"Talvalin was expecting torture, his woman was expecting rape. What I did was the only thing neither was prepared for; neither had their defenses ready." Voord's eyes widened and he clapped one hand to his side, holding it there and whimpering. An ooze of fluid darkened the fabric of his shirt, and the sharp ends of a length of wire poked through the weave in the middle of the stain. When the spasm passed, he drained his cup at a draught and refilled it from the green glass bottle on the table. "And it was a private horror of his own. Oh, there were all the other fears, of loss and pain and death—both his own and the woman's, which is worth bearing in mind— but this was special. It might have been a pleasant memory of his youth for him to look back on"—Voord grinned viciously and raised his cup in a mocking toast— "except that someone he thought he knew took it and him and turned the whole thing foul. And now neither of them know what to expect from me, except that it will always be far worse than anything they can imagine. I think that Talvalin will be more than ready to take any chance we give him…"
Tagen muttered something under his breath, still far from happy with this death wish of Voord's even though the reasoning behind it was plain enough even to him. "Then what about the woman, sir?" he asked. "Will she be left until… until afterward?"
"Mostly." Voord's eyes were a little glazed as the drug and the brandy began working their brief effect. The respite would be short—it always was, and had been growing shorter with each passing dose. Giorl had warned him that the poppy-syrup liquor was known to be addictive, but for any one of several reasons Voord felt he had no need to worry about that risk. He shook his head to clear away the mists that threatened to fill it completely, and looked back at Tagen. "Mostly, but not altogether. You and your four men go down to the cell and move our two guests back into the interrogation room." Tagen got up, eager to begin, and Voord rapped the table for attention. "You will not, I emphasize not, harm either of them just yet."
"But sir, you said—"
"Move them. Nothing else… yet. But you can make it plain to both that she'll be next. When I give you permission, you and the others can do whatever takes your fancy—but only when I allow it. And I don't want her killed, or disfigured, or permanently maimed, otherwise escaping will lose its appeal for both of them and Talvalin won't try as hard as he might do when there's everything still to gain. Do you understand what I mean?"
"Yes, sir. I think so, sir."
"Then go do it—and remember, only threats and promises until I say otherwise. Dismissed."
"Sir!"
Voord watched as Tagen hurried off, wondering what the big man would say if he knew that his Commander was even now considering which of the Bodyguard troops were least efficient and most expendable. After Tagen's squad had done to Kyrin whatever it was their unpleasantly fertile minds could conjure up, Voord's plan was that Aldric alone be moved back to the cell— by two guards of sufficient clumsiness for his savage efforts to break free to have a better-than-ever chance of success. And after that…
Voord had seen the Alban in action before, and knew well enough that once loose and with a weapon—any weapon—in his hand, he was more than a match for any but the most capable swordsman in the Guard. Neither of the soldiers that Voord had in mind was anything like good enough. There was another matter needing some attention in the little private room near the interrogation chamber; the room with the spell-circle set into its floor. And after that, it would be only a matter of waiting for his release to come through the door.
He swallowed more of the pain-easing drink as the effect of the last mouthful began to fade and the lines of fire began once more to mark out his wounds, and thought of how good it would be to end the hurting once and for all. He would welcome oblivion as any other man would welcome recovery from sickness, smile at the Alban as he swung his sword, open his arms to embrace the descending blade. And then Voord thought of the way that Aldric had looked at him, and despite his eagerness to die he shivered…
"Aldric… ?" Kyrin spoke the name for what had to be the hundredth time, and again heard no response other than the too-quick, too-shallow rhythm of his breathing. He hadn't moved since Voord finished with him and went out, not even to rearrange his clothing because with hands shackled at shoulder-height and ankles secured to either upright of the cheap little bed, there was no way in which he could have reached. All that he could do, and all that he had done, was to lie still to avoid the pain of moving and stare at the wall with an unreadable expression burning behind the eyes which blinked too slowly.
