by Chris Bunch
“Now we go
To the heart
Whence you came
Where you were gifted.
“With your brothers
With your sisters
Whence you came
Now we go.”
The flame lowered, but still was the height of a man. More flames appeared, around each circle that had been chalked onto the floor, and darted around them as if they were being chased or were chasing.
Dark-green fire flashed at each of the triangle’s tips, and then it was as if Tenedos vanished.
He still stood there, but his spirit was elsewhere. His head moved, back and forth, and I was reminded of a hawk, looking down from the sky for his prey. His gaze swept back and forth, then looked up, as if the “hawk” were approaching a cliff. His lips drew back, in a snarl, half fright, half rage, and he shuddered.
I started to make the cuts, but held back.
Again his eyes went back and forth, and then flared open, as if in astonishment. He gaped, and terror gripped him. His mouth came open to scream, and I slashed once, then again to make sure.
The fires vanished and Laish Tenedos returned. He dropped the silken cord and tried to take a step, but staggered. I helped him to his seat, and started to pour brandy.
“No,” he said, his voice a croak. “First, water.”
I poured a glassful, and he drained it, then another.
“Now I know our enemy,” he said, and his tones were grim. “But now … brandy. Pour yourself one.”
I obeyed, though I wanted it not. He sipped at his, gathering his thoughts.
“The Tovieti certainly do exist,” he said. “I followed the trail their strangling cord gave me to their stronghold. Or, perhaps, only one of their redoubts. It is in a great cavern, some distance from here. Perhaps two, perhaps three days’ travel, deep in the mountains. I suppose, with someone to help me with the maps, I could find it once more.
“I found the cave, and I entered it, but without using an entrance. There was a huge center room, and I noted passageways leading off to the side. I do not know where they lead.
“There were people inside. Men and women. A thousand at least, more likely more. They were all dressed in white, although some of them were quite dirty. I think all, or most of them anyway, were Kaiti. To one side was a great pile of gold, gems, other treasure.
“It seemed as if these people were waiting for something.
“There was a throne, man-made, and in front of it was what might be called an altar, but one such as I’ve never seen nor heard of. It was cylindrical, like a field drum, and quite high, perhaps twenty feet above the chamber’s floor.
“Standing around it were men and women, also wearing white, but each of them also wore a yellow sash. I think, although I may have imagined it, that one of them looked a great deal like a younger, and less rotund, Baber Fergana.”
“His brother,” I guessed.
“Perhaps. I tried to move my presence closer, and then someone … something … sensed me, for all at once the crowd began howling in rage. The people with the sashes — the leaders, I guess — seemed to see me, because they, too, shouted in rage, and began pointing at me.
“I wasn’t sure what to do, then a horrible feeling of dread washed over me. Dread, and then fear, as if I were suddenly confronted by a raging tiger.
“I was about to be seized and torn … and then you cut the circle and saved me.
“For the second time, Damastes. Once more and you shall have to adopt me, for only kinfolk should have such a debt.” Tenedos smiled weakly, trying to make a small joke.
I paid no mind to that.
“What was that something, sir? Another magician? Or magicians? Did you sense Irshad?”
“I don’t know. If another magician, a powerful one. Perhaps a group of sorcerers, or jasks.
“All I know for sure is the Tovieti most certainly do exist, and, if their reaction to my presence is any indicator, are hostile toward Numantians or, at any rate, this Numantian. Perhaps if I wore a sign reminding everyone I am from Palmeras and am not much more fond of other Numantians than they are, I might be safe.” He shuddered and knocked back the brandy. “The Rule of Ten are not the panicky fools I feared they might be. There is something here, something dangerous. When we find a way to send a confidential pouch back through the pass, I shall inform the Rule of what occurred.”
“And as for ourselves?”
“I do not know,” Tenedos said. “The cord revealed no secrets as to how entry was made to this mansion by the assassin, nor if one of our retainers pulled the strangling cord tight. Their sorcery is thorough. I imagine the only reason I was able to track the cord to its home was there are few magicians here in Sayana with powers to match mine.
