WARNING WARNING WARNING: Really, really severe gore, violence, and torture in the last scene. I deliberately made it as sickening as I could. Please avoid this if you don't want to read it.

Chapter Twenty-Two: Face The Boy Across A Battlefield

"Come here, Indigena."

Indigena went there, her eyes now and then darting from her Lord to the man who crouched at his feet. As she had suspected, it was Lucius Malfoy. But he didn't seem to be bleeding yet, and Indigena had never known her Lord to be gentle about a sacrifice. She didn't know what was going to happen.

But she suspected it, and it was confirmed in the moment that the flesh-snake turned its red eyes to her, and her Lord's voice said, "Hurt him, Indigena."

She bowed, keeping her face still and perfect. That was easier than it might have been for anyone else, thanks to the contours of leaves beneath her face that would hold her muscles in any position she wanted them to—or change her face altogether, to that of Iris Raymonds. "Yes, my Lord. Shall I put him on my thorns?"

"That death takes too long, Indigena," said Voldemort. "I wish you to torture him here, in front of me."

Indigena took a deep breath, and then risked the one thing she could, chose the one path out of confinement. "No, my Lord."

And then the silence was as still and perfect as her face had been. Indigena locked her eyes on the far wall of the burrow and awaited her Lord's explosion. In the meantime, she studied the richness of the soil. Deep and dark, and it stayed where it was put. She regretted that she could not have planted a garden here. She could have reared flowers matched in fineness only by the ones in Thornhall itself.

"What did you say to me?"

What made it worse was the softness. If Indigena hadn't been listening for the tone of intense rage—and hadn't known it would be there anyway, whether or not she listened for it—she might have thought that Voldemort was asking her tenderly, gently, why she had failed to take up this task.

She glanced back at him, looking at his empty eye sockets, eaten by the poison of the Many cobras, and repeated, "No, my Lord."

Another pause of silence, and then Voldemort said, "You must explain this to me, Indigena. You know what will happen if you refuse me for too long." He nodded at Lucius, who remained motionless, though crouched in a position that must have been uncomfortable. "Your body will become mine, and your mind, to do with as I will. You bear the Dark Mark, and I can control you through that, should I choose."

"Yes, my Lord," Indigena acknowledged. She could not deny that. Her hatred of Feldspar would make a fine chain, should her Lord choose to employ it.

"Then explain why you are defying me."

And that was easy, though Indigena doubted Voldemort had meant to make it so. As she recovered from her failure on the Cornwall mission, and heard more and more about what had happened in the wake of the raid on Tullianum, her heart had firmed. She knew death waited at the end of this road, but she had accepted that she would die, in one way or another, ever since she took the Mark. At least she would die on her own two feet. And if her body continued to exist after that, she would still account it dead, because her free will would have perished.

"I am not one for torture alone," she said simply, eyes locked on Voldemort's. "I have not ever been. I did not mind torturing Evan Rosier, my Lord, because I could feed my thorns with his blood and flesh. And I have stood by while you tortured others, and never said a word. And I fed the truth to the Potters because it was the only way they might know justice before their deaths. But lingering pain without a second purpose has never been my choice."

"That does not matter, Indigena," Voldemort said, his voice dangerously flat. "I am asking you to make this choice."

"And it is one that I cannot make," said Indigena, even as she tried to fill her memory with the sound of shifting dirt and the crackling and creaking of a tendril as her rose unfolded around her wrist. "There are some things in me that clash too strongly with my definition of honor. I know that you can control me and make me do them, but in that case, I will not be the one doing them."

Voldemort was silent for a long moment. Then he said, "You came to my side because of honor, Indigena."

She nodded, and sniffed the scents of the soft perfumes drifting around her body, so that she would have their company in the darkness of her enslaved mind.

"I must hold you with honor." Voldemort's voice was softer than she had ever heard it. "You came to me when I was wounded, and aided me without compulsion from the Dark Mark. You have never considered going to Harry and betraying me. I know that. I know the furthest reaches of your mind, and I know that you do not fear my wrath now, because you have refined the fear from your soul." He was silent for long moments more, while Indigena blinked in astonishment. That almost sounded like compassion, and she knew her Lord did not feel compassion.

