by Dave Duncan
Tactics and strategy were flying almost too fast for Fabia to follow, and some of the Werists seemed to be laboring also. She dared not look at Ingeld, whose son and husband were going to be on the wrong side of the coming battle. The riverfolk had noticed the discussion and were drifting closer, hoping to eavesdrop.
Dantio sewed it up. “It would be very tidy if the forces of virtue and vengeance could hit Satrap Horold here before he strikes camp in the morning. Please arrange that, Flankleader.”
Orlad scowled. “If this New Dawn horde is on its way here, why don’t we sail up the Milky to meet them?”
“The riverfolk won’t try it in the dark. But you Heroes can see in the dark, can’t you? And run in the dark? Not you, brother. We need you here, and your skin would take too much explaining.”
Fabia expected Orlad to argue, but he just glanced over his men, who were all leering excitedly now.
“Namberson, Snerfrik, go and relieve Narg and Jungr at the boat. We’ll bring you some chow shortly. Hrothgat, Prok, you’re the best night runners. Witness, where do they go and what message do they deliver?”
Dantio said, “Cross to the east bank and head upstream to the junction, a bowshot or two. You’ll know the Milky by its color. Follow it upstream until you’re challenged—if you aren’t, you’ll reach High Timber itself before morning. The first password is ‘At night the gods weep blood.’ That should get you to the commander. Tell him ‘Dark eyes see farther than you can hear.’ That means you come from me.”
Hrothgat repeated the passwords. “And then tell him to shift his ass down here soonest?”
“Even faster. Tell him about Therek being dead. If they can catch Horold here and Saltaja in Tryfors, then the Stralg tyranny is ended on this Face. Remember that Horold is camped at the downstream end of the islands. We’re well upstream—we don’t want any mistakes.”
The eunuch was showing an astonishing ability to give orders to Werists, but now his eyes wandered, staring downstream again. “Even if he has seers with him …”
Orlad said, “What’s wrong?”
Dantio took a moment to answer. “I suggest you recover your palls, even if they’re not quite dry, then roll them up and hide them. Very few Witnesses have the range I do, but if Horold does have seers with him, he may ask them if there are other Werists nearby, and those stripes are distinctive. Otherwise, I still don’t think we’re in danger. They’re lighting fires, unloading supplies. No one’s scouting.”
His voice had changed, though. Fabia noticed that Horth, who could smell an untruth two menzils away, was studying Dantio narrowly. So was Benard. The disconcerting thing about Benard was that he was not scatterbrained all the time. She still dared not look at Ingeld.
Orlad nodded. “Waels, see to it. Any more, er … advice, Witness?” He actually smiled, too! Fabia thought of a flower bud opening to the sun.
“Just to remind the commander that the satrap usually travels with seers.”
“Hrothgat and Prok, proceed as instructed.”
Cloth ripped. Leaving a trail of rags behind them, two somethings plunged into the shrubbery and were gone, leaving Fabia with a vague impression of huge golden beasts running on all fours.
For a moment nobody spoke. The war had begun. By morning a major battle might be raging through this campground, and other places too. Fabia moved around the group to sit by Ingeld and offer what solace she could.
“Remember what Dantio said about Cutrath being more valuable as a hostage than a corpse. That’s still true.” It sounded weak even to her.
“But it will be much less true if my husband is killed tomorrow.”
She was as rigid as a tree trunk. Benard, who already had one arm around her, added another and pulled her into a crushing embrace, muttering lover’s comfort.
Fabia went back to sit by Horth. “Exciting enough for you, Father?”
He was frowning. “I have a strong impression of huge jaws closing while I am trapped between two of the teeth. And you beside me! I cannot imagine so many Werists spending a night here without scouring the islands in search of women to molest.”
Dantio leaned over them. “I’m sentimental, I suppose, but I’d very much like to hold a little family dinner—just the four Celebres?”
