Widowmaker

by Peter Morwood

  “One way or—” Marc couldn’t finish. His skin went clammy with sweat, his stomach was churning, and the time for bravado and luck was long gone now. Because he knew what Ivern meant.

  It was a fundamental part of Droselan justice: if guilt or innocence could be proven in no other way, then a certain level of compulsion became necessary and was acceptable before the law. Even free confession wasn’t exempt. If it couldn’t be proven true by any other means, it had to be confirmed under duress by the application of sufficient pain that no elaborate lies could be concocted. So that only the truth remained.

  Etek ar’Gellan bent over him, checking the thick ropes at wrist and ankle with fingers that were equally thick, equally strong, equally unfeeling. Then steel rasped, and Etek drew a short, curved skinning-knife from its scabbard at his belt.

  “Start with the left hand,” said Ivern ar’Diskan, his voice sounding as though it came from far away, down an iron passageway clanging with iron echoes. There was a thundering like drums in Marc’s ears, surely too fast for a heartbeat, as he braced himself to bear a pain that was always worst in cold blood on the surgeon’s table rather than suffered in the heat of battle.

  “One finger at a time. Given how his lord cheated my father, it’s no more than appropriate…”

  * * * *

  “What are you doing?”

  Kurek ar’Kelayr’s voice didn’t sound angry. It sounded as it always did, quiet and calm and unruffled. But there was something beneath the calmness, a chilly strength which cut like the edge of the curved knife poised just above Marc’s first knuckle.

  A thread of scarlet ran from under that edge, where the skin had parted beneath no more than the weight of the blade. Marc ar’Dru was staring at it still, as if by seeing the nail and the finger’s-end in place, he could imagine them back into place even when the steel had done its work. There were no crawling blue sparks of the Talent to tell him that the joint might be replaced once it had been severed, only the stinging icy heat of the thin cut telling him that no matter what might happen, it would hurt.

  For all his hatred of Bayrd ar’Talvlyn, he realized at last, after almost seven years, what a gesture it had been for Bayrd to offer his own wrist to the sword’s edge in place of Gerin ar’Diskan’s. Whatever had come after, whatever hidden motives there might have been behind the sacrifice, it had been noble. Win or lose, praise or blame, he had given his pain willingly in the service of his lord.

  Marc tore his eyes from the skinning-knife only when it lifted away from his finger, not daring, as if it was a distant archer still within bowshot range, to ignore it until the danger was past. That carelessness had killed Reth ar’Gyart; it had killed a dozen other men of Marc’s acquaintance, on the field of battle or worse, during a hunt, when people were too often inclined to shoot at sound rather than at sight of a target.

  “I said, what’s going on?”

  Ivern unleashed a babble of words, a torrent of explanation that Marc barely heard. Some expected words drifted to the surface of the stream – ‘traitor’ and ‘spy’, ‘suspicion’ and ‘proof’ – but the rest were nothing more than background noise. He was soaked with sweat from the skin to the surface, through shirt and tunic and jerkin over all; there was a haze of moisture on the nap of the jerkin’s fabric as though he had gone walking out of doors on a foggy morning. But he had not disgraced his honour, neither cried out for mercy nor been sick nor stained his breeches in the terror of imminent mutilation.

  If that was bravery, then he supposed he had been brave.

  There were more steps approaching him, not Etek ar’Gellan’s heavy tread but the quick, precise footfalls of a man both lighter in body and lighter on his feet.

  Kurek.

  “If you suspect anyone of anything in this hold, Ivern-eir,” he was saying, “you bring those suspicions to me. You do not take matters into your own hands, no matter how certain you might be. Erdanor is Hold ar’Kelayr, not Hold ar’Diskan. My fortress. Not yours.”

  “But lord,” and that was the first time Marc could remember Ivern using the title, “lord, it was also in the way of being a private affair between Clan ar’Diskan and this man. He was, let me remind you, a long-time henchman of Bayrd ar’Talvlyn.”