He does not, she thought, as she studied him and the slow way his hand caressed the flesh-snake. But he knows loyalty. He felt for Nagini, the snake that stayed with him for so many years prior to her death. If I had ever shown doubt in my allegiance to him, some temptation to run, then he would not recognize mine. But I never wavered, and so he recognizes that steadfastness.

"I will not force that sacrifice from you," Voldemort went on.

Indigena bowed, and breathed a bit more easily. It seemed that she would keep a scrap of her honor after all, even as she continued to run down into the darkness.

Voldemort looked down on the kneeling Lucius. "Of course, this does mean that we must find some other use for you," he said, and idly kicked out. Lucius fell over, unable to move, and lay there, his nose to the dirt, while Voldemort contemplated. Indigena thought the position amusing, and fitting for what he had become.

"Ah, yes, I know," said the Dark Lord suddenly, and his voice was a purr as he glanced at Lucius again. "Lucius."

"My Lord?" His words were partially muffled by the floor.

"You will go to Malfoy Manor, and stay there until you see signs of activity." The snake swayed and danced around Voldemort's waist. "I do believe that Harry will be using it as a safe house soon."

SSSSSSSSSSSSS

Draco closed his eyes and bowed his head.

He'd studied wards for the past several days to get to this point, so intently that he hadn't wanted to interrupt his study to go to the orphanage with Harry. He wished Harry well, of course, and he would want to be by his side in battle, but if he was ever to make a contribution to the war effort that didn't lie in Harry's shadow, he would have to do this, which only he could perform.

He could feel the wards around Malfoy Manor throbbing beneath his skin like a heartbeat, or a tumor, when he touched them. The chains tightened and grew thicker when pulled. Draco wasn't going to simply tug on them, though, as he would when raising the Manor's defenses against intruders. He was going to change their very nature, so that only certain people would be able to enter the Manor.

After much discussion with Thomas Rhangnara, Draco had finally chosen wards based on the intentions of the people entering the house. They had to either be completely neutral in the conflict against Voldemort or actively opposed to him. Compliance with either Voldemort or the Ministry would mean being bounced from the wards and unable to enter.

Harry might have been a bit unhappy about that, if he'd known all the details. Draco wasn't. There should be no one innocent caught up in the web. Children who were too young to understand the conflict would be accounted neutral. Members of families who preferred the Ministry to Harry might seek to undermine his war effort so that Juniper could succeed, and though they might deserve shelter, they would have to find it at some other place than Malfoy Manor.

Narcissa had expressed her disapproval in cool tones. Draco had listened to her as politely, and discounted the objections—politely, he hoped. It wasn't as though he would often be visiting the Manor, unless Harry moved there. He didn't have to live in the same house with Mudbloods and Muggles.

But now he had to change the wards.

He sank into deep silence; he sat in his and Harry's bedroom, and right now Harry was rather busy collecting those refugees from Hogwarts who would be going to safety in the Manor. The rest of the Slytherin House knew better than to come near their door, after a short but powerful talk that Draco had had with them the other day. The wards became the only thing that was real, twanging, glinting golden chains that stretched from his body into the distance.

Draco began to change them.

As Rhangnara had told him, he visualized each link changing, the gold that made them up right now bleeding away and being replaced with pewter, the color that Draco had chosen to represent wards based on the guests' intentions. It was hard, of course. The old wards were ancient and thick, and had hosted generations of Malfoys and those rare people they trusted. Most of all, Draco himself had been reared to think it was only right that his family have a place they could retreat from the world, and that the wards provided that place. Changing them involved going against his own convictions as well as the magic.

But along with the visualization and the spells Draco had cast before he began—spells to strengthen his concentration and his will—he had his own beliefs on the matter. He wanted to contribute to the war effort, in a way that only he could. He wanted to be able to make some use of the Manor, which otherwise would sit empty, since his mother had no intention of entering it until she reconciled with Lucius and Draco had no intention of leaving Harry's side. He knew the intense need that Harry's side had for secure, warded properties. He wanted to do something to make Harry proud of him, to show that he was moving on and leaving at least a few of his prejudices behind. Therefore, he would do this.

