Half-remembered sense impressions came to her of last night. Yip-nef Dom’s laughter, but not his face; Iayen’s crooked visage swam before her, smiling wickedly; and Alomar, standing unbowed.
Panic welled in her – Ulran! Then she recalled the beaten shackled figure, so unlike the lordly innman, yet he too was unbowed.
She paced her cell, ordering her senses to ignore the hunger pangs. And all the while she tried tidying up her torn clothes.
Constantly she had to cast out of the back of her mind the day’s prospect, for she was under no illusions that torture might be a good expedient for Yip-nef Dom, though she couldn’t imagine what they could want to know.
In the cell next door but one, Ulran sat cross-legged again and controlled his breathing rhythm. Today, he knew, he would require all his reserves. And still the secret of the red tellars’ proposed slaughter eluded him.
But the innman would get his answer soon. The soldiers came for them both and they were taken up to Yip-nef Dom’s preparation salon.
Fhord felt near collapse with the combined weight of her chains but seeing Ulran and hearing his “Are you all right, Fhord?” made her bear the burden without complaint. She managed a nod in response.
Today, Yip-nef Dom and Iayen were ready for them.
Hooks and pulleys had been fixed to the ceiling beams during the night.
Now their wrist chains were hooked up and they were slowly raised, to dangle about a half-mark from the floor, ankle chains just above the tiles.
Ignoring the agonising pain in his shoulder, the innman cast a look at Fhord without betraying his concern.
Her face had paled even more and her mouth trembled slightly as she tried keeping it clamped shut against the cries of anguish she so wanted to utter.
“What do you want from us?” queried the innman.
Both Yip-nef Dom and Iayen were dressed alike in yellow flowing robes that trailed on the dais, jangling gold bracelets on their wrists. On their heads, at a jaunty angle, sat crowns of studded gems, Iayen’s making her lopsided features all the more bizarre.
Without a word, Iayen walked up to the edge of the dais, her face level with Fhord’s, and grabbed one of her arms and swung her round. Iayen was surprisingly strong for a young girl.
Chains clanged against each other. The ceiling beam creaked.
“Tell us, innman, what we want to know!” Iayen seethed and turned to face Ulran, ignoring the hapless Fhord whose eyes wavered with nausea.
Abruptly, Iayen turned, reached out, both hands clamping onto Fhord’s shirt. She pulled down, ripping the garment to reveal Fhord’s breasts, then cupped one in a hand, her pointed nails digging in and drawing blood. She purred, “Or you know who will suffer...”
Yip-nef Dom stood on one side, podgy fingers stroking his flushed cheeks. A she-devil incarnate, this had been of her devising last night, shortly after their debauched celebration of the conception. “Use the weak one against the innman,” Iayen had advised. He tried adjusting his robes to conceal the arousal caused by Iayen’s actions.
“What do you want from us?” repeated the innman.
“The red tellar–”
“Which one, you’ve got hundreds here?”
“Two thousand and fifty, to be precise,” Iayen answered, arms now akimbo, single eye flashing defiantly. She licked Fhord’s blood from her fingernails. “The red tellar that accompanied you, Ulran. Why did it lead you here? And by what means did you communicate with it?”
“No red tellar led us here,” he replied. “We saw one a few–”
Iayen’s double-fisted blow hit him full between the legs, and with the weight of chains he was unable to take any avoiding action.
The pain was slight compared to the rest of his body, but he was surprised at her strength. For a frail-looking young girl, she hit hard.
“Do not treat us like the fools you are!” she said, crossing back to Fhord.
This time she grabbed the city-dweller’s belt and pulled downwards, until Fhord screamed, her wrists almost wrenched out of the iron cuffs.
“All right, stop!” barked Ulran. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.” There was no anger or defeat in his level voice.
“Good!” And she tugged at Fhord once more, forcing another cry from the city-dweller.
Then she left Fhord alone to her pain.
Standing in front of Ulran, Iayen said, “Go on, innman. Speak.”
