Missing Piece

by Robert Priest

  Montither did not at first recognize the man dragged before him by two kwisling guards about an hour later. Not only was the light, as always in the underearth, almost too dim to see, but the man was swollen and bruised and scoured with burn marks and scabbed-over cuts. His lips were puffy and split in the middle and he could hardly stand.

  “He was much prettier when we got him,” said the taller of the two kwislings who had brought him. “He’s had a bad night.” Judging by their blood-spattered shirts, these two must have been his torturers.

  “What’s your name?” Montither asked the battered man. He didn’t answer. “You are one of the Uldeguard, obviously,” Montither said. “Or did you just steal your red jacket?”

  The man spat, but his lips were too ragged and puffy and his red spittle fell short of Montither’s face. “If you do that again,” Montither said, “I assure you I will kill you. Now turn the lights up so I can get a good look at him.” One of the torturers turned a lever on a gaslight and when visibility was suitably improved, Montither looked at the man from the side where some remnant of his former face was still visible. “Why, it is Fargold Fararmor,” Montither said. “Or should I call you by your proper name: Torgee. Yes, I knew this man. I knew him in the mountains when I was training. I defeated him in the Phaer Tourney. No wonder he would lie about me.”

  “He did tell us about training in the mountains,” one of the torturers acknowledged.

  “Now tell me, Torgee, what is this fairytale where the maid I slew lives on frozen in a tower?”

  Torgee didn’t answer.

  “I have my own sources in the city,” Montither went on, “and no one — no one but you has said such a thing. You’re lying, aren’t you, Torgee?”

  Torgee didn’t answer.

  “Where is the girl now?”

  “I don’t know,” Torgee answered.

  “Yes you do. Now tell us where she is and we will be kind to you.”

  Torgee wouldn’t answer even when Montither began to strike him about his already battered face.

  “He was quite voluble last night when he’d had a bit of the tungbane, I assure you,” the shorter of the two torturers said.

  “Well, why am I talking to him like this then?” Montither said irritably. “Give him some tungbane.”

  Now the taller torturer piped up. “Sir, if we give him some more so soon after the last lot it would likely kill him. We could get more out of him if we take it slower.”

  Montither glared at the man. “Do as I say. This filth has called down doubt on my sacred vow and I am not going to dally here while you pamper him.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Montither watched, growing ever angrier as one torturer grabbed Torgee by the shoulders and the other held him by the hair and cut open an unhealed incision in Torgee’s forehead. The man then soaked up some of the resulting blood with an orange cube, which he then scraped off into a small flask containing a gold liquid. Torgee was struggling in their grasp but these men were experts. The one who had him by the shoulders quickly got him around the neck, put his knee in his back, and bent him over backward while the other closed his nose and forced the opening of the flask between his lips. Torgee coughed and sputtered, but they kept his mouth shut and after some terrible convulsions the one who held his nostrils shut released them and he breathed again. The kwislings held him tight for another minute, by which time his eyes seemed almost entirely full of his dark pupils.

  “He’s ready, sir.”

  Montither began again. “Where is she?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “How do you know she’s alive? Have you seen her?”

  “No,” Torgee answered. He had been strong and loyal, but all control was slipping away from him.

  “Then how can you be so sure she is alive? Did somebody tell you?”

  Torgee struggled to stay silent, but he couldn’t. “No.”

  “Then how can you possibly know she’s alive?”

  “I—” Torgee succeeded in cutting himself off.

  “Come, Torgee. You know we’re going to get it out of you. Who told you? What makes you so sure it’s true?”

  Torgee started to vomit, but the larger torturer clamped his palm over his mouth and forced him to swallow it back down.

  “How do you know she’s alive?” Montither persisted. He slapped him back and forth until, unable to hold it back any longer, Torgee’s voice burst out of him with a great bloody holler: “I have a piece of her inside me!”

  Montither was astonished. “What do you mean — a piece of her?” But Torgee was finished. His eyes rolled back into his head and he slumped over, unconscious.

  “A piece of her,” one of the torturers stated with some amusement.

  “Yes,” Montither said. “It was a rat’s nest of sorcery there. Such filth as that no longer surprises me.”

  “So you believe him, sir?”

  “I believe that I will have to return to Ulde and finish what I started.”

  Suddenly Torgee lifted his head and accurately spat a gob of blood straight into Montither’s face. There was a sufficient quantity of it that it also spattered the two kwisling torturers, much to their horror. Montither lunged in a rage and began to throttle Torgee. His huge hands gripped right round Torgee’s neck and squeezed with tremendous pressure. Torgee’s eyes bulged and his face started to turn blue.

  “He is still valuable to us,” the smaller of the two guards dared to say.

  Montither stopped and dusted off his hands as a horrible sounding gasp of air found its way into Torgee’s throat. Torgee was collapsing, but Montither grabbed him by the scruff of his shirt and held him up. He threw him into the arms of the two torturers.

  “He wants us to kill him, don’t you, Torgee?” Montither said, wiping the blood and spittle from his cheek on the cuff of his gold, embroidered surcoat. “But you’ve told us the one thing you most wanted to keep back, haven’t you?”