Witness Mist was many things, Fabia thought, but sentimental was not the first adjective she would apply to him. Devious, implacable, and ruthless suited him better, and mendacious just at the moment. He was certainly lying, and making little effort to hide the fact, but Ingeld and Horth would humor his fancy, and the Werists would do whatever Orlad told them.
As evening retreated into night, the four Florengians went off by themselves, carrying their meals to a far corner of the clearing. There they huddled in long grass, cross-legged and knee-to-knee. For a few moments they ate in silence.
“This is getting to be a habit,” Fabia said flippantly. “These family conferences. Last night and again now.”
Orlad said, “A lot has happened since last night. Do all families keep this busy?”
Dantio was not amused. He spoke with his mouth full. “I’m almost certain Horold does have a seer with him. I think only one, which is worrisome. She may not be able to see us, unless she’s who I think she is, in which case she has an incredible range. She won’t mention us unless he asks her, of course.”
“Why worrisome?” Fabia asked.
“Because when he leaves Kosord, he usually orders all the Maynists in town to go with him. The Mother may not obey him exactly, but she would never send less than three.”
“If he has a full hunt with him, or nearly,” Orlad said, “why should he care who else is around?”
“He won’t ask about you,” Fabia said. “He’ll ask about Ingeld. It’s Ingeld he wants.”
Dantio nodded, chewing mechanically, his mind elsewhere.
“Or me,” Benard said.
“Wait until he hears about Orlad!” She grinned at the resulting glare from her Werist brother.
It folded into one of his so-rare smiles. “Let’s tell him soon!”
“But in private.”
“Right.” The seer laid down his platter and licked his fingers. “Anyway, don’t worry about Horold yet. His hunt are minding their own business and I can keep watch on them while I talk. I’ll know if they start coming, and we’ll have time to run. In the meantime … you have all been asking me why Saltaja was so sure I was dead.”
“The Witnesses lied?” Benard asked.
“No! Maynists do not lie. We may mislead you, but we will never utter an actual untruth. I broke that rule in Tryfors, for which sin I will be expelled from the mystery and harshly punished. I’ll tell you my story, but I want you to swear never to reveal it.”
“I swear by my Lady of Art.”
“And I by holy Weru.”
Fabia could invoke any god she fancied—the Mother of Lies would not care about perjury. She briefly considered swearing by Blood and birth; death and the cold earth and decided it would be unkind. Dantio had already guessed her allegiance, but Benard would be horrified and frightened. Orlad might battleform and go for her.
“I swear by all I call holy.”
Dantio gave no sign that he noticed the ambiguity. “I was present for some of this. Tranquility herself told me more, and the rest I learned from the Wisdom after I was initiated. That is very strange—seeing yourself from the outside. Some things I cannot speak of, even yet.”
Fabia laid a hand on the cold earth for comfort. There was much more going on here than Dantio admitted. He had refused to tell this story until Horold arrived in the islands. He had Witnessed something that he was as yet unwilling to admit. Even Benard was looking suspicious.
Dantio continued, “It is known …”
LONIA LARSDOR
was heading home one winter evening, returning from a visit to a nephew she had not seen in many years. With dusk fast fading to night and upper stories overhanging on either side, very little light reached down
to the street, but this did not bother her. The bustling crowds respectfully avoided jostling soberly dressed matrons such as she.
As she was crossing High, one of the upstream islands of Skjar, she was surprised to observe a youth hurrying in her direction. He wore a long robe and a hat pulled down low on his head; he dangled a sack in one hand. Few boys his age wore anything more than a breechclout, and most would carry such a load draped over a shoulder. He had the black hair and dark skin of a Florengian, which were still extremely rare in Skjar. All those things were curious, but the most remarkable thing about Dantio Celebre was that he was scurrying along the crowded alleys of Sheeplick, almost halfway across the city from her. Very few seers in the cult could see as far as she could, but she had never in her life recognized anyone at such a distance. He must be extremely important! She recalled now that the Witnesses on duty in the palace a sixday ago had been able to locate this same stripling when he was well outside their normal range.