“The bird was leading us. Don’t ask me why it came to the roof of my inn, I can’t answer you that. It landed, carrying tied around its leg a parchment message.”
Looking down at her then across at Yip-nef Dom, he believed they did not doubt him as he went on, “The message was brief. All it said was, ‘Come to Arisa, quickly. Hundreds of the Overlord’s birds are being captured by the king.’ That was all.”
The king and his daughter exchanged glances.
“Who could have betrayed us, father?”
Yip-nef Dom shrugged.
“Por-al Row, perhaps?” she suggested.
“No, why would he do that, since the scheme’s of his devising? It doesn’t make sense!”
A cunning look came into Iayen’s eye. “You recall your hunting hawks?”
He nodded, looking askance at her, their two dangling prisoners momentarily forgotten.
“It seems strange, does it not,” she said, “that your late lamented keeper’s wife went down with a black fever shortly before the hawks disappeared.”
Ulran interrupted. “That would explain the hunting hawks that set upon our guiding red tellar.”
Iayen looked up, bangles jangling. “What happened to it – the red tellar?”
“Killed, after a grisly fight.” He had no intention of going into detail.
Yip-nef Dom signalled for his daughter to join him and they both walked to the opposite end of the dais. Hand in hand, they whispered together.
Ulran looked across at Fhord.
The city-dweller was drenched in sweat, her clothes torn, shirt in tatters round her waist, baring a lean belly and bruised and cut breasts. Fhord smiled fleetingly, as though to say, “I will endure.”
Ulran nodded, proud of her, and resumed his study of their enemies.
Four guards stood by the door, the others having been dismissed. Even the king, it seemed, did not wish to have too many witnesses to his incestuous relations and his open brutality.
The pair returned. “Your disclosures could be false, we find,” said Yip-nef. “However, we shall look into the matter of the hawks.”
“In the meantime,” Iayen said, “we desire to know why you felt it necessary to come here in a hopeless bid to rescue a few birds.”
“In my time as landlord of the Red Tellar I have studied the Overlord’s birds,” Ulran replied. “Their numbers are rare enough. I saw no point in senseless killing. So I determined to find out why they were being killed.”
“But the parchment message mentioned no killing.”
She was quick and astute, he realised. Never having been a man of falsehood, he had made a simple mistake. But his brain functioned as fast as hers: “Hundreds of birds are not captured to fill the cages of a zoo,” he said scornfully. “Too many and you lose your public’s interest.”
“True,” said Iayen, ruminatively. “So you assumed they would be killed?”
“Yes.”
Again he beheld the travesty of a smile upon her crooked lips. “You intend us to believe you travelled all this way, crossing the Sonalumes and braving Astrey Caron Pass, on the basis of an assumption?” She shook her head, now studying her bangles, idly toying with them.
“Yes.” Then he remembered Alomar, who might soon get his dearest wish – death. “That is correct. But I was intent on coming to Arisa by the established routes – until I met Courdour Alomar.”
His friend’s name alone affected both of his inquisitors.
He went on. “He mentioned the incident of finding you as a babe and his parting arrow. As I
was travelling to Arisa and he was simply out for adventure, he decided to join me. But he insisted we approach Arisa from the dunsaron, bearing in mind his last visit. That is all.”
Iayen nodded, turned, and pointed at Fhord. “And how does she fit into your company, innman?”
At this juncture Fhord answered before Ulran could formulate a suitable reply. “I’m a dreamer,” she said weakly. “As you can see, I’m no adventurer.” An ironic laugh passed her lips. “I talked Ulran into taking me with him. You see, I hadn’t strayed outside the walls of Lornwater before. I wanted to broaden my horizons!”
Well done, Fhord. “That’s what she told me,” said Ulran. “I welcomed company. And we had no sense of urgency about the journey, either.”
“I see...” She faced her father again. He nodded. “If you wish, father, though I see no reason to waste any further time on them.”
King Yip-nef Dom grinned. “My dear, Trulan will squeeze a little useful information from them, I’m sure. Any information can only be an asset to our attack on Lornwater, don’t you agree?”
