Free Stone Song by D. L. McDermott Page A

forced to compel the injured man to silence.
    Compulsion was not one of his talents, and he hated to use it, because he knew he was clumsy. Miach could compel with gentle suggestion, thread his thoughts into those of others, and weave his voice into another being’s mind with consummate skill. Elada could not. His own abilities were more akin to barking orders at a frightened child.
    The interrogation that followed was a necessary evil, and when it was done, Elada knew where Sorcha Kavanaugh had been taken, and by whom.

Chapter 6

    S orcha hadn’t known what passing would be like. If she’d had to guess, she might have imagined it was instantaneous, that you closed your eyes and when you opened them again, you were someplace else. Or maybe that it worked the way it did for Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, that the Fae could click their heels three times and think of home and be there.
    It was nothing like that. The Prince Consort had reached out a hand, drawn Sorcha to her feet, and . . . traveled  . . . her through wood, concrete, dirt, stone, water, earth, and air. It was like being buried, suffocated, obliterated.
    When she emerged in the yard beside Gran’s house, gulping in air, her mind was still frozen with terror. Her body shook with horror and revulsion and the only thing that tethered her to reality, such as it was, was the Prince, his fine-boned fingers laced in hers.
    But he wasn’t paying any attention to her at all. Their strange passage hadn’t affected him. He was as elegant, as assured as he had been moments before in the Black Rose. And his face was alive with childlike delight. He was utterly fascinated by Gran’s house. He released her hand and stalked to the door, touched the narrow wooden clapboards beside it, but not, she noted, the cold iron latch, hinges, nails, or straps.
    “Who built this place?” he asked.
    She didn’t want to answer, but she didn’t have a choice. Her cold iron was gone, and the Prince’s whims were her commands. And the Fae wine still had her in its grasp. Even after that horrific journey, she was still in the grip of a powerful, unwanted lust.
    At least in the matter of the house, she could frustrate him by answering honestly. “I don’t know who built it. It was Gran’s house, but it’s really old, and she wasn’t exactly a member of the historical society.”
    The Prince turned a baleful eye on Sorcha. “Why are you so sure she didn’t build it?”
    “Because it’s been here for at least two hundred years.”
    He shrugged. “A reasonable span for a Druid, if she was skilled.”
    “My grandmother wasn’t a Druid,” Sorcha said.
    “No? Then why did she gird her house with so much iron?”
    “To protect me,” Sorcha said, but even as the words left her mouth, she knew that wasn’t right. Gran’s house had been ironbound before Sorcha had arrived.
    The Prince laughed. “Oh, Sorcha, I think you have more secrets than I guessed. Let’s peel them back, one by one, shall we?”
    He ordered her to open the back door and hold it wide for him to walk through and, bereft of cold iron, she complied like the puppet she was. Once inside, he made a cursory examination of the kitchen, eyeing the iron pots and pans with distaste. Then, with preternatural speed, he gripped her arm, spun her about, and lifted her onto the island countertop in the center of the room.
    The Prince pushed her skirt up, grasped her below the knees, and yanked her forward, and she found herself lying on the butcher-block surface, her legs hanging off the end, the Prince standing between them.
    It was difficult to think straight. She despised him, but she wanted to run her fingers through his long black hair and taste his wide lush mouth. Sorcha gripped the countertop, and she tried to push herself away from him, but he said, “None of that, my pretty black-haired bard,” and when he caressed down her thighs to her aching center, she froze and mewled like a kitten.
    He lowered his