The Red wolf conspiracy tcv-1

by Robert V. S. Redick

  "Divine!"

  "— that the captain of the Great Ship requests an audience?"

  The man hesitated, mouth agape. Then, slow and important, he crossed his arms. "No audience," he said. "Take them away, Warden. I am not pleased with you."

  "But these travelers-"

  "Is not my father a God?"

  The warden looked as if he had dreaded this moment from birth. He glanced at me as if hoping I knew the answer to the man's question. But then Ott leaped onto the stairs. The man screamed: Ott knocked him aside like a broom and vanished through the door. We heard him running up the inner staircase.

  The tower has four levels. On the first we saw a half-eaten roast upon a table, a shattered plate, and the slave girl peering at us from beneath the tablecloth. The second was a kind of playroom, with frightfully bad paintings on easels, some knobs of stone that might have been intended for sculpture, a grand piano and a second man in yellow sitting on the floor holding his forehead, a broken fiddle beside him. Ott had needed but half a minute to tame the S's terrible sons.

  "You see how young they are?" said the warden softly. "That is the work of Arunis, the King's old sorcerer. When they irritated him he would cast spells to make them sleep for days, weeks, even. Once they slept for three years-then ran about like mad puppies for a month. But it is an enchanted sleep, for they age not when they slumber. They should be nearing fifty, but they are half that."

  "Is there no means of waking them?" I asked.

  "Their father discovered one. He sets their clothes on fire."

  "Rin's teeth!"

  "That is why they refuse to wear anything but those robes. They can be thrown off in an instant."

  The third floor held a library full of moldering books in Mzithrini script. We pressed on to the next floor, which was the highest. An elegant bedroom met our eyes, with large windows open to the breeze. Sandor Ott stood to our left, stock-still, fingering a sharp little piece of the broken plate, his face glowing with some unspeakable fervor. And across from him was the S-.

  He stood empty-handed by the window, gazing fixedly at the spymaster. I wrote already of his visage, his monstrous scars, but did I mention his eyes? They are red-tinted, as if he stares always through that curtain of blood he came so near to drawing over all the world. I knew he would be here, and yet I stood in awe. Those hands had strangled princes. That mouth had talked whole countries into joining his lunatic war. This prodigy of murder was now become a tool, but whose exactly? The Emperor's? Sandor Ott's? My own?

  You see, Father, the S-saw everything backward. He thought we were his.

  "You are late," he rumbled, breaking the silence. "Midwinter I began to call you, bending my will across the Nelu Peren. Now at last you come, with the year half spent and the White Fleet moving again. Why do you make your lord wait?"

  I have known Sandor Ott for decades, Father, but never before had I seen him afraid. He was breathing hard, and not from the exertion of the stairs. Nonetheless he stepped forward and spoke through his teeth.

  "Creature!" he said. "If some part of you is untouched by madness, hear me well: in my hands you are no God. You are a maggot. And I am the fisherman who baits his hook with you! If you wriggle, you do so for my sake. If you live it is because I wish it. Displease me in the smallest matter and I shall prove your mortality by casting you into the sea!"

  "Will you?" said the S-. "After forty years?"

  No one answered Ott and the S-looked like two old wolves, each waiting for the other to spring. Then His Nastiness glanced at the rest of us for the first time, his face indifferent. We were beneath his notice.

  "Warden," he said, "I choose to leave on this man's ship, for the hour foretold at the world's making is come round at last, and soon I shall possess my kingdom. But you must not think of leaving Licherog. You will stay and guard my library, and my stallions, and my goat."

  The warden sniveled, like a child used to spankings. "Of course, Majesty! Where else would I go? What other task could I aspire to?"

  "Do not lie!" the S-suddenly roared, lifting his hands. "When I return I shall bear the Nilstone in my left hand, Sathek's Scepter in my right! Master of all Alifros shall I be, and whosoever lies to the Master shall know his wrath!"

