The others looked at him in surprise.
'You fought your whole clan the night we met,' he went on. 'They wanted to stab me dead in my hammock, but you wouldn't let them. And come to think of it, you spared Felthrup too — didn't Talag want to kill him after he blocked your escape down that storm-pipe?'
For the first time in many days Thasha looked at him fondly. Pazel dropped his eyes. 'I think I know how the Red Wolf chose us,' he said. 'I think it wanted people like you, Dri. People who can do whatever it takes — even kill — but who hated the idea of killing so much that they'd even fight their friends to avoid it. Because we all do hate it, don't we?'
A long silence. Diadrelu would not look at Hercol. The swordsman, for his part, sat back against the wall. His eyes took on a distant look, as though he were quite alone in the passage, or in some other place altogether.
'Shall I tell you how I broke with Sandor Ott?' he said suddenly. 'It is a dark story, and too long to tell in full, but at the heart of it was my refusal to kill a mother and her sons. They were the lever that has moved my life: had I not faced that choice, to murder innocents or join them in exile, I would today perhaps be serving Ott rather than fighting him. I do not know if you are right about the Red Wolf and its choices, Pazel, but you are surely right about us.'
'What happened?' asked Thasha in a whisper. In all her life Hercol had never spoken so openly of his past.
'We fled together,' said Hercol simply, 'from the Mindrei Vale in Tholjassa over cold Lake Ikren, and thence by the Pilgrims' Road into the icewalled maze of the central Tsordons. And Ott's men pursued us, village by village, peak by peak. For eleven years I gave myself to their protection, and used all I knew of the spymaster's methods against him. It was not enough to save the children. Ott tracked them down and killed them, and took their bodies back to Etherhorde on slabs of ice.'
'And the mother?' asked Diadrelu.
'The mother survives. And with her survives the hope of a better world. She is old, now, but her hand is steady, and her mind is tempered steel. Have you not guessed, Pazel? She was the woman you saw in the garden, and we are far enough from that garden now for me to speak without breaking my oath. Her name is Maisa, Empress Maisa, Daughter of Magad the Third, aunt and stepmother to the current usurper, and sole rightful ruler of Arqual.'
The agitation his words caused can barely be described. Pazel alone knew of Maisa from his school days — Neeps' village had had no history teacher, and Thasha's own had never breathed a single word about such a woman — but they all understood that Hercol was denouncing the Emperor, and even speaking of his overthrow.
'Hercol,' whispered Neeps, 'you sly old dog!'
'My mother used to talk about her,' said Pazel. 'As if she knew her, almost.
'Just a minute,' said Thasha. 'If Maisa's the daughter of Magad the Third, who's that woman they call the Queen Mother? The one who hardly ever leaves Castle Maag?'
'That one?' said Hercol. 'A blameless impostor. An old royal cousin, who somehow survived the Twelve Days' Massacre in Jenetra, and who Magad the Third brought to court as a widow. She has lived there ever since, half-mad but peaceful. I believe she really thinks herself a queen. His Supremacy has made good use of her. When foreign princes call on Etherhorde, that woman's mere presence casts doubt on the rumour that someone named Maisa once existed.'
'What about Maisa herself?' said Pazel. 'What in the nine nasty Pits was she doing on Simja — on Treaty Day? She couldn't have found a more dangerous place if she tried.'
'That is true,' said Hercol, 'and I said as much to her myself. She replied that the world and its assembled rulers had begun to doubt that she still drew breath. "They will doubt no longer," she said. "Neither will the Secret Fist," I countered, but Her Highness told me that Ott would not catch her unprepared, and would risk no open assault on her in Simja, eager as he was to robe Magad in the garb of peacemaker. I can only pray that she was right.'
He smiled. 'At last I am free to speak her name aloud — and my listeners do not know of whom I speak! Listen; I will tell you of her briefly.
'Maisa was the daughter of Magad the Third — a vain and violent prince in his youth, but one who found wisdom in his declining years. She was his second child. Maisa's older brother was Magad the Fourth, also known as Magad the Rake. This youth had all his father's defects of character, and none of his strengths. His worst fault was to see the world's ills and conflicts with brute simplicity. Enemies were to be crushed. Arqual was to be loved. Arquali customs, poetry, history, gods — they were the best under the sun, obviously. This he knew, without bothering to learn a poem, study a history, or meditate upon the teachings of the faith he claimed as his own. He did not, for instance, obey the Twenty-Second of the Ninety Rules.'
