The bar was a shack hung with vines, teetering on piles over the backwater. Skaia Voyid tied her canoe to the verandah post and stepped across the worn planks into the dim interior. It was at least cool, and she needed a drink after three days collecting in the swamps. The woman behind the bar was staring vacantly at a corner where two indistinct figures hunched over a table. Skaia ordered a drink and sat down.

The bar stools were of polished wood, and she felt her mistake straight away. She cursed, told the slattern behind the bar that she would be right back and retreated to the toilet. A crane over her shoulder into the tiny mirror that was part of her kit and a feel of her bottom confirmed her initial diagnosis. She must have brushed against a zit spider line when she took a pee. She knew the lumps on her bottom were basically harmless, that they would grow and start to itch by nightfall, then fall off in a day or two. She huffed in exasperation. It was one more thing she did not need. It was also embarrassing for a member of the Finder’s Web. She was supposed to collect zit spiders, not be collected by them.

Skaia adjusted her clothing and returned to the bar. The woman pushed a mug across and she took a distracted drink of the contents. It tasted awful. She slumped over, dispirited, then felt a twinge of alarm as the slump continued forward until her head rested on the bar. “What now?” she thought, and fell into an unresisting daze. She heard the chink of coin and an exchange of voices as if at a great distance, then rough hands picked her up.

When her mind started to clear she was lying on wet planks in a confined space, hands and feet bound, with a foul taste in her mouth and a sore spot on her head. The motion told her she was on a boat, probably in the forepeak from the shape of her prison. She wriggled around until she was in as least uncomfortable a position as possible and took an inventory of her person. She was not injured and was still clothed. Her belt was missing, along with her knife and pouches of gear, and her pockets empty. She tested her bonds and found them thoroughly professional. She could not have done a better job herself. The timbers had no edges to rub against, there were no helpful protruding nails and no-one had left an old blade in a corner. She was very hungry, which suggested some time had passed. There was nothing to do but wait and see what turned up.

It was a long wait before the hatch opened. The face peering down at her could have been used to illustrate the villain in an improving novel. It was thin-bearded, pock-marked, scarred and set in an unchanging scowl. A hand reached down and set a beaker of fresh water to her lips. Skaia drank, heedless of the water spilling down her front. Drank, but not too much, because she did not want to be sick. When she turned her head away the scowl withdrew and the hatch closed. She returned to waiting.

The motion of the boat changed over the hours, from the long pitching of the open sea to the short chop of enclosed water, finally to a gentle rocking. She heard the splash and run of rope as the anchor went over the side, then a jerk as it set, snubbing the craft against the current. Still she waited, working her fingers and toes to keep the blood flowing but otherwise lying still. It was full dark when the hatch opened again. Arms reached down, grasped, hauled her upright, stuffed a gag in her mouth, fastened it with a strip of cloth and hauled her on deck. She could make out a rising shore against the starlit southern horizon, a pale patch of sand at its foot. The only sounds were the lapping of small waves, the splash of a fish, a distant squawk. Skaia’s very empty stomach gave an audible growl. One of the two men holding her chuckled. They stood still, waiting, until a hoot came from the shore.

“Knife,” said one. Skaia shrank in her bonds. The other loosed a hand, drew a knife and neatly cut her clothing away. It was done in a practiced, almost impersonal way, much as a healer might. Skaia was sure their intentions had nothing to do with healing but was, in a small way, glad that they did not inflict any extra indignities.

“Boat,” said First Villain. The other clambered down into a dinghy alongside, balanced himself and she was passed down and sat on a thwart. The other joined him, one took up the oars and pulled for the beach. Skaia felt the shock and heard the hiss of the keel on sand. First Villain pulled the boat up, Skaia was handled onto the sand, carried a short way to a post, set down on her feet and her arms tied to the rough wood. Skaia heard their feet scrunch across the sand, the scrape of the dinghy pushed out, the rattle and plash of oars as they rowed away. In other circumstances the air would have been pleasantly cool against her skin. She shivered, rubbed the ropes against the pole and only chafed her wrists. The cloth in her mouth tasted horrible.

If she had not been gagged she would have screamed when a soft hoot sounded behind her. It was followed by another, then a panting grunt. Thick fingers patted her hair, ran down her face and neck, over her body. When they reached her rump they paused, touched again, probed the zit spider lumps. There was a questioning hoot, a soft call, an exchange. Skaia jerked her head to free her face from hair and listened. Breathing and the soft scuff of bare feet, moving away. The stars moved on slowly. Insects buzzed about, but the men had left her the protective amulet everyone wore. She could feel the string about her neck.