  “What do you mean, sir?” a torturer asked.

  “I mean, what did it take the most torture to get out of him?”

  “The thing about the piece?”

  “And why do you think it was the one thing he wanted so badly to keep from us?”

  The torturer shrugged.

  “Because he knows it will lead us to her.”

  25

  Drathis Wakes

  Mr. Stilpkin had reestablished the old Elphaerean infirmary and herbatorium on the edge of the recovered area of Ulde. It was a long four-storey building that took up an entire city block. On top of the fourth floor the traditional fifth floor made of Pathan crystal had been restored and repaired. When you went up there it was as long as a playing field and as wide. Looking up, you saw a high crystal topography fashioned from thousands and thousands of finely fitted panes. Many of them had still been in place atop the building when it had first been uncovered from the debris five years ago, but so many were missing that the recirculation of moisture enabled by the system of tiles and layers of sand so cleverly designed by the Elphaerean engineers could not function. Restoring and repairing it became one of the first priorities of the academy. From every smithy and crystal kiln in Ulde these panes had come. The small hands of Nain craftsmen had reassembled them and fitted them with such skill and precision that even now, six days after the previous hurricane, as the wind once again reached gale force, they held strong. Beneath this million-faceted dome for the first time in half a century there grew a great multiplicity of herbs, fruits, flowers, and fungi, skillfully watered and maintained by Mr. Stilpkin’s many eager apprentices. Here the plants flourished and grew, some of them to giant size, until they had to be cut back for fear they’d break through the crystal of the ceiling. And all the while, even in winter when the trees outside were brown and withered, the vegetation in here thrived in magnified sunlight and the skillfully re-circulated waters
.

  At floor level, living vines had been woven to form separated bedchambers where some of Mr. Stilpkin’s various special patients were being treated. Here there were caves of oregano, juniper, and pemmicin with wicker beds entirely woven from living lavender. On days when the sun was shining, it heated the interior to a steamy green humidity that steeped the various patients in the curative atmosphere of whatever herb Mr. Stilpkin had decided best suited their condition. At night there was a proliferation of small telescopes available to enable the ailing to find, fix upon, and sometimes dance to whatever star seemed most likely to have a curative effect on their ailment.

  The tangle of deliberately woven and shaped bushes and vines and flowers grew particularly dense toward the far end of the structure. Here, under long canopies of tree-sized mushrooms whose caps were ten feet across, certain patients took Stilpkin’s spore cure. Among them were the three one-eyed spellbinders — Drathis, Ayeru, and Zandra — who were still suffering from spellshock.

  They lay in three separate beds side-by-side, with Drathis in the middle, as the unconscious Tharfen was carried in by three of Mr. Stilpkin’s assistants. For four days she had remained swollen and unconscious in Mr. Stilpkin’s main room on the third floor. Mr. Stilpkin was shifting her in hopes that exposure to the sunlight up here might finally bring her out of her coma. The assistants lowered her carefully into a newly prepared bed, all the while talking about the threat of the impending Cyclopean invasion in such loud voices it appeared to disturb Drathis. When they finished, they departed for their other duties and Tharfen and the three spellbinders all lay there motionless. After a time, Drathis’s one remaining eye opened.

  Immediately he tensed from the severe pain. It took every ounce of his energy before he could finally stretch his arms out and grab the hands of the other two spellbinders on each side of him. A spasm ran through both of them at the touch of his hand, but neither of them woke. Slowly, Drathis’s lips moved and he began to speak old Elphaerean spell words. When he finished, nothing happened. The weight of his arms was like that of two columns of stone. He had to use everything he had just to maintain connection with the other two. Just as a slight aura of blue light began to vibrate along their arms, Drathis felt his right hand letting go and Ayeru’s fingers began to slip from his. But suddenly, where their hands met, there was a red glow. It was as though a third ghostly hand had joined the other two in one grip. While it held them, the blue aura grew brighter and stronger until Drathis’s heart emitted a blinding blue spark that shot up and through the crystal ceiling and out into the sky. The wind responded in fury. It howled and shrieked like some giant creature caught in a trap. Then in an instant it stopped and all was still.

  26

  Tharfen Wakes

  Soon after the wind stopped, Tharfen awoke with a very vulnerable feeling. It was as though her skin had turned thin and transparent like the inner skin of an egg when its shell is delicately removed. She felt as though she dare not move for fear she break the skin and her insides go slipping out of her and onto the floor, leaving nothing but the supersensitive egg skin part of her empty on the bed. For a second this nightmare vision was so potent her brain started automatically devising a plan of softly rolling toward the edge of the bed. A plan to somehow gently get somewhere and find a container. A new shell, armour. But then a sharp pain in her heel stopped all such calculations. It felt as though something bigger than her heel was trying to burst up through her heel and break her open entirely. Tharfen let out what should have been a cry of pain. But because her jaws were somehow locked together, it emerged as more of a growl.

  “Tharfen?” a voice asked. She saw someone foggy and wavering.