“Yes, but–”
“But nothing, darling Iayen. I like my enemies to know the lengths to which my own cunning and skill go. It makes their suffering under Trulan all the more excruciating, knowing that all their endeavours have been wasted. A bitter pill to swallow, my dear, when you’re pleading to be put to death.”
Fingering the shackles about Fhord’s ankles, Iayen said in a deep whisper, “Yes. I like that.” Iayen pushed all her weight against Fhord and stepped back. Fhord swung pendulum-like, to-and-fro, yet this time she must have been anticipating Iayen’s move for she didn’t yell out though her face was suffused red with the effort of will-power to deny the little bitch that satisfaction.
“So!” Iayen exclaimed and ran across to Ulran.
The innman too was prepared. Her flurry of blows at his groin and thighs diminished after the first vicious onslaught, for her slight muscles weakened quickly.
Finally, she swung him as well, his wrists chafing on iron cuffs, but he would not give her the pleasure of even the movement of his facial muscles.
Round and round, dizzying, swirling, agonies shooting through his shoulder-wound, his head throbbing, his abdomen aching dully, his groin numb. And round and round, seemingly without end, the ceiling gyrating, rocking.
Then an abrupt alarming cessation, though his head still spun wildly, his body still.
“Hear me well, innman, and think on my words as you break under the skills of Trulan!”
Dimly he was aware of Fhord still swinging, the chains rattling, the wooden ceiling-beam groaning. What was Iayen saying? He must listen, concentrate.
“The sacrifice of your precious red tellars is necessary, innman,” Iayen explained quietly, her transformation quite unsettling. Was the mad streak hereditary?
“Por-al Row has concocted certain arcane ingredients which must be mixed with the blood of freshly slain red tellars, and the mixture must be accomplished precisely at mid-moon of the First Durinma of Lamous, which is as you know the sixth night of the new moon – astrologically significant indeed!” She paused but received no response from the innman.
Ulran had guessed as much. But why?
“The potion will make my father invulnerable and with the same number of red tellars as the year – two thousand and fifty – there will be enough to administer to all his loyal soldiers. And Yip-nef Dom’s invincible army will then ride on Lornwater, with their king in the lead!”
***
Edu-seren Grippore was one of Arisa’s most accomplished surgeons and took great care when slicing off Alomar’s eyelids. He was surprised and pleased to see that his patient possessed an iron control, sufficient not to blink, so that he did not have to use his local nerve anaesthetic, a derivative of the saur plant.
Eventually, he stepped back to admire his skill.
Blood filled the warrior’s eyes, making the whites a rheumy pink.
As he left his patient with the king’s enchanter, he thought it was most irregular to perform such surgery, particularly upon a naked man tethered securely in a chair. But the payment of two sphands seemed enough to stay any qualms of conscience.
Por-al Row studied the warrior intently. He had not mind-probed for almost six years, not since he made a disastrous mistake with one of his king’s favourite concubines. The trauma reverted her to a child of four; and he had been badly shaken by the experience, barely escaping with his own mind intact.
But he had to know more about these men. The visions he had seen were too inconclusive, relying on his own interpretative ability. He felt in his bones that in some way these men could still endanger all his plans.
He placed his long thin fingers to his own temples and concentrated fully on Alomar’s face, a stoic bearded visage with uncanny light-blue eyes beneath bushy brows.
It was a gradual process, more difficult to begin with, as he had to focus upon the blood-washed eyes, the life-fluid obstructing the man’s inner eye.
Then his mind reeled, as though a massive hammer had crashed against his skull!
Steadying himself, Por-al Row shook his head and shakily began all over again.
Sweat soaked him before he reached the margin. This time he withstood the mental belabouring, yet gleaned nothing but flashing impressions, incidents, incredible action and violence, until his mind was over-flooded with information. There was too much, these thought-pictures could not conceivably come from one man’s lifetime of experience!
Por-al Row sank back, baffled, and his head throbbed uncomfortably.
Many of the impressions remained with him, so forceful had they been.
