by Dave Duncan
Still he did not meet her eyes. “It’s spreading,” he whispered to the empty hall. “Keeps spreading, you know.”
Like a contagion? “Were you bribed? Terrorized? Or did they warp you with fixes?”
“Even Eboga couldn’t roll it back at Eldritch, and it’s much stronger now.” He twisted as if his back hurt, which it probably should from the way he was sitting.
“What is stronger?”
“Even stronger than it was two years ago.”
“Maleficence, you mean?”
“Redkev warned me before he left.”
“Zajic!” she snapped. “We have only a few moments to talk. Look at me.”
His eyes turned in their sockets to stare at her, peering out of dungeon windows. “You will have to live with it, Irona. All your life you will have to live with it.”
“Live with what?”
“Maleficence.”
Well, at least he had answered a question. But the door at the far end creaked open, and Quebrada Bericha marched in with marines at his back.
“Did they bribe you?” Irona demanded.
The governor was staring past her. “It seeks out your weakest point.”
“It? What? Who, for Holy Caprice’s sake? Evil works through people. Who threatened you? Bribed you? Tormented you? For the sake of the goddess, Zajic! You are one of her Chosen. Why did you desert her? Maleficence is behind this. How did it twist you from your duty?”
“It doesn’t force you to be evil. It makes you want to be evil.” He closed his eyes. “The world grows heavy. Life is most confusing sometimes. Nothing makes sense in the end.”
And for him it might well be the end. He needed Source Water urgently.
Irona stood up as her commander came to a halt. The carrying chair with former commander Gabulla had arrived also, and Sazen had come along ahead of the military and was waiting at the side. She held out a hand to him and he brought her the warrant, two wooden tablets the size of a man’s hand.
She untied the ribbon binding them and the room hushed.
The dying man whispered, “Irona 700?”
She looked down. “Zajik 677?”
“If I knew, why wouldn’t I tell you?”
Not knowing what to say to that, she began to read: “In the name of the Goddess and by order of her Chosen …”
The rest of that day was a nightmare. Irona ordered Zajic dosed with Source Water from the galley’s medicine chests, but he retched at the smell of it and screamed when given it, as if it burned his lips. Moving him south for proper treatment was obviously urgent. That turned out to be easier ordered than done.
The newly relieved garrison had a nominal strength of 120 tribute marines, mostly Genodesan and Nedokon, as those two allies had contributed the galleys, but imperial policy was always to divide and rule, so other client states were certainly represented. Normally, the ships would now be released to return to their respective home ports, but suspicion that Vult had become involved in fix trading made every man suspect. Bericha’s orders required him to deliver all the old garrison to Benign for interrogation. Every one of them was to be strip-searched for evidence of unexplained wealth before he boarded. That was why the much larger Sea Demon and Sea Dog had escorted Irona’s flagship north and two more Benesh galleys would be arriving soon. The departing marines would be divided among five ships, so there could be no unpleasant accidents on the way home.
When the roll was called, twenty-two men reported in sick or disabled, including their commander, and thirty-seven failed to respond at all. No one seemed to know where the absentees had gone, or when. They might have been eaten by rock worms or the giant eels in the moat, although such disasters had been rare in the past. Even Daun Bukit was puzzled, but he muttered that Svinhofdarhrauk might be involved, also that there was a trog with a mark on its arm that looked very like a birthmark he had noticed on one of the missing men. Trogs were too stupid to be dangerous, of course.
Of course? Irona always distrusted those words. If the Shapeless shape-shifters could look terrifying, why could they not make themselves seem harmless and repulsive?
The oar pullers who powered the navy and battled the Empire’s foes were rough men, never finicky or self-indulgent, but the new garrison came close to mutiny when they saw the quarters they would have to inhabit: filth, rotting hammocks, pestiferous kitchens.
