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After Maertn's yelp, Quinn screamed. It was a genuine enough sound, and enough for Sammah to call off his hound. Quinn panted, hoping to make it look like she had just woken in shock, and looked around the room.

"Where am...what happened? Father...why did Elias try to kill me?"

Sammah, his face split with a smile, almost jumped towards her. Quinn! I thought he had for a time. I thought Maertn wasn't doing his work properly. It seems that you are simply just a bit more resilient than I first thought. No, no, Elias won't do that again, will you Elias?" \

The mercenary shook his head.

"See, see how sorry he is. No Quinn, you'll be fine, but you've been a naughty daughter, haven't you? You've been telling all of your friends who you are, and now they know what I am, and what I can do. So it may be the case that you're all going to have to die. Well. Most of you. Ross…” Sammah waved his arms around "he's already done. And your little plaything, I will kill him too if you don't do what I need. Him…” Sammah pointed at Maertn. "He is safe as long as he can heal you." Sammah walked over and grabbed Maertn roughly by the chin, shaking his head around. "But he's been very, very naughty and he's not allowed out of my sight again. I will definitely be doing something about that. After all, healers don't need to walk."

As Maertn opened his mouth to yell, Sammah jammed a cloth in it, muffling his screams. Sammah jumped over to Quinn and clamped his hand over her mouth and nose as Elias approached Maertn. He swung a smooth branch of oak as if it weighed nothing. Quinn couldn't watch. She closed her eyes and felt more than heard the impact of the club as it crumpled Maertn's legs. She reached out to him. She felt his pain; it was immense. Her own screams, restrained by Sammah, grew with it. She tried to draw them from him, take some of the pain. She felt Maertn ease; was she actually helping? She opened the channel wider, mentally spreading her arms to him. The pain of his legs flowed in to her, and Quinn knew that if she hadn't been sitting already, she would have fallen to the floor. In her mind, she felt Maertn's own collapse, and as he fell unconscious from the pain the connection between them dropped like a stone thrown in to a canyon. Sammah whispered in her ear, his voice dancing.

"I've told you before, Quinn. Do not defy me. I am not afraid to hurt you. I am not shackled by the barriers of love or caring."

Sammah released her and Quinn opened her eyes. Elias remained by Maertn, who was groaning on the floor. Sammah waved his hands around as he danced through the room. "He'll be fine. A bit of a limp. He'll never be a runner. Natural healers though, they do recover from things, ever so quickly Now Quinn, back to you. Because you—you are what this is all about. You know that now, don't you? You know that you're special to me. Do you know why?"

"Because I'm an empath. You've always told me that."

"Ah good, they hadn't told you any of it after all. I was afraid that had been a lie, and I had no way of telling without your special talents. No Quinn, you can be so much more than that. And today, we're going to find out if that is possible." Quinn's mind flashed back to the spirit on the beach; that she didn't have the right gift. Her hackles rose. "Remember how I told you that you'd never be able to read me? That was a lie, Quinn. You can read me, if you want to, you just have to really try."

"I remember how that felt, Sammah. No. You're right. I'm never going to be able to read you."

"You can, Quinn. Just try. Don't you want to try? You're so powerful, little girl, and you don't even know how much. Why don't you just try? Be brave, like your friend here. Look at what he's going through just to make you safe. Don't you want to make the most out of your powers, like Maertn does?"

Quinn shook her head. Maertn groaned. It sounded like a
no
, but she couldn't be sure. She reached to him, but he was hazy, his mind only giving her distress and pain.

"I don't want to feel pain like that again, Sammah."

He cocked his head to one side. "Okay, let's think of this a different way. You hate me right now. I can't understand how that feels, but I know the way that hate is meant to work. I have killed a friend of yours and I have crippled your best friend. That means you should hate me. You have the power to beat me, Quinn. You could start to read me. You could start telling if I am lying or not. Then you would be able to tell everyone, that yes you are the Satori, but no you are not a murderer. You could tell everyone, that you could tell the truth of me on trial."