  Ivern was standing at Kurek’s back, badly placed to see the expression which flicked across the face of the man he called lord when he spoke those words. Marc saw it; and he was glad he hadn’t provoked it. The only chilling part for him was that orders had not been given at once for him to be set free. If Kurek could be convinced, even slightly, that Ivern was right to act as he had done, then matters would continue from where they had left off.

  And that bastard Etek still had his knife.

  “You may remind me,” said Kurek, not turning, his voice as controlled as before. “But in future you should be a deal less insolent about it. We are not equals, you and I. Not in this fortress, not outside it. Let me remind you that I am the Clan-Lord here..”

  He put one hand under Marc’s chin, heedless of the blood that immediately began to stain his cuff, and with the other began gently investigating the welts and lacerations left by the riding-quirt.

  Marc shuddered slightly at the contact. For one thing, any contact with the raw pinkness where skin had been flicked off smarted like boiling water. And for another, it felt unpleasant in a way not connected with pain. Kurek’s fingers had a lighter touch than most physicians Marc had encountered, but it didn’t feel like a surgeon’s examination. It was more tender than that.

  But nor did it feel like a potential lover’s concern, despite what he had begun to think might be the real reason for Ivern’s fury. He was familiar enough with how that felt as well, both rough and gentle; one of his past mistresses had been Vitya ar’Diskan, a lady almost as dangerous in bed with her nails as her cousin Ivern was in a locked cellar, with a whip and a knife and a henchman to use them at command.

  The door had been locked, Marc thought irrationally. So how did Kurek get in…?

  The fingers touched again, pressing against a cheekbone to check if the bruised and broken skin above meant perhaps a shattered bone beneath. The pressure was light, but for all that if there had been broken bone beneath, then ropes or no ropes the pain would have made Marc try to leap out of the chair.. The indifference proved it. There was no human compassion here at all.

  It felt more like the cool solicitude of a man for a useful piece of delicate machinery that might have been broken before it had fulfilled its function. Marc had seen it before, in Dunrath: Iskar ar’Joren caressing one of his damned catapults as if it was an injured horse when the thing’s throwing-arm snapped during a practice shoot. There had been no foolish transfer of affection to an inanimate object, just an anxiety that the accident might have caused more needless damage than he could see.

  “No permanent harm,” Kurek announced at last, and though it made Marc feel better, it wasn’t being said for his benefit. “Fortunately for you.”

  “What do you mean, fortunately?” Despite his earlier nervousness and flood of apologetic explanation, Ivern bristled at the hint of threat.

  “I mean just what I say. Now cut him loose.”

  “Not until I’m sure—”

  “I’m sure. That should be sufficient.”

  “How can you know?”

  Kurek looked at the blood on his fingertips where he had probed the wounds – and perhaps deeper than the wounds. “I know. Cut him loose.” His gaze shifted from his stained hands to Etek ar’Gellan’s face.

  Etek didn’t move. Kurek ar’Kelayr might be a high-clan lord and outrank everyone else present, but like a good henchman he was waiting for the word from his own lord, and that word hadn’t yet been given. Kurek stared at him, and Marc, but not Ivern, could see the surprise and annoyance at this silent disobedience change to a small, tight smile. “I won’t tell you again.”

  And still Etek didn’t move.

  Not until Kurek put out one hand, index and second fingers ex
tended, as if to touch the big man in the middle of the chest. He didn’t even make contact, but there was a sharp crack, like the breaking of a twig, and a tiny incandescent spark jumped between fingertips and body. Both sound and spark were far too small for what they did.

  Etek ar’Gellan was flung into the shadows as though shot from one of Iskar ar’Joren’s catapults, fifteen or twenty feet backwards with his own feet clear of the ground, until his flight stopped short with a thud against a wall somewhere in the darkness.

  “Blast you to the Black Pit!” rasped Ivern, fear of Kurek and fear too of a blatant use of the Art Magic all forgotten in an insensate spasm of arrogant rage. “Who do you think you are, to manhandle my servant?”

  Kurek turned slowly to look at him, cradling his right hand in his left. The top joints of the first two fingers were purpling with bruises and the nails were already black. “I already told you once,” he said, his voice deceptively gentle. “I’m the lord of this place. And in this place I can do as I please. So guard your tongue.”

