Someone was whispering and hissing at him, but Corvan ignored them. He had to go back to the dream chamber and Kate. The way his body had appeared in the chamber had terrified him. The gatekeeper’s medication was doing something strange. He needed Kate or someone to come help him to get out of the prison cell.

  The voice outside his cell grew louder and more desperate "Sir. Please wake up. The guard will be back shortly."

  "Tsarek?" Corvan peered through the slits in his mask at the lizard's long nose pushing in between the vertical bars. "How did you get in here?"

  "No time for explaining. You must not drink any more of the liquid they bring you," Tsarek whispered. “If you drink any more you will always need it to stay alive. That bad man will control you.” Tsarek stepped away from the bars to glance around the corner of the passage leading back to the treatment area. “This is how they turn men into the Rakash. You have to . . ." Tsarek jumped back to the cell and crammed his face between the bars. "The guard is returning,” he hissed. “Do not drink his medicine. Wait until he is gone and pour it on the floor with the other waste." The lizard sidled along to the far edge of the rusty gate. "Please, Sir, listen to me. I will return as soon as he is gone and get you out of here but If you drink any more of his potion I cannot take you with me." He stared hard at Corvan. "You will be a Rakash, and I will never be able to trust you again."

  Tsarek vanished and a shiver ran up Corvan’s spine. As he suspected, the Rakash were not a strange race. They were simply people who fell prey to the desire for lumien seeds and then became addicted to the elixir from the gatehouse. That is why his body was so tall and pale in Kate’s medallion chamber. He was already on his way to becoming one of the Rakash.

  The creak and groan of metal wheels scraping on the stone floor out in the hall brought Corvan fully to his senses. He quickly turned his face to the wall and calmed his breathing.

  "There he is, my master,” the man who had locked him in the cell said, “sleeping peacefully. The first treatment was successful, and he willingly took the elixir. His heart is repaired and once we give him his regular dose, I believe this one will be your strongest yet."

  "That is good.” The deep voice of the man in the wheelchair ran a shiver up Corvan’s spine. “When he awakens, you will start him on double the dosage. We are running out of time; the night of deepest dark is almost here and the current leader of my Rakash keeps delaying the attack. I need someone new to take charge."

  "A double dose might be too much for this one. He is still very young, and his body is not fully mature."

  "Just do as I say." The metal wheels scraped and in the silence that followed Corvan could almost feel the gatekeeper studying him. "What does he have on his head?" the man snapped.

  "A mask like your own. The leader of your Rakash told me you wished this one to be special and keep his eyesight."

  "Not that special. I can't afford to have him understand too much of what is going on around him. Take me back to my room, then return immediately and seal his eyes. As soon as this one is ready, his first task will be to kill the formerleader of my Rakash. With only one hand, that one is no longer of any use to me. I don’t care for the way the operates."

  “Yes, my master. I will do as you say.”

  The wheels screeched and chattered on the cobblestones, then faded around the corner and up the passage.

  As soon as it was quiet, Corvan pushed himself up on the metal gurney. His body was weary, but at least the intense pain in his chest was gone. Pulling the mask from his face he ran a hand through his short hair. The light above him no longer bothered his eyes.

  The table shook on its small wheels as he slipped off and stook shakily on his feet beside it. He needed go get away from the cell before the guard came back to seal his eyes, but how? Tsarek obviously didn’t have a key.

  A wavering shadow fell across the bars and then the face of the one-handed leader of the Rakash appeared. The he man pushed the hood of the special cloak back from his face. "Well, young Corvan," he whispered hoarsely. "Shall we see if you are ready to kill me and take my place as the leader of the Rakash army?" His blue tongue flicked out with a rough laugh. "The old fool thinks he can be rid of me so easily."

  The stub of the Rakash leader’s arm pushed in through the bars and his good hand gripped the next one over. The tall man pushed outward until the blue veins on each finger stood out in sharp contrast to his white skin. The muscles in his good arm tensed and bulged as the bars of the cell door groaned and slowly edged apart. The mutated man wedged one shoulder into the space, then pushed again. Flakes of stone fell from the top of the opening as the metal gave way and bent apart.

