The Ladies of Mandrigyn

by Barbara Hambly

  Two days later, on orders from Acting Governor Stirk, the larger portion of the population of Mandrigyn turned out along the Golden Street, which led into the town from the tall land gate, to welcome Altiokis of Grimscarp, Wizard King of the Tchard Mountains. Though the crowds that lined the way were thick—troopers of the governor were going from house to house to make sure of it—they were silent. Even those who had welcomed the soldiers who had put an end to the succession troubles in the city ten months before in Altiokis’ name no longer cheered.

  In the thick of the crowd, dressed in his patched brown gardening things, with Gilden and Wilarne brightly veiled and giggling on either arm, Sun Wolf watched the Wizard King ride in.

  “He never came after Iron Pass,” Gilden whispered, her calmly businesslike tone belying the caressing way she rubbed her cheek on his arm. “The captain of his mercenaries—the Dark Eagle, his name is—led his troops into the city, with Derroug and Stirk and some of the other chiefs of the council who’d been exiled by Tarrin. Amber Eyes tells me...”

  A harsh blare of trumpets rose over the deeper drone of the battle horns, cutting off her words. The Wolf raised his head, the sounds prickling his spine. Rolling like thunder down the wide, tree-lined street, the deep boom of the kettledrums was picked up and flung from wall to marble-fronted wall. Sun Wolf and the girls had taken their positions in the last straight reach of the Golden Street, where it ran down to the Great Landing; beyond the crowds, the gilding of the ceremonial barge flashed in the wan sunlight. Across the way, on a balcony draped with pennons, one of Amber Eyes’ girls sat combing her hair, preparing to tally the number of troops as they passed.

  “There,” Wilarne whispered.

  Around the corner of the lane they appeared, a mass of black-mailed bodies, their measured tread lost in the sonorous crash of the drums. Antlike heads, faceless behind slit-eyed helmets, stared out straight ahead. Sun Wolf wondered, with a prickle of loathing, whether the eye slits were functional or merely to keep the populace from suspecting. Like the nuuwa in the palace gardens, these soldiers marched unarmed.

  “Altiokis’ private troops,” Wilarne breathed, under cover of the Wolf’s drawing her closer to him as if to protect her. Though his ancestors help the man who thought this sloe-eyed scrap of primordial mayhem needed protection! “That’s Gilgath at their head, riding the black horse. He’s the Captain of Grimscarp, Commander of Altiokis’ Citadel.”

  The Wolf considered the inhuman, mailed bulk with narrowed eyes. Like his men, Gilgath was masked and hidden by his armor. Men at his sides led beasts on chains—huge, strange beasts, like slumped dog-apes with chisel teeth and mad, stupid eyes—ugies, Lady Wrinshardin had called them.

  More of them walked with the black-mailed guards around the Wizard King’s ebony litter. The people in the street had fallen utterly silent; the only sounds now were the blows of the drums, steady and inescapable as doom.

  At the sight of the litter, the Wolf felt his flesh crawl. It was borne by two black horses, their eyes masked with silver, led by the black-armored guards. Pillars of twisted ebony, whose capitals flashed with opal and nacre, supported dead-black curtains; where the curtains had been drawn back, the interior of the litter was masked by heavy lattices of carven blackwood. Sun Wolf, who stood taller than anyone around him in that chiefly female crowd, craned his neck, but could see nothing of the wizard within, except for a still, dark shadow, unmoving against the blackness of the cushions.

  And yet, at the sight of it, something stirred in Sun Wolf, anger and an emotion deeper than anger; revulsion and an implacable hate. The impact of his feelings startled him, with the awareness that he looked upon pollution. And behind that came the horrible and revolting certainty that he had sometimes felt in the haunts of the marsh demons of the North—the certainty that he looked upon that which was not entirely human.

  This was not a demon, he knew, edging his way forward through the crowd to follow the litter with his eyes. But something...

  He pushed ahead to the front edge of the packed throng as the litter descended to the landing stage and the waiting barge. No snake, no spider, no foul and creeping thing had ever affected him with such cold loathing, and he struggled for a glimpse of the thing that would emerge. Distance and the angle confused his line of sight; Gilgath, the Commander of the Citadel, was deploying his soldiers across the covered tunnel of the Spired Bridge, to line the canal route toward the governor’s palace. Behind him, other marching footsteps echoed in the narrow street as the rest of Altiokis’ force approached.