  There was more menace in that single soft-spoken warning than in any amount of the shouting that Ivern’s father indulged in, and the younger ar’Diskan flinched as though threatened with his own whip. Marc watched, and flinched too, but inwardly. He had placed their relationship now, and guessed that variations of it might be the same for all the other lords’ sons in Erdanor.

  It wasn’t that Ivern and Kurek had ever been lovers, or that Ivern might have a trusted retainer’s respect for his lord. He was just a dog with a cruel master, kicks one moment and caresses the next, without any rhyme or reason, always off balance. And he stayed in Erdanor and continued to endure it because it had the cruel comfort of familiarity. With Gerin ar’Diskan for his father, that was the only treatment he had ever known.

  And still he had what passed for pride, scarred and dented though it was. Marc could hear it in his voice, covering the tremor of fear, as he drew himself up and tried without success to stare Kurek down. He could see it in the fingernails dug into palms to keep his hands from shaking.

  “You are lord in Erdanor, and Clan-Lord ar’Kelayr. I know it. I accept it. I have always accepted it. But it does not give you the right to address me like a vassal. Have you forgotten, lord, who my father is, and what he is, and what he owns and holds and rules…?”

  “You forget so quickly, ar’Diskan. Once you passed the threshold of this fortress, I became everything that deserves love and fealty and respect and honour. Not your father, not your brother, not any lover you might have left behind. I know just who and what your father is. Gerin ar’Diskan is so haughty and inflexible, so unwilling to listen to reason, that Erhal the Overlord is leading an army north from Cerdor to destroy him.”

  “Lies!”

  “Truth.”

  “How can you know this?”

  “I know.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “I can.”

  “Erhal can’t be the Overlord. His sister Yraine and her faction would never permit it. He’s no more than a child.”

  “Seventeen. Old enough.”

  “Three years off eskorrethen. Young enough.” Then Ivern’s face took on a crafty look. “This is some sort of test, isn’t it?” he said. Kurek’s face didn’t change. “You’re trying to trick me. Because nobody can be Overlord of the Albans under their own name. So why hasn’t he taken the title of Albanak, Landmaster, like his father and all the others before him? Eh? Answer me that…?”

  “New customs for a new land? His sister would be Albanak if she assumed the title. It might be that Erhal wants to be a little more distinctive than that. Perhaps he wants to give over the style and title of Overlord completely. Perhaps he wants to be called King.”

  Ivern’s lips curled at such a ridiculous suggestion. “Nobody would stand for that,” he sneered. “Not the lords, not the people, not even his most faithful retainers. And they wouldn’t even declare him Overlord, never mind King, unless…”

  Ivern’s voice trailed off. Faithful retainers would not. But faithless retainers, those with everything to gain as supporters who controlled the lord they supported – those would be just the people to acclaim an under-age youth as lord, or prince, or king, or any other title that they chose. Because the rank and the title would be meaningless. He would be a figurehead, a puppet who would dance as they pulled on the strings. They would act in his name and by his mandate, as they would have done had they dared lay claim to the rank of Overlord and Landmaster themselves.

  Usurpation not to power but to a position for the manipulation of power was a daring, and classic, move of the Great Game, and though they had been enemies for almost as long as the Albans had been in Alba, his father and Bayrd Talvalin had one thing in common. They had so far managed to walk the tightrope between one faction and the other, without incurring the enmity of either. Until now.

  “What can he…What can we do?”

  “Better,” said Kurek, warmth flowing back into his voice and washing away all memory of anger, of accusation, of any cause for fear. Ivern relaxed, and smiled. “Much better. More like the Ivern I thought I knew. So then. We’ll march my forces out from Erdanor towards Segelin and Hold ar’Diskan, wait until Erhal and your father are done with hacking at each other, then move in and make an end. You’ll make a wiser Lord ar’Diskan than your father or even Arren...”