“As for what we do next, I can increase the magical wards I’ve placed around these buildings, but that’s nothing more than a temporary, defensive maneuver. All we can do is be most wary, and hope we will be able to discover their plans … if they pertain to us … before the Tovieti can put them into execution. My apologies. That last was a terrible choice of words.”
He drank another glass of brandy, not noticing that I’d barely tasted mine, then I returned to my quarters.
But I did not sleep.
Nor, from the number of lighted windows in the mansion, did almost anyone else.
• • •
Two days later, we received an invitation for a banquet at the court of Achim Baber Fergana. The invitation was a command, since the occasion was the joyous celebration of the anniversary of Achim Fergana’s ascent to the throne. Any member of the nobility not actually on his deathbed was required to attend, with appropriate presents, or his absence would be deemed a declaration of blood feud against the achim.
I’d already weathered a few of the achim’s feasts, and wished there was some way I could avoid this one. His idea of merriment was to listen to endless speeches, songs, and poems extolling his brilliances in every field from bed to politics to war, while nibbling at a continuous flow of delicacies. These were washed down with spice leaves, which convinced the chewer, in his dreamlike state, that he was gifted with all the virtues Irisu had given Mankind. To keep from falling asleep, one drank å’rag, an oily, lethally effective distillation of the juice of oranges. By the next morning death would be counted one of Umar’s greatest blessings.
Since there could be but one unutterably excellent person per banquet, the goings-on tended to produce arguments and, the Men of the Hills being as they were, duels. This Achim Fergana thought capital, and encouraged his nobility to hack away at each other with swords or daggers until at least one fighter was too bloody to continue.
But there was no alternative.
Things went badly from the beginning.
The throne room was filled with tables, and the animals had been banished to a mews outside, where they would be given their own feast. The room was packed with Kaiti nobility. Men were the only ones allowed present. Tapers along the walls and small oil-filled lights on each table provided illumination.
Achim Baber Fergana sat on his throne, a table in front of him. At such a banquet particularly honored noblemen and foreign dignitaries were seated at the first long table, directly in front of him. This night, it was Seer Tenedos, myself, and, three seats away, the Kallian, Landgrave Elias Malebranche. He caught my eye, and raised his glass with a rueful smile. I returned the mock toast — it was clear he was enjoying the evening no more than we were.
Achim Fergana was in a foul mood, and its reason took little investigation. The center chair at our table was empty — the chair reserved for Jask Irshad. There were three of his high-ranking sorcerers present, but no sign of the master magician. I wondered how anyone, even of his high station, could dare defy the achim. Something terribly unforeseen must have happened.
Naturally, the achim assuaged his anger by drinking and chewing more than usual, and barely touched the delicacies offered to him. The great pile of gifts to
one side of the throne was ignored.
Matters peaked as a particularly untalented bard was holding forth, in wretched doggerel:
“Fergana struck in that hour
Feeling the strength within him flower.
Sword in hand he made them cower
Blood would fill that peaceful bower.
“With his sword, that fearsome blade,
The Mighty One — ”
The Mighty One had enough and, with a roar of incoherent rage, hurled a golden plate at the poet. He realized his masterpiece was unappreciated, and fled hastily.
“Where in the hells is my jask?” Fergana roared. “How dare he shame me in this hour, as I celebrate my triumph? Guard captains! I want this castle searched until he is found! Turn out the watch … turn out a regiment and search every street in Sayana if necessary!”
He roared on. I was staring in fascination, never having been close to a monarch’s wrath before, and then I shivered. It had suddenly become very, very cold. My breath was steam, and my fingers were growing numb.
Then I saw the fog.
