The Captive Read Online Free PDF Page B

back. Damn her! Damn them all!
    The earth was hard and unyielding. The punishment had left
him feeling weak and a little light-headed. He cursed viciously under his
breath, his pride in shreds. It was humiliating enough to be a slave without
having her stand there, watching him writhing in agony in the dirt, helpless as
a worm squirming on a hot rock.
    Why the hell didn’t she go back into the house where she
belonged? Time and again, he thrust the shovel into the earth, wishing the tool
was a weapon, wishing that it was Drade at his feet. At last, he exposed the
tree’s roots. He was panting heavily now, plagued by a relentless thirst.
    Dain picked up his communicator and called the mine office.
“Dagan? I need a couple of men up here to haul this tree away.” He paused a
moment, his gaze never leaving the prisoner. “Right. We’ll be there in a few
minutes. Out.”
    With a mocking grin, Dain touched the left side of the
controller, activating the magnets within the heavy lynaziam shackles on
the prisoner’s wrists. The bands snapped together with a sharp click.
    “Let’s go,” Dain said, jerking his head toward the path.
“The hole awaits.”
    Eyes forward, Falkon started down the path that led to the
mine compound. He refused to look at the girl, but he could feel her gaze on
his back, knew she was watching him with those enormous green eyes.
    He cursed her all the way down the hill.
    * * * * *
    Solitary confinement. Falkon squatted in a corner of the
hole, his head resting against the damp dirt wall at his back, his eyes closed.
He had thought his cell the worst kind of prison, but he had been wrong. This
was worse. Much worse.
    It was a hole he had dug himself. A rough square, four feet
wide, four feet deep. They had stripped him of his boots and breeches and
ordered him inside, then covered the hole with a canopy made of thick
ebonywood. A narrow slit in one corner allowed him just enough air to breathe.
The earth beneath his feet was damp and cold.
    It was like being buried alive.
    They opened the hole once each day, just long enough to pass
him a loaf of dark brown bread, a bowl of weak broth, and a cup of sour wine,
and then he was left with his own company again, his own dismal thoughts.
    By the end of the first week, he could scarcely tolerate his
own stink. The air in the hole reeked of excrement and sweat.
    During the day, he spent hours staring at the narrow ribbon
of light that filtered through the slit in the wood. The sun pounding down on
the thick black wood turned the hole into an oven. Sweat dripped down his body
to puddle at his feet. The collar and manacles chafed his skin. At night, he
huddled into a corner, his body shivering convulsively in an effort to warm
itself.
    The close confines of the hole pressed in on him. He stared
into the darkness that surrounded him, his hatred for the overseers, for the
mine owners, for Drade, growing until he thought he might choke on it.
    In his imagination, he killed them all over and over again,
devising new methods of torture, of execution. His favorite was to put them in
the hole he now occupied and leave them to rot. All of them. The overseers. The
couple who owned the mine, who now owned him, body and soul. Their servants.
Their daughter, with her long silver-blonde hair and eyes as green as the
oceans of Daccar. Ashlynne.
    He muttered an oath, and then he swore aloud, unleashing a
long string of the most foul profanity he knew.
     
    They let him out of the hole for ten minutes each week so he
could remove the pile of excrement from the corner. But he could not remove the
stink. Not from the earth that surrounded him on all sides. Not from his skin.
    It was humiliating, degrading, to be forced to squat in that
fetid hole like some sort of dung beast, blind and dumb and helpless. He prayed
for his freedom, for a weapon, for vengeance. Always for vengeance. And the
hatred grew within him, taking root deep in his heart, choking the life from
his