Présentation de l'éditeur
In this relentlessly gripping thriller, Compton Crook Award winner Tamara Siler Jones weaves together her unique blend of fantasy, forensics, and suspense to create a world terrorized by a killer out of our darkest nightmares. Now one man must follow a trail of savaged victims to save an innocent life hanging by the slimmest of hopes. . . .
One by one, young men in the kingdom’s outer reaches are vanishing into the dark. So far, two bodies have washed up on the local riverbank. But Dubric Byerly, head of security at Castle Faldorrah, soon realizes there are countless more victims . . . for it’s his curse to be forever haunted by the ghosts of those whose deaths demand justice.
The latest to vanish is Braoin, a seventeen-year-old painter whose mother came to Dubric’s aid when he most needed it. All Dubric knows is that the boy is still alive. But time is running out, and it isn’t only Braoin’s life hanging in the balance. If Dubric can’t untangle the twisted web of clues and lies and find his way to the killer, one of his own pages will be the next to die. . . .
Extrait
Chapter 1
Braoin saw strings.
They streamed from somewhere above, dangling before his eyes. Black and shining in reflected firelight, they rustled in the slightest breeze and hung before him, just out of reach.
Not that he could move his hands to try to touch them. He felt like immovable sludge, thick and heavy and still. He lay on his belly, his head balanced upright on his chin, his muscles lax and uncooperative. He blinked and time strung away from him, fading to a dark river.
When he dragged his eyes open again the black strings had disappeared and his view had changed.
His head rested on its side and he stared at his right hand--at least it looked like his right hand, with paint on his knuckles as he remembered, but it lay slumped on a board like a dead slab of meat. Beyond it he saw only shifting darkness. He took a breath, determined to stay awake, and tried to move his fingers. One finger, the smallest, twitched, but the rest remained still.
Goddess, I've never been this drunk, he thought, letting his eyes fall closed again as he tried to think. He remembered eating supper with his aunt's family, but he'd had to leave before sunset, had to get home early because . . .
The dark! His eyes blinked open. His paint-stained right hand and his bare wrist and forearm lay still; there was no reaction when he tried again to move his fingers. He could not lift his head nor move his legs, which hung free beneath his hips. His nude upper body lay chest-down on a hard, scratchy surface, his arms were bare, and his back and shoulders felt cold. Braoin could tell from the breeze on his toes and testicles that he no longer wore his boots, or his pants.
No, no, no! Desperate to move, he forced a twitch through his dead fingers. A spasm gripped his hand, flipping it off the board like a fish out of a bucket.
"Waking, eh," a man's voice whispered from the dark. "Was afeared of that. Quit yer kicking if ye know what's good for ye."
"Let me go, please," Braoin said, his tongue thick. It sounded like "Eh ee ogh, eeh."
A sigh. "Talking ain't gonna make it no better." Fingers gripped Braoin's left ankle, then pain sliced around it, holding it fast, as the man tied him tight.
Braoin pleaded in nonsense syllables while the man moved on to fasten his right foot.
"Shh. He's coming."
Something moved far behind Braoin, something big and lumbering. "Don't talk to it," a second voice said with a low, threatening growl.
A mumbled apology, then Braoin heard steps hurry away.
He heard nothing for a long time, nothing but the rhythmic rush of blood in his ears. Try as he might, he could not move, and he saw only a long length of board leading into the dark.
A thick-bellied man in black robes walked into Braoin's line of sight. He reached down and lifted Braoin's escaped hand, slamming it on the board.
Braoin swallowed and tried to plead, but