  Corvan backed up to the far side of the cell as the Rakash squeezed through the opening he had created, then crossed over to stand directly in front of him.

  "Go ahead. You can take my life; it does not matter for I am as good as dead already." His stump pointed at Corvan's face. "But so are you if you don't quit taking their medicine. You needed it to heal you from the gatekeeper’s insane overdose of power, but ou will soon realize it is killing you. You will also know that you will die anyway if you don't get more, and they don't let you forget it." His good hand smacked the wall beside Corvan's head and the stone shuddered. "They will own you and you will do things you never imagined you would." His blinded eyes drew closer. "I tell you the truth. The person I once was would not have dragged your father down here."

  "My father’s here in the gatehouse? In these cells?" Corvan looked anxiously past the man into the hallway. “Did they give him the same medicine?”

  "No. I did not trust the gatekeeper, so I removed him to a different place."

  "Where? I need to find him and take him home where he belongs."

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  The Rakash leader shrugged. "Where do any of us belong?"

  "With our families. With those that love us. I want to take him home."

  The grotesque faced softened. "Your Watcher can guide you to him." The Rakash leader paused and looked overhead, as if his blinded eyes could look right through the stone ceiling and into the gatekeeper’s office. "When you return through Anamir city I need you to tell Leena what I did for you.” He held up his good hand where a silver ring, set with a single white stone caught the light of the lumien. “Let her know . . ." A wave of pain contorted his face. "Let her know that I still think of her, that I wear her gift."

  Corvan nodded. "I will. And I thank you for helping me."

  "Don't thank me.” The Rakash waved his stump in front of Corvan’s face. “No doubt you and I will meet again, and I honestly cannot say which of us will die when we do. The gatekeeper’s elixir often speaks louder than the best of my intentions." He paused. “I hope your father recovers quickly.”

  He stepped to one side and gestured to the twisted bars. "You best go quickly before the guard returns. That fat oaf will suffer for letting his master's next great leader escape,” he said with a rasping laugh. “He will be blamed for giving you far too much of the elixir and making you so strong you bent his cell door."

  He pushed Corvan toward the door with his good hand. "Go now. Your watcher waits for you at the end of the corridor. He knows the way out of the cells to where your father is being held."

  Corvan squeezed through the opening in the bent bars and took off down the hall without looking back. More cell doors lined the right-hand side; the floor slick with the human waste that was trickling into the corridor. Most of the cells were empty but a few held men in various stages of being transformed into Rakash. A scrawny arm grabbed at him as he passed one of the final cells, but Corvan slipped on a mound of raw sewage and the young Rakash-to-be just missed grabbing onto Corvan’s arm.

  The hallway came to an abrupt end in a tight rounded cul-de-sac. There was no way out and no Tsarek. Corvan turned back but rumble of small wheels and a blue glow from around the corner announced the arrival of the elixir. Arms stuck into the hall as the young men in the cells began crying out. Corvan flattened himself into the rounded cleft of the wall and hid as best as he could.

  The cell keeper appeared, pushing a small cart stacked with racks that held vials of blue light. The din in the tunnel increased as the potent scent of the elixir worked its way down to the waiting victims.

  The man fumbled inside his robe, pulled out a key ring and turned to Corvan's cell. Shouting a curse, he jumped back from the bent bars, knocking his cart over and sending a cascade of blue over the floor and walls as the vials smashed to the ground. Shouting more sharp words, the guard lumbered away as the glowing liquid flowed along the floor in Corvan’s direction. Guttural cries of frustration erupted from the cells as thin hands stretched out to the luminescent stream. A few managed to reach it and were wetting their long fingers, then bringing them back to desperate faces jammed deep into the bars; sucking off the fluid and reaching out for more.