His new beliefs pushed at the old ones, and Draco felt the chains lessening bit by bit. It helped that he could think of gold as soft and malleable, likely to melt in the fires of his convictions. He knew each link, too, thanks to his status as heir of the Malfoy properties. Each one he saw as dimming in color and shifting in properties, and, little by little, reluctantly, they changed.

Then a flash of golden light enveloped him, and he felt another will shoving back against himself, as if a second Malfoy opposed his intent to change the wards.

Draco kept calm. Rhangnara had told him this might happen. Old houses quite often had some protection built into their wards, so that a rebellious child, a blood traitor, or someone who had managed to fool the wards into thinking he was of the family could not change or drop the defenses on a whim. This was a fragment of the spirit of an ancestor, come to test Draco's courage.

Draco answered with a flash of pewter light, and all the arrogance he could muster. I am Draco Malfoy, son of Lucius Malfoy and Narcissa Black, only heir of the line, accepted joining partner of the most powerful undeclared wizard in the British Isles and the only vates in the world. Who are you?

The voice hesitated, and Draco gained some ground, changing five golden links to gray before it could respond. Then it answered, It does not matter who I am. What matters is that you are degrading the wealth and pride of our heritage!

Draco laughed. You can't even remember, can you? Again the hesitation, and Draco pushed against the center of that strength, which seemed to hover in the air somewhere between the chains. You might not even be a Malfoy, but a wandering ghost caught and held by the wards, or some bastard child condemned here because you were no use to the family otherwise. At the least, you have no proud name to match mine.

Do you know what you are doing to this proud name? The voice was screeching now, and Draco imagined a tiny stamping figure like a house elf, because it amused him.

Of course I know, he said, and I know that as true Malfoy heir, the wards and the Manor are mine to do with as I like.

The voice snarled back at him, and then seemed to decide to use all its strength in shoving against him. But Draco was past the midpoint now, with the chains all around him changed to pewter and the colors rippling away from him, flowing down the wards to the horizon, melting the gold. He knew he was going to succeed.

Flash, and change, and spurt like a starburst, and then the voice wailed in indignity and went back to its place as a guardian. Draco blinked, and opened his eyes to what felt like a changed world—shards of glass grinding under his skin. He had been told to expect that, too, until the wards had time to get used to their new nature and the Manor to its changed status.

He didn't care. He had done it, and Harry would find out and look at him with love and pride, and Draco had enough love and pride in himself for any ten wizards even if Harry didn't.

He flopped back on their bed then, a small smile on his face, and slept for two hours.

SSSSSSSSSSSSS

Harry sighed. He had argued with Michael Rosier-Henlin for an hour, and if the boy didn't want to go with his mother and little sister to Malfoy Manor for safety, then he didn't have to go. Harry wished that someone would have, however, since none of his sworn companions had been enthusiastic about the idea of Michael staying with Harry and swearing another oath.

Instead of thinking about Michael, who currently stood behind him in Medusa's room with arms folded and looked ready for another fight, Harry turned to Medusa. "You have everything you need, Madam?" he asked gently.

Medusa nodded wanly. She had Eos wrapped close in her arms, and a small trunk floating behind her that contained the objects she'd managed to create or been given in Hogwarts. Though several people had tried to help her, Harry suspected she hadn't taken anything but those items she truly needed for her baby daughter. Medusa obviously didn't like charity.

"Then we may leave," said Harry, and escorted her down to the entrance hall, where the other refugees who would go to Malfoy Manor were waiting. Medusa buried her head in Eos's baby blanket and refused to look up. Eos was awake, Harry saw, but watching everything with large solemn eyes, absurdly quiet for a baby of five months old. Harry thought about making absurd faces to see if she would laugh—she was supposed to be his goddaughter, after all—but refrained, in the end. He didn't think Medusa would appreciate it.

Most of the other refugees straightened up the moment they saw him, and Harry nodded carefully to them. Thirty-five people, most of whom had fled to Hogwarts for safety immediately after the first vampire attack, or in the wake of the first attacks on Harry's allies. Ignifer and Honoria were among them, though Ignifer was going mostly as a bodyguard for the others, Harry thought, and Honoria because she would not be parted from Ignifer. She currently stood upright with the aid of a wooden leg, cheerfully refusing any more help, and making jokes about losing limbs that didn't seem to reassure the anxiously hovering Ignifer at all.