  "I do not lie, Majesty-"

  "Where are my sons? You spawn of a tick! Bring them! I swear on the Casket you shall die in the bowels of this prison, wailing, the fires of the Nine Pits licking your mind. Your mouth shall fill with ashes, your eyes-"

  Ott and Drellarek moved as one. Drellarek struck His Nastiness a blow to the stomach that stopped his ranting. Ott did something with his hand, too quick for the eye to follow. There was a splash of blood: for a moment I thought he had murdered the fiend. Then I saw him hold up a bit of flesh between his thumb and forefinger. It was one of the S's ear-lobes.

  The monster-king staggered, groaning. Ott threw him a handkerchief "Stanch your wound, maggot," he said. "And never forget this: Sandor Ott draws blood once as a warning. Once."

  I had little appetite for dinner. That night I tried to sleep ashore, but the spirits on Licherog outnumber the prisoners as the dead outnumber the living, and no chains kept them from my room, where they moaned, begged for sweets, accused me of ridiculous crimes. I went back to my ship. And before dawn I rose and found Uskins on the forecastle as planned. We sent the whole night watch below, and when we stood alone Drellarek and his thugs brought His Nastiness and sons aboard, wrapped up like babes in swaddling cloths. They are hidden now in a deep part of the ship, as carefully as I hid the Emperor's gold.

  Before we cast off from Licherog the warden came to shake my hand. "Will the Emperor let you retire now?" I asked. The man was a simpering wretch, but he had done his job.

  "Oh!" said he. "The Emperor promised years ago that my banishment would end when those three departed Licherog. But I do not know. Every kingdom needs its jailors, and this place is not so very awful, sometimes."

  "It's a swillhole! And festering with ghosts besides! Get out of here, man!"

  "There's the S-'s warning to think of, Captain."

  By the Pits, Father, that was the strangest moment of our landfall. This man knew the scheme: how we were throwing the S-at our enemies as one might throw a dog at a marauding bear, not because the dog can survive, but because it can weaken and distract the bear. And yet he feared-the dog! Not the Emperor or the White Fleet, not disease, nor being strangled some night by any one of the ten thousand killers on that rock. Only his ex-prisoner: and so much so that he planned to stay on Licherog through his declining years, feeding that madman's goat.

  He found time for a last loony caper, this fellow. We were on the gangway. I had just seen the S-hidden away, and told the warden goodbye, when I saw him staring up at the Chathrand, transfixed. "I thought you had cleared the deck!" he cried.

  So I had: there was no one in sight but the sailors returning to their posts, and one other: a soap merchant named Ket. The man paces many nights away on deck-says he cannot breathe in his cabin-and it was he who somehow saved that nuisance Hercуl. Mr. Ket looked up, smiled and bowed to each of us in turn.

  "Relax, he saw nothing," I murmured. But the warden was gone. I turned and there he was, fleeing across the quay. He did not stop running until he reached the top of the stairs and had passed through the door of his prison.

  Knaves, fools, madmen: you see how I am surrounded, Father? As ever, I remain your obedient son,

  N. R. Rose

  P.S. Mother is again demanding golden swamp tears. I tell her those bath crystals are hard to acquire, since they form only when lightning scalds an ancient cypress while its sap is running. Still she insists, daily now, and goes so far as to call me "an ungrateful child." Would it tax you, sir, to explain the matter gently?

  1* "His Nastiness" appears in many letters and log entries by Captain Rose. Scholars debated his true identity until this letter was unearthed on Mereldнn. Little doubt remains that the term refers to the Shaggat Ness.-ED
ITOR

  2* In several places Rose appears to have blotted out the word Shaggat before sealing the envelope.-EDITOR.

  Merchandise

  6 Modoli 941

  The Flikkermen tied Pazel's hands and feet and threw him into the well. He plunged twenty feet into black water, certain they meant to drown him and chop his body into fish food, and blind with terror as he was, part of him felt insulted to be considered so worthless.

  Seconds later he was dragged out of the water and up onto a cold stone floor. He sputtered and gagged. In the darkness ten or twelve bare-chested Flikkermen squatted around him, whispering and croaking. They soon stripped him of his gold, his knife and his mother's ivory whale. All three delighted them, and they patted his face with their round, sticky fingertips and said "Shplegmun"-good boy.

