2.

Time lost its meaning in the dungeons of Ang'arta.

Neither day nor night touched those grim, circled halls, dug deep into the granite beneath the fortress. There was only torchlight, the smoky glow of the torturers' fires, and the screams from the breaking pits. Kelland could not say how long he'd lain in his cell listening to that endless wail. It might have been months; it might have been years. He had no way to tell. He had nothing save the firelight and the screams.

Worm had put out his eardrums to end that screaming. It had taken him ages to sharpen some dead prisoner's finger bone to a point, clenching it in his teeth and scraping it against the stone of his cell. Then he had wedged it into a crevice and rammed his ears onto it, one side after the other, to buy himself silence with pain.

He died not long after. Kelland had never learned what his true name was or how he had come to the dungeons. He was only a pale, mutilated face in the cell opposite. The torturers of Ang'arta had taken his arms and his legs, his eyes and his tongue. They left him blind and voiceless, a worm that had been born a man.

The soldiers came when the body started stinking. They took Worm's corpse to feed the ghaole or the greenhounds or some other creature of the Thorns', and a new prisoner filled his cell. Kelland did not know his name either.

"Don't Speak," someone had scratched into the stone near the cell's mouth. The warning was well founded. There was no talking in Ang'arta's cells. Any attempt to speak, or to tap a message through the walls to the man in the next hole, led to a swift and brutal beating. Not for the one who'd spokena"Kelland would have accepted that penalty without complainta"but for the one he'd been trying to reach. That kept them quiet, mostly. There were a few who didn't care, or were glad to inflict suffering on others to relieve their own misery, but most of those were soon taken from the solitary cells. They went down to the breaking pits, to suffer the soldiers' casual abuse and fight their fellows tooth and nail for scraps of food, drops of water.

If they were lucky and cruel, they would survive to take their place among the Iron Lord's reavers. If not, they joined Worm in a ghaole's belly.

Kelland wondered how long it would be until he fed the ghaole himself. It was hard to imagine, sometimes, that there had ever been anything more in his life than this.

There had been, once. He remembered fighting in a winter wood, his sword bare in his hand and his goddess' power bright as sunfire in his soul. He remembered the Thornlady and her pack of dead-eyed ghaole, and the touch of her magic like rust creeping through the iron of his resolve. He remembered the moment of doubt that had shattered hima"and now, as he lay imprisoned in the strong-hold of his enemies, surrounded by the stink of sweat and blood and shit, that doubt consumed him.

He had no magic here. His cell was carved from the bowels of the earth, sunk in stone and barricaded by iron so that the sun could not reach him. Without sunlight he was powerless. Kelland needed the sun as surely as the Thorns needed pain, for one was the manifestation of his goddess as the other was of theirs, and without that touch of the divine he was nothing but flesh and blood and breath. Only mortal.

Death was never far away. Fever took its share of souls; putrefying wounds and ill-use claimed others. Some prisoners simply lost their will to live, becoming hollow-eyed ghosts that sat mutely until their bodies followed their spirits across the Last Bridge. Stripped of his goddess' presence, cold and friendless in the dark, Kelland sometimes felt himself sliding toward that final, absolute despair.

It was the memory of Bitharn that pulled him back from the abyss. He remembered her in flashes and fragments, as if some instinct warned that it would hurt too deeply to remember her in full. If he dwelled too long on what was lost, it would break him.

Instead he allowed himself moments: the sun catching gold in her hair; the quick warmth of her hand on his arm; the silhouette of her sitting watch by the fire, tireless and vigilant. Her bravery and her cleverness and the intensity that sharpened her eyesa"sometimes gray, sometimes hazel flecked with motes of greening gold, depending on the lighta"in the fraction of a heartbeat between drawing back an arrow and loosing it. She had the same intensity whether she was shooting at a straw-filled dummy or a charging boar. And sometimes, too, when she looked at him. When she kissed him.

That thought was dangerous as a live coal, and just as likely to burn. Kelland always pulled away from it, and always came back to it, unable to let go of the gift and burden of truth.

Bitharn had loved him. She had never said so, but he had known all the same. A blind man would have seen it. And he had loved her in turna"loved her, and desired her, despite his Blessed oath of chastity.

He had never touched her. But he had wanted to a and that wanting had been his undoing. A mistake, not seeing the truth within his own soul. Desire had weakened his will and undermined the faith that was the wellspring of his power. The Thornlady saw it before Kelland did. Without faith, he had no magic; without magic, he was defenseless against the Thorns. Unable to choose between his lady and his goddess, he lost both.

He didn't know what had happened to Bitharn after he was taken. Perhaps she had been captured too; perhaps she'd stayed safe, as he hoped. Kelland didn't know. But the thought of her trapped in Ang'arta was bleaker than the absence of sunlight, and so he tried to put her out of his mind. Instead he slept, seeking refuge in dreamlessness from the nightmare that awaited when he woke.