  Then the Wolf heard a single deep voice call out, “Arrest that man.” Turning, he found himself staring up into the face of the Dark Eagle, captain of Altiokis’ mercenary forces.

  The Eagle hadn’t changed since they’d campaigned together in the East. The sardonic blue eyes still held their expression of bitter amusement as Sun Wolf turned to flee.

  He found himself hemmed in by the civilians at his back and the City Troops that were running toward him from all sides. Gilden and Wilarne had melted away into the crowd, already heading in opposite directions to get the news to Sheera. The Eagle spurred his black mount forward toward him, bowmen clustering around his stirrups—if the Wolf remembered the Dark Eagle’s specialties, there wasn’t much chance they’d miss. Civilians were crowding away from him, panic-stricken. Someone grabbed his arm from behind and shoved a sword blade against his ribs; he ducked and feinted. An arrow shaft burned his shoulder as it buried itself in the body of the man behind him.

  The Wolf grabbed the sword from the slacking grip and spun to meet his would-be captors, throwing another one of them into the path of the second arrow and darting for the mouth of the nearest alley. A man in his way cut at him with a halberd; he parried, slashed along the shaft, and jumped over the falling weapon. The crowd milled and scattered before him. The Eagle’s mercenaries and the City Troops broke ranks to pursue.

  He was closed in, he saw. He cut another man’s face open and turned to strike a third. Though battle concentrated his mind, he was somehow peripherally aware of movement near the landing, of a stirring in the black curtains...

  Something, he did not know what, like a smoky and confusing cloud, struck at his face, and he turned to slash at it. His sword cleaved it like air, haloed in a splattering of red lightning. In the last second in which he realized that it was merely an illusion sent to break his concentration, something hit him on the back of the head, and darkness closed around him.

  Chapter 17

  “CAPTAIN SUN WOLF.”

  The voice that penetrated the blackness of his mind seemed to come from a great distance away. It was the Dark Eagle’s, he recognized, obscured by the buzzing roar that filled his skull.

  “And in such clothes, too. Open your eyes, you barbarian; I know you can hear me.”

  The Wolf pried one grit-filled eye open and squinted against the burning glare of yellow light.

  “They say when you hire out your sword, you meet acquaintances in all corners of the world,” the Eagle went on, “but I hardly expected to see an old friend here.”

  Sun Wolf blinked painfully. The light that had blinded him a moment ago resolved itself into the smoldering fireball at the end of a torch stuck in a greasy iron wall sconce, just behind the Dark Eagle’s shoulder. He became slowly aware of the burning ache in his arms; when he tried to move them, he found that they were, in fact, supporting the weight of his limp body. The short chain that joined his wrists had been thrown over a hook a few feet above his head. He was hanging with his back to the stone wall of a room which he guessed was underground—under what was left of the Records Office, presumably—and the memory of another small underground room and the drifting sparkle of unknown fire on the air brought sweat to his stubbled face. He got his feet under him and stood, glaring at the mercenary chief, who was, for the moment, the only other man in the room.

  “The least you could have done was keep your flapping mouth shut,” he growled hoarsely. />
  The Dark Eagle frowned. He was a stocky man of medium height, his black hair falling forward over his bright eyes. “Lost your tongue?”

  “A lady poisoned me, and I lost my voice over it,” the Wolf answered quite truthfully, hearing, as he said the words, the metallic rasp of the sound.

  The flicker of concern that had glimmered behind the blue eyes fled. The mercenary chief laughed. “I hope you had your revenge. The reason I took you in is that I’m paid to keep order in Altiokis’ domains. Why ever you’ve decided to winter in this lovely town, I’d have to clean up the mess sooner or later. Where are your men?”

  “At Wrynde.”

  “I didn’t mean your troops, I mean the men you’re leading. And believe me, Wolf, I’m not going to accept that you’re in this town to no purpose. What men are you at the head of?”

  Sun Wolf sighed, leaning his head back against the rough rock of the wall behind him. “None,” he said. “No one.”

