Stones Unbound (The Magestone Chronicles Book 1) by Richard Innes Page A

down his chin from his split lip.  He looked up at the large man
looming over him.
    “You hit like a girl,” he responded.  This time the punch
broke his nose and sent tears tumbling from his eyes.  Blood now flowed freely down
his face and dripped from his chin.  A small, dark form was beside him then,
wiping up most of the blood with a wet cloth.  He thought he recognized the veklian
as the one who served him the meal earlier in the day, but his vision was
blurry and his head spinning.  “Okay... maybe not a girl... more like a barmaid
swinging a wet rag.”  Hoyle braced himself for another blow, but nothing came
immediately.
    Suddenly, a booming laugh burst from the larger man,
startling the guards at the door.  “I must admit,” Robart said as he finished
his laugh, “you do have a backbone... and grit.”
    “I’m glad you’re impressed,” he replied, spitting out blood
into the rag the veklian held beside him.  “That was always my goal all along –
impress the torturer...”
    “I prefer to refer to myself as an artist,” came the
response from behind him.  Robart stepped quickly in front of him and with a
swift motion drove a dagger down and into the meat of his thigh.  Hoyle gritted
his teeth as the immense pain swept through his body.  The blade was in to the
hilt, so the tip must be through and out the bottom of his leg.  He could hear
more blood dripping on the floor.  Robart leaned in front of him, staring into
his eyes, and asked for about the eighth time in the last day, “What did you
find for them?”
    Hoyle stayed silent, more because he was starting to fade
again due to blood loss this time more than the pain.  Robart glared at the veklian,
and the creature retreated to somewhere behind Hoyle.  Hoyle's head started to
droop as his vision started to tunnel.  He saw Robart motion out of the corner
of his eye, and then he heard the soft voice of the priestess.
    “Be still,” she said as her hands touched both sides of
Hoyle’s head.  “I cannot heal him with the knife still in his leg,” she
chastised his torturer.  A sudden tug at the blade in his leg, and Hoyle lost
consciousness.  For at least the fifth time in two days.  Not that he was
counting...

Chapter 10
     
    It was the second full day of petitioner duty, mid-afternoon,
when Celia looked up to see that the line was done.  She sighed, stood and
raised her arms above her head and stretched her back.  She felt several pops
up her back as things realigned.  The only thing she hated more than the
helplessness she felt being unable to help most of the petitioners, was the
hard wooden chair she had to sit in all day, with only a short break for lunch
as a repreive.
    Zazaril had assigned it as a punishment, but she felt it was
more of a duty, which is the only thing that had gotten her through the last
two days.  As it was, she had had a hard time focusing, her mind wandering back
to the feelings of the trace spell she had cast on Salrissa.  She had spent the
first half of the day before in the southwest quarter of the city, the trade
quarter, at the Red Rooster Inn, Celia assumed.  After that she had moved
around the far side of the city until well after dark.  The first time she
‘jumped’, it caught Celia off guard, causing her to spill her tea on the tome
she had found in the library.  One moment Salrissa was in the southwest, the
next she was in the southeast.
    That must have been how she had gotten them out of the guild
tower, but Celia was still not sure what it was Salrissa had done.  She had
‘jumped’ again several times that night, seemingly stepping from one end of
Tala’ahar to the other in an instant.  Celia still shuddered at the memory of
what that trip had done to her body.  She was not eager to repeat that event
anytime soon.
    This afternoon, she was still in the southwest quarter of
the city, most likely the trade quarter.  It seemed she was more active at
night, and Celia understood