"I've done what I can for his pain," Esme said. "Part of the madness that made him attack you was sheer agony from the ways he's been altered. The human part of his mind is gone-what's left has no more reasoning ability than a stampeding bull." She looked to Soterius again, and her eyes hardened with anger. "If this is what Arontala can do-and what Jared permits-then sign me up as a battle healer. I'm with you."
Soterius managed a smile. "Carina's shown me what an advantage it is to have a healer with you in a fight. But you're needed here, Esme. These refugees won't stop taking sick and having babies just because there's a war on. And the men will fight better, knowing their kinfolk are as safe as we can make them."
Esme sighed. "You're right, of course. But just knowing that someone did this to him deliberately makes me want to knock some heads together!"
Soterius laughed. "I've seen Carina in a fight. Never underestimate an angry healer with a quarterstaff!"
The laughter quickly faded, and Soterius and Mikhail sat down with Esme next to the unconscious prisoner. "Can you tell how long ago the changes were made to him?" Soterius asked with a nod toward the ashtenerath fighter.
"The scars from the torture are several months old. And from the amount of the drugs left in his system, I'd say he'd been drugged for quite a while. But the changes in his brain were new-about a month old, no more."
"At that rate, Arontala can't afford to make too many of these," Mikhail observed. "Tadrie said his brother-in-law disappeared six months ago. If it takes five months to capture and break a prisoner and they only survive for a month after they're turned into a weapon, then we're unlikely to face whole armies of these things-at least, for long."
Soterius nodded. "It's like the mage monsters that Arontala called along the Dhasson border, and the ones that Tris ran into the night they found Kiara. Those things are horrible killing machines, but Tris says it takes so much magic to raise them and control them that even a mage as strong as Arontala can't keep it up for long. And they can't breed on their own. Thank the Lady, or we'd probably be overrun with the things!"
"Could Arontala have help?" Mikhail asked.
Soterius frowned. "In all the years we put up with that cursed mage at Shekerishet, I never saw him in the company of other magic users. I can't imagine him sharing any of his power or secrets with