  The elixir mixed in with the grime on the floor as it ran towards Corvan’s hiding place, creating a muddy, slow-moving sludge. The young Rakash in the final cell was not crying out. He was down on the floor, using the leverage of a bench in behind him to push his head through the gap at the bottom of his cell door. His ears stretched out before his head finally slipped through. The fluid had reached the front of his cell but it was still not quite close enough for the long tongue. The Rakash pushed even harder before Corvan heard the pop of his shoulder dislocating. With a gasp of pain, the face pushed in closer to the slurry.

  Corvan crouched lower in the shadowed corner. A single thin line of glowing liquid reached his feet; the powerful scent overcoming the foul odors swirling about him. As he took a deep breath; fresh desire flowed through his body and before he could even consider the choice, he had touched his index finger into the pool forming at his feet.

  A loud slurping brought his eyes back to the young Rakash licking at the filthy floor, its blotched face covered in muck. Corvan shivered. That was what his own skin had looked like in Kate’s dream chamber. If he took even one more taste, he would become one of the Rakash; a hated enemy to everyone he cared about.

  Lifting his hand, he stared at the drop of blue fluid hanging from his fingernail. No amount of pleasure and power was worth what this stuff had to offer. As he wiped his finger on his cloak, a completely different sensation of power flowed through him. He had just made a choice to deny his own desire and to do right by the people that mattered most to him; a decision was a much greater power than any that the lumiens or elixir could ever give him.

  A wave of fluid washed into the alcove, gurgling at his feet as it disappeared into a circle of partially plugged holes; a manhole cover over the sewer that ran below. That had to be where Tsarek had gone.

  Sticking his fingers into the holes, Corvan pulled but the metal cover only budged a fraction of an inch.

  Fresh shouts erupted in the hallway. The fluid had moved on past the first cells and the Rakash inside them were screaming for more, wrenching on their doors until the walls shook and dirt fell from the ceiling.

  Corvan yanked hard on the holes, but he did not have enough strength. Blue fluid pooled higher around his fingers. The power was there if he would only use it. For a moment his resolve wavered. How could he help his dad and Kate if he were stuck here? Just a small bit of power and he could get away. “No!” he whispered to himself. “No more. There has to be some other way out of here.” Getting to his feet, he was about to run to the top of the hall, find a way out of the Gatehouse and ask Leena for help, but before he could move, a cell door crashed into the hall at the top of the tunnel and one of the Rakash bounded into the hallway. Dropping to all fours, the mutated man lapped at a pool of the blue fluid. Next to him, another door broke open and now the two Rakash began fighting over the remaining pools of liquid as they tumbled toward him.

  A sharp jab bit into his ankle. A long, curved claw was sticking out of one of the holes in the grate. The heavy metal disk was lifted, then pushed off to one side. Tsarek's face appeared in the opening, wrinkling in disbelief at the sight of the Rakash groveling after the fluid.

  "Tsarek," Corvan whispered.

  The lizard's neck twisted to face him. "Oh Sir!" He leapt out of the hole and grabbed Corvan's sleeve. "I am so glad one of those was not you. I thought I was too late to save you!” He pushed the grate wider. “You must get inside quickly. It's the only way out of here."

  Corvan sat in the muck and dropped his feet into the darkness. The powerful stench of the sewage below gagged him as he lowered his body into the tight space. His feet landed, squishing into the sludge, then he pulled his head down inside a low tunnel. He retched but there was nothing in his stomach to come up. The wave of nausea passed, and he watch the mix of bright blue and muddy grey fluids dripping from the lip overhead.

  Corvan was just about to take a look for Tsarek when the lizard's feet swung down. He dropped with a plop in the muck, hooked the grate overhead and dropped it with a sludgy clank into position. He raised his re-grown claw and spoke rapidly, like a record on the wrong speed.

  "I only gave them enough to stop them following us. It should have been more. In the end it would be a mercy compared to the long death they have in front of them. These ones are so young. It’s not their fault. The gatekeeper did this to them. They deserve another chance."

  Tsarek gave a weak smile and in the dim light Corvan could see traces of luminescent blue elixir glistening between his teeth.