"We'll go out beyond the wards around Hogwarts to the edge of the Hogsmeade road, and Apparate," said Harry quietly, drawing their attention. "I know that I've shown Malfoy Manor to most of the adults, but does anyone else require a glimpse of it?"

Heads shook. Most of the party was tense and unsmiling, Harry saw—probably intimidated at the thought of venturing out beyond Hogwarts for the first time in a few months, even though they'd agreed to leave the school so as to be farther away from Harry in the case of a direct attack by Voldemort, and even though the transfer to the safehouse at Silver-Mirror had gone perfectly. Well, perhaps they did have something to worry about.

Harry stayed closed to Medusa and Eos as they left, but it wasn't long before Ignifer came up to him, bouncing her wand across her palm.

"Why isn't Malfoy accompanying us?" she asked.

It took Harry a moment to realize she was talking about Draco, and he smiled a little ruefully. "He still has his share of pride," he answered. "He has agreed to let strangers live in his home, but he would prefer not to watch as they possess it."

Ignifer grunted. Harry wondered if she was saying she could understand that. They walked a few feet further in silence, and then Ignifer said. "Do you think he will mind if I kill his father?"

Harry blinked twice, then glanced at her. "You know that Lucius is a slave to Voldemort, and did not—"

"He cut off Honoria's leg." Ignifer's voice was soft, and Harry might not have thought she was furious except for the curl of flame bubbling over the edge of her hair. "I want him dead."

"I can't let you kill him," said Harry.

"Even in the heat of battle?"

Harry was forced, sharply, to remember that Ignifer had, after all, Declared for Dark, and could presumably use subtlety and cunning when she wanted to. She acted enough like a Light witch most of the time that he could forget.

Instead of replying with the sharp tirade she probably expected, therefore, he said mildly, "Do you know, each time I think the lesson of misplaced vengeance is going to strike my allies, and yet it never seems to work? Bulstrode, Parkinson, Starrise, Snape—the list of those who have fallen victim to it is abnormally long. I suppose that I shouldn't be surprised to see another case beginning."

Ignifer's spine stiffened, and then she glanced away from him. "You have made your point," she murmured, so gently that Harry could hardly hear her. "But I still want Malfoy dead."

"I can understand that," said Harry, his heart beating harder with relief. "What I can't understand is giving up your duty to guard others—your duty to guard your partner, in fact—to chase misplaced vengeance."

Ignifer gave a curt nod. "You need not worry about that."

"Good." Harry squeezed her arm briefly, then lifted his head. They had passed the edge of Hogwarts's anti-Apparition wards. He raised his voice. "Now, concentrate on the image of Malfoy Manor, and Apparate."

He gently took Medusa's arm, although he knew she probably didn't need the help, and closed his eyes. The image of the blue-gray house he'd seen so many times showed clearly on the back of his eyelids, and he jumped.

There was a bright twitch of the world around him, several sharp cracks as people came into being, and then screams. Harry's eyes flew open, and he moved to put himself between Medusa and Eos and danger.

Lucius Malfoy was attacking from the left.

He didn't look at all like either the Lucius Harry had known or the Death Eater Harry had heard mentioned during the First War—thought that latter might have something to do with his lack of a cloak and a mask, Harry thought, finding humor, somehow, in the haze of his anger and shock. His hair flew around him, and his face was covered with dirt as if he had spent days lying in it. His wand shot spells without pause, so he must be doing them nonverbally. And almost all of them were pain curses. He hadn't raised a shield that Harry could see.

Almost certainly, Voldemort intended Lucius to die fighting Harry.

Harry heard Ignifer give a snarl, and snapped at her without turning around, even as he raised a Protego around the target of Lucius's first pain curses, a woman with three small children. "Get them into the Manor and stay with them, Ignifer!"

There came a moment shared between Lucius's deflected curses and Ignifer's silent struggle to obey. Harry knew he'd won both when Lucius had to duck and Ignifer spoke from behind him in a loud, deliberately calm voice, chivvying people towards the Manor's front door.

