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the deaths of his half-mad sister and her twin, his own equally insane sire.
    Evidently that had not happened, however, for he had not been released, and he had heard vague rumors of the ship that would have delivered her being intercepted by her mother’s Powersmith kin. There were tales, too, of a massive battle waged between the Powersmiths and Finvarra’s folk, of Finvarra’s daughters taken hostage and Finvarra fleeing in the shape of an albatross, then turning his full wrath on Lugh and attacking both north and south, while a third force tried to intercept the Powersmiths en route home. This last had supposedly succeeded, but the Powersmiths had raised a shield of magical fire around their fleet which not even Finvarra could shatter.
    All this he had slowly found out the previous autumn. Winter had come then, and in previous years both the Tracks and seas of Faerie would have been impassable. That was before the Powersmiths had learnt how to build ships that could sail in any weather and promptly built a fleet of them for Finvarra—an action they doubtlessly regretted now, since he’d heard something about an impass: the Powersmith fleet besieged that same navy. As for Lugh and Arawn, who did not have the new, stronger, vessels, he supposed they had used the interim to muster forces and augment their fleets so that they could come to their ally’s aid, now that the Tracks were once more growing stronger with the approach of Midsummer.
    As for himself, he knew things Finvarra wanted also to know, and his un-loving uncle had spent most of the winter trying to discover those things.
    The torture was new. Before, the bonds were only to prevent his escape by distracting him enough to dampen his Power. But lately things had changed. At least—so far—he had resisted.
    They were coming now, he could feel the dull tread of heavy feet on the invisible stair that wound up from somewhere below. Closer and closer, and a door opened in the wall and two figures entered; squat, muscular manshapes not quite shoulder high on him, cleanshaven all over to better display skin that gleamed like waxy, dark-green leather where it was not covered by loincloths of short white fur and arm-and-leg bands and torques of polished silver. Djinn, Fionchadd knew, who could work with Iron—unlike his guardsmen, who were men of the Sidhe.
    No words passed between them as they approached. He tried, as he had tried a hundred times before, to summon Power to blast them, but it would not come; the pain had caused its flame to burn too low.
    Without dispatch, one of the djinn seized his left arm, spun him around to draw both wrists together, while his companion grasped Fionchadd’s legs, subduing their pointless thrashings with the skill of one long practiced, and with speed not even his Powersmith kin could have equaled.
    The rest he knew from grim experience: chains shortened until his limbs were drawn to the corners of the bed; his tunic racked up to his armpits, his breeches to his feet, then hair-fine needles of Iron deftly applied so that they wrought neither wounds nor bruises, but only tiny holes—and delicate, almost crystalline pain.
    “Tell ussss,” one demanded, in a sort of hissing whisper. “Tell ussss of the place you came from. Tell us of the land beyond the fiery waterssss.”
    “Finvarra would know thissss,” the other took up. “Tell ussss, and no more will we harm you.”
    But Fionchadd would not tell and was glad he had given away the torque that contained one of the seeing stones that would have told, had Finvarra got hold of it, and gladder yet he had destroyed its twin before his capture. Oh, he would not have known the Words that called the images showing all the ways of that other World Fionchadd had traversed in hopes of finding a way to safe-haven for his mother, but he had no doubt the Ard Rhi of Erenn would have eventually discovered them. Finvarra’s druids were mighty, and his own Power also, that of the Tuatha