"Why would they believe me over the word of a baron? How would they verify my truth over yours? It makes no sense. And why would you even want me to do that? No. It's a trick. You're deceiving me."

Sammah rolled his eyes. "Then let's do this the hardest way. Honestly Quinn, you do make things awkward for me." Sammah waved his hand and Elias drew his sword. He rolled Maertn over with one foot, and held the blade to his throat. "Read me, Quinn, or I will have Maertn killed."

48

It was a bluff. It had to be. Everything they had found out so far told them that Sammah needed both Quinn and Maertn. Was that a risk she was willing to take? No. Maertn's life was not hers to give. Quinn nodded her submission to Sammah. "Ah ah, not the normal way, Quinn. Put your hand on my arm, and read me."

Despite herself, Quinn hesitated, her hand halfway between the gap between her and the Baron. Sammah rolled up the sleeve of his silken shirt, exposing his hairless olive-skinned arm. He waggled it around, imploring her to hurry up.

"Elias, wake up the healer. I'll need him soon."

Quinn understood the implications of those words the same time she opened the thread up to Sammah. It was too late. That flow of energy was unstoppable, and when it reached her father, Quinn's eyes opened wide, her body lancing with the hottest agony she had ever felt in her life. She felt warmth stream from her eyes and nose, and she sensed it trickling down her ears. Her throat constricted, unable to cope with the pain. Her mind went white with heat and, inexplicably, Sammah began to glow.

49

"Bastards need to do more than that to kill me. Let me go. Come on. We need to... Sammah's apartments. We need to get to Sammah."

Shiver shrugged. "We'd already sent the militia to Sammah. He was sitting there quietly with his healer boy and his retinue. No problems there."

"Eden will tell you. Where's your lad?"

"We had to arrest him. He's in the gaol."

"What? He's your son!"

Ross tried to sit up and winced at the pain that lanced through his shoulder and across his collarbone. He collapsed back down to the bed.

"Sammah wouldn't let us release Maertn. Torran had a look at you instead. Can't do anything, he says. Just bruises. Nothing broken."

Ross set his jaw. "It feels like everything is broken. Why is Eden in the gaol?"

"We found him next to you, covered in blood, with two of Sammah's guardsmen dead. We haven't mentioned it yet to Sammah, being as he looked so damned calm when we went in to see him. We wanted to find out what happened from you, first. Now. What happened?"

"Sammah! Sammah happened. He's going to kill the king, Shiver, though you knew that anyway. Your son can help stop him. Just...just let him out, okay?"

"I can't do that, Ross."

"Look, you ignorant fool, no one but Sammah knows how deeply you're in the mire with him. I don't count, I'll promise you that I'll keep my mouth shut. If you help us now, all the plotting you've done will be ignored, do you hear? Vance cannot convict you for a crime you haven't done. So help me out of this bed before I do something I regret. And get your son out of the damn gaol!"

"You're sick, Ross. You must have been hit really hard. You need to rest. You're clearly mad with hysteria." Shiver waved someone over. Ross looked across to see one of Sammah's men looming over him. The man pinched his nose and poured a foul concoction down his throat. Ross choked, spluttering and trying to spit it out. It was useless, though. His choices were to swallow or to choke to death; he swallowed. The spiked tea worked quickly, Ross's eyes drooping and his voice losing its vigour.

"Eden...let him out...save...stop Sammah."

"No one is stopping Sammah, Ross. It's far too late."

With the chamberlain asleep, Shiver addressed the remaining men. "Now, will you please let him go?"