Lucius's eyes locked on Harry. Harry felt his heart ache with pity. They only held insanity on the surface. Someone else looked out of the bottom of them, and that person was begging for help.

"Fight me, Potter," Lucius whispered, and his wand struck out, with a curse Harry knew well—the Blood Whip.

Harry dropped the shield, which would explode in the face of that curse, and rolled smoothly on the ground. The curse shot over his head, and from the scream that followed, Harry knew it hadn't struck someone, that that was just a cry of fear; he knew the sounds of pain too well. He stood and concentrated on the image of Lucius standing motionless, while relaxing the barriers on his magic the way that Jing-Xi had taught him.

The air flooded with images of shadowy cats and snakes, and Lucius slowed down, his movements heavily weighted. Harry began to breathe a bit more easily. If he could hold Lucius still, it was possible he could recapture him, and hold him in one place until he managed to talk him out of the hatred Voldemort was still using to cage him. On no account would Harry kill him, not if he still had a choice.

"Do you remember me, Lucius?" he asked softly. "The man who made a truce-dance with you? The man who gave you the gift of Parseltongue, and received a link to the wards of Malfoy Manor in return? Your son's lover?" He took several steps forward, never removing his eyes from Lucius's. "You left behind a son and a wife who love you, who are willing to share their lives with you if you return. Isn't that better than what you have now, Lucius?"

Lucius squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head, though, given the weight of Harry's magic on him, it moved as slowly as though he were underwater. Harry could feel the strands of compulsion winding around him, originating from the Dark Mark on his left arm. If Voldemort possessed the ability to make Lucius go against him, Harry thought, it would come from that.

"You can do this," Harry whispered. "You can struggle. I know you can. I've fought enough times with you, you stubborn bastard." He made sure to lace his voice with affection. True insults might drive Lucius back into the arms of the Dark Lord. "I refuse to believe that you would give up simply because you're fighting Voldemort."

Slowly, Lucius's eyes opened. Harry looked into them, quietly, confidently. The insanity had dimmed. Something like sense was rising to the surface again.

"You can do this," Harry coaxed. "Narcissa misses you. Draco misses you. Isn't that worth more than all the hatreds you've held on to, the clever plans you wove that couldn't save you, the—"

Lucius's eyes moved past him, and towards the Manor. A moment later, a flood of vile, foreign magic filled the air around him, and Harry's hold snapped like leaves. Lucius snarled and lifted his wand again.

Harry knew Voldemort must have used the image of people who weren't Malfoys entering the Manor to fire Lucius's hatred. He moved, not to hurt Lucius but to raise a shield and then tug on the magic that flowed between him and Voldemort, wrapping it around himself and refusing to let more run down the tunnel. Voldemort was exerting an awful lot of effort to reach Lucius from this distance. If Harry could make that hard, he might give up his pawn rather than take a wound.

It didn't seem so, though, perhaps because Voldemort could also command Lucius to use his own magic. Lucius used a sharp green lightning bolt, which resembled some curses Harry had seen before but which he didn't actually know, and which turned out to explode shields. Harry found himself flat on his back, gasping, his control over his magic shattered and his cheek flayed open almost to the bone.

He lunged upright, reaching again for Lucius, this time envisioning the cloud cage that had contained Hawthorn, and which he would make proof against Apparition.

But Voldemort had learned his lesson about sacrificing pawns. Lucius Apparated out moments before the air around him turned thick and golden.

Harry cursed, slamming a fist against the ground to relieve the feeling. His magic turned the grass to molten glass. Harry blinked, shivered, and stood, cradling his hand against his side. He heard pounding footsteps behind him and turned, eyes scanning the ground for casualties. There was no one dead, but a blood trail led towards the door of the Manor.

Ignifer was running towards him, wand held high. She skidded to a stop at the sight of his bleeding cheek, her flames leaping around her like a wall. "He hurt you," she said. Her narrowed eyes traveled past him to lock on the place where Lucius had stood. "And escaped."

