As they entered the shadowy tomb, Iome smelled death and roses. Dozens of skeletons of faithful guards lay in the tomb, bones gray and moldering. But last night, someone had brought bright red rose petals and strewn them across the floor of the tomb, to alleviate the smell.
Gaborn bore Queen Sylvarresta to her sarcophagus, in the sanctum at the back of the tomb. It was a red sandstone box, with her image and name chiseled into its lid. The roof above the sanctum was a slab of sheer marble, so thin that light broke through it, shining down onto the sarcophagus beneath.
Here in this deep corner, air breathed into the tomb from tiny slits in the stonework, so that the smell of death did not reach.
It took a great deal of effort for Gaborn and two bakers to slide the lid of the sarcophagus back, exposing the empty casket. Then they lifted the queen into place, and were about to set the lid on the box when Iome begged them to stop, to let her look for a while.
Pallbearers carried Cleas to a stone shelf, pushed back the bones of some loyal guard from a decade past, and laid Cleas in his place.
They did not have Cleas' armor and weapons to bury with her, so a baker took a warhammer from a nearby corpse, laid it across Cleas' chest, wrapped her hands around its handle.
Gaborn stood a minute in the dim light, studying the moldy skeletons, many of them still in armor, bearing weapons on their chests. Though the room was small, only forty feet long and twenty wide, five tiers of stone shelves were cut into the walls. Some guards had been entombed here for over twenty years. Bones from knuckles and toes littered the floor, borne there by rats.
Gaborn looked as if he would ask a question.
"You may speak freely here," Iome told him, still kneeling beside her mother's casket. "These pallbearers are all deaf or mute, sworn to the service of House Sylvarresta. No one here will betray you."
"You bury your dead with their weapons here in House Sylvarresta?" Gaborn asked.
Iome nodded.
He seemed delighted, looked as if he would rob a corpse. "In Mystarria, we bequeath fine weapons and armor to the living, so it can be put to good use."
"Mystarria does not have so many smiths to keep employed," Iome said dryly.
Gaborn asked, "Then no one will mind if I borrow a weapon? Mine was destroyed."
"Who can say what offends the dead?"
Gaborn did not immediately take a weapon. Instead, he paced nervously. "So," he breathed at last, "she is in the Dedicates' Keep?"
Iome hesitated to answer. Gaborn had not said who "she" was. Apparently he was distraught. "The Princess came to the keep this morning, and washed her father and fed him. Raj Ahten's guard put her there for safekeeping during the attack. But she may leave at any time. I think she still occupies her room in the King's Keep, with servants to attend her."
Gaborn bit his lip, quickened his step, thinking furiously. "Can you get a message to her for me?"
"It should not be hard," Iome answered.
"Tell her that House Orden is sworn to protect her. Tell her that I will kill Raj Ahten, that she will look upon my face again someday, no longer a Dedicate."
"Don't...please don't try," Iome said, choking back a sob. Her voice cracked, and she feared Gaborn would hear it, see through her disguise.
"Try what?" Gaborn asked.
"To kill Raj Ahten," she said deeply. "Queen Sylvarresta clawed him with poisoned fingernails, yet he withstood the venom. It is said that the wound of a sword thrust through his heart heals before the blade is withdrawn."
"There must be a way to kill him," Gaborn said.
"You will be forced to kill House Sylvarresta, for both the King and his daughter are Dedicates to Raj Ahten. Lord Sylvarresta himself received eighty endowments of wit last night, all in Raj Ahten's behalf."
Gaborn turned at this news, went to the door of the tomb, staring out up into the sunlight, considering.
"I will not kill my friends," Gaborn said, "or their Dedicates. If they gave endowments, they did not do so willingly. They are not my enemy."
Iome wondered at this. It was common practice to kill another's Dedicates, a necessary evil. Few Runelords would shirk this most hateful responsibility. Did Gaborn hope to let men live, simply because they did not intend evil? She said, "Even if you spare House Sylvarresta, even if you turn instead to other houses, kill other kings, they are also innocents. They, too, deserve to live. They have no love for Raj Ahten."
