Lady Polaris swept onto a low dais at the front of the room, white hair and dress glistening in the reflected crystalline light. To polite applause, she announced she had commissioned one of her cleverer charges to produce a work that she herself had dreamed up. The archmage bragged about her cleverness; then she sat in the front row to see just what she’d commissioned.
Without any sign of Sysquemalyn, her entertainment began.
There was neither curtain nor light bank, but somehow the room went dark. Then, about head-height on the dais, a window into nothing opened, dropped, and became a door. From the door stepped a handsome man, as naked as a baby. Sketching with his hands, the man described more circles, and each opened into another window. From one he drew cloth to wrap himself. From another, a shining sword. A third window opened onto a sylvan glade, complete with waterfall, and this window the man tugged open until the water of the pool spilled over the lip and gushed onto the dais, then the floor, only to disappear. At this trick, the company of archmages oohed like children watching fireworks.
In the glade, the man met a woman, equally naked. He retrieved for her a bolt of cloth and wrapped it about her slender form. Arm in arm, they crossed the stage and stepped into a sunny desert. The audience could feel the warm wind and scent of cactus blossoms waft over them, and oohed again.
At the rear, Candlemas found himself oohing and aahing along with the rest. Then he shook his head, wondering how Sysquemalyn had contrived these tricks. Typical entertainments were a blend of illusion, sleight-of-hand, distant events viewed magically, and performances by hired actors. Certainly all these elements mingled here, but there was much more magic involved, and he was piqued that he could identify little of it.
As he’d guessed it might, the story soon turned tragic. An archmage entered the story, took a fancy to the beautiful woman, and demanded her. The hero resisted, so the girl was spirited away. Journeying through ever-increasing settings—twisted tubes of stone, empty expanses like black glass, tangled forests where the trees attacked, and so on—the hero suffered fear and sorrow, then gained a boon companion only to lose him tragically. The girl, who spurned the archmage’s advances, was brutally tortured, both physically and then spiritually, tricked into thinking she’d killed her lover when he entered her room by night. Soon the girl died and spiraled into a pit of hells, each more fearsome than the other. Despairing, the hero killed himself, then flickered through his own hells, drawing gasps and guffaws from the jaded audience. In the end, the lovers were united only to be incinerated in a pit. But the archmage, taking pity on the misguided and headstrong humans, resurrected them as two ash trees at opposite ends of the sylvan glade, yearning to interlink branches, but never quite achieving it.
Finally, the scenes were whisked away, and only Lady Polaris was left standing there to bask as the audience roared and cheered and applauded. They demanded she take a bow, which she did, smile gleaming. But Candlemas did not linger. Mopping his brow and yanking at his collar, he staggered past servants and spectators until he reached fresh air at a back door.
Of course, he told himself, the moral was clear: mere humans must never defy the whim of an archmage, lest they be racked in every hell imaginable. The audience of archmages had, naturally, loved it.
But where, Candlemas asked himself over and over, had Sysquemalyn gotten those magics? And how had she manipulated them?
And most importantly, could she really control them?
* * * * *
In the morning, which Sunbright was moderately surprised to see, the orcish commander took pains to paint a smeary red hand on a curl of birch bark, with his own mark, a tiny red spider, in the corner. This, he explained, would be a safe-conduct to get them past later patrols as they approached Tinnainen. “And fortunate you will be to gain audience with the One King, honored be his name. Once you listen to him speak, you will throw off your doubts and join our glorious cause. Maybe soon, I’ll see the two of you commanding patrols!” With a gurgly laugh, he waved them along the road and up into the next reach of forest.
Barely had they passed the first few trees, though, before Sunbright flung the red-painted pass by the side of the road and scanned the woods to either hand. “I reckon the south side will—”
Greenwillow cut him off. “What are you doing? Are you mad?” She bent and retrieved the pass, blowing chaff off the wet paint.
“What?” Sunbright snapped back. “Me mad? You don’t believe that chip of bark will protect us, do you?”