"What part of 'stay with them' did you not understand?" Harry asked. His chest was heaving, but his mind was perfectly clear. He had lost hold of Lucius, but he would most likely have other chances. His wound was minor, the least of his worries; it could have been so much worse. He frowned at Ignifer, who looked taken aback. "I told you to remain with the refugees in the Manor. You're the strongest witch among them. They need your protection."

"I…" Abashed, Ignifer looked away from him.

Satisfied that she had the point, Harry softened his voice. "I know. You saw me hurt. But sometimes that doesn't matter, Ignifer. Sometimes you need to make the hard choices, and my life is worth less than the lives of thirty-six people—thirty-seven, counting yourself. Do you understand?"

Ignifer nodded, though she didn't look happy about it. "Why do you think Malfoy was here?" she asked, changing the subject.

"Voldemort probably sent him for his knowledge of the territory, and to punish both me and him by making me face him in battle," said Harry, pushing aside the thought of what he would say to Narcissa and Draco when next he saw them. It hadn't been his fault that he lost Lucius; he had not known that Voldemort could force his captured Death Eaters to go against Harry's magic. In the future, he would know that. "I imagine that we'll see him again."

SSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Adalrico had been waiting.

He had felt something more than despair ever since Pharos Starrise had died whimpering over the sound of his own bones. The hatred that had condemned him to serve under the Dark Lord was ended. He could not look at the fingerbones hanging in the corner of the burrow room where he brewed his potions and feel his loathing towards the Starrise family with the same intensity as before.

Pharos has a brother…

But Tybalt Starrise had done nothing to him, and Adalrico most often ignored the voice in his head in favor of staring at the fingerbones again, and daydreaming about the day of the Tullianum raid.

Sometimes, now, in a corner of his mind so deep that he barely allowed himself to realize it existed, he dreamed of Millicent, and Marian, and Elfrida. He dreamed of them, and he dreamed, too, that he had been allowed to go back to them, somehow rescued and redeemed from his chains in the blackness.

But he had never thought seriously that he might have a chance like that—at least until Lucius Malfoy Apparated back from Malfoy Manor, and the full might of Voldemort's anger descended on him. As Adalrico knelt, eyes on the floor, in a corner of the throne room, he felt the chains on his own mind slip a little. Voldemort was intent on making Lucius pay, so intent that he wasn't keeping as tight a leash on his other recalled servants as he should.

Adalrico let his eyes track, inch by inch, over to Hawthorn Parkinson, but saw no twitch of movement from her. Then he remembered that she had other hatreds to chain her here. One of them, Indigena Yaxley, stood a few feet from her, arms folded as she watched the interplay between Lucius and Voldemort with a resigned expression. And Hawthorn was probably dreaming of killing Lucius herself.

Feldspar Yaxley was absent, but he would probably have been too cowardly to move even if he was here, Adalrico knew.

So this was his chance alone, should he choose to take it.

The screaming from Voldemort about Lucius's failure, mingled with the hissing of his snake, went on and on, and even a few of the other Death Eaters—minus Sylvan Yaxley, who was cycling into Oaken Yaxley just at that moment—began to shift uneasily. Adalrico knew they were thinking about the rage and hatred behind that screaming, and what might happen should Voldemort decide that Lucius was not enough of a target for him.

Adalrico knew that his own disappearance would increase those emotions in the Dark Lord, but he did not care. He couldn't do anything to save either Lucius or Hawthorn. He felt something like himself for the first time in months. He wanted to go back to his wife and daughters, and if Voldemort's hold on him lessened any more, then he was going to take the chance.

Voldemort leaned forward in his throne, the snake actually slithering off his lap to confront Lucius, and his hold lessened.

Adalrico took the chance.

He focused all his thoughts on the house at Blackstone, since it was the place he knew best, and certainly better than trying to Apparate to Hogwarts and being bounced from the wards. Once he was back in his house, he could raise the wards. He had designed the ward-destroying stones. He knew their weaknesses, and he could resist anyone trying to reach him. The hardest part would be fighting the call of the Dark Mark, but with his hatred held back, he could do even that.

Just one moment more, to let the library of Blackstone coalesce in his mind's eye.

And then Voldemort noticed him.

