudly as he regained his feet and Kanu swore at them both for making enough noise to alert any enemy within miles. Shivering, Dari started for the bank. The boil of water around his legs startled him and he cried out when he felt something bite viciously into his flesh.

Morgan cursed as he ran into the water and grabbed Dari. dragging him out, he threw him into the mud of the bank, breathing hard.

"What is it?" Kanu demanded, trying to see in the darkness. and then he came close enough to see the rips in Dari's clothing. "Devil fish!" he exclaimed fearfully. "They can strip of a man of flesh!"

Morgan dragged Dari to a tree and attached his chain to it. "We will cross at daylight," he ground out, "When there is light enough to see the fish. If our enemies find us before then, my slave will stay here, and, perhaps, slow them down enough for us to get across and away."

"Cross the river?" Kanu demanded in disbelief, "How can we cross it even in daylight?"

"We must," Morgan replied. "There isn't a ford."

"I don't trust you," Kanu growled. "You would ride into your own death and you have no honor. Your slave saved both our lives, yet you ignore your obligation and leave him to die."

"He risked his life," Morgan snapped back. "So he will not mind offering it again so that I may get my revenge."

A chill went through Kanu. Dari had his face turned towards darkness, saying nothing. Was it cowardice? He had risked his life and suffered great pain for them both. It was Morgan and himself who were preparing to run and leave him like a staked offering to the Gods. Kanu wasn't used to questioning his own honor and he didn't like it. His perceptions were being skewed and his firm understanding of weak and strong was as uncertain as sand under his feet. Those thoughts kept him awake through the night, that and the fear of their enemies coming down on them unaware. He owed Dari his life and he wasn't certain of his own bravery if they should be attacked. Would he give his own life to save a slave chained to a tree?

Morning found them still safe from their enemies. Kanu hated his relief as Morgan unchained Dari and they moved along the stream until they could find it's shallowest point. Dari's obvious bites, still raw and open from the night before, were a warning, but there wasn't any choice but to cross as quickly as they could and hope that the fish wouldn't have time to attack.

"Here," Morgan suddenly said and he was sending his horse into the water. Kanu followed, the fractious horse, not liking the cold water, and needing hard kicks to get it going. Dari clung before him, looking ready to fall off, white as snow, and eyes frightened as he tried to see beneath the surface of the water for the fish.

They were up onto the other bank, with only a snort and a half kick of alarm by Morgan's horse. It had a clear bite on a hock, but Morgan didn't seem inclined to check it as he urged it into the woods. Kanu followed, not liking their clear trail of hooves and blood.

After a few hours of travel, they passed another stream. Kanu began to dismount to drink but Morgan glared and said, "It's salt marsh. Undrinkable. We're close to the great ocean."

Which meant nothing to Dari or Kanu. Morgan's mood had darkened, though, to vicious anger, and they broke into a gallop that didn't spare the horses.

Woods turned to boggy marsh and open sky. The clouds were roiling, dark and threatening rain. When they reached a city, buildings piled together and wood weathered gray by salt and ocean winds, that rain broke loose.

Morgan surprised them by dismounting at an inn and tying his horse to a post. Dragging off all his packs from the saddle, it was clear that he intended to stay.

Only half trusting, Kanu dismounted as well, twitching nervously at the crowds of people milling past them and the rain that was beginning to become a downpour. Dari didn't seem anymore at ease as he awkwardly dismounted, floundered on the ground, and then regained his feet with difficulty. Hooking a hand under the boy's arm, Kanu dragged him into the inn after Morgan.

Morgan was already speaking to several people and looking angrier by the moment at the answers that he was getting. When he returned to them, his face was as dark as the weather and his look at Dari was murderous.

"They have taken ship for the Eastlands across the ocean," Morgan ground out. "I follow at dawn, if I can raise the money for passage."

If they had been alone, Dari was certain that he would have been breathing his last and in as ugly a fashion as Morgan could have managed it. A tick along Morgan's jaw showed him how much the man was grinding his teeth, wanting retribution on the person he blamed for his delay, the delay that had allowed murderers to get so far ahead of him.

"You're not taking him," Kanu guessed.

"I will sell him, for passage money, if things don't go well," Morgan promised, but Dari could see that it would be a last resort. He would do what he had to in order not to leave Dari alive.

