“Give them a brief rest,” she rapped. “The wind should rise soon.”
Her eyes swung to Carse and Boghaz. “And, Scyld, I’ll see those two again now.”
Carse watched Scyld cross the deck and come down the ladder. He felt a sick apprehension.
He did not want to go up to that cabin again. He did not want to see again that door with its mocking crack nor smell that sickly evil smell.
But he and Boghaz were again unshackled and herded aft, and there was nothing he could do.
The door swung shut behind them. Scyld, Ywain behind the carved table, the sword of Rhiannon gleaming before her. The tainted air and the low door of the bulkhead, not quite closed—not quite.
Ywain spoke. “You’ve had the first taste of what I can do to you. Do you want the second? Or will you tell me the location of Rhiannon’s Tomb and what you found there?”
Carse answered tonelessly. “I told you before that I don’t know.”
He was not looking at Ywain. That inner door fascinated him, held his gaze. Somewhere, far at the back of his mind, something stirred and woke. A prescience, a hate, a horror that he could not understand.
But he understood well enough that this was the climax, the end. A deep shudder ran through him, an involuntary tightening of nerves.