SSSSSSSSSSSS

Indigena lifted her head. Before, she had not felt that the atmosphere around her was truly dangerous. Her Lord would scream, and he would torture Lucius to death, but she had already expected that.

Now, though, silence filled the air like smoke from a fire, and Adalrico Bulstrode was making little, choked, helpless sounds, holding his head in his hands as Voldemort and his snake stared at him.

He tried to escape, Indigena realized, as she watched the others straighten. And our Lord sensed him.

She could almost feel the vast weight of Voldemort's anger swinging, centering now not on Lucius, who had only failed him, but on the man stupid enough to oppose him. Indigena took a moment to fortify herself, raising the same shields against compassion that she had during Severus Snape's torture in the Chamber of Secrets. She did not care for the torture, but she would not interfere. It was not her place.

"Indigena."

She clenched her fists, causing the thorny rose to try and worm its way into her hand so that it could spread the fingers, and looked up at her Lord. "Yes, my Lord?"

"I assume that your prohibition against torture extends to torturing Adalrico, as well?" The calm in Voldemort's voice made the statement worse.

Indigena nodded in silence. She was not sure that her Lord would actually give her a choice when he was this enraged, but she had to refuse the opportunity to torture no matter what.

"That does not matter," Voldemort whispered. "That does not matter. I am minded to try something that requires the sacrifice of a Death Eater—one who took the Mark willingly, one whose Mark my magic may circle through. Only the rarity of my servants until now kept me from trying it. And now that I have a servant I may sacrifice, and one versed in the necessary torture, there is no need to hold back any longer." His voice changed, to a whipcrack. "Oaken!"

"My Lord." Indigena's cousin rose to his feet, showing off the brown-bronze eyes and stern face of the quieter Yaxley twin.

"You have tortured people, I know," said Voldemort.

"One every month for the last ten years, yes, my Lord," said Oaken, without flinching or changing his expression. "Unwilling sacrifices are necessary to maintain our invulnerability."

"Then you will have no objection to taking this man and doing what I tell you to do with him." Voldemort pointed his finger, and the snake jerked its head, at Adalrico.

Oaken did not blink. "No, my Lord."

"Excellent." Voldemort stood from his throne and walked steadily forward, the snake gliding next to his heels to insure that he did not do so blindly. "Stretch him spread-eagle, then. Indigena, your vines are required to bind."

Adalrico made small, futile motions as if he wanted to struggle, but their Lord's control over him was too complete to let him do so. As she made vines sprout from the earth to tie him, Indigena felt a moment's stab of pity for him. And then it was gone back into the washing tide of horror, as she watched Oaken stride forward and crouch down over Adalrico, insuring that his limbs went where they needed to go.

When that was done, Oaken glanced up at Voldemort, who stood looking down at Adalrico as if he still had eyes.

"The Death Eaters swear an oath to me," Voldemort whispered. "That is the true secret of service, that oath. Do you consent to serve me all the days of your life? That created a bond that cannot be broken, and the Mark is the visible sign of it." He outlined the Dark Mark in the air above Adalrico's left arm, though he did not touch it. It was so quiet, save for his words, that Indigena could hear as well as feel her heartbeat. She felt the other Death Eaters leaning forward all along the wall, trying to guess what would happen next and how to avoid it themselves.

"Adalrico's time to serve me, alive, is done," said Voldemort, and then sank to the floor. "Oaken Yaxley, I desire you to make a Dark Mark of Adalrico Bulstrode, to see that his body imitates in shape what his arm bears. Do not touch his left arm, but warp every other part of him as you see fit. And make sure he stays alive and conscious."

"My Lord," said Oaken, and bowed, and began.

Indigena watched, both because she felt Adalrico was owed a witness to his demise and because she thought she knew what her Lord would do to her if she were to look away.

She saw Adalrico's belly opened, the intestines drawn out like braided ropes, twined around his body in the shape of the snake, running from shoulder to shoulder and arm to arm to form the sinuous curves. She saw his legs broken and reformed, the bones in them used to suggest the pattern of scales; Oaken spent a long time on that, as if the detail were important. She saw his head twisted to the side and then bent inwards to his chest. His torso would become the center of the skull, Indigena saw. His ribs were broken and extended through the skin to form the teeth of the skull. Large, bloody patches of overturned flesh made the eyes. Adalrico's right arm was obliterated, pieces of it used to carefully layer the dome of the skull.

