The Spectre Cycle

Chapter ten

Chapter tenI, Dray Prescot, Vovedeer, Lord of Strombor and Krozair of Zy, knew exactly where I was. By Krun, did I not! That conniving shint Ahrinye had callously dumped me down in Schan, homeland of the Shanks.

He’d threatened to do this before. On that occasion Zena Iztar had prevented it. As far as I knew no one who’d ventured to Schan on the other side of the world from Paz had ever returned.

So I lay face down staring appalled on that appalling scene in the quarry below. For all I knew the story of the declining king and the little slave shishi, Ismelda, was a complete fabrication designed to make me think there was a purpose to sending me to Schan.

If Ismelda was indeed down there eternally climbing the treadmill, or wheeling the ore to the crushing hammers or feeding the furnaces