  “Stop it.” Tharfen’s voice was little more than a whisper. And even so the energy it took sent a ripple through every muscle in her body. She was so weak.

  “Can you hear me, Tharfen?” It was Mr. Stilpkin.

  “Aye.” It was little more than a breath. She felt naked and shattered and she tried to gather herself.

  “Do you know where you are, Tharfen?”

  Something ricocheted through her belly, as though terror had become a particle, cold and unstoppable. She tried to sit up, but she didn’t have the strength.

  “Tharfen, you had better lay back for now. You have tetanus, also known as lockjaw.”

  She grunted and again worked at gathering herself, but it was like pulling in gold dust in the wind. The more her will clutched at it, the more out of hand it got.

  “You have an infected wound in your heel, Tharfen. Can you tell me why that is?”

  Tharfen wasn’t awake enough to lie well, but she wasn’t ready yet to tell the whole truth about the piece. “Used a bleeder’s cup. Supposed to be for humours.” She was dimly aware of the reemergence of her accent from five years ago.

  “Surely you know that is a discredited line of medicine.”

  “I know. Just had it around for decoration, but I had something caught in my heel.”

  “Something?”

  “Little, ah … splinter. Wouldn’t come out.”

  “Well, it’s given you a mighty infection.”

  Her next question was urgent.

  “How long have I been here?”

  “This is your fourth day here.”

  Despite her weakness, she almost sat upright at this news. “No! I’m supposed to be on the underocean by now.”

  “I’m so sorry, Tharfen, but—”

  “No! Where is my ship?”

  “I’m afraid there was a hurricane the day you were afflicted and they never returned from Wheatley’s Aight.”

  “No!” She tried to sit up again.

  “There’s nothing you can do about it right now, Tharfen. You have to rest. You are going to need all your energy to get well.”

  “I am well.”

  “Tharfen, you can barely speak. You haven’t eaten in days. You’ve barely moved. Feel yourself. Feel where your muscles used to be.”

  She felt the stiffness in her joints.

  “No!” The lock of her jaws caused this exclamation to come out as a growl.

  “I’m sorry, Tharfen. You’re lucky to even be alive. We really thought we’d lose you today … from thirst if not from hunger or fever.”

  Tharfen wanted to shout in rage, but she couldn’t summon the energy. Mr. Stilpkin put a spoon to her lips and she swallowed a mouthful of gull broth.

  “The last thing I remember is making my speech at the Panthemium and seeing … What was that huge thing flying toward us in the sky?” she asked finally.

  Mister Stilpkin placed the warmth of his green hand on her brow and told her about the ultimatum. “Of course,” he added, “there is not a single thought or suggestion from anyone of turning you over to them, don’t worry about that.”

  She thought about it a moment. “They can’t be trusted anyway,” she returned. “They are well known for breaking promises.”

  “In the meantime, Lirodello is making sure we all do everything possible to prepare ourselves for the onslaught.”

  “Lirodello?” Tharfen sighed. “But he has absolutely no … no leadership qualities.”

  “You are talking about the old Lirodello.”

  She slumped back into the bed feeling the great magnet of sleep pulling her down again into unconsciousness. “No.” It was little more than a whisper.

  “Something magnificent has happened to him. He is an entirely new Lirodello.”

  27

  Lirodello and Spellcraft

  Lirodello had indeed been showing great leadership. His newfound cheerfulness inspired people and gave them a sense of hope. But the population was ever-growing and hope, when you’re hungry, can only take you so far. The city faced almost insurmountable difficulties and there was no time to address them all. He did have great success, though, in dealing with the marauding limbs and body
parts that arose from the bog. He inspired the fishermen, whose boats, due to the complete lack of wind, had been lying idle in the bay, to find a new use for their nets.

  They took to positioning themselves at various points about the edge of the bog, where they awaited the emergence of limbs from the mud and caught them one by one, binding them in sacks on carts. Night after night they captured the amputated pieces before they could conglomerate and cause more trouble. When day came, the night’s catch would be rolled to the tunnel and sent down on the rail to the beach. Still wriggling and gnashing, still trying to make their way back to whatever ancient body they’d been cut from, they were taken to the warehouses along the edges of the docks and kept in holding cells where the sacks were strung up one by one from hooks in the ceiling. The populace was particularly grateful for this initiative, and as fear of the body parts diminished, more and more people joined in on the capture, so that it became something of a sport, a diversion from the otherwise grinding and growing problem of hunger.

  Most of those who had known Lirodello over the years attributed the change in his demeanor to the call of duty. He was the right man at the right time and he knew it. But Atathu was unconvinced. Ever since the death of her sister, Imalgha, Lirodello, even if he had not been overly attentive to her, had always been at least dimly aware of her and grateful for her assistance and attention. Since the night when the one-eyed mage had executed that mass spell at the Great Kone, however, he had barely looked at or spoken to her. And he had taken to keeping dark curtains and shutters drawn over his windows day and night. She knew this because she lurked in an alley near his quarters and watched for him. Sometimes she carved new chevrons in her much scarred forearm while she waited. She had waited so long for him. He should have been hers by now. Something was up, but she did not know what.