A pounding on the cell bars roused him from uneasy sleep. Not a nightmare, this time. It was a man who waited for him, one of Baoz's hard-faced reavers, clad in boiled leather with a red fist on his chest. A wide, cruel scar striped his face from cheek to chin; his teeth were blackened splinters where it passed across his mouth. He unlocked the door with a jangling iron key ring and lifted his tarred torch. Its flame, painfully bright after so long in the dark, stung tears into Kelland's eyes.

"Celestian. You are to come with me."

Kelland crawled to his knees and, with a great effort, out of his cell. He could hear drums booming down the hall. Their hammering was no louder than the thundering of blood in his ears. He swayed on his feet and caught himself against the wall before he fell. Scar Face watched, pitiless.

He mastered himself and stood. I am a Knight of the Sun. I will not be weak. It was pride, foolish pride, but what else did he have? The Baozites respected one thing and one thing only: strength. Kelland willed away the trembling in his knees and the hollowness in his stomach. They had fed him nothing but cups of watery gruel, one a day for however many days he'd spent locked in this hole, and standing left him light-headed. But he made himself let go of the wall and forced his spine straight as a swordblade, drawing on will when his body threatened to fail.

"Why? Where are we going?" His voice was a rusty croak, hardly recognizable as his own. He hadn't spoken in so long.

Scar Face spat on the floor. "The Spider wants to see you."

Without another word the soldier strode down the hall. Kelland was hard-pressed to keep up, and the whirl of his thoughts didn't help.

For centuries Ang'arta had been a blight on the surrounding kingdoms. The reavers of the Iron Fortress worshipped war; they trained for it from childhood, and as youths were plunged into the pits to be reborn as warriors. Their discipline was as legendary as their cruelty, and they were the finest soldiers in the world.

Yet they were, and for centuries had been, also the weakest in magic. Baoz gifted his favored warriors with divine powera"strength and endurance beyond that of ordinary men, swift healing, bloodmadness in battle. But he did not give them spells. Only his red-robed priestesses with their iron horns and crimson smiles commanded true magic, and the last of those had died three hundred years ago.

And so, over the years, an uneasy equilibrium took hold. Few kingdoms had ever been able to field armies that could match Ang'arta's, but the Knights of the Sun stood ready to lend their spells where steel might fail. Because of them, the ironlords had been held back from conquering Calantyr in its fragile youth or devouring the crumbling ruins of Rhaelyand before new kingdoms rose out of the empire's ashes.

It was not an easy balance or a bloodless one, but it held.

Eight years ago, that had changed. Eight years ago, Aedhras the Golden, then an ordinary soldier, returned from his sojourn to the east with the Spider as his wife. Soon after that, the Baozites had magic. True magic. It was not their god's, but it was theirs to command, and that was the Spider's doing.

Kelland had never seen Avele diar Aurellyn, the Lord Commander's wife and the leader of the Thorns in this part of the world. Few had. Rumor had it that she spent her days spinning webs high in the Tower of Thorns, and sent her maimed disciples out to do her will rather than risk herself. She was said to be beautiful, ruthless, and cunning as a fiend.

He followed Scar Face up a long crawl of stairs, passing soldiers who chuckled to their companions and jeered at him as they shoved by. Kelland tried to make himself deaf to their words, but he couldn't ignore them completely. They knew who he was: his dark brown skin and the white shells braided in his hair made him as unique in their world as he'd been at the Dome of the Sun. The Burnt Knight, champion of the Celestians, had become a prisoner paraded for their amusement. Anger and shame twisted around each other, hot in his heart, but he kept his face still as stone.

One of the Baozites drove an elbow into the knight's ribs as he passed. Kelland tried to pivot and thrust an arm out to catch himself, but he was too slow, too weak after so long in the cell. The side of his head cracked against the wall. Pain blinded him; he felt blood running down his cheek. He stumbled to a knee on the steps, defenseless.

Scar Face stepped between them. He swung his torch at Kelland's attacker as if fending off a wolf. "Enough. The Spider wants to see him, and she doesn't want to see him with half his face a pulp."

"Not pretty enough for her bed that way?" the Baozite sneered, but he backed away.

"She just likes to do it herself," one of his companions said, to laughter, and they left.

After they had gone Kelland pushed himself back up against the wall. There was a wet smear on the stone where he had struck it. He held a sleeve to his temple, trying to quell the throbbing in his head. Scar Face watched, impassive, and made no move to help. But he set a slower pace until they reached the top of the stairs, and he kept himself between Kelland and the Baozites on the steps.

"Thank you," Kelland mumbled as they came to the landing.