  Pazel had learned one thing during the invasion of Ormael: when a mob lays hold of you, do not fight. Become silent, docile, do as you're told. Above all, study your captors. It was easier said than done, in that dim room. But now and then one of the creatures would flash, as if releasing energy it could no longer contain. An awful sight: the Flikkerman's whole body would light up like a glow-worm, and through its translucent flesh Pazel saw veins and roots of teeth and the six pulsing chambers of a Flikker heart.

  "Swellows tricked him," one said in their tongue. "Bought his trust with coins. Does he have all his fingers?"

  They worked swiftly, checking each of Pazel's joints as if to be sure his pieces were in working order, feeling his head for cracks. Then they began to argue his fate.

  The Flikker who had met Pazel at the gate was for selling him to the Uturphe Bladeworks, but another felt he was too small to pour molten iron, and would not fetch a good price. Another said they should sell him to a ship bound for Bramian, where hunters needed boys to lure tigers out of their caves. Still another knew a magician who wanted to replace his last boy assistant, whom he had turned into a block of ice for a party trick and then forgotten, until the lad melted and trickled away through the floorboards.

  They had many such fine ideas, and the debate wore on. At last the head Flikkerman burst into light. Since they could not agree, he declared, they would let the buyers themselves decide. The boy would go to auction.

  The others grumbled: the auction was quite far away, apparently. But their chief had spoken, and they obeyed.

  Soon Pazel was back in the water, this time in the bottom of a narrow boat like a cross between a decrepit fishing-dory and a gondola. With their flat feet on top of him, his captors poled down a long, dark, dripping tunnel. What it had been built for Pazel could scarcely guess, but it was clearly one of the secret ways the Flikkers moved children in and out of the city. They turned corners, ducked under low ceilings, opened moss-covered gates. Eventually they sat him up and pressed a flask to his lips. What he swallowed was sweet and briny and rushed to his head like wine.

  On and on they went. At length the Flikkermen began to sing. Theirs was a cold, swift, mournful music, like that of a river approached in darkness, and it made Pazel wonder for the first time just who they were, these Flikkermen, these people who never went to sea, and lived as a race apart in the cities of humankind.

  We cut the sod where the gold wheat grows.

  We dropped the seed of the poplar groves.

  Men all forget, we sing it yet:

  We still recall where the deep flood goes.

  We felled the trees for the conquering fleet.

  We dug the ore for the blacksmith's heat.

  Twilight to dawn and a century's gone:

  We lay the cobbles beneath your feet.

  Fearsome the wind o'er the stolen earth.

  Fearsome the morning of our rebirth.

  Dawn-light to day the Flikkermen say:

  We set the price of your children's worth.

  Do not tarry where the schoolyard ends.

  Do not linger where the alley bends.

  New blossoms pale, empires fail:

  We keep the coin the world expends.

  Wind shall tear pennant from heartless tower.

  River shall rise and wave devour.

  Men all forget on what road we met:

  We shall be kings in the final hour.

  The last words were scarcely out of their mouths when the next song began. Pazel's head still swam with the drink. Soon he found himself drifting into miserable sleep in which the voices sang on, conjuring stories of lost tribes and swamp banquets and Flikker queens with onyx crowns and shawls of butterfly wings.

  At some point he half woke, and found himself no longer underground. The boat was now gliding down a river under a brilliant moon. The banks were high, the land dew-soaked and desolate. A few stone farmhouses squatted in the distance, lamplight blazing in their windows, and once a riderless horse pranced and nickered at them from behind a fence, but there was no one to whom he might have shouted for help.

  He slept, and woke again, and it was day. The boat was surrounded by reeds and tall marsh grass; Pazel could not even see the open river. They were anchored, and the Flikkers were eating cold fish and hot peppers wrapped in some sort of leaves. When they were finished one propped him up and gave him another long drink of the salty-sweet wine. Then they checked his ropes, washed their faces with marsh water, and curled up in the boat to sleep. In a few minutes the wine did its work, and Pazel dropped forward among his captors.

  He woke after nightfall, sunburned and hungry. They were back on the river. Other boats ran close beside them; other Flikkermen had joined his captors' songs. Pazel saw prisoners bound like himself, weariness and terror mingled in their looks. The countryside was open and silver by moonlight, but there was no sign of farmland or any human dwelling. After another sip of the ubiquitous wine they fed him three mouthfuls of their leaf-wrapped fish. It was sour-tasting and sharp, but he ate it eagerly, and the Flikkermen laughed: "Shplegmun."

