by Victor Poole
The eyes of all in the room were fixed on the young man as he first steadied himself on his friend, and then hobbled carefully back through the wall. This time a surge of yellow, like the color that had been around Denai, came out of the young man's face, and a great spilling shadow descended from his body, and burned away near the bottom of the wall.
"I feel wonderful now," the young man said, standing up on the other side of the wall, and beaming around at the others. "I feel as though my whole insides have been peeled away, and refreshed." The young man no longer looked faint or weak; he came and stood near Denai, grinning with pleasure.
"I want to try as well," another man near the door said. He and his companion came cautiously down into the center circle, and first one, and then the other, passed through the wall. One of them made a brief bubble of red in the wall, and the other was as Delmar, and made no change at all, aside from a surge of intensity within the wall itself.
THE
TREACHERY OF DENAI
"I think it is burning away corruption," the man said who had purged no light. He was examining the blue wall thoughtfully. He came through the wall again, and joined Ajalia and Delmar.
"I'd rather you took it down, before I come back," the man said, who had given out a bubble of red light. "I thought it hurt," he told his companions. One by one, and some more hesitantly than others, the Talbos spies came through the blue wall. At the last moment, the man who had asked for the wall to be taken down dashed through as well, and grinned shyly at the others. None of the spies died.
"I vote that we take news of this new magic to our king," the grizzled old man said, and many of the others agreed with him. "We will submit ourselves to this agreement," the old man said to Delmar, extending a hand, and shaking Delmar's hand in a firm grasp. "What you say is fair, and just. Let all the people be tested, and we will rid ourselves at last of these plagues of witches."
"It shall be done," Delmar said, and he shook hands with all of the spies. He came last to Denai, who laughed, and gripped Delmar hard around the shoulders in a hug.
"I remember when you came along with Ajalia to my stables," Denai said, grinning gleefully. "I look forward to our time together in Ajalia's house." Delmar looked around at Ajalia, who shrugged.
"He lives just off the great hall," Ajalia told Delmar. "I thought you knew." Delmar, who looked a little less than pleased about this news, smiled thinly, and bid the group of spies farewell. "I have questions for you," Ajalia told Denai, and he held back. When the other spies had all gone, Ajalia sat down on the lowest bench, and waited for Delmar to join her. Delmar, giving Denai a dirty look, sat right next to Ajalia, and put his arms around her possessively. Ajalia stifled a sigh. Delmar, she reminded herself, had been right about Philas. Perhaps, she reflected, he would also prove to be right about Denai.
"I want to know everything you know about Ullar," Ajalia said, when they had all sat down in the now-empty room. Denai's face turned a little red. "Who is she married to?" she asked Denai.
"Um," Denai said. Ajalia suppressed a sharp feeling of annoyance. Delmar, she told herself, had good instincts.
"When did you marry her?" Ajalia asked.
"I'm not married to her," Denai said quickly, his face beet red.
"Then who is her husband?" Ajalia asked.
"Well," Denai hedged, looking as though he would rather be anywhere but here just now. His eyes went to the door, and his fingers tightened over his knees. Delmar, who had relaxed as soon as Denai had become uncomfortable, laughed now.
"He means to say that they are not married in the way you think of marriage," Delmar told Ajalia. Ajalia began to gather up the magic she had used to form the blue wall, and to untangle the different threads. Some she wrapped around Delmar's ankles, binding him to the earth, and some she laid around the top of his head, as she had seen Chad lay magic into Esther. Delmar, though he did not seem to notice what she did, relaxed, as though he had sunk into a warm pool of water.
"How do I think of marriage?" Ajalia asked.
"Sex," Delmar said, leaning his elbows on the bench behind him, and looking with benign interest at Denai. Delmar glanced at Ajalia. "It's an old trick, to avoid children and financial entanglements," Delmar told her. "People would do this in the old days, when they wanted the security of a connection, but did not love each other."
"They traded energy," Ajalia said, looking at Denai.
"It sounds awful when you say it like that," Denai told Delmar. "She isn't really my wife," he told Ajalia.
"Who is the father of her children?" Ajalia asked.
"Ullar only had one child, long before I met her," Denai said.
"Bain," Ajalia said.