Oh my love, thought Kyrin, oh my dear one, I wish that you would say something. Anything. Not just lie there and watch it all inside your mind, over and over and over again.
She began to speak, very softly, not calling his name anymore but telling one of the old stories of her people as she might have done to a child awakened frightened in the night. Kyrin didn't know what good it would do, whether he was hearing what she said—or even whether she was doing it not for his benefit but for her own, to take her mind away from the time when the door would open and it would be her turn.
"Long, long ago and far, far away in the frozen Northlands, there was a hunter who went out one day to hunt, and as he wandered near to the shores of the cold Northern Sea he heard a crying and went to see what made the sound. And there among the rocks and the grinding bergs that surged up and down on the icy swell, he found the cub of a white bear and the bear's mother dead and drowned beside it. So the hunter thought at first to kill it, but it cried so sorely that his heart was touched and instead he took the little furry creature home to be a pet and a companion if it lived…"
She spun the tale out and out, weaving into it shreds and threads of other stories so that it grew more fantastic and seemed to take on a life of its own. That had always been the way with the old tales, so that a traveling storyteller could spin an entire evening's entertainment— thus ensuring his bed and board for the night—from a single original idea. But unlike the storytellers back home in Valhol she was not to be allowed to finish without interruption, because she was only three-quarters through the tale when the cell door clanged open and Tagen's squad of guards came in.
Aldric turned his head just enough to look at them, but his blankness of expression did not alter; he remained shut up within himself, seeming neither able to see nor to hear anything except whatever was going on within his head, refusing to react to the crude hands dressing him or the cruder jokes made while they did so. As they hauled him upright, Kyrin got her first chance to see his face in other than shadow—and by comparison with the man she knew he looked like a house where nobody is at home. And then she saw the quick, almost imperceptible glance that he shot toward the back wall of the cell, and toward the taiken that was shackled there just as securely as he had been shackled to the bed.
There was just the glance and nothing more; it was gone again almost at once, and if she hadn't seen it so clearly Kyrin would have doubted that the somehow shrunken figure who slumped between the soldiers had such a speculative, calculating look left in him. She wondered what hope or plan or seized chance lay behind it; and indeed, as the guards dragged him from the cell into the torture chamber next door, whether there would be enough left of either of them to make use of any granted opportunity.
They came back for her a few minutes later, all hot hands and stale breath and hungry eyes as they unlocked the chains and told her what it was they were going to do once Woydach Voord had learned whatever it was he wanted to know. Kyrin shut her ears to the stream of dirt; most of it was coarsely repetitive and not overly original, and the fact that they kept using the word 'later" allowed the tremulous flutter of her belly to relax a little. That "later" would be respected, if only out of fear, for only one of the five dared more than an elaborate fumble around her crotch while setting the chains aside, and he was promptly snarled at by the big kortagor called Tagen.
And then they were alone again, strapped to the only ordinary chairs in the interrogation
room that was empty of everything but the hulking inanimate machinery of pain, left no doubt to think of the last time they had sat in these same chairs and what they had witnessed. Left to wonder when Voord would come in, and what would happen the next time the door opened. And to wonder whose turn it would be then.
Ryn Derawn filled his wife's glass with distilled grain-spirit for the third time in ten minutes and watched uneasily as she stared .at the clear juniper-scented liquid like a wise-woman reading futures from a bowl of water, then—also for the third time in ten minutes—drank down the potent stuff in a single swallow.
"I'm still not convinced," said Giorl to her husband, "no matter what you say. If I was wrong, then the consequences for you, for me, for the children, for all of us…" She shook her head, dispelling the images, and held out her glass for yet another drink.
"No. You've had plenty for now, and I haven't had half enough for this to make any more sense." Ryn put the tall stoneware bottle to one side and smashed its stopper into place with the flat of his hand. "Giorl, no matter what you do up at the fortress you've never needed to hide behind this stuff before. These two new prisoners… You must have some suspicions, or you wouldn't even have mentioned them."
