The Spell of Undoing by Paul Collins Page A

snarled, ‘Answer when spoken to, not before.’
    Kull smiled. ‘I believe you returned to the slaughterhouse, found the icefire, and hid it. My advisers suspect that you then used it to hurl Tolrush into this,’ – he spat fiercely – ‘this demon-riddled hell! So I ask you once more. Where is it?’
    ‘I don't have it.’
    ‘Brand her. We shall see if she knows more than she's telling.’

    Tab woke screaming.
    She clutched her left hand to her chest, but no matter how hard she pressed, the pain wouldn't go away. Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to unclench her fingers. Pain seared through her arm, and made her gasp. When she could see again, she stared at her hand. The palm was ruptured and blackened like charcoaled meat. Crying, she dipped it in a pail of water …
    … and fainted from the excruciating pain.
    Dreams came to her. The branding was just one part of the torture. They had flogged her, hung her upside down from a high beam by her feet and tried to drown her by shoving her head repeatedly into a barrel of ice-cold water. The torture had gone on for hours. As she slept she jerked and cried out, cringing away from unseen horrors.
    Tab woke hours later. She was no longer in her own cell. She raised her head. She now shared the cell with the boy she'd seen when she had first woken to find herself in this hellhole. Two swarthy-looking men sat slumped in the cell she had previously occupied.
    Her mind, still groggy from pain, became more alert then. She forced herself to sit up. The boy's bunk was hard against the other wall, barely an arm's reach away.
    Tab knelt by the other bunk. Very gently, she shook the boy's shoulder, aware of how stick-thin his arm was. The boy suddenly recoiled in horror, kicking and screaming. His foot caught Tab on the jaw and knocked her backwards. The boy scrabbled as far away as he could, whimpering.
    Tab rubbed her jaw and got back on her knees. She could see the terrified boy watching her from a gap in the blanket.
    Ruefully she said, ‘You've got a kick like a mule, did you know that? Owww!’ She tried moving her jaw from side to side. It hurt, but nothing seemed broken. ‘How many guards have you brained by now?’
    The boy said nothing, but his tiny whimpers had stopped. He continued to gaze at her with enormous brown eyes.
    ‘My name's Tab. I'm from Quentaris.’
    Nothing.
    ‘They kidnapped me and brought me here – last night, I think.’ Nothing.
    ‘I'm an orphan. Grew up in Mrs Figgin's orphanage. She was horrible. An old bat. Actually, bats are all right. She was more like an old she-dragon … Well, some of the time. She could be really gentle on her better days.’
    The boy did not answer, nor did he look away.
    ‘You know, I'm a prisoner here too,’ said Tab, trying not to sound exasperated. She realised one of the boy's legs was poking from the blanket. His shin was painfully skinny and a large seeping sore was crawling with flies.
    Tab wrinkled her nose. ‘Oh, what have they done to you?’ She blinked back tears and stretched out a trembling hand to move the blanket so she could see the wound better, but fretting, the boy jerked his leg away. He was crying now, silently.

    Tab reached for his hand. The boy cried out like a frightened animal and covered his head with his arms, cringing away from her.
    Tab froze, her arm in mid-air. Slowly, she drew it back.
    Softly then, she continued talking about her life growing up as a Dung Brigader, not ever having known her parents; she talked about Quentaris and what it was like and how much she loved it, even though she herself had not been born there, but had stumbled from a rift cave one day, an articulate four-year-old who knew her own name but little else; she talked about meeting Fontagu and the Spell and the great Rupture, and how her life had changed for the better; and in an even lower whisper she told the boy how she had discovered her ability to mind-meld. ‘Somehow the magic in me was awakened by