Clearly Vult was deeply infested by Maleficence, from the governor to the lowest scullions, who were not even human. Eldborg 300 had founded the city now known as Eldritch to rule the Dread Lands. Maleficence had taken it. Eboga 500 had tried to recover Eldritch for the Empire and failed. He had withdrawn the frontier to Vult. Would Irona 700 now have to abandon Vult? She spent the rest of the day on an exhausting orientation tour with Daun Bukit and ended feeling more lost than ever. The buildings on top of the rock were in sad disrepair. Many of the tunnels inside it were less inviting than sewers.
Sazen Hostin, who could usually answer any question she cared to ask, had vanished as completely as the missing marines. She finally tracked him down by telling Bukit to take her to the fortress’s archives. There she was relieved to find her secretary, sitting on a box in a gruesome tunnel stinking of rats. The floor was heaped and piled with hundreds of the little wooden tablets that were used for any document intended to be permanent—slates were only for temporary notes. He was trying to read by the light of a single candle.
“Look at it,” he wheezed. “All that’s left of the archives. Dry rot, mildew, woodworm, death watch beetle. And rats.”
“It’s late,” she said. “You can’t read it all tonight.”
“It’s in here somewhere. The answer. It must be.”
“Leave it now. Come back tomorrow.”
The little man looked up at her blearily. “Tomorrow may be too late. Go away.”
The quarters used by ex-governor Zajic were near the top of the rock, but too squalid for Irona’s use. She explored the buildings outside, on the summit. Apart from the reception hall, she identified a dovecote, a henhouse, a wine store, several abandoned sheds that looked as if they hadn’t been entered in years, the guardhouse over the entrance to the rock, and what she decided had been built as a governor’s bedchamber. It had a fireplace, a stout oaken door, and windows with both bars and shutters. The rafters were massive beams, still solid, and she could see no slates missing. The door was held by a latch that could be opened from either side, but the stout brass bolts were on the inside. There was no furniture, and not even much in the way of litter: no dead leaves, bat droppings, or even dead birds on the hearth, so the chimney probably had bars on it also. If the rain ever stopped, the view would be spectacular.
“This will do,” she said. “Find General Bericha and tell him I want this scrubbed out right away. I’ll need a roaring fire. Have my bags and camping supplies brought up from the galley. Vly can tell you which—”
“Ma’am!” Bukit had turned corpse white. “You can’t sleep up here!”
“And why not?”
“Because nobody goes outside the rock in the dark, ma’am! Nobody! Both doors are locked—up here and down at the beach. They’re guarded on the inside by six men apiece. Standing orders are to kill anyone who tries to open them at night, for any reason.”
Irona went over to the shack door to inspect it again. The hinges were monster size and the timbers a handbreadth thick. It would stop a charging war galley.
“You’re telling me that trogs will climb up here to kill me? That Shapeless will break in?”
He just shook his head, still aghast. Perversely, Irona felt that she might have stumbled onto something. These had once been the governor’s quarters, but Zajic had not been using them. True, she would be cut off from the garrison, but if no one went out or in at night, then any problem that arose would have to wait until morning anyway. And her instincts said th
at she might be safer in isolation up here than down in that maze, where all sorts of nastiness could lurk in dark corners.
Also, it wouldn’t hurt to signal to the garrison that she wasn’t afraid of ghouls in the night.
She looked to Vly for support. He just stared back. Vly, she realized, had been following her like a shadow for some time without saying a word. She was so used to him just being there that she had not noticed his return. He was holding a wine bottle that she recognized as one she had brought with her.
“What do you think, love?” she asked.
“Go home,” he said. “Don’t stay here. Vult’s a leper house.”
His voice was slurred, but he had always taken his guard duties so seriously that she could not recall ever seeing him anywhere close to drunk. Mere merriness was his limit.
“Citizen Lavice and I will sleep here,” she told Bukit.
Vly shook his head, mumbling. “You can’t do any good here, Irona. It will destroy you.”
