“You are awake,” the mage declared, “and I am Taws. You know me as the Messenger.”
“May the Lady save me!” Hattim moaned, his features blanched of color as his teeth rattled between trembling jaws.
“May the Lady roast in Ashar’s fires for all eternity,” Taws blasphemed. “She will not save you. You do not need her.”
Hattim looked to his discarded clothes. His sword was stowed aboard the Vargalla, but on his belt there hung a ceremonial dagger, more decoration than real weapon, but long enough of blade, and sharp enough, that it would pierce ribs to find the heart—if this demonic creature was equipped with such an organ.
Taws followed his glance and shook his head. “It will do you no good. See ...”
He fastened a hand in Hattim’s hair and rose, bringing the Galichian moaning from the bed as he ducked sideways to scoop the blade from its ornate, jeweled sheath. Tears filled Hattim’s eyes as his scalp was stretched and he thought he should find the skin tom from his cranium, but Taws tossed him back on the bed as easily as he might have tossed a kitten and sent the blade swirling into the air. As it rose he made a single pass with his right hand and Hattim saw a blue fire dance briefly about the taloned fingers. Then gaped as the dagger spun impossibly long in midair, the steel of the blade abruptly red, melting, dripping molten metal that seethed and sputtered on the boards of the floor, the odor of burning wood acrid as the taste of fear in his mouth. The large jewel that decorated the pommel fell loose, shattering into iridescent fragments that were joined by the shards of the smaller stones set into the grip and quillon. Blackened, the hilt thudded to the floor and broke into pieces.
“You can do nothing.” Taws made another pass with his unhuman hand and Hattim felt the cry for help forming in his throat cloy and halt against his chattering teeth. “Nothing at all save listen to me.”
“Why should I?”
Hattim heard his voice quaver, thin as the mewling of an infant . He could not seem to fill his lungs with sufficient breath to shout, and the numbing lassitude pervaded his limbs so that he found movement impossible; all he could do was lie helpless on the bed as the Messenger studied him, the rubescent eyes hideously fascinating. In that moment, Hattim Sethiyan knew how a rabbit must feel when confronted with the implacable stare of a hunting cat.
“Because I can give you everything you want,” Taws said.
“You are Ashar’s Messenger and sworn enemy of the Kingdoms,” Hattim responded, the words thick and slow on his tongue.
“Ashar’s Messenger, certainly.” The ashen mane of hair ducked in confirmation. “But enemy of the Kingdoms? That depends on the definition.”
Hattim stared at the mage, still consumed with sheer terror, but also, now that it seemed his life was not immediately threatened, with a degree of morbid curiosity.
“I am my master’s servant,” Taws declared, his voice sonorous, as if he delivered a lesson, “and consequently the enemy of the Lady and those who serve her. Do you serve her, Hattim Sethiyan?”
“Of course,” Hattim gulped. “I am Lord of Ust-Galich.”
“But you would be more,” Taws said. “So much more, would you not? Ambition clogs your pores, Hattim. It oozes from you like the reek of sweat. I can smell it on you, sweet and sickly as the perfume on that doxy. ”
“I,” Hattim began, but halted at a gesture from the mage.
“You would take the White Palace,” Taws continued. “You would claim Darr’s throne for your own and take his daughter to your bed. You would extend your rule across Kesh and Tamur until the sun sign rose over all the Kingdoms, from your borders to the Beltrevan, from the Gadrizels to the Tenaj Plains. Did you but think you had the strength of arms, you would take the field against your fellow lords; but you know you cannot, and so you place your hope in marriage to Ashrivelle and the subsequent tenancy of the Andurel throne.”
Hattim dragged a fear-furred tongue slowly across sour lips and knew that those cratered eyes saw into his soul. “How can you know that?” he muttered.
“Because I am what lam,” answered Taws. “Do you think the Sisterhood would permit your dream reality?”
“I,” Hattim said slowly, “I do not know.”
“You do,” Taws informed him. “You know they would not. They would speak against you. They would side with your enemies. They would lend their influence to Kesh, to the Caitin line.”
An image of Kedryn flashed briefly before Hattim’s eyes. He saw the boy as in the duel; saw the kabah swing toward his head; saw Kedryn hailed as victor of the war.