“Of course I do! That orc might be starry-eyed and dense as an oak tree, but he’s honest enough. And he’s empowered to issue passes, and now we’ve got one! So we don’t need to skulk through the woods anymore, and so lose time. We can hie straight to Tinnainen.”
“Listen to yourself!” Sunbright waved his hands in frustration. “An honest orc? Orcs can’t be trusted, starry-eyed or not! Nor can most ‘civilized’ men, for that matter.”
“Nor any men at all, say the elves. Think, frost-brain! We failed to slip past an orc patrol this far from Tinnainen. The closer we get, the thicker the patrols! We can’t skulk any farther through the woods. Furthermore, if we tried and got caught, we’d likely be executed as spies. So we have no choice but to march down the middle of the road—as we’ve every right to do, after all—with this pass pinned to my breast.”
“Save yourself the trouble!” Sunbright grabbed his hair, pulling on his topknot. “Just prop your sword in the road and put that against your breast! Better to fall on your own sword than go down to a dozen hacks from bloodthirsty orcs.”
“I won’t argue.” And with that, Greenwillow spun about and tramped off down the road. Sunbright called after her, then yelled, then swore, and finally trotted to catch up.
He waved his hands at the openness above and to either side of them. “I still say this is stupid.”
“Save your breath for walking, human.”
* * * * *
Their new status as legal delegates to the One King was tested about noon. Climbing a steep road, they ran into a patrol of orcs coming down the ruts. Human and elf froze and waited nervously, Greenwillow’s hand clearly showing the pass.
The five orcs pulled abreast of them, then shuffled around until Sunbright felt the hair on his neck and arms rise. He anticipated his last sensation would be the back of his skull caving in. But one of the orcs snatched up the chip of bark, studied the spider mark, then gruffly handed it back. Snarling at the others, they passed on without a word.
Sunbright let out a long breath.
“Now do you believe me?” Greenwillow glared with gray-green eyes.
“Yes. You were right and I was wrong. But glory to Garagos, being a diplomat is harder than being a fighter!”
And so they traveled for two more days. They slept two nights in the woods and, when closer to the city, spent one night at an inn. The place looked perfectly normal, for all that orcs and orcish men hung around outside sipping weak ale and bragging crudely of their conquests, sexual, battlefield, and otherwise. Inside, the human proprietor and his wife maintained business as usual. Too usual, in fact. They conspicuously acted as if nothing were wrong and there weren’t a horde of orcs within spitting distance. Attempts to draw them into conversation went nowhere, and all the time they displayed smiles so tight Sunbright thought their faces would crack. But the elf and barbarian bought a passable meal and good brown ale, the harvest having just passed, and slept on pallets on the common room floor.
So it was that, finally, they came within sight of Tinnainen. It occupied a high plane almost devoid of trees, and the rocky road wended right to its front gates. Another road crossed the main one, and past the city steeper foothills gave way to distant mountains. In this direction, Tinnainen was the first or last city along the road, a fairish size but tiny compared to Dalekeva, yet it served as a market for whole communities scattered through the mountain range. Again, there was a small town surrounding the gray-walled city, which by fresh paint and n
ew stonework showed it had been reinforced for defense, with catapults and ballistae on the largest flat-roofed building.
In the distance, crofters’ homes were scattered in fertile pockets, but there was no farmland to speak of, for the land was stony and broken. It was sheep and goat country, and the smell of the pens by the roadside swept Sunbright up in a wave of nostalgia that almost smothered him. Too, the weather reminded him of home, for it had turned colder at this higher elevation, and clouds meshed and clashed over the mountains, churning the sky first blue and then gray. A shrill wind came and went, sucking around his bare legs. He couldn’t help think that Talos, god of the tempests, was telling him to go back, go back.