“You will be left alone this night, Courdour Alomar, to contemplate upon the morning. Tomorrow you shall have an audience. Tomorrow you will learn how this Tower of Ash will destroy you!”
The alchemist left the circular room.
Blood spattered Alomar’s chest and streamed down the sides of his face from his severed lids.
He had already established that the chair was bolted to the floor and a had attempted forcing the thick lashing of leather but there was no give at all.
As the alchemist said, there was nothing for it but to brood on his coming death in the morning. And, oddly, as much as he looked forward to joining Jaryar, he perversely wished to disappoint his enemies.
To die in battle, that he would not baulk at: but this, this he would resist, for resistance was in his nature as much as Jaryar was in his heart’s-blood.
***
Por-al Row descended the winding stairs at the back of the circular Tower of Ash that stood in the centre of the courtyard. His head still throbbed from his experience with Courdour Alomar, but he would try the other two as well – if that she-devil had left them alive!
He entered just as Iayen was relating the purpose of his own diabolical scheme, as though it was of her own devising. He reddened and stepped forward, ignoring the presence of the guards.
He grasped the swinging form of the unconscious Fhord. “Sire,” he said.
Iayen swerved round, only now aware of him.
“Yes, Por-al Row?” said the king.
“I would like to mind-probe these two, Your Majesty.”
“What of Courdour Alomar?” Iayen asked before her father could reply.
“He is a mass of confusing and conflicting impressions – he isn’t possible!” Por-al Row opened his hands, shrugged and turned away from Iayen. “Sire, I’m sure we may find out something of use to us.”
“Try it, then, Por-al. But Iayen and I shall stay to watch.”
This he had not anticipated. For after his experience with the warrior he was dubious about his ability. It was as though they were both scheming to trick him. Trap me into showing my limitations! As if I’ve ever claimed to be perfect!
He stepped forward, approaching Ulran first while Iayen clicked her fingers and sent a guard away.
As Por-al Row stared into the innman’s forehead
and concentrated he was outwardly aware of a bucket of water being brought in and thrown up at the dangling woman. Then he met something. Yes, he was getting somewhere. A mental contact.
But all he could perceive was an illimitable void, a state of no-mindedness which sent his own thoughts scurrying round and round as though in a vortex of air, lost without any reference points, and he had to make a dangerous conscious effort to break away, and found himself gasping and swaying drunkenly between the dangling bodies of Ulran and Fhord.
The witch-girl’s giggling made him flush with anger.
He shook himself and faced the wet features of Fhord. Por-al Row was still surprised to find that Fhord was a woman. His scrying hadn’t revealed that, only that this person represented some danger to him and his scheme. The woman’s eyes rolled: she was not suffering from a nightmare but reality.
“Look at me, woman,” Por-al Row whispered, and Fhord, curious and still hazy, looked.
Their eyes met. The mesmerising gaze of Por-al Row held, clamped onto those dark brown orbs. Because Fhord was still unsure of her predicament, the enchanter found an easy quick opening and glimpsed some knowledge of a red tellar actually communicating with someone – a man.
Then nothing, more like a white-stone wall, yet a burning orange glow emanated from behind it, quite unlike Ulran’s no-mindedness. So! The woman, for all her apparent weakness and exhaustion, possessed a formidable mind!
Hastily, Por-al Row explained to the king what he had gleaned.
He was pleased to see that his reference to the red tellar communicating with someone had disturbed them both – even the imperturbable she-devil Iayen! “I believe my mind-probing could cut deep into this woman, if she were first softened by Trulan.”
“I agree,” the king said. He exchanged a look with his daughter and she nodded. “Send them both back to their cells,” Yip-nef ordered. “Trulan can begin his work on them tomorrow. We still have three days to learn anything of interest before First Durin.”
“And they pose no threat to us, anyway,” added Iayen. “So if they should take longer to break, no matter.”
“Yes, but–”
“No buts, Por-al,” snapped the king. “You do not but Iayen! Now go and see to the preparations for the rite!”
Floreskand_Wings Page 34