It crept in from nowhere and everywhere, as if doors had been flung open, and the mists of a winter night had come rolling in on us. But it had been clear and temperate when we arrived. The mist came more thickly, a dark, seething ocean with flecks of light within it. I thought it would fill the throne room solidly, but it formed into near-solid, shimmering shapes.
A voice crashed into our ears:
“Baber Fergana … this is the hour of reckoning. Now is the moment of my revenge, my brother.”
Chamisso Fergana! Yet I saw no human form.
The fog swept toward the throne. One of Achim Fergana’s nobles leaped to his feet, sword in hand, and slashed vainly at the mist. It took him, lifted him, and tore him in twain, blood gouting and entrails spattering, steaming in the cold. He had not even time to scream before he was dead, his torn corpse cast aside.
Fergana was up, his own blade out. The fog seized and pinioned him, pulling his arms apart until he might have been stretched helpless on an invisible rack.
Gratings above us clattered open, and the achim’s archers in the gallery took aim, and arrows volleyed. Some of them struck home — in Kaiti bodies — but most clattered against the flagstoned floor.
The fog swept up, and there were screams as it fell on the guards, held them helpless like pinioned kittens, and throttled them.
Tenedos fumbled in the small pouch at his belt, and down the table the Fergana’s jasks were yammering magical phrases, trying to devise up a counterspell.
Laughter rang through the room, laughter I thought I’d heard before. Then came Jask Irshad’s voice:
“You fools can save your efforts. My magic is far greater than yours could ever hope to be, just as I am the greatest jask in this or any other land.
“Baber Fergana, O False Achim, this is the time you shall rue all of the shame, all of the humiliation, you have dealt me over the years, even though I was once your most faithful servont. I fled your tyranny before dawn this morning, knowing I would return after nightfall, and finally strike back at a time and a manner Chamisso Fergana desires.
“A long time ago, when first I realized the depths of your evil, I came up with a device I told you would provide perfect safety. Dolls, each of which would contain the life-element of everyone around you.
“You, fat roaring fool that you are, thought it an extraordinary idea. And so you let whoever owns the dolls own the heart of Kait.
“Look not beneath the dais, O false Achim whose doom comes. For I have the dolls, and I am fled into a safe place, where I have sworn eternal fealty to your brother, the achim-to-be, Chamisso Fergana.
“Know this, too, dog of an achim. Over the years, little by little, I was able to make another doll. A doll of you, although it could easily be mistaken for some peasant’s pig, so foul and misbegotten does it appear.
“It holds your hair, your spittle, a bit of your blood, even some of your life fluid one of the whores you call wives permitted me to scrape from the inside of her thigh.
“You are mine, Baber Fergana, and you shall die most slowly, in a manner that will be told of in whispers until the city of Sayana has fallen stone from stone.
“I shall now give you the pleasure of seeing what that death is, and making your agony even more dire.
“I thought of wreaking it on someone you hold dear, but realized there is no such being.
“The only one you love, Baber Fergana, is yourself.
“So I asked permission, and the achim-to-be was kind enough to grant it, to rid Kait of two of its enemies, from a land that we’ll deal with most harshly when Chamisso Fergana sits the throne.
“Your fate is here, Seer Laish Tenedos and Legate Damastes á Cimabue. I hold the mannequins you were foolish enough to give your substance to, and I give them to my wraith!”
The fog lowered from the balcony, and I pulled my sword, as stupidly as Fergana or that nobleman, but knowing nothing else to do. It formed tentacles, and the tendrils hesitated, then began flailing about, like vines in a windstorm, as if the fog were unsure of its victims, suddenly blinded. Then, from outside the castle, I heard the sudden screams of animals in agony, the poor beasts the fog now was tearing at.
When Bikaner, Damastes, and myself had donated our hair for the dolls, Damastes had switched the tiny golden boxes before handing them to Jask Irshad. Since he suspected Irshad might test them, to make sure we hadn’t smuggled in matter from outside, he and Troop Guide Bikaner had secretly clipped bits of hair from three of the court animals. That animal hair had gone into the boxes and thence into our dolls, and now, those beasts died our deaths.