The gates stood open and were thronged by orcs who largely ignored the traffic. In such a small city, everyone would know everyone, even the occupiers knowing the occupied. But the guards perked up quickly enough when the two strangers approached. Greenwillow showed her pass, explaining she desired an audience with the One King. Sunbright watched the traffic, which consisted mostly of humans going about their business. The people of Tinnainen, as in many small communities, resembled one another in sporting narrow, pointed jaws and beetling brows. But they seemed content enough with the orcish army occupation, buying and selling and gossiping. From a tavern Sunbright heard the sound of men singing, and occasionally a woman’s voice joining in. It can’t be too cursed a place, he found himself thinking, but he would still have liked to question one of the locals for a few minutes in a quiet corner.
An orc captain took Greenwillow’s pass and detached two soldiers to escort her somewhere. The orcs spoke among themselves in a grunting, gargling language that sounded like someone choking. Sunbright watched Greenwillow’s eyes. He’d neglected to ask her if she spoke the language, but read in her face that she did, for she followed the exchanges with feigned indifference. So the ignorant barbarian took his cues from her and stayed close on her left side, for she fought right-handed.
Tramping through the crowded streets, Sunbright looked for signs of oppression and found none. Whatever the One King’s plans, he’d kept a rein on pillage and rape. They soon arrived at what Sunbright thought of as the city palace, entered a small side door, and squeezed into a room barely larger than an alcove.
The guards left them to a human clerk, and Sunbright breathed easily again. But soon he found himself missing the orcs. The clerk was a fussy, irascible woman who questioned them endlessly as to their mission.
“I told you thrice now,” Greenwillow finally snapped, “I’m a delegate from the High Elves of Cormanthyr, here to see the One King!”
“And I’ve told you, elf, the king is a busy man! He doesn’t admit every saucy snippet that marches in here! Give me the missive to read, and I’ll decide if it warrants the king’s attention!”
Greenwillow cursed under her breath in elven, but handed over the missive, which Sunbright now saw for the first time. It was a wide and lumpy sheet of old parchment, much scraped and curled, folded thrice and sealed with blue wax with a simple sigil. With no pomp whatsoever, the clerk jerked her thumb under the wax and snapped the seal, uncrinkled the parchment, and read for a long time.
Finally she reread a section, then folded the missive shut. “I see. Wait here.” She heaved her massive butt off a bench and passed through a wooden door.
“ ‘Kings think they rule, while clerks really do,’ is a saying at court.” Greenwillow sighed and studied the ceiling, reaching up and fingering dust along a beam.
Sunbright drummed his fingers idly, went to a shuttered window in the wall, and peeked between the slats. “What if the king … Garagos!”
His shout was drowned by an inrushing wave of orcs. They carried not studded clubs but hardwood batons, and wore red-and-black tunics and steel helmets and breastplates and greaves. There seemed to be a hundred of them, and they stampeded into the tiny room like a herd of mad buffalo. Before Sunbright or Greenwillow could even draw steel, the wave smashed into them, plowed them into a wall, drove them under feet and greaves and pounding batons. Sunbright was literally smothered under a ton of gray flesh and bright steel, and blows crashed, like an avalanche, on his head. He heard Greenwillow shriek just once. Then the lights went out.
* * * * *
Sunbright awoke abruptly and, remembering the attack, reached out to stop the invading orcs, lost his balance, and toppled off a bunk onto the floor.
Groggy, he crouched on hands and knees, listened and smelled and peered around.
He was in a room no bigger than a hayrick. A wooden door studded with iron spikes filled one wall; a tiny, barred window marked another. A wooden bunk with straw-stuffed ticking and a bucket were the room’s only furnishings. Light from the window bounced off fresh whitewash.
A jail cell. The words came to him from tales he’d heard, for he’d never seen one. Indeed, he hadn’t been in nine different buildings in his entire life. He’d spent almost every day outdoors.
Then he recalled what jails were for. With a choked cry, he scrambled up and pushed at the door, for he couldn’t pull it open; there was no handle. Heedless, he threw his shoulder against the door until the iron spikes were tipped with blood. Failing there, he ran to the bars, grabbed and yanked and pulled. But the bars were thicker than his wrists. The view outside showed only another wall.