"There must be a way to get Raj Ahten without killing others," Gaborn said. "A decapitation."
Iome had no advice to give. With powerful Runelords, a decapitation was the most certain way to insure a kill, but plotting the deed and doing it were two different matters. "And who will decapitate him? You?"
Gaborn turned to her. "I could try, if I can get close to him. Tell me, is the herbalist Binnesman well? I need to speak with him."
"He's gone," Iome said. "He vanished in the night. Raj Ahten's men saw him...at the edge of the woods."
Perhaps of anything she could have said, this news seemed to dismay him most.
"Well," Gaborn said, looking lost, "I must change my plans. If the wizard is in the woods, perhaps I can find him there. Thank you for the news, Lady...?"
"Prenta," Iome whispered. "Prenta Vass."
Gaborn took her hand, kissed it, as if she were a helpful lady-in-waiting. He held her hand, just a moment too long, lightly sniffed the scent of her perfumed wrist, and Iome's heart skipped. Her voice had not faltered, she felt sure; he had not recognized her voice. But did he recognize her perfume?
He gazed into her face, with his penetrating blue eyes, and though a small frown formed on his lips, he did not speak. Iome pulled away, turned her face, heart pounding, fearing that she had been discovered.
She knew she was hideous, that every scrap of beauty had been stripped from her. Her yellow eyes, her wrinkled skin, were gruesome enough. But her features were nothing compared to the horror she felt inside, the insidious draw toward self-loathing.
Surely he would condemn her. Surely he would pull away in contempt. Instead, he stepped around, to better see her face.
Iome suspected that Gaborn recognized her. He regarded her silently now, trying to discern any traces of the woman he had seen yesterday. But he refused to embarrass her by voicing his recognition. Iome could not withstand that gaze, felt forced to raise a hand, and with it hid herself from those eyes.
"Don't hide from me, Prenta Vass," Gaborn said softly, taking her hand again, pulling it down. He'd spoken her name hesitantly. He knew her. "You are beautiful, even now. If there is any way I may serve you?"
Behind Gaborn, Iome's Days shifted nervously, and the bakers suddenly left the tomb as if they'd just recalled urgent matters elsewhere. Iome wanted to break into tears, to fall into his arms. She only stood, trembling terribly. "No. Nothing."
Gaborn swallowed hard. "Can you bear another message to the Princess for me?"
"What?"
"Tell her...that she haunts my dreams. That her beauty is indelible in my memory. Tell her that I'd hoped to save her, hoped to give her some small aid, and maybe I did some good--I killed a powerful flameweaver. Because I'm here, my father has come, though perhaps too late. Tell her I stayed the night in Castle Sylvarresta, but now see that I must leave. My father's soldiers are hunting for me in the woods. I dare stay no longer. I'm going to try for the woods, before my father charges the city."
Iome nodded.
"Will you come with me?" Gaborn asked. He stared into her face, and now she knew without a doubt that he recognized her. His eyes were filled not with contempt, but with pain, and so much gentleness, she longed to fall into his arms. Yet she dared not move.
Iome's eyes filled with tears. "Come? And leave my father? No."
"Raj Ahten will not hurt him."
"I know," Iome said. "I--don't know what to think. Raj Ahten is not totally evil, not as I feared. Binnesman hopes for some good from him."
" 'When you behold the face of pure e
vil, it will be beautiful.' " Gaborn quoted an old saying among Runelords.
"He says he wants to fight the reavers, that he wants to unite mankind for our own defense."
"And when the war is won, can the Wolf Lord give your endowments back to you? Will he give his own life so that all those who were robbed of endowments can regain them, as Good King Herron did? I think not. He will keep them."
"You don't know that," Iome said.
"I do," Gaborn insisted. "Raj Ahten has revealed his nature. He has no respect for you or any other. He will take all that you have, leave you with nothing."
"How can you be sure? Binnesman seemed to want him to change. He hoped to convince the Wolf Lord to rid himself of the flame weavers."