His efforts to appear inconspicuous were only making him seem furtive, and another escape attempt would put him in terrible danger. Although a Witness should never meddle in events, surely a word of caution to a child would not incur the wrath of holy Mayn.
She crossed the bridge to Milk Yellow and he to Limpet Bend.
As Sister Tranquility, Lonia was one of the most senior and most respected members of the Maynist cult, and commonly regarded as a possible future Eldest. She was a native of Skjar. She loved the horrible old city, crammed between its canyon walls, even when it was insufferably hot or unbelievably wet, which was almost all of the time. She knew every one of its sixty-sixty islands and innumerable bridges, all its splendid buildings and imaginative vice hovels—and, as a Witness, was even aware of what was going on inside, activities that varied from the frightful to the farcical.
She had recently been appointed Mother of the Skjar lodge, a posting that gave her enormous satisfaction, recognition of her long service to the cult. She could no longer deny her white hair, her wrinkled exterior, and sagging interior, but she still had all her faculties, thank the goddess. The thought of becoming Eldest one day held no appeal. Her new duties were quite challenge enough.
As she set foot on Snakeskin, Dantio began crossing to Egg.
Tranquility was one of the most outspoken critics of the infamous treaty the current Eldest had made with the bloodlord a decade ago. Although Stralg and his brothers were certainly Werists, Tranquility and her supporters maintained that their sister Saltaja was a Chosen and probably their father Hrag had been one, also. It was written in the laws of holy Demern: Thou shalt not covenant with the Evil One. It was true that the Maynists had no proof to back up their suspicions, but if Stralg had accepted help from Xaran, the Eldest’s compact with him was invalid and always had been.
Earlier that year, the bloodlord had lost two-thirds of his horde crossing to Florengia, but he himself had survived and was reputedly meeting almost no resistance there. His brothers and brother-in-law could not match him as warriors, but the Witnesses would prop them up and help them suppress any revolution before it became dangerous. Saltaja was going to continue ruling Vigaelia in Stralg’s name for some time to come. Skjar was her capital, and when Mother Melody died, the Eldest had sent Tranquility to replace her, with orders to keep an eye on the Queen of Shadows. In other words, she was to prove her case or shut up. There never could be proof in the Maynist sense, because the Ancient One veiled Her followers from the sight of the All-Seeing, but there might be ordinary, extrinsic eyewitness evidence of chthonic actions.
Dantio crossed to Snakeskin.
Tranquility adjusted her route so that eventually they must meet face-to-face. She waited in a doorway as he dodged ever closer, then stepped out in his path.
“Dantio?”
He yelled in terror, dropped his burden, and fled off into the crowd. She watched him doubling around through alleys and courtyards until he went to ground under a wooden doorstep, wriggling down in the filth like a human worm. She took the shortest route there and laid down his food sack at the end where his head was.
“Dantio,” she said, “the seers in the palace see you. When you are missed, Satrap Eide will ask where you are and they will tell him. They don’t want to, but they have no choice—they must answer any question a hostleader asks.”
He was trying very hard to keep his weeping silent. He had opened some of the half-healed welts on his back.
“Then the lady Saltaja will have you flogged again. I heard her threaten you with double next time. I know she meant it.”
“You’re another!” said a muffled whimper.
“Yes, I’m a seer, but I’m not on duty just now. I am trying to help you. Why not come out and we’ll talk about it?” This was outright meddling. She made a mental note to reprimand herself severely.
After a moment he began to wriggle. She reached down to help him and the moment their hands touched, she learned that he was a seasoner. She had never encountered seasoning before. It was so rare that the instructors at Bergashamm could only describe what they had been taught themselves. The only known living seasoners were Stralg Hragson and Saltaja Hragsdor. Now much more than compassion fueled Tranquility’s interest in the hostage.
She walked Dantio back to the palace while explaining about the wicked compact and why he would always be caught if he tried to run away. She did not mention that she had been present in the palace during his last flogging, enduring his agony and terror.
“I promised my brothers,” he said, over and over. “Benard and Orlando. I promised my brothers I would go back for them.”
