by Martin Ash
And as if all this were not revelation enough, it appeared that the fate of the vanished King and the darling little prince and princess were also bound up in Issul's quest, as much as was the fate of Enchantment's Reach itself.
So both Issul and Pader Luminis knew what had happened to the King, after all.
And all of it had been kept from the Spectre!
Fectur steamed silently. It galled. Oh, how it galled. He recalled again how he had caught Issul and the cursed conjuror, heads together in Leth's study. Surely then, it was this blue casket that they had been discussing, which Issul clutched hidden to her breast.
'No one must know of this!'
'I swore as much to Leth. He bade me warn you, or whomsoever I passed it on to: its existence must always remain a secret.'
Well, it was a secret no longer. Fectur itched and burned, almost bursting from his skin as he fought the urge to ride out now in pursuit of the Queen and her precious cargo. More than a day and a half had passed since her departure; he would not find her. And so much still demanded his personal attention here in Enchantment's Reach. He could only trust that Gordallith would do his job well and that a report would soon be forthcoming.
*
In addition to all else, Radius had confirmed that Issul and Pader Luminis had made arrangements for Grey Venger's removal from Enchantment's Reach. The old woman too. She was called Arene. Radius took her to be a mystic or clairvoyant of some description, but could furnish nothing more about her.
Finally, at Fectur's urging, Radius, his cheeks aflame, had described how the two had planned the Lord High Invigilate's humiliation in the Special Assembly.
Fectur closed his eyes. There would be a reckoning for this. Oh yes, that much he promised himself.
But in the meantime, how was he to make the best of all he had learned?
To begin with Fectur considered the possibility that the information Radius had passed on might be dissimulation. Not on Radius's part. No, the boy had been far too scared to tell anything but the truth. But could Issul and the magician have concocted this fantastic tale deliberately to mislead, knowing that the boy would pass it on?
The more he considered this the more he was inclined to dismiss it. No, it all rang true. Looking back, everything fell into place; all - or almost all - the unanswered questions. He would proceed cautiously, but in the belief that he was not misinformed.
Next he thought of Radius. The boy's knowledge made him a serious risk. Was it wise to let him live?
For the time being, all things considered, Fectur decided that it was. The boy had privileged, trusted access to Pader Luminis. He had useful ears. He might still remember more details of what he had already reported. It would be a pity to lose such a unique and valuable source just yet. If the necessity arose he could be disposed of with little trouble.
Then Fectur gave his attention to the Queen's quest, but resolved that to mull any further over it just now would be time wasted. He had acted with foresight, after all. The machinery was in position. Until he heard from Gordallith there was little more he could do. Except . . .
Hmmm, the bodyguard, Kol, who was now assigned to Pader Luminis, had travelled back with the Queen from wherever she had been after leaving Lastmeadow. His knowledge could prove very useful.
At this point in his musings Fectur was interrupted by a curt knock upon his door. An officer of his Security Cadre entered, halted before Fectur's desk and saluted. 'The prisoner is below, sir.'
'Any problems?' Fectur enquired.
'None. There will be some minor repercussions, almost certainly, but nothing we aren't prepared for.'
'No identities?'
'We carried nothing. Of course, fingers will point after an abduction like this. But our accusers will never dare to raise their voices without sure evidence.'
'Good. Let us see if those fingers can be made to point elsewhere.'
'I will attend to it.'
'His chamber has been prepared?'
'Just as you specified, my lord.'
'Then I think I will go down and pay my respects.'
Fectur descended via the numerous stairways that let into the grim, lightless bowels of the Ministry of Realm Security. Here, in the chill dungeons, he passed along narrow aisles, ignoring the cries that came to him from the honeycomb of tiny cells on either side, seeing nothing of the desperate prisoners huddled within. He came at length to a locked door outside which a sentry stood guard. At Fectur's nod the sentry unlocked the door and the Lord High Invigilate entered.