Howling, he grabbed the bunk and used it as a ram to batter first the door, then the window bars. But the crude bed was made of lightweight pine and soon cracked. Heedless, he smashed it to splinters that lodged in his hands.
Confined for the first time in his life, Sunbright, child of the tundra and the steppes, went berserk. He screamed and ranted and banged on doors and windows and walls until the whitewash was spattered with blood. And still he pounded and shrieked, all through the afternoon and long into the night.
Chapter 10
Orc and human guards found the barbarian lying on the floor of his cell. Punctures and scrapes and crusted blood covered him from head to toe, and for a moment they feared he’d killed himself. An orc guard rolled back the human’s eyelid, jammed his thumb into the eye, and felt the prisoner squirm. Grunting, four soldiers lugged him upstairs.
Sunbright came to when dropped into a tub of scalding hot water. Blubbering, lashing out, he was restrained by firm hands and gentle reassurances. Opening his sore eyes, he found himself in the grip of two dark servingwomen dressed in damp linen shifts that clung to their bodies. The shifts each had a small red hand painted on the front.
Sunbright lay half in and half out of a small bathtub. “I … I don’t understand.” His voice was raspy and raw from screaming.
“Rest, good sir. Be at ease. Let us attend you, and soon the One King will explain all.”
Dizzy, groggy, still not at full strength, Sunbright gave himself up to their ministrations. Gently they washed and dried him, combing his golden hair and pulling it back into a topknot. Then they bandaged his hurts, most of which were self-inflicted, and fed him cakes and ale. They dressed him in a soft smock of light blue, painted with a red hand on the front, and slippers. Lastly, gingerly, they insisted he don silvery manacles. The barbarian refused, and argued, and finally pleaded in a way that amazed and shamed him, but the servingwomen were firm: he couldn’t appear before the One King unless shackled.
“The One King? I’m to meet him?” Solemn nods answered.
Only the king could get him out of this mess—whatever it was—so, reluctantly, he extended his arms. The handcuffs and chain were cold, and glistened. With a shock, the barbarian realized they were silver, not steel. “Curious, this king’s customs,” he muttered.
Bidding the servants thanks, Sunbright gave himself over to the castle guards. These were unusually tall and upright orcs and a smattering of men, all in the steel soup-bowl helmets and breastplates and greaves and tunics of black edged with red. None of them spoke as Sunbright was escorted down wide stairs to the main hall.
The barbarian peered over steel helms; the guards were tall
, but he was taller. The palace’s main hall had plain stone walls, like those of many keeps, but banners and streamers of red and black hung where normally there would be the banners and pennants of enemies defeated in battles. As far as Sunbright knew, the One King had yet to conquer anything except this one tiny city. Courtiers lined the walls, city people and orcs and women dressed to kill, the oddest mix the barbarian had ever seen. There were more folks, guards and clerks and even a few dancing girls, seated along benches and tables flanking the throne. The throne itself was carved from ebony wood, and sported a pennant above it of a red splayed hand. The king looked like a bearded, black-haired man carved from wax. Sunbright waited a long time as the king attended business, making decisions and issuing commands in a flat drone.
Abruptly, the king stood and began to address the crowd. He began, “Fellow Tinnainens, citizens of the First World. Know that by doing my bidding, you cause the wonders of man to increase.”
The proud and empty words rolled on for what seemed like hours. It was all fluff as far as Sunbright was concerned. The message was that the people, by obeying every order of the One King implicitly, would be part of some vague new order when he conquered the world. Independent, trained to think for himself—for only the alert survived on the tundra—Sunbright resisted the pettish arguments, but saw the city-born courtiers nodding in unison, as if hypnotized. Perhaps, the barbarian thought, if one listened to this mishmash of fact and fancy long enough, it would make sense.
At last, a plump, grayish man in a gray gown consulted a list, took command of the barbarian, and led him to yet another table staffed by clerks in an alcove at the back of the room.
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