“Oh, yes,” murmured Taws, sibilant, “you bear no love for Kedryn Caitin, yet the Sisters do. They would see him ascend the throne before you. They are enemy to your dreams, Hattim Sethiyan.”
“You tempt me,” Hattim groaned. “You put words in my mouth, ”
“I take the words I find from your soul,” came the response. “What I say to you, you have whispered to yourself. Deny them! Tell me you do not want Ashrivelle. Tell me you do not covet the White Palace.”
Hattim gazed with awful rapture into the red-lit pits of the mage’s face and felt the answer tom from deep inside him, from the lowermost depths of his being where he hid the truth.
“I cannot,” he admitted.
Taws’s laughter seemed to fill the room and Hattim thought that surely his guards must hear it, that courtiers and carls must momentarily burst armed through the door to slay the Messenger. If he could be slain.
But no relief, no escape, came and he could do nothing save face the veracity of the creature’s statements. It was indeed as though Taws saw his most hidden, innermost secrets and held them up stark before him.
“Then,” said the mage, “you cannot deny that the Sisterhood is your enemy. And if those blue-robed whores are your enemy, then so must be the one they follow. ”
“No,” Hattim moaned, afraid now for his mortal soul.
“She cannot harm you,” Taws declared negligently. “Beside my master she is as nothing—a pitiful woman. Would you allow a woman to stand between you and your dream?”
“She is the Lady,” husked Hattim fearfully.
“Ashar is Lord of the Fires,” Taws rasped. “He is strong. He is power incarnate. He is the granter of dreams.”
“But ...” Hattim was dreadfully afraid; and horribly fascinated. “Ashar lent his might to the Horde and the Horde was defeated.”
“By Kedryn Caitin,” the mage snarled, his eyes burning a brighter red as he spoke the name, “who is your enemy and mine. It will not happen again.”
“They say Kedryn is the Chosen One,” argued Hattim tremulously. “They say the Lady smiles upon him.”
“He is human—he can die,” Taws responded. “I will have his soul for my master. Would you not enjoy his death?”
Again he struck directly to Hattim’s deepest desires and the Galichian nodded: “I would.”
“Then are we not allies?” Taws asked, his voice calmer, hideously persuasive. “Do we not seek the same ends?”
“You would see me in the White Palace?” asked Hattim, wonderingly.
“I would put you there and give you dominion over all the Kingdoms,” said Taws. “I would raise you higher than you dare dream. Come, I will show you.”
He rose to his full height, extending a hand toward the Lord of Ust-Galich, and Hattim felt the torpor leave his body as he stared into the coals of that hellish gaze and reached out to take the offered hand. He felt a shock tingle his arm, and for an instant the hair on his head stood upright, then there was a moment of delirium in which his senses spun and nausea swirled within his belly, only to fade as he felt himself lifted, rising, floating above the floor of the little room, drifting weightlessly, light as a dust meot, filled with a terrifying anticipation.
It was dreamlike, yet all too real: he could scarcely dare believe it, even as he knew it happened. He felt himself drawn toward the shuttered window and winced as the hard oak confronted his face. Then he was drifting thro
ugh the wood, aware of its touch upon his naked body, and out into the night, floating above Nyrwan, rising higher, carried by the mage’s power upward into a sky scattered with stars.
He was vaguely surprised to find that he felt no fear. Instead, confidence filled him, emanating from the spectral figure that flew beside him, and he began to experience an exhilaration as they rose toward the twinkling pinpricks that glittered against the blue velvet panoply of the night. He saw Nyrwan below him, a huddle of buildings no larger now than a child’s playthings, receding into darkness as he felt Taws adjust their trajectory and they began to move southward. He saw that they followed the course of the Idre, the river a moonlit ribbon glistening against the aphotic land. Then, like stooping hawks, they were hurtling downward and his heart lurched beneath his ribs, his eyes closing as he waited for the impact of hard earth against yielding body.
It did not come and instead he heard Taws command, “Open your eyes. 1 would not harm you.”
Obediently he forced his shuttered lids ajar and saw that they hovered now above another riverside settlement, boats rolling on the sway of the river, one of them recognizable as the Vashti, the tripartite crown of Andurel on the pennant snapping fitfully at the masthead marking her as Darr’s craft.