Thasha thought for a moment, then recited: ' To lie with a woman is to pledge oneself to her wellbeing, and that of the child that may follow. I shall seek no pleasure there but in the knowledge that part of my life shall be the payment. Nor shall I… " Blast it, I'm forgetting-'
'"Nor shall I deny the wages of love, which are the soul,"' finished Diadrelu.
Hercol looked at her, startled, and appeared to lose his train of thought for a moment. Then he nodded and went on. 'Magad the Rake did just that,' he said. 'At twenty-six, the prince seduced a blacksmith's daughter and got her with child. When she could no longer hide her pregnancy, he paid the Burnscove Boys to whisk her offshore and drown her. But his father caught wind of the scheme in time and brought the girl back unharmed. The old Emperor was livid: word had leaked of the attempted murder, and across Etherhorde thousands were taking portraits of the royal family from their walls and tossing them in shame upon the streets.
'The Emperor hobbled out into the Plaza of the Palmeries and swore that his son would raise the child as his own — or else forfeit the crown of Arqual. But the young prince rode up on a charger, leaped to the ground with a snarl, and spat at his father's feet. What other son could replace him? he asked. And the old man struck his son across the mouth.
'Magad the Rake was driven from Arqual. He fled east, to the Isle of Bodendel, under the flag of the Noonfirth Kings. His father disowned him, and the Abbot of Etherhorde cast him from the Rinfaith. In Castle Maag some months later, the blacksmith's daughter bore a son: Magad the Fifth.'
'His Supremacy,' said Thasha.
'A title invented by his father the Rake,' said Hercol. 'Alas, the blacksmith's girl was still in love with her foul seducer, and blamed herself for tearing the royal household apart. It seems the royal servants blamed her too. One day, for spite, they told her how the Rake had kept other women scattered about the city, and had often declared that the mother of his son meant less to him than the hunting-bitches in the kennels. The girl left Castle Maag, went straight to her father's smithy and drank hot lead.'
Diadrelu closed her eyes.
'The Emperor had no other son, it is true. But he did have his beloved daughter, Maisa. She took the orphaned princeling, Magad the Fifth, as her own child, and vowed to care for him always. And her father, in the finest deed of his life, named Maisa his heir.
'The old man lived another six years, and in that time Maisa wed a baronet, and bore two sons of her own. They were never jealous of their cousin, who would rule when Maisa's time on earth was over; they did not hunger for more blessings than those life had already showered upon them. But jealousy there was: somewhere in East Arqual, Magad the Rake was plotting his return. And the Secret Fist took his side, for Sandor Ott feared to serve under a woman. He knew also that Empress Maisa would not let him run the occult affairs of Arqual as he saw fit — a practice he had grown used to under her father. This was, after all, when Ott first began dreaming of the use he might make of a certain heretic king in the Mzithrin lands.'
'The Shaggat,' said Pazel.
Hercol nodded. 'Ott's agents provoked the skirmishes that grew into the Second Sea War, and the old Emperor, weakened by tales of the ghastly bloodshed engulfing the west, died
halfway through the campaign. Maisa was crowned Empress, and at once sent emissaries of peace to the Mzithrin capital. Among them was a young genius of a surgeon by the name of Chadfallow.'
'Ignus?' said Pazel in disbelief. 'But that was forty years ago! He can't be that old.'
'He does not look it,' Hercol agreed, 'but he is past sixty without a doubt. Years ago I asked his age. "Old enough to be your father," he told me shortly, "and to be spared such idle questions." In any case, he went to Babqri as Maisa's standard-bearer. It is to the Empress that Chadfallow owes his career as special envoy, although at times I think he forgets this.
'The war was by now quite out of control, raging throughout Ipulia and the Crownless Lands. Still the last, worst years of it might have been prevented, but for what happened next. In great secrecy Ott brought Magad the Rake back to Etherhorde, and with the aid of certain generals who had always loathed taking orders from a woman, drove Maisa from the city. Her baronet was killed, her birth-sons driven into exile beside her. Magad the Fifth, the Rake's child, was torn from her arms and taken to the father who had tried to drown him before his birth.