"You believe he will do it? You can stand here, over the body of your dead mother, and believe Raj Ahten has any degree of decency whatsoever;"
"When he speaks, when you look in his face--"
"Iome," Gaborn said, "how can you doubt that Raj Ahten is evil? What do you have that he has not yet tried to take? Your body? Your family? Your home? Your freedom? Your wealth? Your position? Your country? He has taken your life, as surely as if he'd slain you, for he desires to strip away all that you have and all you hope to be. What more must he do to you, before you know him to be evil? What more?"
Iome could not answer.
"I'm going to cut off the bastard's head," Gaborn said. "I'm going to find a way to do it, but first we need to get out of here alive. Now will you come with me, if I bring your father out of the city, too?"
He took her hand, and when he touched her, all darkness fled. Iome's heart pounded. She almost dared not to believe her fortune, for when she looked into Gaborn's eyes, all her fears, all her self-loathing and sense of ugliness vanished. It was as if he were some living talisman that wrought a change on her very heart. A stone fortress, she thought. A haven. "Please," he begged, using all the powers of his Voice.
She nodded yes, numb. "I'll come."
Gaborn squeezed her hand. "I don't know how, yet, but I'll come for you and your father--soon--in the Dedicates' Keep."
Iome felt again that sensual thrill, the longing she associated with the presence of Binnesman. Her heart pounded. He had just held her tenderly, as though she still had her endowments of glamour, as if she were beautiful.
He turned, took a short sword from a corpse and tucked it in the folds of his robe, then hurried from the tomb, his fleeting shadow blocking the cold sunlight a moment.
As he fled, she almost dared not believe he would return for her, that he would not save her. Yet a warm certainty filled her. He would be back.
When he was gone, Iome's Days said, "You should be careful of that one."
"How so?"
"He could break your heart." Iome could not fail to note something odd in the Days' voice, a tone of respect.
Iome felt terrified. If Raj Ahten caught her trying to escape, he'd show no mercy. Yet she knew that her heart was not pounding in fear, but for another reason. She held her hand over her heart, trying to still it.
I think he already has broken it, she told herself.
* * *
Chapter 18
DUELING WITH DECEPTION
Two hours after Gaborn fled Iome in the tombs, Borenson rode up to the ruined gates of Castle Sylvarresta, a green flag of truce flying from a dead nomen's lance. He forced a smile.
His muscles ached, and his armor was covered in blood. He now rode a new horse, gleaned from a fellow soldier who would never ride again.
It would be a game to match wits with Raj Ahten, one he did not want to play. Luck had not favored him. Most of his warriors had been slaughtered. He'd paid for every small victory. His soldiers had slain more than two thousand nomen. He had unhorsed most of the Wolf Lord's army, and had managed to slay or drive off a number of Frowth giants--while a dozen more of the creatures had perished in that insane fire. Dozens of Raj Ahten's legendary Invincibles had followed Borenson's men into the woods, and the Invincibles were now so full of arrows that their corpses looked as prickly as hedgehogs.
Yet Borenson had not won a clear victory, despite heavy enemy losses. Raj Ahten had quit hunting Borenson's men when they got deep into the woods, fearing an ambush. In part, Borenson had hoped that Raj Ahten would brave the woods, where his own men, he felt sure, would have the advantage.
But Borenson also wanted Raj Ahten to fear that ambush, needed Raj Ahten to believe that the woods were full of men. King Orden had often said that even a man with great endowments of wit could be outsmarted, for "Even the wisest man's plots are only as good as his information."
So it was that Borenson rode up to the gates of Castle Sylvarresta, reigned his horse in at the moat. Smiling.
On the charred wall above the ruined gate towers, one of Raj Ahten's soldiers waved his own lance overhead three times, an acceptance of Borenson's request for truce, then waved at him, beckoning him to ride into the castle. The drawbridge was down, its gears and chains melted. One side of the drawbridge was so charred it had a hole in it large enough to let a man ride through.
Borenson stayed where he was, not wanting to deliver messages in private, and shouted, "I'm in no mood for a swim, not in this armor. Raj Ahten, I bear a message for you! Will you face me, or must you hide behind these walls?"