“The king,” Taws put contempt in the word, “sleeps yonder. Come.”
And Hattim was drawn forward, twin of the wraith that led him, over the sleeping settlement to the walls of a tavern hardly different from the one he had so recently left.
He swallowed nervously as they drifted once more through solid wood to stand in a chamber where a man lay asleep beneath rough sheets, the rumpled spillage of his thinning gray hair and his slumber-eased features revealing him to be Darr.
“Do you see him?” Taws said, not really asking a question. “How easy it would be to kill him now. How easy to snuff out that weak life.”
Hattim stared at the sleeping figure and turned his face slowly toward the mage. A question formed unbidden on his lips, written loud in his eyes, and Taws chuckled, shaking his head.
“You begin to see what I can do for you; but no, not yet. Were he to die now there would be procedures, rituals of appointment that would not favor you. It is not yet time; that will come later, when the moment is more propitious. Come.”
He raised his hand, carrying Hattim with him as they floated back through the window and rose again into the sky, rushing southward with ever increasing speed, faster and faster until the Idre was a blur below them and it seemed to Hattim they must bum like falling stars. Instead, they slowed after a while and the Galichian saw that the roofs of Andurel spread before them, the walls of the White Palace albescent against the backdrop of night.
Again they descended, invisible to watchmen, traversing walls of stone and doors of wood as specters unencumbered by corporeal limitation. They entered a chamber Hattim did not recognize until he saw the great bed sheeted with silk and the cascade of wheat-golden hair upon the pillow. Ashrivelle’s lips were parted, moist and full; inviting. One slender arm lay atop the covers, pale and smooth. Taws murmured words too indistinct for definition and gestured with his free hand, then released his grip on Hattim and pointed to the sleeping girl.
The exposed arm pushed the covers down and Ashrivelle sat up. Hattim gasped aloud, but his voice appeared as insubstantial as his frame, soundless, for the princess gave no indication that she heard him. Nor did she see him, for her eyes remained tight closed as she slowly swung her legs from the bed to stand upright before the unseen watchers. A gown of smooth, sheer silken material draped her nubile frame, a shining silver-gray in color, sleek against the contours of her body. Hattim felt excitement rise as her hands reached to the ribbons that fastened the robe about her shoulders and drew the ties loose, the garment slithering to her feet. She stood before him and he drank in the sight, feeling lust stir as his eyes explored the planes of her body.
“I will give her to you when the time is ripe,” Taws promised, “and she will be everything you dream of, and more.”
He shifted his fingers again and Ashrivelle bent to retrieve the discarded gown, veiling herself as Hattim watched, licking his lips, wanting her now. With eyes still closed, she fastened the gown and slid back beneath the covers, drawing them to her chin as the mage took Hattim’s hand and they once more drifted away.
“Look,” Taws urged as they hovered over Andurel, “I show you your future.”
Hattim followed the Messenger’s pointing finger and saw the White Palace transformed. The green and gold of Ust-Galich shimmered on the walls and towers, where the sunburst emblem of his kingdom fluttered proudly. On the great gates that faced the avenue leading down into the city he saw the sign, and as he watched, the avenue became lined with warriors dressed in shining golden mail, green surcoats emblazoned with the sunburst. The gates opened and a chariot drawn by two pure white horses came stately through, the charioteer wearing the livery of Ust-Galich. Hattim saw himself standing in the chariot, Ashrivelle beside him, a hand upon his arm and adoration in her eyes. Then his attention was caught by a procession of warriors that came slowly up the avenue, driving a group of men before them with flails. Bedyr Caitin was one, he saw, and Jarl another; Kedryn stumbled between them, and behind him, the heir of Kesh. All were in chains, and bloodied as though taken in recent battle. They came to the chariot and halted, falling to their knees with rank fear in their eyes and manacled hands upraised in plea for mercy. He saw himself spring down, resplendent in regal robe of green and gold, the medallion of the Kingdoms upon his breast, and stride toward them. He saw his lips move and Bedyr nod, abasing himself, lips pressed to the boot his conqueror extended. All followed suit and from the watching soldiery and the admiring citizens there rose a great cry. He heard that and recognized his name: “Hattim Sethiyan! Hattim Sethiyan! Lord of Andurel! Lord of the Kingdoms!”