"All right. All right! So I'm wondering." Giorl looked at her empty glass one final time, then thumped it down onto the table and stared instead at Ryn. "And I'm scared to give room inside my head to what you've just suggested. Whoever they are and whatever they did, they're his now. Voord's… to do with as he pleases. And there's nothing I could—or would dare—do about it!"
"If they're the ones I think they saved Mai's life—you said that yourself. If they hadn't been there she would have died long before I could have found you." Ryn sat down beside her and put one arm around Giorl's shoulders. "That wasn't all you said. Do I have to remind you—or didn't you mean any of it at all?"
"Oh, you bastard…" Giorl's taut features crumpled, she leaned her head against him and Ryn felt the first sob go jolting through her as she began to cry. He felt wretched too, wishing that neither of them had brought the matter to discussion; but he knew also that he would never have looked at his beautiful, kindly, learned, lethal wife in quite the same way again if he had kept silent.
All he wanted was for Giorl to take him inside the Warlord's citadel for sufficient time to see the two captive foreigners that she had spoken of. Nothing else. Just so that he would know enough for his own peace of mind. Ryn hadn't yet decided what he would do if they really were the young couple with the talent for impromptu surgery. He almost hoped that they were not— that he could look, and shake his head and go away again… and try to forget what it was that awaited them. He knew little enough about what was done in the Underfortress when Giorl wasn't acting as consultant surgeon to various high-ranking personages, and that little he had discovered had been more than enough to prevent him from trying to learn more. For her part, Giorl didn't talk. That was what had made her outburst today so startling, when she had come through the door of the house shaking all over—and not from the cold— and had drunk down the first of those brimming glasses before trusting herself to speak.
Not that his response had calmed her down. When she described the people for whom Voord had ordered a demonstration—and Ryn was grateful that she hadn't described what that had involved—she had been hoping for a denial. He knew her well enough by now to read something so simple from her face, and he was angry now that he hadn't told a lie; except that she knew him just as well, and would not only have been in her present state but also something worse because of his attempted deceit. Truth, Ryn decided, was the least painful of the several painful courses open to him. Assuming that Woydach Voord did not become involved…
"Put on your outdoor boots and get your overmantle. We're going to the fortress." There was still the thickness of recent weeping in Giorl's voice, but once she had straightened her back and wiped the tears from her face all other traces of uncertainty were gone. She had spoken calmly, with determination and the serenity born of a decision made and now unshakable. Almost unshakable; for when Ryn hesitated she smiled minutely at him and make small shooing movements with both hands. "Do it, love. Quickly. I'm running just a step ahead and if we don't move now, at once, it'll catch up with me."
Ryn looked at her quizzically but received no further elaboration. He stamped into the fur-lined boots and pulled on his heavy, quilted overmantle without asking anything aloud, and it was only as they left the house and walked out into the slowly falling snow that the question moved out of his eyes and became words.
"What are you running from?" He thought that he knew the answer already, but he had to hear it from her just so that he could be sure. The silvery mist of Giorl's exhaled breath was between their faces and she glanced at him and then turned her head away, still smiling that same small fixed smile, and Ryn knew his guess had been right.
"My own fears," she said softly, and looked up toward the gray clouds as though a shadow had passed across the unseen sun. "Of course…"
The candles in the ice-encrusted room were burning blue, their flames stirring the sluggish drifts of incense smoke and sending them in spicy-scented tendrils up to the crystalline ceiling. There was a buzzing, the sound of glutted flies, and there was the sonorous rise and fall of words from where Voord knelt once more at the center of the circle and spoke to That which listened to him only through lack of any other worshipers.