  “You put up one hell of a fight for a man with a clear conscience.”

  “You wouldn’t know a clear conscience if you found one in your bed. What in the name of all your sniveling ancestors are you doing serving that demon?”

  The Dark Eagle frowned. “Demon?”

  “Whatever was in that litter, it wasn’t human. I’ll take oath on that.”

  The blue eyes narrowed to slits. “You always could spot them, couldn’t you? But Altiokis is no demon. I’ve seen him summon demons and I’ve seen him handle the things they dread to protect himself against them.”

  “He’s no demon, but—I don’t know what he is.”

  A white grin split the swarthy countenance, and the uneasy look vanished. “He’s the greatest wizard of the world—and a man of uncommon appetites to boot.” The smile faded. “Why do you say he isn’t human?”

  “Because he isn’t, dammit! Can’t you tell it? Can’t you feel it?”

  The blue eyes hardened. “I think we hit you harder than we intended, my friend,” the Eagle said. “Or maybe your light-skirts’ poison addled your never-very-stout brains. Altiokis is a man—and a man who can afford to pay damned well to keep trouble out of his lands. As you shall see.”

  He moved toward the cell door, then paused, his hand on the handle. In a quieter voice, he said, “I’d advise you to tell him whatever you’re in, Wolf.”

  He opened the door and stepped aside.

  Altiokis entered.

  Two impressions, spiritual and physical, seemed to overlap for a second in Sun Wolf’s brain.

  The spiritual was the impression of a half-rotted tree, leprous with age, its cancered bark still standing but enclosing another entity, a black and lucid fire that showed through the cracks.

  The physical was the sight of a man of medium height, impossibly obese from eating rich foods, with bad skin, the suspicion of a shadow of stubble on his pouchy jaw, and too many rings embedded in the flesh of his fat fingers. Contact with merchants’ wives had sharpened Sun Wolf’s appreciation of the value of cloth; the black velvet that formed the underpinning of the jewel-beaded embroidery of the immense doublet sold for fifty silver crowns a yard. The jeweled belts that supported the overhanging rolls of fat would have purchased cities.

  In the back of his mind, the Wolf heard Lady Wrinshardin’s acid voice saying, “He is vulgar.”

  And he knew, watching the Dark Eagle’s face and the faces of the gaunt harbor master, Stirk, and of Drypettis, who stood in the shadows of the corridor behind him, that the physical being was all anyone ever saw.

  He wanted to scream at them, “Don’t you see it? Don’t you understand what he is?” But he did not understand himself.

  Sunk in their pouches of fat, the cold little eyes gleamed with smug amusement. The Wizard King stepped forward, raising his staff. Like the pillars of his litter, it was carved of ebony in twisting patterns, its ornate tip flickering with the ghostly gleam of opal and abalone. The touch of it on Sun Wolf’s neck was like ice and fire, a searing dart of pain, and he flinched from it with a stifled cry.

  A satisfied little smile decorated the puffy lips.

  “So you’re the man who thought he could go against me?”

  Sun Wolf said nothing. After the ordeal of the anzid, pain had changed its meaning for him, but the shock of being touched by that staff had taken his breath away. He was aware of Drypettis, standing in the doorway, like some monstrous orchid in her orange gown and veils; he could see her huge brown eyes watching him with an unreadable mixture of coldness and hatred and spite. He wondered if she had thought to tell Sheera where he was being held and what good it would do anyone if she had.

  Or was she waiting to see if he broke, to slip away and warn the others when he did?

  Altiokis’ voice went on. “Who hired you, Captain?”

  The Wolf swallowed and shook his head. “He never told me his name,” he whispered. “He said he’d pay me to spy out the city, the gates, and the canals and to lay out a siege plan...”

  “Probably one of the Thanes.” Altiokis yawned. “They’re always stirring up trouble—and it’s time they were put down.”

  “Where did he meet you, this man?” the Dark Eagle asked.

  In a stifled voice, the Wolf replied, “In the Peninsula, after the siege of Melplith. He arranged a meeting with me, three weeks from now, in East Shore. I was to come here, which I did, overland, and lay out my plans...”

  “Yes, yes,” Altiokis said in a bored voice. “But who was he?”