“Saltaja is a very evil woman, Dantio. She never makes an idle threat. If you continue to defy her, she will keep increasing the punishment until she kills you.”
He said he believed, but she could feel the untruth. Racked by homesickness and imagined guilt, the boy was so desperate that he truly did not care.
That night she sent an urgent message to the Eldest, in Bergashamm.
Tranquility was in the duty room the next day when Satrap Eide sent a summons for a Witness. Guessing the problem, she looked and saw Dantio already on the far side of Triangle. She sent Ember to answer the satrap’s call because her range was not great, but Ember found the boy anyway. Her dismay when she had to report where he was moaned through the palace like eldritch funeral horns. Eide sent Werists to bring him back, and Saltaja sentenced him to a dozen lashes, four on each of three days.
Sick with horror, Tranquility fled to the Home of Holy Nula to consult the Senior Mercy, Mother Dolerian, who was a distant cousin of hers. Dolerian was tall and spare, but wore her years well. Her hair was silver, her face un-lined, and not a wrinkle marred the fall of her brown robe. So great was the calm she projected that even to sit in the same room with her was to feel one’s burdens grow lighter. She was sympathetic in this case, but not cooperative.
“Punishment is never pleasant, Lonia dear,” she said. “But obviously the brat is stubborn and will have to learn his lesson.”
“Lesson? You call that a lesson? She started with a leather belt, went on to a stick and now she’s using the plaited leather whip they use on adult criminals! Wielded by a Werist! It cuts his flesh to the bone. And three separate floggings! Flogging unhealed cuts hurts much more. This is inhuman!”
Dolerian sighed and nodded. “But if the trollop finds out that we have been easing his suffering, Lonia, won’t she simply increase the punishment?”
That was a very valid argument, for almost nothing happened within the palace without Saltaja hearing of it. Nulists were the kindest, most sympathetic of people by definition, but Mother Dolerian was stubborn, and nothing Tranquility could say would change her mind, not even angry sneers that she must be afraid of the Queen of Shadows. Defeated, Tranquility crawled back to a palace aflame—it seemed to her—with a boy’s torment.
For a thirty after his ordeal on the whipping post, Dantio was kept in solitary confinement. Typically, when Saltaja even
tually sent for him, it was in the middle of the night. As always she wore black, even to a black wimple and black cuffs covering her hands. She sat on a black throne in a black room lit by a single lamp, so almost nothing was visible except her corpse-pale, strangely elongated face. This treatment had been known to reduce strong men to gibbering terror, but the boy kept his poise. He was too young to see that such courage just increased his danger.
“If I release you, will you run away again?”
“Honored lady, I have learned my lesson. I swear I never will.”
The seers eavesdropping in the duty room felt his duplicity like a slap in the face.
Saltaja was skeptical, too. “That is good,” she said. “From now on you will report to the guard four times a day, and if you fail to do so just once, boy, I will have you gelded and your ears cropped. You believe me?”
The boy said, “I do believe you, honored lady,” but his reservations were obvious to the watching seer. First you will have to catch me.
The Eldest responded to Tranquility’s report by agreeing that seasoning had never before been detected in one so young. She directed Tranquility to be extremely diligent, which meant that meddling would be overlooked, within reason. She also ordered that a Witness be assigned full-time to study this Dantio Celebre. Tranquility took on that job herself, and set out to win the boy’s trust. She invited him repeatedly to her tiny home near the palace, talking endlessly with him and listening while he poured out his troubles. He had a great curiosity about Vigaelian history, customs, and—ominously—geography. He was clever, gentle-mannered, and impossibly stubborn.
Tranquility had written to the Kosord and Tryfors lodges, and early in the new year they replied with reports that Dantio’s brothers were surviving or even thriving. She passed on this good news, of course. Amazingly, both had turned out to have seasoning also, and the entire Maynist cult was soon buzzing over this discovery. More hostages and slaves arrived from Florengia, so that dark skin became a less freakish sight in Skjar.