Abdel tried to growl again but just gagged. He felt someone touch his arm, knew it wasn't Jaheira, and tried to make a fist. His fingers wouldn't bend, and he had only one clear thought: That's strange, before his knees gave way, and he was out before he could see the cobblestones rush up at his face.
* * *Abdel roared in rage, frustration, and bloodlust, but not in pain, even when Booter latched onto the second fingernail with his needle-nosed pliers.
"This will hurt too," the self-styled dungeon master murmured, then pulled hard, tearing the fingernail up and off in one swift, cruel motion.
Abdel held his teeth together tightly and swore to more gods than he thought might be listening that he would kill this "dungeon master" in a most telling way, and he would do it soon.
Chapter Two
Jaheira clenched her jaw tightly closed inside the iron band that held her mouth shut. She could breathe through her teeth and drink water, but she couldn't speak, and though they'd been there for what felt like at least two days, she wasn't able to eat. She'd been identified as a mage by her masked captors, though that wasn't quite true. A druid in the service of Our Lady of the Forest, Mielikki, Jaheira could call upon that divine power to cast the little miracles people called "spells," but she was no mage. Still, she had to admit that they'd been right to keep her from speaking. She could have warped the wood in the door that held them in this dark, stinking chamber, spoken to the roots weaving through the ill-kept stone blocks that made up the walls, or even just taken the rot and disease out of the stagnant, bitter water she had been given. She would have had to speak to do any of those things.
She remembered being jumped while walking with Abdel in Baldur's Gate and had assumed that she'd been brought to the same place as he, though she hadn't seen him since regaining consciousness in the cage. When she awoke, she met two others. Each of them had their own cage. They could see each other, and the other two could speak, but they were kept apart.