  “I tell you, I don’t know.” The Wolf glanced from the Eagle to Altiokis and back again, sensing that the Wizard King didn’t really much care who had hired him. Was he that confident of his own powers and of the magic that protected the Citadel? Or had he, as a result of his endless life, merely reached the point of bored carelessness with everything?

  “The man chose an expensive spy,” the Dark Eagle commented thoughtfully. “The world abounds in cheaper ones.”

  The Wolf flashed him what he hoped was an angry dagger of a glance. “Would you hire a cheap one?”

  Then he flinched in agony from the glowing tip of the Wizard King’s staff.

  “Remember to whom you’re talking, barbarian,” Altiokis said, with a kind of quiet relish. He brought the staff toward Sun Wolf’s face, the white metal of its tip seeming to glow with an unholy luminescence. The Wolf drew back from it, feeling the sweat that poured down his cheeks, staring as if hypnotized at the star-flash of the opals and at the twined jaws of the inlaid serpents that held them. Something that was not heat seemed to smoke from the jeweled tip, like a cold promise of unbearable pain.

  “I am Altiokis,” the Wizard King said softly. “No one has the temerity to speak thus to my servants.”

  The burning jewels were within a half inch of the Wolf’s eyes when he whispered, “I’m sorry, my lord.”

  Past the opals, he saw the little smirk appear and wrenched his head aside as the staff touched him again. A cry of pain escaped him, and he felt the flesh along his cheekbone sear and curl, the shock of it piercing his whole body like a sword.

  Savoringly, Altiokis said, “I could chip you away, piece by piece, until you begged for the chance to tell what you know and the mercy of a cut throat. I may do it yet, merely to amuse myself.”

  Sun Wolf made no reply to this. For a time, speech was beyond him. Sickened with the pain, he hung from the chain above his head, trying to regather his thoughts, telling himself that, no matter how bad it was, the anzid had been far worse. But beyond that, he was conscious of both anger and outrage that a man with powers of the Wizard King should use them so, like a cruel child pulling the wings from a fly. He had met enough men in his time who were amused by pain. He had not expected a man who had mastered the hard disciplines of wizardry to be one of them.

  “Governor Stirk...” Altiokis said, and Stirk looked up, the surprised gratification on his face reminding Sun Wolf of a dog that hoped for a pat. The tall harbor master came forward, almost wagging his tail. In t
he doorway, Drypettis stiffened with outraged indignation. Stirk actually went down on his knees and kissed the Wizard King’s jewel-crusted shoe. Altiokis almost purred.

  “Did the interrogation chamber survive the fire?” the wizard asked.

  The new governor’s face fell. “Alas, no, my lord,” he said, rising and unobtrusively dusting his knees. “The upper level of the prisons was gutted by the fire the night Governor Derroug was murdered.”

  My ancestors, the Wolf thought, through the raw anguish that seemed to be pouring into his flesh from the open burn on his face, are looking out for me, after all.

  There was a pout in the fruity voice. “Then he shall go with me to the Citadel in the morning. When I depart, Governor Stirk, I shall leave a force of men here under the command of General Dark Eagle, to be billeted in the houses of citizens as you choose. Do not think that in the event of these disruptions, the annual tribute from this city will be excused. Moreover, I feel sure that you are moved to make some suitable show of gratitude for your elevation to your new position.”

  Stirk almost fell over himself agreeing; Sun Wolf wondered what Altiokis could possibly want with more wealth.

  “As for this—arrogant barbarian...” The butt end of the staff licked out and cracked sharply on the side of Sun Wolf’s knee. Beside the agony of his seared face, he hardly noticed. “I scarcely feel that he is telling us all the truth; but in time, we shall learn from him the names of the men ill-intentioned enough to hire such a person to spy out my city. From my Citadel, I can see all. No army can approach without my knowledge. But it will save trouble to know whom to punish.”

  The words were rhetorical, and Sun Wolf knew it. Altiokis didn’t much care whom he punished or why; to a man a hundred and fifty years old and of no great mental resources to begin with, the infliction of pain was one of few amusements left. Sun Wolf’s eyes followed the fat wizard as he waddled toward the door, with Stirk bowing along at his heels. The Dark Eagle, his face a smooth and cynical blank, brought up the rear.