The three mercenaries all smiled to each other. The one that had drugged Ross held up two fingers to the others. Eden, held between them with his mouth gagged and his arms bound, struggled wildly. They were still in Ross's quarters. The guards that had first seen the murder scene were in the corner, limp and prone. Neither Eden nor Shiver was sure if they were dead, but they wouldn't be alive for long if Sammah wasn't stopped. The maid whose screaming had set everyone off was lying on the bed. She, too, had been drugged. Shiver had sent away the guards that had come running. Ross had fallen, he had told them, and Torran had been summoned to tend to him. The hysterical maid, petrified at seeing her master fall, had been dealt with. All plain answers to questions that weren't probed far. The men of Everfell were no longer used to dealing with violence, and they couldn't see a plot of treason even when one was waved under their nose. Sammah's men, however, were born for this kind of plot. They were carrying out their master's orders to the very word. Shiver knew which side was being weighed and found wanting, and it wasn't the contingent from Sha'sek.

Eden was pushed forward. The door to Ross's rooms was closed as two of the mercenaries left. One man alone stayed to guard them, leaving his weapons drawn. Eden stayed bound, and Shiver did not move to release his bonds. That would not have been a welcome gesture in the eyes of their captor. At that point, Shiver didn't care. He was alive, and so was his son. Everyone else could go and hang, as far as he was concerned.

50

Quinn looked around. She was back on the beach. The agony was gone, for now. But the light remained. She looked down. It wasn't coming from her this time. But there weren't any other spirits, and the mist had cleared. She looked at the ground. It was sand. All around her, just sand. No bones. She walked to the water's edge, and pushed in one toe. The water was warm and inviting. She started wading in, and was up to her shins before she felt a tug back.

"No. Don't go there."

She turned around at the familiar voice. It was Maertn.

"It's nice in here, Maertn. Come and join me."

"I can't go in there, Quinn. I'm not even meant to be here. You're not, either. Come on. Come back to me."

He held out his hand. She wanted to take it, even went to start wading towards the shore. Suddenly a chill wind rose up. She dropped to her knees in the sea, letting the water come up to her waist. "It's cold out there, Maertn. I prefer it in here. It's warm. Safe. Come and join me, you'll see."

She waved him forward, but Maertn stayed resolutely on the shore. "You're not meant to be going that way, Quinn. Please. Won't you just leave? It's not water. Come back to me."

"What do you mean? It's lovely in here. I..." Quinn looked down again at the liquid lapping against her body. She saw, then, why it was so warm. She was bathing in a sea of blood; viscous and never-ending, it was clinging to her skin, staining and tainting her. Quinn shot upright, and the vertigo that hit her. That, coupled with the freezing cold air, made her want to drop straight back underneath again, back in to the hugging warmth. Quinn knew though, what that meant, where she was. The Beach of Bones. The Bloody Shore. She had been here before, this close to death, and nearly denied a crossing to the Otherlands. Only the damned came to the Beach of Bones. Before, she had made her own way out. This time, Maertn had come to get her. Maertn was trying to heal her, and she was resisting him.

Resolute, she put one foot forwards, towards the shore. Her legs felt leaden, as if each one was weighted down by an anvil.

"That's it, Quinn, come on. You can do this. Come back to me!"

"I can't, Maertn." Quinn began to panic, and with realisation came tears of dread. "I don't want to die. Please, save me!"

"I can't come any further, Quinn. You have to save yourself. You have to want to come out of there. Please, Quinn, you must. Even if we can't stop Sammah, I can't live without you. Eden can't live without you. Come back to me. You have to do it, Quinn. I can't lose you here."

She moved another foot forward. Her other foot, however, stayed stubbornly where it was, no matter how much she pulled. It was stuck fast in the sand, and a rising wave splashed at her hips. "I can't do it, Maertn. I'm stuck. I just don't have the energy."

"Don't use your body Quinn. Use your mind. Use me! Use your ability. What you did to me, when Elias hurt my leg—do that—do it now!"

Quinn opened a thread to Maertn. She found within him a wall of resolute iron will, that she had never thought her sweet, fragile Maertn capable of possessing. But right now, he was in his element; he was a healer, and he had been skilled enough to make the journey here to save her, and only to save her. She grasped on to this, and using his willpower as a lever, again tried to move her foot. It began to wiggle free of the sand. She imagined kicking down at it, hammering away at whatever was holding her back, whatever was keeping her here; whatever being wanted her to die in this place.