He stood in a dank, windowless cell which was illumined by a single torch on a bracket beside the door. The walls were of cold, rough stone, streaked with damp. Filthy straw littered the floor. A trestle-table had been set against one wall, a number of metal instruments arranged neatly upon its surface. Beneath the table was a three-legged wooden stool.
Against the opposite wall a man was spreadeagled, naked. His wrists and ankles were restrained by iron clamps attached by small lengths of chain, bolted to the wall. Over his mouth was a thick soiled gag, tied at the back of his head.
Fectur stood before him and surveyed him for long moments without uttering a word. The man was aged in his late twenties, athletically built, though with signs of an incipient paunch. A mass of dark hair complemented a thick, trimmed beard, and a cloud of hair upon his broad chest. He looked up briefly and stared Fectur in the eye. A latticework of faint purple lines upon his eyes revealed indeterminate otherborn origins; he was no doubt a hybrid of two or more of the various races that had made Enchantment's Reach their home over the centuries. He met Fectur's gaze long enough to make plain his contempt, then let his head hang again.
Fectur took a few moments to consider, then stepped forward and punched the man hard in the solar plexus. The air rushed from the prisoner's lungs in a loud blast, constricted by his gag. He writhed against his chains, striving against his agony to draw breath again. Fectur went to the table, and from the instruments there selected a pair of small, wide-bladed shears. He tested the action a couple of times, enjoying the clean smooth sound of the metal blades caressing. Then he stepped across to the prisoner, pulled aside his hair and snipped off the top of his left ear.
The man vented a muffled roar and yanked helplessly against his chains. Fectur stepped back to the table and replaced the shears.
'Just so the terms of our conversation are properly understood.'
When the man's noise had subsided Fectur took up the shears again. The prisoner recoiled, straining against his chains, desperate sounds coming from behind the gag as his tormentor stepped close.
'Relax, man.' Fectur brought the shears up and sliced through the gag. 'Now, let's have a little chat, shall we?'
He pulled out the stool and sat down, his arms folded upon his chest. 'I have no taste for this, you know.'
The prisoner eyed him silently through glassy, narrowed, pain-racked eyes.
'Truly, I do only what is required,' Fectur continued. 'So, it is in your hands from here on. Now, do you want to start, or shall I?'
The prisoner spoke between his teeth. 'What is it that you want of me?'
'Oh, I think you know the answer to that,' said Fectur. 'And I will have the information I seek. Be sure of that, Iklar. Be very sure.'
He paused, letting his words work to their greatest effect. Iklar, naked and so vulnerable, his neck and breast slick with the blood running from his mutilated ear, dropped his gaze.
Fectur said, 'But let us proceed methodically. You will recall, a matter of less than a moon's passing ago, you were approached one evening in the Tavern of the Veiled Light in Overlip by a young woman, far from unattractive. She bade you carry a message to the outlawed leader of the True Sept, Grey Venger. This you duly did. You do not deny this, do you, Iklar?'
Iklar hesitated.
'Oh come, now,' said Fectur. 'Do not make me resort to cruder means. You do know where you are, don't you?'
Iklar's gaze flickered across the t
able and its contents. He closed his eyes and nodded. 'Aye. What you say is true.'
'Very good. Now, tell me what happened next.'
'I delivered the message as it was passed to me. But why do you ask this? It is well known that Grey Venger responded. He met, with King Leth himself, in Overlip, and later went voluntarily to the Palace.'
'Quite so. And now he is abroad, a prisoner of the Queen.'
Iklar's brow furrowed.
'It is true. Believe it or don't. I care not.'
'What of the King's promise?'
'What of it? Let us say that in regard to Grey Venger, the Crown and the Legendary Child, things have changed. Now, you will tell me how you contacted Venger.'
'I have never had access to Grey Venger. I merely delivered the message to another.'
Fectur took up the shears, stood, and approached him. 'Tell me only the truth, Iklar. If I have as much as a hint that you lie I will take off your nose, then your lips, then. . .' he traced a line down the man's neck and breast with the points of the shears, then circled the nipple. He stood back. 'Do you understand? And it would be only a beginning.'
