Free Mark of the Black Arrow by Debbie Viguié Page A

looked down. There lay a creature the size of a child, bound in shackles. Its skin was smooth and blemish free except where the iron manacles clamped cruelly against its wrists. There the skin blistered and smoked, thin curls wisping up with each brush against the metal. Its face was fine-boned and smooth, its nose a button between plump lips and liquid eyes four times the size they should have been. Silky hair of the palest sapphire parted around a pair of feral, pointed ears. The eyes flashed with hatred and the plump lips were pulled wide to show rows of needle-thin teeth locked into a grimace.
    The smaller man crouched, staring at the creature. “What is that thing?”
    “One of the trow,” the tall man answered.
    The smaller man reached out his finger to touch the creature. He barely pulled it back in time as the trow lunged, teeth snapping where the finger had been.
    “Vicious little shite.”
    “The iron causes it pain.”
    The smaller man stood. “That why you had me bring this?” His hand disappeared under his cloak, coming out with a long, slender dagger. The metal was a dull gray that nearly disappeared in the dim light. The blade was wafer thin, both edges ground to razor sharpness. The taller man’s voice came out dry and sardonic. “I chose you for your ability to quickly grasp a situation.”
    “But
I
summoned
you
.”
    The tall man’s thin lips twitched in what could be mistaken for a smile.
    Drawing their attention, the gray man knelt beside the struggling creature.
    “Good enough?”
    The tall man nodded. “Near perfect.” He passed his hand over the gray man’s head and his voice took on a cadence of power. “You may return to your barrow, return to your hole, return to the loam that covers you, return to the effluvium and decay. Lie in wait until root becomes branch and branch becomes root and the worm that dieth not walks free among the tombstones.”
    The gray man raised his wide, shovel-like hands to his face, covering it completely. He spoke three words in a language that had not been uttered by humans since the Tower of Babel. His hands lifted to the sky and his face turned with them. He stood in supplication for a long moment and everything paused—both men, the creature in its bonds, even the torches ceased their sputtering and burned with steady, still flame.
    Finally, the gray man dropped his hands and turned away, shuffling off into the dark without a glance back.
    The creature on the ground began to howl, a long, plaintive drawl of noise full of sorrow and threaded through with fear.
    The tall man kicked it lightly with a booted foot.
    “Stop that.”
    The creature’s mouth shut, cutting off the noise.
    “What is your name?”
    “So you can use it in your working?” The creature’s voice was smooth and melodious, the sound of rain on a leafy bough, of a sparrow’s flight. “Not in this world or the next.”
    The tall man chuckled. “I don’t need your name to do what I plan to do.” He turned to the smaller man, who still held the iron blade. “Gut him.”
    “What?”
    “You heard me. Stick that knife in his gullet and split him open.”
    The smaller man held out the knife.
    The tall man shook his head. “It is to be by your hand, princeling.”
    The smaller man looked at the creature on the ground, then at the knife in his hand, then back.
    “This is necessary?”
    The tall man said nothing.
    The smaller man knelt beside the creature, who watched him with impossible eyes. He took a deep breath and put his hand on the creature’s chest.
    “Wait!” the creature cried. “You don’t have to do this. Not this. I can give you what you seek without it.”
    “You don’t know what we seek.”
    “Two men in a dead field by the witch stone, consorting with a principality… I’d wager that you want power.”
    The tall man touched the creature’s shoulder and spoke. “What power can you give us? You are our captive.”
    “I am the land here. Me and mine are the