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Again the scuff of feet, approaching. Skaia was unwilling party to an extended exchange involving, she thought, at least three parties. Fingers again explored her person, with particular attention to her bottom. Then came a series of peremptory barks and grunts. Skaia felt the ropes holding her to the post loosen and she was picked up and slung over a hairy shoulder. This, she thought, is getting truly bizarre. It was also profoundly uncomfortable. When the back beneath her flagged she was passed to another, as they made their way up the slope, brushing unheeding past prickly shrubs and sharp branches. This second kidnapping was harsher than the first.

She was scratched and bruised when her handlers set her down against yet another post and wrapped her with vines. She wondered if there was to be a third kidnapping. They seemed to go with posts. The vines were not ropes, but there were many turns about her body. On the other hand, the cloth holding her gag had loosened. Some vigorous chewing and spitting, and her mouth was clear. Never had a full breath been so sweet. To call out or not, that was the question. Around her the air was thick with insects. Before her rose some dark bulk, too regular a line against the night sky to be natural. The rest was silence, no hoots, no grunts, no pad of feet.

She had decided that silence was safest when a call came from the dark. “You at the post! Can you speak?”

* * * *

Aitonala had the middle watch, the full dark long after sunset and before the late moon-rise. Vision unaided by spell was useless, so she focused on her hearing, walking slowly up and down to keep herself awake. The breeze had faded with the light, leaving the air heavy. A high haze dimmed the stars. She sorted sounds in her mind for reference: insects, the occasional bird, the almost inaudible suck of water around the rocks below, the creak of rock cooling after the day’s heat. Every few steps she stopped still and listened intently, cataloguing changes.

A distant bark caught her attention in one of these pauses. It was not a sound she had heard before, and she stayed still, head to one side. More strange sounds drifted up the hill, all faint, then silence for a time, then again a bark, louder this time. She thought of the monkey-things the brief had mentioned, and wakened Rakt. The two stood there in the night, ears straining. At a closer sound she touched Rakt’s hand, and they crouched lower. From below came a rustle of leaves, the muted slap of feet on stone, the heavy breaths of exertion. Rakt eased his sword from the scabbard and his shield to his arm. The steps sounded again, receding, and the silence returned. After a little, Aitonala breathed in Rakt’s ear.

“I’ll cast Night Sight and check the ground below.” The spell showed her a world in shades of grey, sharp and ghost-like. There the light grey of the scrubby slopes, there the darker shade of the stair, and there a figure bound to one of the skull-posts. As she watched the figure spat a wad from its mouth, then turned to scan the surroundings. Whoever it was, they did not look threatening, wrapped as they were with ropes. She looked further, to see nothing else alive other than a passing bat. After a word with Rakt she called out.

“You at the post! Can you speak?”

The figure jerked, then called back. “I can. Are you going to kidnap me too?”

“Err, no. Are you kidnapped now?”

“I did not get here by myself.” Aitonala conferred with Rakt, wakened the restored Cardnial and swung down the wall, careful to keep to the cloth-covered section. Another scan showed no threat. She skipped over to the post, blinked at the naked kidnappee, then freed her with a few quick slices.

“Quick, up to the top of the wall. Do not, whatever you do, put your foot other than on the cloth, and do not look to the side. Got that? Good.”

Cardnial helped Skaia over the parapet, realising as he did so that she lacked clothes. His offer of a cloak was gratefully accepted. Wrapped in this, Skaia told her story, warts and all.

Chrys, waked by the noise, came over to join them. When the tale was done she scratched her nose reflectively.

“My thought is that these ape-creatures intended to sacrifice you, but found you unfit. So they offered you to the castle. When the sun came up you would be driven mad, or so they thought.”

“That they did not linger tells us that they are not immune to the effects of the walls,” said Aitonala.

“Except that when they return and do not find this lady raving in her bonds, or should they sight the cloth, they might well be clever enough to realise it offers a path to the top – and to us,” added Cardnial. “These are no ordinary apes. So we had better pull it up.”

“Leaving us on a wall between the apes and the shulgin,” observed Aitonala.

“What are ‘shulgin’?” asked Skaia. They explained, and she nodded in enlightenment. “We call them gruyush.”

“You have them here in Dravishi?” asked Rakt.

“No, but I have read of them. They are listed by my order, as the skin is of great value if treated with Unrot promptly after it is removed.” Here Chrys sighed. “And there is of course the old story.”

Rakt broke in. “We need to get that cloth up. The moon should be up shortly. And we still need sleep. Cardnial, can you stand watch? We can talk in the morning.”

Skaia concurred, only asking for a snack and a drink of water first.