'I do not lie!' insisted Iklar. 'I am a messenger, nothing more. ‘The first stage in a channel, well-known to you and to the Crown. After me there would be others, three or more, before the channel touched the heart of the True Sept.'
Fectur knew it to be true. After the True Sept went quite literally underground he had expended much time and effort trying to reach its inner core. Frustratingly, the trail ended always at the Veiled Light. Surveillance teams had made Iklar their target, yet never had they discovered the moment when a message was passed, or whom it was passed to. Any of a hundred or more persons with whom Iklar mingled could have been the next link in the chain to the True Sept's heart. Fectur had wished for a purge of Overlip, but knew it to be impractical. So dense and intricate was that warren - it was another world, one which all the wiles of the Spectre could not penetrate.
'Yet the channel remains in place?'
'It did until an hour ago, when your men arrested me. That was reckless, my lord. I am nothing.'
'Do you think I am not aware of your status? But I am sure, if you were to return, the way could be opened once more. You will have passwords, codes, to cover all contingencies?'
Iklar gave a half-nod. He seemed puzzled.
'The True Sept established contact with the Karai Prince Anzejarl,' Fectur said. 'Do not deny it. I caught one of your members virtually in the act. In fact he died, confessing his crimes, here in this very chamber. The question that remains is, Why? Anzejarl is not known for his love of bargaining or negotiation. What end does the True Sept seek in contacting the Karai? What do they have to offer?'
'You are asking the wrong man,' Iklar replied, his eyes pained. 'I’m but a messenger.'
'Yes, I know that!' Fectur snapped. 'But the apparatus for reaching the Sept's heart remains in place, does it not? Through you I might still make contact with whichever High Priest now stands in Grey Venger's stead.'
'It might be possible. You could have done that without bringing me here first.'
Fectur glared at him. 'What do you know of 'Orbelon'?'
Iklar returned him a blank stare. 'What is this?'
By the look in his eyes Fectur knew him to be telling the truth. 'The 'Soul of the Orb'?'
Iklar shook his head, his gaze enquiring.
'Well, let us see.' Fectur bent and picked up the fallen gag. He studied it ruminatively, then applied it to Iklar's bloody ear. Iklar flinched.
'You really should have a doctor see to that wound.'
Fectur tossed the shears onto the table and strode from the cell.
iv
Shreds.
They were all he had.
Everything came in shreds. Even now, with all he had learned today, he seemed hardly to have advanced a step. When he strung the shreds together he stared only at gaping holes in between.
For a man of Fectur's bent and temperament such a fragmented tapestry was an outrageous provocation. Moreover, it was a threat. He believed Iklar. He accepted that he might apply pain beyond imagining, take Iklar to and beyond the brink of death, and the man would yield nothing more than he had already given up. Yet the key, or a key, to resolving much of this intolerable mystery lay in discovering just what it was that the True Sept had that could weigh significantly in Prince Anzejarl's mind. Of this Fectur had become convinced.
But how to get to the Sept's secret heart?
He could send Iklar back, but would the Sept respond favourably?
Fectur had a single ace to play; something he had for the last two days been pondering how best to use. He did not himself understand it, but recognized that it had to be of consequence. It was something that no one but he had knowledge of.
He had not totally been truthful when reporting to King Leth the results of his interrogation of the captured agent sent by the True Sept to establish contact with the Karai. The man had not died as Fectur had claimed. Not quite. He had lingered, until only two days past.
For some time in the man's final hours Fectur had been on the point of dispatching him, yet something, an intuition, told him that the man had not quite given his all. Fectur was impressed by his resilience, by the Sept's capacity for instilling such extremes of loyalty into its members. But in the end his intuition had proved correct.
It was in his dying breath that the prisoner had finally given up his secret. He had been a man no longer; no longer knew who or what he was. And Fectur, with infinite patience, had won his confidence and prised from him those final, fateful words.