'To make the people accept such treachery, Ott spread rumours about Maisa: rumours of corruption and graft, and uglier sins. A pack of lies, of course; but by the time the people saw through them it was far too late.
'Having seized the throne, the Rake set out to seize his son's heart by equally brutal tactics. Magad the Fifth was a boy of nine, and loved his stepmother dearly, but his father and a thousand sycophants filled his head with tales of Maisa's wickedness, and kept at them so relentlessly that the boy at last started to believe the lies. They called her embezzler, deathsmoker, torturer of children, unnatural lover of animals and Flikkermen, practicer of dark Western rites. By the time young Magad's half-brothers were found and slain in the Tsordons, the boy was denouncing Maisa himself. And to this day our Emperor repeats these lies, whenever he forgets that his stepmother does not officially exist.'
'But can he truly believe them,' Pazel asked, 'after Maisa raised him as one of her own?'
'A fine question,' said Hercol. 'All I can say with certainty is that when it mattered most he permitted Ott to go on hunting Maisa and her children. I do not know if he has ever repented. Still, there was a rumour in the Secret Fist that the death of Magad the Rake was no hunting accident, as the world was told: that he was not tossed from his horse but pulled from it, by his son. The man who is now our Emperor then took a stone and crushed his father's skull — and the word on his lips as he did so was, "Mother!" '
'And yet he sits upon her stolen throne,' said Dri, 'and pretends that she never existed.'
Hercol nodded. 'Worse, he has never pardoned her. If a foreign king or bounty hunter laid hands on Maisa, he could claim to be holding an enemy of the crown. Ott, after all, only let Maisa and her sons flee Etherhorde to save appearances. He always meant to kill them, at a prudent distance from the capital. And as I have already told you, he succeeded with her sons.'
'How has the mother survived so long?' asked Diadrelu.
'Good luck, in part,' said Hercol. 'Even a spymaster has but so many men at his command, and for decades now they have been occupied with their Shaggat deception. And the Mzithrinis have certain brilliant agents of their own, both within the territories of Arqual and in the Crownless Lands, and much of the Secret Fist's efforts go to fighting them. But Ott scorns the very notion of luck. His edict was always Leave nothing to chance. And so I think it was with Maisa. He must have decided that an ex-Empress living out her declining years among poor mountain folk was better than a slain Empress who could become a martyr.'
'But she's not in decline, is she?' said Pazel. 'I mean, I saw her, and-'
Hercol looked at him, and a bright ferocity shone in his face, and the memories seemed to dance once more before his eyes. 'They slew her children,' he said. 'And they took her hopes for peace, and her faith in goodwill and honour among nations, and dragged them through sewers of treachery. No, she is not in decline. There is an avenging fire in her that could yet change the fate of this world, and sweep away the lesser men who bleed and abuse it.'
Dri was watching him intently. 'Is that your dream as well?' she asked.
'Yes,' said Hercol. 'And I am far from alone, although I have sometimes felt so. And with the approach of Treaty Day I feared I would lose her at last. I wrote letter upon letter, begging her not to gamble with her life on a visit to Simja. No answering letters came. Only once — days before boarding the Chathrand — did I receive a scrap of paper, slipped into my pocket by a stranger in a crowd. The words were in Maisa's hand: Have you forgotten our toast, Asprodel? I assure you, I have not.'
'What's that name she called you?' asked Pazel.
Hercol smiled again. 'In her service we all bear false names. Her Majesty chose mine.'
'Asprodel,' said Dri, looking up at Hercol. 'The mountain-apple, whose flowers open before all others, even in the melting snow. I would not call that name a false one.'
'But what did she mean?' pressed Thasha. 'What toast?'
Hercol remained silent for a moment, as if struggling to fit words to memory. 'Before Simja,' he said at last, 'I had not laid eyes on Empress Maisa in ten years. Not since the day we learned for certain that her sons were dead. On that day she called me to her cold chambers, in that forgotten colony of timber men, and sent her one servant from the room, and poured us each a cup of steaming wine. "Today I turn, Asprodel," she told me. "Henceforth I shall face the wind, and cease to live as a hunted thing. My own hunt begins, and by the souls of my children, I swear it shall only end with my death."