  A short time later he noticed that his captors were watching the shore. Lifting his head Pazel saw a pack of ghost-gray dogs racing through the underbrush, studying them with eyes that glowed red as coals. Sulphur dogs. It was said that when they killed, they ate the flesh warm and chewed the bones to daybreak, grinding them to meal. How they communicated no one knew, for they never barked or howled. For a long time Pazel lay watching the pack run in silence, keeping pace with the boats.

  The next three days were much like the first-sleep by daylight, in some hollow or thicket or marsh; swift travel by night. But Pazel felt a queasy ache in the pit of his stomach. It grew hour by hour, and by the third day he was shaking and chilled.

  "What's wrong with him?" the Flikkermen asked one another.

  "Fever," Pazel told them, "I've got chills and a fever."

  "Babbling. Delirious." They shook their heads.

  "That fish would make a wharf-rat sick. Don't you have anything else?"

  They wondered aloud what tongue he was speaking. And Pazel bit his lips with rage, for he thought they were teasing him. Your tongue, you ugly louts! Only much later did he realize that they were right: he was delirious, and speaking Ormali, and he wondered if he might be starting to die.

  Time became even more fragmented: one moment it was a hot, fly-plagued afternoon, the next a damp and chilly midnight. Through all the pain, cold sweats and dizzy spells, Pazel suffered most in his mind. Questions preyed on him like vultures, one ravenous bird after another dropping out of the sky to peck at his brain. Was Hercуl alive? Who had attacked him, and who had killed that Zirfet fellow? Had the ixchel realized that Thasha knew of their presence on the Chathrand, and slit her throat? What would the Flikkers do if he was too weak to sell?

  Clammy palms swept flies from his face. Wet cloths were pressed against his forehead, and something astringent rubbed on his chest. He was lifted in and out of boats. Warm broth was spooned into his mouth; plain water replaced the wine. Days and nights were like the violent banging of a cottage door in the wind: lamplight, darkness, lamplight again.

  Th
en a dawn came when Pazel realized with a jolt that his illness was gone. He was thinner and weaker, but his head was so clear it was like a stiff sea-breeze driving away the clouds, revealing a cool, clean starlit night.

  He was in a larger boat, with a roofed cabin. He was unbound and undressed, but wrapped in a blanket tucked snugly beneath his feet. A Flikker woman was crouching by a wood-burning stove, stirring a pot of stew and singing: Poor little field mice, lost in a storm, only a wildcat to keep them warm.

  She was very old. Her green-brown skin was dry and wrinkled, and the joints in her great hands were swollen and stiff. She glanced at him and gave a satisfied croak.

  "Awake!" she said, in the Flikkers' old-fashioned Arquali. "I knew thy heart was strong. Art thou improved, boy?"

  "I'm much better," said Pazel, in her own tongue.

  The old woman lit up like a firecracker, and dropped her wooden spoon. "You speak Flikker!" she cried.

  "Where am I, please?" asked Pazel.

  She recovered her spoon, hobbled forward and whacked him smartly with it across the cheek. "Feel that?"

  "Why, yes," said Pazel, holding his cheek.

  "Praise the blood of the earth! A few days ago your skin was numb-numb and cold, like a drowned man's. But look at you now! You're going to live, strange human boy."

  Pazel saw his tattered clothes folded on a corner of her low wooden table. Scattered over the rest of the table, to his astonishment, were books. They were soiled, fourth-hand volumes, spines cracked and resewn, pages hanging in tatters. Nearly all were medical in nature; indeed the first book his eyes lighted upon was Parasites: An Appreciation by Dr. Ignus Chadfallow.

  "You've been caring for me, haven't you?" he said.

  "Right you are," said the old woman. "Thirteen days."

  "Thirteen!"

  With a kindly smile (an expression Pazel had not imagined possible on a Flikker face) she helped him out of bed and into a chair by the stove. Her name was Glindrik, she said: this was her home.

  "What happened to the others? They were going to auction me off."