Those words, combined with everything else the Spectre had now learned, seemed laden with meaning. If he could just work out how best to use them, they must surely now provide him with his longed-for access to the True Sept's hidden heart. And if he could reach the heart of the Sept, then through it he could reach Prince Anzejarl as well.
And if he could reach Anzejarl . . .
SIX
i
The wolfhearts milled in a clearing bounded by a circle of obsidian standing stones below.
'It is not a good time,' whispered Count Harg. 'They are assembling for a ritual of birthing.'
Leth gazed down upon the scene. He had rarely set eyes on creatures as strange as these.
They were twenty or so in number and had emerged from holes in the rock at the base of the cliff from which he and his dubious band of warriors looked down. Others were coming from rock formations beyond the stone circle. They came forward on all fours, approximately lupine in form, with long bodies clothed in sleek grey hair. They were far larger than wolves - perhaps as large as men - and their legs were accordingly large-boned and muscular. Their heads were wholly devoid of hair, bloody red in colour. The skulls were heavy and broad, crowned with thick folds of skin out of which rose short, thick cartilagenous stalks, three in number, at the tip of each of which was a bulbous eye set into a carapace of horny flesh. Their mouths were wide, gaping slits filled with a mass of fleshy tendrils which fell to a level somewhat below the wide jaw where they shivered and writhed ceaselessly, like beards of worms.
'I think we will have to attack,' whispered Harg. 'We can charge in at the gallop, take out as many as possible without pausing, and be through them and away before they properly know what has hit them.'
'Will they not permit us to pass unhindered?' queried Leth.
Harg half-laughed and shook his head.
'Can we not speak to them, negotiate a way through?'
Harg gave him a look of forbearance.
'I am reluctant to attack creatures who’ve done me no harm,' Leth said.
‘You are very soft, Swordbearer.’ Harg nodded over his shoulder. 'Move back. We will talk about it.'
He signalled to Rasgul, the leader of the Abyss warriors. The three slid from their hiding-places and made their way back to the wayside where their horses were tethered, tended by the long-limbed youth, Juson.
&nbs
p; 'The Swordbearer thinks we should engage the wolfhearts in friendly badinage, and ask them if they will allow us to pass,' said Harg to Rasgul. Rasgul's frozen, scornful expression left Leth in no doubt as to the esteem the warrior held this opinion in. Rasgul glanced away down the path and jettisoned a thin jet of saliva between his teeth into the dust.
'My point is that it seems a cowardly act to simply charge into them, swinging weapons, when they have done us no harm, nor even menaced us,' Leth said.
'They have done us no harm for the simple reason that they are not aware of our presence,' Harg replied. 'Were they so, we would be fighting for our lives just now. The wolfhearts are not inclined to cosy chats.'
'Then can’t we wait for them to disperse?'
'Under different circumstances that is precisely what we would do. Unfortunately we have come upon them at the beginning of a birthing ritual. A new wolfheart cub is being brought into the tribe. It’s an event that occurs rarely, perhaps once every three years. The rite and attendant celebrations could last for up to three days.'
'Is there no other way past?'
'You have seen for yourself that the road passes right alongside their circle. The one factor in our favour is that their attention will be focused wholly upon the centre of the circle. It’s the only way.'
A weird, melancholic sound reached Leth's ears. Harg nodded to himself. 'The ritual has begun.'
Rasgul stared at Leth as though expecting something, though he spoke no word.
'Well, Swordbearer, you are our leader. What is your decision?' asked Harg, his sarcasm unconcealed.
'I’m a stranger here. I can but follow your advice,' said Leth. 'But if it must be as you have said, then let it be with the minimum of bloodshed.'
'Fear not for that. Not one of us will be lingering amongst these beasts for a moment longer than is necessary.' Harg turned to Rasgul. 'It’s preferable to wait for the moment of birthing, I think.'