Urzed’s smile broadened and became much crueller, more avaricious. Perhaps it was those broken teeth. “You are awake at last,” he said. “I hope my people did not cause you any lasting hurts?”
Jessa refused to answer, doing her best to glower back at him. Much to her annoyance, it was she who broke the unnerving eye contact. She bit her lip.
“I see you have already discovered you were not tied up,” he said. She tried to look unsurprised when she realised it was true; she had been so full of her plans to escape, she’d missed such a basic fact after coming to on that smelly, makeshift bed. She was about to question Urzed further when Sarnd groaned, and she dashed over to kneel by his side. His eyelids fluttered and opened.
“You had better not have harmed him! He needs water,” she demanded, turning to glare at Urzed. Looking rather amused, the Enjeb leader moved away. She cared little whether he was obeying her order, as long as he was somewhere else.
“Sarnd!” she whispered when they were alone, “Are you all right?”
Her brother rubbed his head. “Yes, I think so. Just a bad headache! How are you?”
“Much the same... Sarnd, I’m so sorry, this was all my idea and you were right, it’s a terrible one.”
“Where are we? I recognise nothing about this place.”
“I don’t know. Listen, I’m not sure what he wants, but Urzed—”
Fissures! Saying his name was apparently enough to summon him. He held a lit torch, and the knife was gone, replaced by a leather flask which he held out to them. Jessa hesitated, but there had been no poison in the water that night in the Enjeb camp. Besides, if Urzed intended to harm or kill them, he’d already had plenty of opportunities.
Urzed placed his torch in a niche on the wall and watched while she helped Sarnd to sit up. They both took time soothing their parched throats, while Jessa’s eyes darted around the room, looking for anything that might give them an advantage, or a way out. Her gaze kept returning to the Enjeb leader. His scars made his face unreadable, and Jessa gave up trying to work out what he was thinking. If only there was a chair somewhere in this place, so he would stop looming over them.
At least her brother was talking, and rational. That mark on his head was blood after all, but it seemed to be just a shallow cut. She used a little of the water to clean it up.
Feeling calmer now, she turned to Urzed. “Where are we?”
“We are at Creonze. Does it not look familiar to you?”
They both shook their heads. It was strange he asked that; he must realise nobody from Naerun ever came anywhere near the place.
The name alone was enough to send a renewed bolt of fear through her. As if being in the clutches of her family’s arch-enemy was not enough, they were also in the fortress of Creonze, a place with a sinister reputation where evil powers gathered. And they were at least twenty miles from Naerun, which made the possibility of rescue more remote than before.
Jessa was inadequate for the task of coming up with a plan to get them out of this mess, and a look at Sarnd’s ashen face told her he would be of little help. She was both annoyed with him, and filled with an urge to promise she’d look after him.
As if she was in a position to look after herself.
Mostly, she felt hot anger rise up within her. It was directed towards Urzed for deciding he wanted them in particular when neither of them had done anything to hurt him, and for his decision to drag them to this cold and perilous place. She was infused with the urge to punch him in the face, but that would get them into worse trouble than they were in already.
The Enjeb leader looked a bit disappointed by their reactions to his revelation, but he shrugged and said, “No matter. I will explain why I have brought you here, and you will understand. I started my life as nothing, little better than a slave. Like you.”
“Us? But we’re—”
“Are you not?” He looked surprised.
Jessa shook her head, wondering what on earth was going on inside his mind. Did he have them confused with someone else entirely?
“We all begin as slaves, whether we realise it or no,” said Urzed. “My master was also my uncle, the lazy and stupid ruler of our great raimi. Like many before him, he was content to waste his years eating and becoming fat, only rising when he was forced to defend our territory from a raid by one of our neighbours. He did not care about the glories that should rightfully be ours.
“I was too young when my mother died to rule over the raimi, but I knew he occupied my rightful place. When I spoke out to my people about our heritage, the destiny that should belong to us, he ground me down, humiliated me, isolated me from the few friends I had. Eventually, he forced me to beg for scraps of food in exchange for performing the most demeaning of tasks.”
Jessa’s mind flew to the image of that wretched woman in the Enjeb campsite. Had she been the target of Urzed’s warped desire to avenge his miserable childhood?
The man’s gaze mesmerised her, even when it was turned on Sarnd. Her brother swallowed as he wiped trembling hands on his trousers. Urzed turned away from them as he continued, and Jessa could breathe again.
“You, however, do not know who your masters are. You believe you are free.” He appeared to be sneering, though with his scarring it was hard to be sure. “Shall I tell you what you are imprisoned by, blinded by?”
She nodded, because her mind failed to come up with any other response.
“Rules, laws, and your own lack of awareness that they need bind you no more.”
Jessa had begun to hope Urzed would at last reveal some information she could work with, to get herself and Sarnd out of his clutches. Now she realised he was just following the illogical contours of his own mind.
“I cast off my slavery, and am now the master. And I can help you truly free yourselves.”
She had a strong urge to argue with him, to tell him he was being ridiculous. To reveal she and Sarnd were far from the custodians Urzed believed them to be. She managed to hold it back.
“Once I attained maturity,” Urzed said, oblivious to her inner struggle, “I heard a voice calling to me from afar, promising I could rule over the Enjeb if I opened myself to power. It was the Orufasu—the Serpentstone in your inadequate language.”
Jessa’s mind flew back to all the dreadful tales she’d heard and read about the Serpentstone, what it was said to be able to do. Most of them seemed unbelievable, and yet here was someone telling her it had spoken to him!
“Come to me.”
She looked at Sarnd, but his lips were clamped shut. And she was fairly sure it wasn’t Urzed who had spoken either. Jessa shook her head. This is the absolute worst time to start hallucinating. Keep your wits together!
“I had nothing to lose,” Urzed went on, “and if it led to my death, it would have been a release. I obeyed, and was rewarded by the ecstasy of the Orufasu’s sweet fire. I will not forget the face of my uncle as he burned.” Urzed’s laugh was one of the most malicious she’d ever heard.
She could only stare at him, this madman with his terrible disfigurements from fire, laughing about his uncle dying in flames.
“I crushed the despised Enjeb like a desert-beetle under my heel, and forged a force of warriors capable of victory over all that stood in my way. We slaughtered and captured as I willed. But this pleasure was merely a distraction on the way to my true goal.”
“And what is that?” she asked, unsuccessful at keeping all the sarcasm out of her voice.
“Jessa!” Sarnd hissed. “What are you doing?”
Urzed arched the scars where his eyebrows had once been. “Together, nothing can stop us. You can rule the world from my side.”