Scar Face gave him an unreadable look. The shiny welt of his scar flexed as his jaw worked. "She wants you, so she'll have you," he said, "and I'm not sure you should be thanking me for that."

Kelland nodded, and regretted it as the torchflame swam in his vision. For the rest of the way he simply followed the soldier, concentrating on the monumental task of putting one foot before the other. After an eternity of steep gray steps. Scar Face unlocked a massive wooden door and took him down another hall.

The air was cleaner up here. Kelland noticed the change even through his daze. The dungeons stank of excrement and misery; the common halls were thick with the smells of old rushes and unwashed bodies and sour ale. This hall was quieter by far, and the air carried only a whiff of woodsmoke and sweet pine.

The first door they reached was barred by an oak beam, thicker than Kelland's arm and mounted in iron brackets. Spidery marks, inlaid with some lusterless gray metal, were carved along its length. Scar Face lifted the beam, grunting at its weight, and let its butt end slide to the floor. He pulled the door open and propped it with a boot. "You'll wait here."

"Another cell?"

"A guest room."

"Your lady's hospitality warms my heart." Still, he was too weak to fight, and there was no reason to lose his dignity over such a petty struggle. Kelland went in.

The door closed behind him. He heard the scrape of wood on stone, the soldier's muffled curses, and the dual thud, one side after the other, as Scar Face wrestled the beam back into its brackets. But these noises barely registered, for in the room was a pure gift of hope.

It was clean. That in itself was a gift. There was a bed with fresh linens, a platter with cheese and dried plums and new bread. Beside it was a washing bowl with brush, mirror, and razor. The luxurya"the cleanlinessa"of it was unimaginable, but all those things paled beside the greatest blessing of all.

Windows. Tiny, high, and barred, but open to the sky.

It was almost dawn. He could see the first tendrils of it beginning to soften the deep blue of the fading night. In an hour, perhaps less, the sun would rise and morning would break and he, who had been so long immured in the dark, might feel his goddess' radiance on his face again.

Kelland bowed at the waist to the dawn. He raised his arms to his chest as he came up, then over his head and back down in the ancient forms. His muscles protested at the stretchinga"it had been too long since he had observed the full dawn prayera"but the grace of the movements was not lost to him. He had not been broken. He could still pray.

The Sun Knight bowed again, continuing the measured sequence, and wept silently in gratitude as his Lady's light filled his soul.

"I TRUST YOU ARE WELL RESTED."

Kelland opened his eyes. There had been no sound to signal the Spider's arrival; he had not heard the bar lift, nor the door open. It was possible she did not need to lift bars or open doors to move about the fortress. The Thorns could pass directly from shadow to shadow, flitting through darkness and avoiding the light.

If she had hoped to surprise him, though, she would have to be disappointed. Kelland hadn't been sleeping. He had been in light meditation, renewing his atrophied muscles with the blessings of his faith. Months in that tiny hole had crippled him a but one short day after being allowed sunlight, Kelland was almost fully restored. Awake, and immersed in prayer, he had felt her approach like a shadow falling across his soul: the presence of her goddess against his.

The Spider sat in a high-backed chair near the door. She was not what he had expected, but no one could have been.

Avele diar Aurellyn was thin, small breasted, and finely boned, with the pale golden complexion and slightly tilted eyes of her homeland. She was as beautiful as the stories said, though it was a coolly elegant beauty, no more welcoming than a frost-laced mountain pool. Jewels sparkled on her fingers and in the silver lattice of her necklace, bright over a high-necked dress of black velvet. Unlike every other Thorn he had seen, she was not visibly maimed.

"As well as any man can be in his enemies' den," Kelland said, swinging his feet to the floor. Several paces separated him from the Spider, but the intimacy of this audience still set his teeth on edge. He took refuge in formality, using brittle courtesy to create distance and sanctuary.

A smile touched her lips. "I am not your enemy, sir knight."

"No? Then I must apologize. No doubt when your minions captured me and locked me in that pit, they did so out of dearest friendship."

"I do not dispute that things were done in the past. Put them aside. You have more urgent concerns, as do I. Why do you suppose you were brought up here?"

Kelland had been wondering that himself, but he pressed his lips together, mute.

The Spider had been admiring her rings. At his silence she glanced up, then laughed aloud. Her laughter was warm and low, and deeply discomfiting.

"Not for that," she said. "I can only imagine what the soldiers must have saida"but I hope it will not insult your pride to say that, however charming you might be, there is nothing in you to tempt me away from my lord."

"What, then?"

"You want to be free, yes? That is what I am offering you: liberty."

Freedom. Clean air, sweet water, the ability to walk wherever he wanted, as long and as far as he wanted, without the screams of the breaking pits echoing in his ears. The freedom to read a book, tucked away in a sunlit corner of the Dome's library, or to eat mealsa"to taste real fooda"of his own choosing.