Time stopped, no one moved, and the fog itself was immobile. But next to me Laish Tenedos’s fingers blurred.
The Seer Tenedos cast far greater spells later, spells that held or broke entire armies. But this might have been his most impressive, since he had no time to prepare, nor materials to choose from. He later told me he had rue and red eyebright in his pouch, and used mustard and horseradish from the table condiments. He muddled them together on his plate, then dropped the mixture into the tiny flame of the oil lamp in front of him. He said the real strength of the spell was in the words, and not the materials used. I do not know the language he spoke in, and Tenedos never offered to tell me what the words meant or what they summoned. But I can recollect them precisely, and set them down as they sounded in my ears:
“Plenator c’vish Milem
Han’eh delak morn
Mom sevel mom
Venet seul mom
T’ghast l’ener orig
Orig mom
Orig mom
Plenator c’vish Milem.”
I felt warmth, warmth growing into heat, and in seconds it was hot in the hall, very hot, like the heat of a summer day in the desert outside.
The fog coiled, then shriveled, like a slug in a saltcellar, and a long, dying wail came, like a man falling into a bottomless abyss, and the throne room was clear.
Baber Fergana stood next to his throne, sword forgotten on the stones beside him, his face a gape of amazement.
Men stared at each other, realizing they yet lived. But in that instant before the babble started, Jask Irshad’s voice came:
“Very well. Fergana, the magic of the Ph’rëng has given you life once more.
“But I still hold the dolls, False Achim. And my sorcery has barely been tested.
“Chamisso Fergana and I have another idea. You have three days, Baber Fergana. If you give up your throne, I will give you an easy death, far easier than that you’ve granted your enemies. This is only because of the Most Benevolent Chamisso Fergana’s concern for the people of Sayana.
“But if you do not abdicate, in three days I shall return. And I shall bring another death to you, death in its most terrible, most lingering form.
“It shall not come just to you, but to everyone in your court, every man … and woman … whose spirit I
possess in my mannequins.
“If you still cling to your throne, I promise I shall kill everyone who now hears me very slowly, in an awful manner.
“Then Chamisso Fergana will loose his secret allies, the Tovieti, to ravage the streets of Sayana.
“Consider my offer, False Achim.
“Consider my offer, princes who serve evil.
“In three days, I shall return for my answer.”
There was silence, silence broken by a babble.
I saw Landgrave Malebranche hurry from the room, and wondered why Irshad had ignored the other Ph’rëng in the throne room. But other things were more important.
Tenedos was on the dais, talking to Achim Fergana. He went to the back of his throne and touched a level I’d never noticed, and the dais swung away, revealing that the trick was mechanical, not magical.
The cover of the pit was gone, and the depression was empty, of course.
Now the babble redoubled, and despair, rage, and fear roared through the chamber. But that went almost unheard.
I was staring across the chamber, into Laish Tenedos’s eyes, and their message was clear:
If Kait was not to be turned over to anarchy, and the always-turbulent kingdom explode north into Urey and Numantia in its chaos, somehow I was going to have three days to find and steal back that collection of dolls.
NINE
THE RAIDERS
Sayana was atumble with noise, confusion, and fear. Achim Fergana’s troops were alerted, and were trying to bring some sort of order, but with little success. There were men running in all directions, shouting the most nonsensical things about doom being upon us all; women shrieked in panic; and the taverns and temples — man’s two favorite shelters — were packed, despite the late hour. Obviously word of the horror in the palace had spread through the city like oil across water, growing in awfulness as the story traveled.
Some merchants were taking advantage of the disorder, and their stalls or shops were open, and they stood outside, loudly shouting the efficacy of their magical wares. Buy an amulet and turn away the wrath to come. Let a seer cast a spell, and you will be unharmed when the dread Tovieti come to ravage Sayana. They were doing a brisk business.