  Ivern nodded acceptance that he should replace his father and elder brother, almost as though something had blocked out his understanding of just how that replacement was to be achieved. Then someone groaned. It was a hoarse, anguished noise, and though his head was still bobbing in that imbecilic puppet’s nod, it snapped around towards the source of the sound. In that instant, as his mouth opened in silent shock at what his eyes could see, the closing meshes of Kurek’s glamour shattered like a delicate net of spun glass kicked by a spiteful boot.

  Etek ar’Gellan came lurching out of the darkness where he had been thrown. His face was smashed and bloody, and the noises that pain and effort were forcing through his slack lips were unrecognizable as speech. One leg was bent at an angle through the knee-joint, and he dragged the useless meat and bone behind him, more a prop than a limb. But something kept him moving.

  And the heavy skinning-knife was still clutched in his right hand.

  “Fool,” said Kurek very softly, and favoured him with an appraising glance, very plainly deciding whether or not he was still dangerous. “My compliments on the quality of your retainers,” he said idly to Ivern. “A pity this one doesn’t have as much wisdom as he has strength. Or he’d have known when he was well off. As it is…”

  He made a quick, dismissive gesture with one hand.

  There was a protracted rushing, roaring sound, a noise somewhere between that of wind in tall trees and the crash of surf on shingle. Then there was a glare of harsh light that slapped all the shadows in the cellar flat against the walls, and a shrill squealing, the noise damp wood makes on a fire.

  It came from ar’Gellan.

  A blazing globe of flame surrounded him, and the big man writhed briefly at its core, blackened and twisted, the wick of a monstrous candle. Then he dwindled, and crumbled, and died. The flame winked out and a faint drift of grey ash sifted down through the last eddies of heat. The knife he had been holding dropped out of the empty air and hit the stone floor with a clank; except that it was a knife no longer, but just a charred, fused lump of metal.

  And that was all.

  As the spell drained power from him, other spells maintained by that same power wavered and began to fail. Kurek’s face darkened, his hair darkened, he even grew taller, and though his old appearance still shimmered through the new as if it was a reflection seen through a half-silvered mirror, he was Kurek ar’Kelayr no longer.

  Ivern stared at the stranger beside him, at the ash strewn on the floor, at the melted knife in the midst of it, and this time there was no anger to conceal his shock, nor any charm of glamour to warp what he saw or how
his mind responded. “You always condemned the use of magic,” he said helplessly. “You always said—”

  “Never mind what was said. That’s past. This is necessity.”

  “Necessity? To do that to a man? To burn him like—”

  “To do it quickly. If I remember correctly, my ‘brother’ Dyrek preferred the slower method of firing an occupied house.”

  “That was war!” The stranger who had been Kurek regarded him sceptically, with a glitter of what might have been amusement in his dark eyes. “At least it… It was a raid. Not magic! Kurek, what’s happening here?”

  “Kurek? No. Not Kurek any longer. That play is over. My name is Kalarr cu Ruruc. And you must do as I say.”

  Ivern gaped at him blankly. It might have been courage, or it might have been deliberate insolence, or – as Marc thought – it might have been that Ivern’s brain had simply stopped accepting what was happening around him.

  Kalarr waited. And waited some more. And then his temper flared as suddenly as the flame which had eaten ar’Gellan, and he uttered a huge, wordless cry of rage, and swung his open hand at Ivern’s face.

  There was no other power this time than his own muscles, but there was far more of that than seemed reasonable. Ivern ar’Diskan spun half around under the impetus of a slap that had carried more force than many punches, and fell down.

  When he came up again his taipan was out of its scabbard and levelled in a trembling hand. Kalarr stared at it, then at Ivern, and smiled a slow, wide smile that showed too many teeth. Those teeth grated audibly together, the sound of a man exerting effort, and in the time it took for three of Ivern’s panting breaths, Kalarr’s face changed three times. It became Kurek again, and then Ivern himself, and finally returned to what had to be its true shape. Kalarr was breathing hard from the strain of what he had just done, but the wide, humourless smile had not altered.

  “You aren’t as useful as you believe,” he said brutally. “In fact, you never were. But now you’ve become a nuisance. A small, whining annoyance, like a mosquito. Do you know what happens to mosquitoes, Ivern ar’Diskan?”