It seemed madness to accuse the Wolf Lord of cowardice, but Borenson had long ago decided that sanity was no virtue in an insane world.
In twenty seconds, when he heard no response, Borenson shouted again. "Raj Ahten, in the South they call you the Wolf Lord, but my lord says you are no wolf, that you are born of a common whippet, and that you have not the natural affections of a man, but instead are given to fondling bitches. What say you?"
Suddenly, atop the wall, stood Raj Ahten, shining like the sun, the white owl's wings sweeping wide from his black helm. He gazed down, imperious, unperturbed by the insults.
"Serve me," he said softly, so seductively that Borenson almost found himself leaping from his horse, to fall on one knee.
But he recognized the use of Voice immediately, was able to ignore it. A captain in Orden's guard could not be the kind of man easily swayed by Voice.
"Serve you, the one who's been baying from these walls all morning, breathing out threats to my lord? You must be mad!" Borenson said. He spat on the ground. "I fear there is no profit in serving you. You don't have long to live."
"You claim to have a message?" Raj Ahten asked. Borenson thought that the Wolf Lord seemed too eager to stem the tide of insults.
Borenson made a show of taking a long gaze at the soldiers along the castle walls. Thousands of archers were there, other defenders with pike and sword. And on the wall-walks behind them were citizens of Castle Sylvarresta--curious boys, eager to hear his message. Some farmers, merchants, and tradesmen stood now to defend the walls for Raj Ahten as vigorously as they would have stood to defend Sylvarresta the night before. Borenson felt acutely aware that his message was for these soldiers and townsmen more than for Raj Ahten. A message foretelling doom that was delivered in private might demoralize a single leader. The same message delivered before an army could subvert an entire nation.
"Such a small army, to be trapped so far from home," Borenson said, as if musing to himself. Yet he threw his own voice, loud enough so the men on the far walls could hear.
"They are a fine army," Raj Ahten said. "Good enough for the likes of you."
"Indeed," Borenson countered. "I do commend them. Your men died most excellently in the woods this morning. They fought almost as well as expected."
Raj Ahten's eyes blazed. Borenson had succeeded in angering him. This is maybe not the smartest thing I've ever done, Borenson told himself.
"Enough of this," Raj Ahten said. "Your own men died well, too. If you desire a contest to see whose men die best, then I must concede that your men will win, for I slaughtered enough of them today. Now, deliver your message. Or did you come merely to try my patience?"
Borenson raised a brow, shrugged. "My message is this. Two days ago King Mendellas Draken Orden took the castle at Longmont!"
He waited a moment for this news to sink in, then added, "And though you have sent occupying forces to hold that piece of rock, King Orden bids me to let you know that your reinforcements have been slaughtered to the man."
This news shook the defenders on the castle walls. Raj Ahten's men were gazing at one another, trying to consider how to react.
"You lie," Raj Ahten said evenly.
"You accuse me of lying?" Borenson said, using his own gift of Voice as best he could, trying to sound righteous and indignant. "You know the truth of it. As proof, you may search your own feelings. This morning at dawn, King Orden put to death all in Longmont who had given you endowments. You felt the attack. You felt his retribution. You cannot deny it!
"And now I shall tell you how it was done: We began our march three and a half weeks ago," Borenson said honestly, naming the time since he'd left Mystarria, then calculated when Raj Ahten's own troops would have set march, "shortly after we received word of your departure from the South.
"At the time, my lord King Orden sent word to the far corners of Rofehavan, setting his snare for a pup of a Wolf Lord. Now, Raj Ahten, the noose has your neck, and shortly you shall find yourself choking, choking on your greed!"
The men on the walls began talking, looking about in dismay, and Borenson guessed at their question. "You wonder how my lord knew that you would attack Heredon?" Borenson shrugged. "My lord knows many things. He heard of your plans from the spies who serve at your side." Borenson glanced meaningfully at the counselors and magicians who stood beside Raj Ahten, barely suppressing his smile. He held his gaze on the imperious-looking Days at Raj Ahten's side. Perhaps Raj Ahten might still trust these men, but from now on, Borenson suspected none of them would trust each other.
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