“It’s making a good start on you,” she said, and took the bottle away from him.
Bericha came to inspect later. He made sure she understood about the lockout at curfew but raised no objection to her choice of quarters. Perhaps he hoped the Shapeless would come and get her off his back. As the setting sun made a brief appearance in a slit between clouds and horizon, Irona ate an insipid meal of cold fish and hard bread, washed down by navy-issue wine. Vly barely ate anything, but he put away most of the wine.
When taps were sounded, Irona took him with her to watch the summit door closing ceremony, and then to inspect all the other buildings so she could be certain they were unoccupied. Vly showed no interest in any of it and had found another bottle by the time she bolted them in for the night.
She planned no baby-making efforts tonight. Tomorrow would be soon enough to begin serious procreation, after she had organized a proper bed in place of a thin straw pallet between her back and a floor of bare rock.
It was not much of a bedroom, with rain dripping and hissing in the fireplace, wind howling in around the shutters, bare floors, minimum furnishings, and baggage piled along one wall, but it was probably the cleanest place north of Fueguino. She thought it was trying to seem homely, with the fire crackling and candle flames dancing. In a week or so she would transform it, Irona promised herself, with rugs and hangings and some of the quite attractive pottery she had seen the previous day. If she couldn’t find what she needed in Vult itself, she would go to Fueguino for it, give those rowers’ arms some exercise.
On her second attempt, she identified a bag containing some of her clothes—Vly had done the packing and in great haste, so she had no idea what all he had brought. And she struck lucky, finding a warm woolen nightgown in there. Dropping her tunic, she slipped it on and turned toward the mattress in front of the fire.
“Take it off,” growled a low voice behind her.
She spun around in alarm to find Vly with his eyes unfocused, his mouth pulled down in an ugly pout, already naked—and with a fully erect penis.
“What?” she asked automatically, but she knew instantly what was going to happen. She wasn’t going to enjoy it, either.
“Shut up,” he said. He took her neckband in both hands and ripped the gown wide open, then pushed it down until it dropped. “You want a fucking baby. I’ll put a fucking baby in you.”
“Slow down …”
“Shut up.” He slapped her face just as she remembered her father doing. But then he forced her down to her knees.
“At least the mattress …”
Another slap, hard enough to make her head spin. She tried to put the remains of her nightgown under her, but he pulled it away and pushed her back down on the bare rock, hard and cold and gritty. Vly had always been strong, but now he seemed incredibly so, pushing her legs apart as if she wasn’t resisting at all. She cried out, remembering her mother’s protests when this was done to her. Her pleas went unanswered and her efforts to respond in the hope of turning deliberate rape into some sort of lovemaking merely provoked him to even greater violence, nipping and punching. She screamed when he thrust his phallus into her like a sword.
“Good,” he said, and did it again. And again.
Irona closed her eyes and tried to believe that this wasn’t her lover Vlyplatin doing these awful things to her. It was a shape-shifter who had taken his form. It was Maleficence himself, or itself. It doesn’t force you to be evil. It makes you want to be evil. But why Vly? Why him so soon? All her struggles were useless against his strength.
It seeks out your weakest point. Had Vly been so desperate for a child that he would descend to this, taking by force what would be so willingly given?
Several times she thought it was over, he had finished. But each time he was just resting, or gloating, then the torment would begin again. After an age, he achieved his climax and sighed at the sense of release. He did not even roll off her, as he usually did. He scrambled to his feet without a word or a glance, walked over to the mattress before the fire, rolled himself up in a blanket, and seemed to go to sleep instantly.
“The next time you need to empty that thing,” she said, “I hope you’ll use the other bucket, the one by the door with a lid on it.”
There was no reply.
Bruised, frozen, and bleeding, Irona sat up and wrapped the remains of her nightgown around her, trying to stanch the blood oozing between her legs. She took an edge of the cloth in both hands and tugged it as he had done, but it wouldn’t rip for her. Her back and elbows were bleeding, too. She shivered convulsively, from cold and shock.