"Yes," Denai said. "She watched other people's children, and called them her own to her neighbors, to save face." Ajalia remembered the first time she had met Ullar, when the middle-aged mother had come to her room in the poor tenement, and had argued with Chad about her children screaming too loudly. She also remembered what Coren had said, about Vinna keeping her small child away so that she could work as a servant without shame.
Ajalia stared at Denai, a patient look in her eyes, and Denai grew gradually flustered.
"I don't know what you're looking at me like that for," Denai said finally. He gestured to the place where, until lately, the blue wall had stretched from one side of the room to the other. "I passed through the test well enough."
"Are you winding magic around in me?" Delmar asked suddenly, turning to Ajalia. Ajalia, who had thought she was getting away with her sparkling lights quite unobserved, jumped.
"Yes," she said.
"It tickles," Delmar said. He turned back to Denai. "Are you spying on Ajalia for your wife?" he asked the horse trader. Denai shifted uncomfortably.
"She isn't my wife," Denai said through only partially open lips.
"For the sake of argument," Ajalia said, her voice friendly, "since you have undergone a form of marriage to the woman, let us say that you are married to her." Denai's lips pressed hard together.
"I didn't know Rane was dead," Delmar said conversationally to Ajalia.
"I was a little bit upset," Ajalia told him. "I liked Rane."
"What are you going to do to me?" Denai asked hesitantly. Ajalia looked at the horse trader.
"I'm going to keep asking until you answer," she replied. "Who was the father of Bain?"
Denai's mouth clamped up, and he looked as if he would never speak again. Delmar turned his full attention on the horse trader, who avoided his eyes.
"Where is Bain's mother?" Delmar asked. "Have you been sneaking around with her?"
"He has," Ajalia told Delmar. "One of my boys had him followed, and they also saw him sneaking away to meet a witch."
Denai's whole face went sickly white.
"That was not a witch," Denai said faintly.
"Old woman, skinny, poor tenement, something about her hair," Ajalia rattled off, watching Denai closely.
"But that was my mother," Denai said weakly, looking back and forth between Ajalia and Delmar. "My mother is not a witch."
"Well, we've heard that before, haven't we?" Delmar asked, looking around at Ajalia. Ajalia wanted to laugh, since it was Delmar himself who had repeatedly claimed that his mother wasn't a witch.
"It is unlikely she is," Ajalia told Delmar, "since Denai went through the magic wall well enough. I still think," she added, "that Ullar is using you. Is she blackmailing you somehow?"
Denai's face changed again, and Ajalia let out a victorious exclamation.
"Ha!" Ajalia said. "Now tell me why you married her," she said. Denai shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
"I don't want to say," Denai said. "It has nothing to do with my work, or anything." Ajalia waved a hand dismissively.
"I do not care how small the lie is, you have been lying to me, and I want to know the truth."
"I have not been lying to you!" Denai said shrilly. Delmar leaned back, a satisfied smile on his face.
> "Ajalia used to do that to me," Delmar told Denai smugly. "Now I just listen to her. You'd better tell her, before she makes you cry."
Ajalia pursed her lips at Delmar, who gave her an unrepentant look, and went back to watching Denai squirm.
"I didn't lie to you," Denai insisted. "You never asked me about Bain, and you didn't—I mean," he faltered. Ajalia was sure that Denai was remembering the time when she had spoken to him about Bain, and he had not told her then that he was tied to the shadow boy's mother.
"You said then," Ajalia said, in a hard voice, "that only a few of you knew about Bain. Who else knew?"
Denai shifted uneasily, and licked his lips. He looked at Delmar, and then at Ajalia. Delmar did not ask Ajalia when she had spoken about Bain before to Denai; Delmar, Ajalia thought, was beginning to take for granted the fact that she often gathered information in, to him, mysterious ways.
"Rane," Denai said in a dry voice, "and Beryl."
"Were you aware," Ajalia asked Denai, "that Beryl probably helped to create Bain?"
"Well, now, of course that makes sense," Denai said. "I didn't know then. Ullar knew, as well, some of it," he said. "Not all of it."
"Is that why you were married to her? So that you could find out anything she knew, or learned?" Ajalia asked. Denai glanced again at Delmar, and then nodded. He looked like a man who is afraid for his life.