The freedom to find Bitharn. To rejoin her, if the Bright Lady smiled on his search.

And then?

He didn't know. Dangerous even to let his thoughts stray in that direction a but he would have the freedom to make that choice too.

The idea dizzied him. After an eternity in Ang'arta's dungeons, freedom was not just a word. It was bigger than that, and smaller. It was hot bread and cool wind and the shared joy of prayer in a cathedral, smoky incense swirling to the eaves. It was, if he was lucky, a smile and a touch he'd missed for too long. "But with a price."

"Of course," the Spider agreed serenely. "There is always a price. That hardly bears noting."

"What is yours?"

"What do you remember of Duradh Mal? Surely it must have been mentioned when you were in training at the Dome of the Sun."

It had, although Kelland remembered its history only vaguely. Six hundred years ago, Ang'arta had not been the only seat of Baozite power in the west. The fortress of Ang'duradh, nestled among the peaks of the Irontooth Mountains, was its twin and rival. Had the two strongholds been closer to each other, they might have fought the other more viciously than any outside foe; their god rewarded strength, and there was no worthier foe than his other dedicants.

But Ang'duradh had not been conquered by its western sibling. No one knew what had befallen it. The last known visitors to the fortress were a small band of pilgrims seeking refuge from an early snowstorm. The Baozites let them in for a handful of silver, as was their custom. After that, they closed their gates a and no more was known.

The Irontooths' passes froze in autumn and thawed in spring; months passed while the fortress lay locked behind walls of snow. That spring, a few desperate travelers knocked on the Baozites' doors for shelter, only to find silence at their gates and rotting corpses behind their walls. Not a single soldier survived. The mystery of their deaths had never been answered.

The ruins were named Duradh Mal: Duradh's Doom. They were reputed to be cursed, or haunted. Wise men and fools alike avoided that place. Since then old kingdoms had fallen, new kingdoms had risen, and six hundred years later, Duradh Mal was still no concern of his.

Kelland shrugged. "A long time ago, a Baozite fortress fell. No one knows why."

"And the town of Carden Vale sits below its ruins."

"What of it?"

"A curious coincidence. No more. For now." She laced her jeweled fingers together and rested them on her knee. "There is one other thing I wish to discuss with you before I go. Faith."

"I doubt we share much in that regard, lady."

"More than you might think. You serve your goddess faithfully, as I do mine. Without that devotion to guide it, your life would have no purpose. Yet you are tempted by love, as I was, and you do not know how to reconcile the two. Do you deny it?"

Behind his calm facade Kelland's temper began to burn. He reined it back firmly. It was no surprise that the Spider knew of his weakness; it was, after all, how her disciple had caught him in the woods. He'd let them manipulate him once. It would not happen again. "No."

"Good. Then I will tell you, and perhaps you will listen. Now, or when you are ready. I cannot, of course, force you to believe what is true." Her smile took a wry twist. "But you are crippled until you do. A divided heart is no proper vessel for the gods' power. So.

"We spend our lives in service to our gods, and yet we know so little of what they require. Oh, we know the simplest rules. Sunlight. Pain. But beyond that? Laws and oaths are handed down through the ages, and some of them truly must be observed, while others a others, I think, were invented by mortal men to enhance their own prestige, when the gods care nothing either way. And sometimes the intention is all that matters.

"If I tell a lie, knowingly, my magic fails. Honesty is required of us. It is not difficult to understand why: the truth cuts deeper than any lie, and if everyone knows that the Thorns are truthbound, no one can salve his suffering by pretending otherwise. What we say must be true. That is a holy order. But if I say something that is not true, while believing it to be so, nothing happens. Perfection is not required. Intentions matter."

"Your point?"

"Is very simple. Your oath of chastity is one where intentions make the difference. If the act is not a choice, there is no sin. Celestia does not withdraw her blessings if her servants are raped a to the chagrin of some of my lord's soldiers, who had hoped we might have found an easy solution there. And if the act is an expression of love, rather than baser desires, there is no impurity of the soul and, again, no loss of your Bright Lady's blessing."

"Bysshelios believed that," Kelland said grimly. The Bysshelline Heresy had nearly torn the Celestian faith in two before it was stamped out. The infighting had ended less than a century ago, and the rifts were not yet healed. Some of the villages in the remote reaches of the Cathilcarns still clung to Bysshelline beliefs.

"He was right."

"He was a heretic."

"Heresies seldom survive, much less spread, without some truth at their core."

Kelland shook his head. The cowrie shells braided into his hair clinked. "Pretty promises from a treacherous tongue. You will forgive me, lady, if I choose to believe the High Solaros over you when it comes to the strictures of my faith."

"As you like," the Spider murmured. "I cannot force you to believe. But I hope you will come to accept the truth soon, as you are useless until you do."

"I'm sorry to disappoint you."