' "What do you hunt, Your Majesty?" I asked her.
' "Why, my throne," she said, as if surprised by the question. And yet anyone would have forgiven me if I had laughed. She had been a stateless monarch for thirty years. I had been with her for the last twelve, and had watched her entourage dwindle from seven hundred to sixty, half of them old, less than a dozen true warriors. Nine-tenths of her gold was spent, and her sons were in ice-coffins sailing back to Magad the Fifth. How could she even begin?
'I learned soon enough. "Open that chest by the window, Asprodel, and bring me what lies therein," she said. I obeyed her, and this what I found.'
Hercol seized the hilt of his sword, and in a swift, quiet motion pulled the weapon from its sheath. In the dim light the blade was little more than a shadow, and yet somehow they could all sense its nearness, as though it were radiating heat, though they felt none.
'"That is Ildraquin," Maisa told me. "Earthblood, in the tongue of the Selk, who made it from the steel of the Gates of Idharin, when that city was no more. Six miles beneath the earth they forged it, under Wrath Mountain. It was their gift to Bectur, last of the Amber Kings." '
' "I have heard of that sword," I told her, "but under a different name: Curse-Cleaver, men call it, do they not?" '
'"They do," she said, "for in the deep heart of Alifros all curses die, and something of that heart's molten power was caught, they say, in the tempering of the blade. And Ildraquin did break the curse that had wrapped the Amber Kings in misery and sloth, they say, for Bectur's reign was like a last ray of sun beneath the thunderheads, before a long night of storm. It was far too late to prevent the storm. Let us hope we are not too late again."
'With that she sheathed the sword and passed it to me. I began to object, but she silenced me with an impatient gesture. "Whom do you imagine I am guarding it for? A son?" I found no words to answer, so she continued: "Gather your things, Asprodel. You ride today upon the river, with the timber-men to Itholoj, and thence to the coast, and by the first ship bound for Etherhorde. A great ally awaits us there: probably the greatest we shall have in this campaign, although he shall never wield a sword. He is a mage, Ramachni Fremken, and he has stepped already into the life of the daughter of my admiral, Eberzam Isiq."
'Ha!' cried Pazel, turning to Thasha. 'And you thought Ramachni had befriended you just so that he could fin
d me, and teach me those Master-Words. But he's always been part of something larger.'
'Well I knew that much,' said Thasha. 'In fact I always thought he was part of something enormous — bigger than who rules Arqual, or whether it fights another war with the Mzithrin. I suppose that something was the Nilstone. But to this day I feel like there's more to the story than he's telling me.'
Hercol was studiously avoiding her eye. 'Ott had chosen you already to play a part in the Shaggat's return,' he said stiffly. 'The prophecy with which he had infected the Nessarim required a military daughter. Ramachni knew of his interest in you almost from the moment of your birth, and bid me watch over you, and befriend your father. Alas, I never came close to guessing the nature of that interest.'
'So the admiral's on Maisa's side as well!' said Neeps excitedly. 'Right, Hercol?'
The Tholjassan shook his head. 'Eberzam suspects that Maisa lives, and even that I am pledged to her cause. But he has always had the tact not to pose the question to me directly, lest he force me into an admission that would inconvenience us both. The admiral long ago swore an oath to Magad the Fifth, and it has cost him terribly to break it. Only knowledge of the Shaggat conspiracy proved strong enough.'
'The loyalties of a lifetime are hard to part with, even for the finest reasons,' said Dri, still gazing at Hercol.
'I wish he were aboard,' whispered Thasha.
Pazel heard the stifled misery in her voice. He had to fight the urge to take her hand, right there before them all.
Suddenly the shell embedded in his skin began to burn. Pazel clenched his teeth. Klyst knew, Klyst always knew, when his heart went out to Thasha. And if the murth-girl — wherever she was, whatever she had become — could read his feelings so plainly, couldn't Oggosk do the same?
Where Thasha is concerned I shall not be in the least forgiving.
He looked at Diadrelu. He could kill this woman and all her people, just by caring too much for the girl at his side.
Sealed fates, he thought. All of us murderers before the end. He could almost have laughed at the absurdity of it all.
The Rats and the Ruling sea tcv-2 Page 29