"We knew that Bain was trying to communicate with his mother again," Denai said. "He's one of the older shadow children, and one of the more powerful. They had done new things with him, after the others were all destroyed. We didn't know," Denai said, and he took a shuddering breath, "we didn't know how he was managing to vanish like he was." Ajalia looked at Delmar.
"I have Coren, your little brother, in my house," she said. Delmar made a wry face at her.
"I know what his name is," Delmar said. Ajalia shrugged.
"He had a part of Bain's soul stuck into him," Ajalia said, "and a part of him was missing. I'm thinking of going out to where we buried Bain, to see if I can reattach it," she added to Delmar.
Denai was growing interested in what she said; his fear was leaving him now.
"A part of his soul?" Denai asked. "How was it put in?" Ajalia eyed Denai closely. She did not like the eagerness in his voice, or the way that his eyes brightened.
"Denai, are you a witch?" Ajalia asked. Denai laughed, but Delmar was studying the man as well.
"No," Denai said. "Of course I don't do that kind of magic."
"Why would you be so interested in how it was done?" Ajalia asked. Denai shifted again on his bench; his eyes went to Delmar, and Ajalia saw Denai thinking of running towards the door. Just as she opened her mouth to warn Delmar, the horse trader leapt towards the steps, and Delmar, who moved like a cat pouncing from languor, followed him and wrapped great arms around Denai's waist. Denai struggled for a little, and then, when Delmar sat on him, gave up.
"It isn't fair," Denai said with a chortle. "You're too big and heavy for me."
"Are you working with the priests?" Ajalia asked. "Are you trying to create new shadow children for the priests?"
Denai, who had been jocular up to this point, lost all control of himself. Delmar had seen the change in the horse trader's eyes, and Denai saw this, and began to fight like a ferocious animal. Ajalia sat on the bench, and watched Delmar wrap Denai up into an immobile knot. She admired Delmar's muscles as he did this.
"I see you aren't helping me," Delmar gasped, when he had restrained the horse trader thoroughly. He had pinned Denai until the horse trader could hardly move. "It's a pity we don't have any rope," Delmar added.
"Would you like me to get some?" Ajalia asked.
"No," Delmar said, "that's fine." He rearranged his hold on Denai, and then sighed. "Well, that's just disappointing," he said, looking down at Denai's face, which was slowly turning purple as the smaller man attempted to wrestle free.
"That Denai is a horrible person?" Ajalia asked.
"No," Delmar said, "that your magic wall didn't catch him. I had hoped that would be a simple solution to our problems."
"It will still work wonderfully," Ajalia reassured him. Delmar snorted.
"It won't," Delmar said. "Here was Denai, going to happily run off to conspire with the priests, and he went through the wall without any problem."
"But he isn't evil inside," Ajalia argued. "He isn't the source of the problem. If we're going to go around banishing all the stupid people, there won't be anything left of the city. Chad has been foolish," she told Delmar, "in the past, and if he had been in the wrong hands, he would be a terrible nuisance. We don't need to worry about people like Denai doing the actual magic, and if we remove the people who do the magic, we remove almost all of the problem."
Delmar, she saw, was thinking about this.
"I suppose you might be right," he said. "But where does that leave us with this one?" Delmar nodded down at the restrained horse trader.
"I'm right here," Denai said angrily. He grunted, and writhed.
"Where's Ullar now?" Delmar asked. Denai let out a harsh laugh.
"Let me go," Denai said, "and I'll lead you to her."
"He's lying," Ajalia said instantly. "He'll take you into a trap, and the priests will destroy you." Denai glared up at Ajalia, hatred in his eyes.
"You don't understand," Denai said, struggling against Delmar. "She doesn't see how evil the witches are!" Denai shouted at Delmar. "She's keeping one locked up in her house. We have to protect the city from people like her."
"I know where Ullar lives," Ajalia told Delmar. "We might get more information out of her."
"No!' Denai shouted, his skin going white again.
"Well, are you going to tell us anything useful?" Delmar asked. Denai's mouth clammed up. Delmar laughed. "Let's take him to Hal," he told Ajalia. "There's a nice little dungeon in Ocher's house. Then we can go and see the woman."