"… O my Lord O my true Lord O my lost beloved Lord O most favored Bale Flower O Issaqua Dark Rose Dweller in Shadows I pray thee and beseech thee hearken to thy faithful servant who begs most humbly take away this Gift of life from me and grant me peace…"
He could smell the roses now, an overwhelming perfume which blurred his mind in a way that the poppy-syrup never could. The candle-flames began to shrink and for all that it remained snow-shot day beyond the shuttered, curtained, frozen windows, a darkness deeper than mere nightfall flowed like ink into the room. Voord began to hear the sweet, sad, wordless music that was the Song of Desolation, and with that hearing he began to tremble. The warning words of the charm written into one of his grimoires came back to haunt him; but he had ignored that warning so many times now that the haunting was little more than one ominous memory among many.
Issaqua sings the Song of Desolation And fills the world with Darkness …
In that Song there was a loss and a betrayal, the sense of being discarded that was all part of the smashing of altars and the tearing down of shrines, or worse, their re-consecration in the names of other Powers with no right to dwell there. When his dabbling in sorcery began, so many lost years ago, Voord had been delighted by the ease with which demons responded to his Sum-monings; it was only as time passed and he learned more that he discovered the truth behind their eager attention. The deities of an older race were reduced to the demons of the new, diminishing thus down through successive generations until they were forgotten. For all their past majesties, they were often as pathetic as lost children— grateful for any attention at all, even idle curiosity, rather than re-consignment to oblivion.
Issaqua the Bale Flower hung before him in the icy air, a wavering nimbus of reddish-amber light—like that from heated iron—that formed unstable curves suggesting the whorled petals of a monstrous rose. He bowed very low, stood up and stepped out of the circle without any of the precautions he had always been so sure to take before. They were redundant at this late stage; and in the Presence of Issaqua, there would be nothing of a lesser stature that he needed to fear. The light throbbed slowly behind him, illuminating nothing but itself, and Voord felt his boots crunch in the hoarfrost that had formed from the moisture in the air as he walked to the door. The dry coldness ground into him, searing his mouth and nostrils as he breathed, chilling the metal wires that held his flesh together until they seemed to burn instead.
Tagen was outside, standing at parade-rest a diplomatic distance down the corridor. As Voord emerged in a pearly cloud of freezing vap
or, the kortagor came to attention and saluted. Voord nodded acknowledgment, then sagged backward against the rimed timbers, exhausted. Soon now, very soon … he thought, looking at the big man through eyes that refused to focus properly. A long race, but almost run …
"I was coming out to tell you—"
"That we can attend to the woman, sir?"
Oh eager, eager, my hound. "Yes. I will be in here, Tagen… waiting. Make certain that Talvalin knows. Now go. Gather your squad. And, Tagen…"
"Sir?"
"Be thorough."
* * * *
"Ryn? Well, tell me."
Ryn Derawn backed slowly away from the small shuttered peephole let into the door of the interrogation room. It was only when Giorl touched him that she realized how her husband had begun to tremble. He stared at her and his lips moved, but no sound came out.
"It's the pair you thought, isn't it?" she hissed, shaking him, trying to restore some sort of coherence. Ryn nodded. He had gone chalk white, not so much with fear of where he was or recognition of Aldric and Kyrin, but because of his look within the harshly white-tiled environment where his wife did most of her work. He had never seen a torture chamber before, except in old woodcuts, and hadn't been prepared for the air of cold efficiency that flowed from the place like mist. Most of the apparatus was too mechanically defined for him to guess its purpose without explanation, but there had been enough pieces whose operation was all too obvious for his stomach to turn sick.
"Yes," he managed to say at last. "I was hoping not, but… there they are: the ones who saved Mai's life."
"And what are we going to do? Let them go and end up where they are now?" Giorl was always deadly practical where cause and effect were concerned, and never more so than when the matter in question was serious. This was a serious as any in her life, and already she regretted giving way to Ryn in the first place. "We'll have to get out of here before someone sees us," she said, the hand which had touched his shoulder in comfort tightening to pull him away. "There isn't anything that we—"
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