Then the vision faded and he was again floating in the sky as Taws drew him back to the north over towns where the sunburst of Ust-Galich flew, flickering in and out of his sight, phantasmagoric over Tamur and Kesh, promise of power and prestige beyond his wildest dreams.
Abruptly, the afterimage of the chimera still burning in his mind, he was back in the chamber in Nyrwan, sprawled on the bed with Taws standing before him. He shivered, staring at the mage.
“You can give me that?”
Taws nodded without speaking.
“But ...” Twin doubts clouded Hattim’s ambition. “The Sisterhood? What of them? And Kedryn—if he is the Chosen.”
“Do you doubt me?” snapped the mage, frost in his tone so that Hattim shrank back, shaking his head. “The Sisterhood is vulnerable—as must be all who adhere to Kyrie—for they place their trust in weakness, in love and brotherhood. How did you vote when Kedryn spoke for peace with the Beltrevan?”
“I spoke for war,” Hattim answered. “I spoke for a slaughter of the tribes.”
“But Kedryn is governed by the teachings of the Lady,” Taws sneered, “and he spoke for a sheathing of the swords; for love where blood should have flowed. He is a true follower—and they are all like that. I offer you the Kingdoms, man. Do you want them?”
Hattim licked his lips, his gaze fastened on the mantis-features, no longer held by the hypnotic power of Taws’s rubescent stare, but in fascination. He ducked his head.
“Aye, I do.”
“But there is still a doubt,” Taws grated, the words bone on bone. “You fear the power of Estrevan, but I tell you the Sacred City is far away and 1 can give you the throne before the blue-robed bitches know it. And when they do, it will be too late. You will sit in the White Palace and you will hold all those in Andurel hostage—Estrevan will not dare move against you.
“Tamur and Kesh will murmur, but neither Bedyr Caitin nor Jarl Sestrans will seek civil war. Not while you occupy the city and Ashrivelle sleeps beside you. Not while they know the Sisters of Andurel will die should they move against you.
“And Kedryn Caitin? I have a doom pl
anned for him that will satisfy all your hurt pride. He is blind, is he not? And he travels to Estrevan in hope of regaining his sight. He will not! Not in Estrevan, nor any place he will think to look. And while he is questing we shall plant the seeds of his downfall. He will come to meet his doom as a lamb to the slaughter!
“You need fear no one whilst I stand beside you, Hattim Sethiyan. You need only do as I bid you and you shall have all that you want.”
The words were seductive and Hattim felt his doubts slip away. Surely not even the Sisterhood could stand against Taws, and was it not the natural way of ambitious men to side with the strongest?
“What must I do?” he asked.
“Obey me,” said the mage. “No more than that.”
Hattim rose from the bed and stood before the white-maned creature. Then he fell to his knees, lowering his head, ambition slicing a smile across his lips.
“Master, command me.”
Taws looked down on the man, triumph burning in the craters of his face. How easy it was to tempt such as this. How easy it would be to bring the Kingdoms beneath his master’s heel.
“Rise,” he ordered, “what we do requires time. And first I must come on board your vessel, then we must reach Andurel. Once there I will give you Ashrivelle.”
Hattim rose, smiling. “And Darr?”
“The princess first,” Taws husked. “Her father after.”
The Lord of Ust-Galich nodded, reminded of practicalities. “You will require clothing,” he suggested. “And your presence will be questioned. What shall I tell them? And the doxy . . .” he glanced toward Ellebriga’s corpse. “How shall I explain that?”
“That? It is nothing.”
Taws gestured and Hattim saw the blue fire bum about his fingers again, glowing fiercer this time, and lancing out to encompass the body. For an instant Ellebriga’s form was wreathed in dancing light, as though flame consumed her from within. The stench of roasting flesh pervaded the chamber and he pinched his nostrils to shut it out, unwilling to tear his hideously fascinated gaze from the crisping flesh. It blackened as he watched, peeling from bone and bursting organs that burned and were devoured until only a flaking of ash remained, skirling on the floor as an unholy wind whistled eerily, dispersing them.
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