And all the while, Adalrico screamed, until he could scream no more. What stopped him was not the exhaustion of his voice, but the placement of his mouth. Indigena saw a pair of lips opening and shutting somewhere in the center of the skull design, but Oaken—well, it was Sylvan by then—smoothed a hand over them, and they shut forever, so as not to disrupt the harmony of the design.

Soon it became impossible to think of what lay before them as Adalrico Bulstrode, or as human at all. It was a Dark Mark sculpted in skin, in bone, in flesh and organs and quivering meat.

And through it all, the left arm remained untouched, the Dark Mark uncovered, black and gleaming in the dim light of the burrow.

When it was done, Sylvan stood back and looked at the Dark Lord for further instructions. Indigena, breathing heavily against her own nausea, looked, too. Her Lord's eyes were not open, of course, but his snake-like, bone-white face conveyed his deep bliss in the twins' work.

"Now," said Voldemort, his voice barely above a whisper, "make a cut in my left side. Use your magic. It must go to my magical core."

Indigena had a faint inkling, then, of what her Lord intended to do. He could use the magic of his Death Eaters because of the Dark Marks. His power could run through the Marks in a vast circle instead of draining.

But she did not know, yet, whether she was right. So she was forced to watch as Sylvan cut a hole in her lord's left side, and dug deep, using magic to keep him alive all the while, aiming straight for the magical core. Indigena listened to the intently muttered spells with detached admiration. At some point, Sylvan—Oaken now—would need to cross the divide that separated the world of soul and spirit from the world of flesh and blood, and they were doing so even as they kept up the work of cutting. In their own way, they were true artists.

She thought that a moment before she vomited.

Her Lord did not seem to notice. Of course, he had not wavered since the cutting began, instead staring at the Dark Mark made of Adalrico, his face unchanging. And then he started, and Indigena knew that Oaken must have reached the magical core.

"Bring up his left arm," he whispered. "Press the Dark Mark to the hole in my core."

Oaken didn't hesitate, separating the left arm from the rest of Adalrico's body by a simple Cutting Charm, and then feeding it through the hole in Voldemort's left side, murmuring another spell that would let the limb cross that same divide between the world of spirit and flesh.

The world shook and quivered. Voldemort placed his right hand on the Mark made of flesh, and Indigena felt the moment—as a crawling in her left arm—when he began to draw up his magic.

The magic tried to drain out the hole in her Lord's magical core that Harry had cut with his variant of the Fisher King Curse—

And was stopped. The Dark Mark contained a piece of Voldemort, and the magic drained into Adalrico's Dark Mark, circled through it, and then circled back into the magical core itself.

At the same moment, Voldemort intoned, "Ebibo minutalem!"

The Dark Mark under Voldemort's hand, all that was left of Adalrico, softened and shook, and then writhed up and plastered itself around Voldemort like one of the fake masks Indigena had seen Muggles wearing for Halloween. It clung there for long moments until it abruptly all softened further and streamed into the cut in his left side. Sealed twice, Indigena thought, dazed, with the Dark Mark providing the immediate plug to the hole and the flesh shaped into a Dark Mark providing a second, symbolic plug on top of that.

And, since Adalrico had taken the Dark Mark of his own free will—as had every Death Eater, or Voldemort would not have accepted them—there was a good chance that this counted as a willing sacrifice.

The burrow flooded with magic. Indigena could not see. She could hear her Lord laughing, and smell her own vomit, and taste the heavy tang of blood, and feel soft musky fur pressing against her skin, but she could not see. The Dark Lord had arisen again, and he was cloaked in Darkness.

She did know that the magic raised in this burrow was beyond anything she had ever felt before, that Voldemort was the most powerful wizard she had ever encountered, and her knees bent without conscious volition, casting her down with humbled mind and bowed head.

Voldemort laughed, and laughed and laughed, and the Darkness went up like an unfolding flag to challenge the dominion of the Light, promising terror and torture and magic resurrected—the life of despair, the death of hope.