Morgan settled at a table and shoved Dari down onto the floor at his feet. Dari huddled, miserable, but warm close to the roaring hearth of the place. Kanu glared for a moment, not understanding, and then stalked away on his own business.

Men began sitting at the table with them, one of them shoving Dari over with a foot to give himself more room. Almost under Morgan's chair, Dari heard money clink and voices talk about a game.

"Poor little thing," a woman's voice said. "Like a scrawny stray cat, ye look. Here's some scraps for ye'."

A cracked plate full of bits of fish and hardened bread was placed on the floor by Dari and he flinched, wide eyed. Looking up he met the regard of one of the older serving women. She winked at him good naturedly as she wiped her hands on her apron and then went back to her duties.

Dari tensed, expecting Morgan to thwart any attempt to eat, but the man was preoccupied. Dari timidly took a few bites and then finished the plate hurriedly. Pushing it away, he hoped that Morgan wouldn't connect it with him, when he finally did bring his attention back to his slave.

Tobacco smoke, the steady roar of talk, and the crackling fire took their toll. Dari curled up and fell asleep, escaping pain and fear in a comfort that he didn't trust to last very long.

The curses of men and the scrape of chairs awoke him sometime later. The drag on the chain had him struggling to gain his feet, every muscle stiff and bone aching. Morgan was paying off a man and nodding as the man gave him instructions as to where to find his ship. When he was done, and the man had gone back into the crowd, Morgan looked down at Dari and growled, "You're lucky that I won enough passage for us both or you would be meeting your end now."

They left the inn and found darkness falling and rain abated. Morgan left the horses, as if they didn't exist any longer, and took Dari into the nearest bath house. While Morgan used the hot tubs, Dari was left to wash with old soap and used cold bath water. It was still a wonder to be mostly clean again and he couldn't help the urge to dunk his head in the gray water of a tub and wash out his hair as best he could.

"Your master said to get these for you," a skinny boy said and dropped old clothing on a wooden seat near Dari. he looked Dari's nakedness up and down and asked, fearfully, "Where's you naval?"

Dari grabbed the clothes and moved away, remembering other men and other cruelties when his difference had been discovered. The boy went away, hopefully not to tell his tale, and Dari dressed and limped through the steaming rooms in search of his master.

Morgan was dressing as well, dark hair wet from his bath and tense look not so harsh for the moment. He gave Dari a quick rake of eyes, only long enough to make certain his orders had been followed, and then he was taking hold of chain and packs and taking Dari outside.

The wharves were open to a cold wind from off the water and that water was tossing and dark, ships rising and falling against their moorings. Dari's wet hair quickly became a misery as he shivered and followed nervously behind Morgan, his eyes wide on the heaving ocean.

They found Kanu standing and staring at the same ocean, eyes narrowed and thoughtful. He looked at them as they approached and then announced, when they had come close enough, "Which one of these boats are you taking?"

"Why? I don't have passage for you," Morgan replied. "Your debt to my slave ends here. Go home Conoba."

Kanu looked out over the water again, the gleam in his eyes a new one that Dari had never seen before. "I am not a coward. I think that I know where my honor lies. I don't intend to go to hell because of a fear of getting wet. I have my own passage." He didn't explain where he had come by his money, but his hand flexed on his knife and his mouth set in a grim line.

"Damn your honor and your company!" Morgan snarled. He turned away from Kanu sharply. The snap of the chain almost took Dari off of his feet as Morgan stalked down the wharf to a dark hulled ship, flying a purple and white flag, and adorned with a dragon on its bow.

As they boarded, crossing a gangplank, Dari felt a presence, a tumbling miasma of emotions begging him not to cross, not to go. It stopped abruptly as they boarded the ship. Dari looked back and saw ghost lights winking in the darkness of the wharf. They feared the ocean. Dari felt a moment of dark emotion, almost anger as he thought of just how useless those beings of light and air had been to him. His chest ached and he bent over a sudden blinding pain there. Morgan showed no patience with it and gave the chain a harsh jerk.

A presence colder than the wind brushed by Dari's side. He flinched, forgetting his anger, and the pain lessened. When he blinked against a wave of nausea, he saw a wispy form appear and disappear. It seemed that Morgan's ghostly sister wasn't to be left behind.

TBC