A Dream of Mortals (Book #15 in the Sorcerer's Ring) Read Free

the surface. He still appeared
unconscious to her, and now she worried if he had drowned.
    “Thorgrin!” she cried. “Wake up!”
    Angel grabbed him from behind, wrapped her arms
tight around his stomach, and pulled sharply toward her, again and again, as
she had seen one of her leper friends do once when another friend was drowning.
She did it now, pulling up into his diaphragm, her little arms shaking as she
did.
    “Please, Thorgrin,” she cried. “Please live!
Live for me!”
    Angel suddenly heard a gratifying cough, followed
by throwing up of water, and she was elated to realize that Thor had come back.
He threw up all the sea water as he racked his lungs, coughing up again and
again. Angel was flooded with relief.
    Even better, Thor seemed to have regained
consciousness. The whole ordeal seemed to have finally shaken him from his deep
slumber. Maybe, she hoped, he would even be strong enough to fight off these
men and help them escape somewhere.
    Angel had hardly finished the thought when she suddenly
felt a heavy rope land on her head, dropping down from the sky and completely
engulfing her and Thorgrin.
    She looked up and saw the cutthroats standing over
them at the edge of the ship, staring down, grabbing hold of the other end of
the rope and yanking it up, hoisting them in as if they were fish. Angel
struggled, thrashing at the rope, and she hoped Thor would, too. But while he
coughed, Thor still lay there limply, and she could tell he clearly didn’t have
the strength yet to defend.
    Angel felt them slowly hoisted up in the air,
higher and higher, water dripping down from the net, as the pirates pulled them
closer, back to the ship.
    “NO!” she yelled, thrashing, trying to break
free.
    A cutthroat held out a long iron hook, hooked
the net, and yanked them with one jerky motion for the deck.
    They swung through the air, the cords were cut,
and Angel felt herself falling as they landed hard on the deck, dropping a good
ten feet and tumbling as they did. Angel’s ribs hurt from the impact and she
thrashed at the rope, trying to break free.
    But it was no use. Within moments several
pirates jumped on top of them, pinning her and Thorgrin down and yanking them
out. Angel felt several rough hands grab her, and felt her wrists bound behind
her back with coarse rope as she was dragged to her feet, dripping wet. She
could not even move.
    Angel looked over, worried for Thorgrin, and
she saw him being bound, too, still out of it, more asleep than awake. They
were each dragged together across the deck, too fast, Angel stumbling as they
went.
    “This will teach you to try to get away from
us,” a pirate snapped.
    Angel looked up and saw before her a wooden
door to the lower deck being opened, and she stared into the blackness of the
lower holds of the deck. The next thing she knew she and Thor were thrown by
the pirates.
    Angel felt herself go tumbling as she went
flying headfirst into the blackness. She hit her head hard on the wood floor,
landing face first, and then felt the weight of Thor’s body landing on top of
her, the two of them rolling into the blackness.
    The wooden door to the deck was slammed from
above, blocking out all the light, then locked with a heavy chain, and she lay
there, breathing hard in the blackness, wondering where the pirates had thrown
her.
    At the far end of the hold sunlight suddenly came
flooding in and she saw the pirates had opened up a wooden hatch, covered by
iron bars. Several faces appeared above, sneering down, some of them spitting,
before they walked away. Before they slammed this hatch down, too, Angel heard
a reassuring voice in the darkness.
    “It’s okay. You’re not alone.”
    Angel started, surprised and relieved to hear a
voice, and she was shocked and elated as she turned to see all of her friends
sitting down there in the blackness, all with their hands bound behind their back.
There sat Reece and Selese, Elden and Indra, O’Connor and Matus, all of them