"Ullar won't tell you anything either," Denai rasped angrily. Delmar dragged the horse trader to his feet, and began to shuffle him along to the door. Ajalia went in front and opened the door, and they went down the long passage, and through the many metal doors, until they came out into the street.
"I don't think people like Denai will be a problem, once we've cleared out the evil ones," Ajalia told Delmar again. "There are weak and stupid people everywhere. The goal, as I see it, is to get Slavithe into a state where it is comparable to any other city in Leopath."
"Talbos isn't like anywhere else, any more than Slavithe is," Delmar told her, heaving Denai along, and frowning.
"Talbos is much healthier than Slavithe," Ajalia said, "and anyway, how do you know where anywhere else is like?" Delmar's lips pushed out, and he lifted Denai up into the air.
"Cooperate, little man," Delmar commanded, and set the horse trader down on his feet. Denai, who had an angry snarl over his face, grumbled as he walked along before Delmar. "I hear things," Delmar told her.
"From whom do you hear things?" Ajalia asked. "From priests? From sailors?"
"From people," Delmar said with dignity.
"From books?" Ajalia asked. Delmar shot her a wounded glance, and didn't say anything else. Denai, in the darkness, began to chuckle.
"What are you laughing at?" Delmar snapped. He had his hands wrapped around Denai's arms, which were held behind the horse trader's back.
"He's trying to distract you," Ajalia interrupted. "He wants to make you emotional, so he can kick you and rush away." Delmar's mouth screwed up into a knot.
"Well, that's rude," he observed, and shuffled the horse trader along in the street. The white streets were almost totally deserted now. Ajalia asked Delmar if he had seen the glowing walls of his father's house. "I heard about the temple," Delmar said. "I've only just gotten back. Was my father's house glowing, as well?" He sounded interested.
"It was last time I saw it," Ajalia said. They were gradually drawing near the place where the shining light would begin to be visible.
&
nbsp; "You should let me go," Denai said threateningly.
"Why, so you can run to the priests and complain?" Delmar asked. "Give me a good reason. Make a deal with me. Tell me about Ullar's husband." Denai's lips closed up tight again.
"We can go through his stable tonight as well," Ajalia told Delmar. "I'm sure he has things hidden there."
"What kinds of things?" Delmar asked eagerly.
"I don't know," Ajalia said.
"There's nothing there," Denai snapped.
"And you're a liar," Ajalia said. She thought she could hear the face that Denai was making. "I really thought you were all right," Ajalia told Denai. "I'm disappointed in you. I thought we were going to have a productive relationship. Did you ever ride my black horse?" she asked suddenly.
"No," Denai said mulishly.
"Does that mean that you did, and now you're even more angry, because he was as wonderful as I said he was?" Ajalia asked. Denai was silent for a time.
"No," he said again.
"You know," Ajalia said to Delmar, as they came nearer to the old Thief Lord's house, "I wonder if Rane was angling to be the Thief Lord himself." Denai went very still; Ajalia kept her eyes fixed on him as they walked. Ocher's house was just a little way from the dead Simon's house, and she was watching now for the glow that should have been, by now, visibly bleeding into the air. "What if Rane and Beryl were hoping to supplant Simon," Ajalia asked, "and Denai was the only one who knew of their plot? I really thought Rane was all right as well," Ajalia said. "I guess I'm not as good of a judge of character as I thought." She made sure her tone was light, and mildly regretful. She could see Denai listening carefully to what she said. "Denai was their spy on the priests," Ajalia said, "and Beryl spied on the witches. I bet Rane did know she was doing some things, but he thought it was justified. I bet he went along with you becoming the Thief Lord, because he thought you would be much easier to displace."
"Rane was going to torture you," Denai burst out with, looking at Ajalia. "I told him it wouldn't work," the horse trader added. "I didn't think you'd kill him, though."
Ajalia said nothing. Delmar walked a little more slowly; when they came to Ocher's house, Delmar glanced at Ajalia, and kept walking. They headed down a connecting street, away from the old Thief Lord's house, and the dragon temple that lay behind it. Ajalia wondered if Philas was still in her house, and if Cross had kicked the Eastern slave yet.