Even if it had been Vly and not something else masquerading in his likeness, even if the two of them had gone through much the same process hundreds of times, she still felt defiled, mutilated, and degraded.
She crawled over to the bedding and found the other blanket. Vly was lying on a corner of it, but did not stir as she hauled it free. However much the prospect appalled her, she knew she must lie down there beside him because it was the only warm place in the room; she could not remember if Akanagure Matrinko had ever raped his wife twice in a night. She thought not, and the question was irrelevant anyway. Precedents did not apply. Irona 700 was shut up until dawn with a monster in human shape, and short of murdering it in its sleep, there was nothing she could do about it.
“What?” she said, starting awake. The room was dark, and the wind still wailed. Lightning flashed through the chinks. She thought a voice had wakened her. She could hear rainwater trickling somewhere, and the door rattled. She rolled over, wishing for that down-filled mattress she had enjoyed the previous night in Fueguino.
The door rattled again. The candles had burned out. The storm was still wailing as loud as ever. Remembering that the door had not rattled before, she sat up.
“Vly!” She reached out a hand for him and found no one.
She hit the door running, grabbed the bolts, slammed them home. That stopped the rattling. Goddess, Goddess, why would he have gone outside in the middle of the night?
Or had he? If what had raped her earlier had been a Shapeless, then it must now have gone home to Svinhofdarhrauk and Vly might have been dead for hours.
But she could not know that.
If it had been a doppelgänger, it had been a very convincing one—not behaving in the least like the real Vly, but looking like him, smelling like him, sweating like him. Vly blaming himself for her decision to come here, crazy with guilt, drunk out of his mind for the first time in his life … But Vly had always been so protective! The least hint of an insult, a hand reaching out to her from a crowd, anything, and he had reacted to draw his sword and defend her.
Irona took a log from the scuttle, poked up the fire, threw some fragments of bark and kindling on the embers. As flames flickered, as darkness retreated, she made out his sandals and smock lying where he had dropped them. His sword was not in
evidence anywhere, but his precious dagger was there by his sandals. Armed with that, she went all around the room, accompanied by her monster shadow, but together they found nothing, not a mouse.
Shivering, she wrapped herself in a blanket and sat close to the fire, with the dagger beside her. She could not go back to sleep while Vly was out there. She was certainly not going out to look for him.
Wail … Howl … Moan … Iro-o-o-na … It was only the wind. Not Vly’s voice. She would know his subterranean growl anywhere. She realized that she did not expect to ever hear it again. If the Shapeless had not gotten him, or he had not fallen over the edge, he would soon freeze to death out there. But she must stay awake, must keep vigil until morning. Vly had never walked in his sleep before, so far as she knew. He had never mentioned doing so. He couldn’t have gone down into the rock. He had either fallen over the parapet, or his corpse was lying out there in the yard.
Something scratched on the door. A dog might do that. A man half dead with cold might crawl close and just have enough strength left to … No. She remembered the thickness of the timbers. No human hand could scratch hard enough to be heard through that.
From time to time she put another driftwood log on the fire.
How had her life gone so terribly wrong? Obviously Maleficence had corrupted Zajic and most of his garrison, although not all of them. Why had Vly succumbed so quickly and tragically? He had been unhappy about her decision to accept the appointment, but it had been her choice, not his. If anyone was to blame for Vly’s death, it was Ledacos 692, who had tricked her into it. Had there been any truth behind the stories of black feathers and efforts to poison him? No doubt he was now stalking around Benign in a Seven’s purple—at her expense.
There was nothing she could do about Ledacos now, but she would survive. She would live to fight another day. Revenge needs a well-sharpened knife, said the proverb.
When morning light peeked through chinks in the shutters, Irona dressed and prepared to face the worst. She cleaned the blood from the floor and burned the stained nightgown.