Chapter 9

The sun was low in the sky as the two men approached the island. The rays of the bright sun nearly had them blinded so that they were almost on top of the captor's ship before they knew it. Luckily, nearly all of the crew was either below deck sleeping or on shore and did not notice the two interlopers.

"We should find a spot to land around that bluff to keep from being noticed," Gwydion said.

Achmed nodded and they rounded the bluff without being spotted. Achmed had been completely silent for the last hour. He had been straining to hear any sound of the missing heartbeat that he had followed most of the way to where the two hunters now found themselves. Now, he was sure that he might be getting faint wisps of vibrations in this tumult of waves that pounded his senses.

As they dragged the boat on shore and hid it behind a screen of branches, the king now was able to hear that heart clearly. She was defiantly on the island and not still on the ship as they had feared. But her heart was racing; something was happening that he did not want to comprehend. Yet, he knew that they must know what was happening and what the circumstances were.

"We have to get closer to them and have a look at what is happening. I am able to tell that they are just on shore, by their ship," Achmed told his companion in a very distant tone. He was preparing to take a quick look into what was happening before they approached. He knew that he had not been able to use his path lore to find Rhapsody since he first witnessed her abduction, but he hoped that the captor felt that the island was safe enough to take down the barriers that had blocked the king.

Kneeling on the ground, Achmed removed his right glove and placed his bare hand gently on the sand. Focusing on the heartbeat, he gathered himself and let his sight fly briefly across the space between him and Rhapsody. In a second he was focused on the scene that was unfolding around her. It was horrible, whips and various nasty looking iron instruments littered the sand. A fire was burning hotly and he watched as an iron poker was removed from the flames. The man who carried this poker was definitely the source to the foul vibrations that Achmed had felt outside of Avanderre.

Forcing himself to look away from this man, he looked towards the being that was object of the foul man's attention. At first, he had no recognition of this person tied to a wooden stake firmly planted in the ground. Then he caught sight of the hair and realized in horror that this was the Lady Cymrian, his dearest friend, Rhapsody.

She was riddled with angry, red, welling lines and had multiple burn blisters up and down her arms and one on her cheek. But, even as he looked at her and was stricken by the wounds inflicted on her, he knew that this torture was only beginning. The marks were nothing of much consequence. Though they must be terribly painful, it was nothing life threatening and most of the lashes were barely deep enough to leave permanent scars. This man, if that is what you could call him, was just getting warmed up. No doubt he just wanted to get her to realize different levels of pain. His real instruments would be lack of food and water. Though Achmed knew that Rhapsody had probably had neither of these things in abundance since her capture; he could tell that she was still not terribly dehydrated or malnourished yet.

Well now that Achmed had seen what the situation was like he decided it would do no good to have Gwydion catching sight of Rhapsody like that. He may rush in to save the day right then and that could be disastrous.

"On second thought, we should stay here for another hour. The sun will be nearly set by then and it will be easier to travel across the island undetected," he stated as he came out of his trance. Gwydion merely looked at his partner for a moment while trying to gage what the king was feeling and thinking. Getting nothing from him, Gwydion simply sat down and pulled out the canteen to have a drink.

"Be careful with that," the Dhracian warned sharply. "I'm sure that Rhapsody will need that more than us when we get her." With that, he melted in to the forest of the island, leaving Gwydion alone on the deserted beach.

There the duke sat, pondering what was to happen in the next few hours. The two of them were obviously outnumbered by at least ten to one. What could the two of them possibly accomplish here other than to give the captors two more prisoners? Or, what was more likely, give them two corpses.

Gwydion followed this train of thought for a while until he realized that the sun had sunk to nearly completely below the horizon. It was past time for them to set out to the other camp, but Achmed had not returned. The duke began to get worried. What if the king had been scouting, which is what Gwydion knew to be the cause of his absence, and had been captured as well? What could he, one person, do then?

As he paced up and down the small beach worrying about what might have happened to his companion, Achmed crepted up behind the duke nearly causing him to jump out of his skin when the Dhracian's gloved hand came to rest on the duke's shoulder.

"Calm down. I was just waiting till the men went back onto the ship for the night. There are only two left on the beach to guard her, this should be a lot easier than we thought."

"They left Rhapsody on the beach? I don't understand, what are they doing with her?"

"They are trying to get some kind of information from her. That is all that I can tell. Now please, make no moves until I have taken the guards out. Once they are taken care of, then you can go in and get her and bring her directly back here. I'll follow a ways behind to make sure that no alarms have been raised. You got it?"

"Yes."

"Good, let's go."