A Man of His Word

by The Complete Series 01-04 (epub)

  “Wait!”

  A body on the floor!

  She had killed a man.

  Where was the good in that, to offset the obvious evil? The thought was appalling, and even worse was the certainty that she could not halt what she had started, and more bloodshed must follow. Ignoring her command to wait, the warrior went leaping up the stairs, sword in hand.

  “Stop!” she cried, and hurried after him. She heard crashes and a shriek that became a ghastly bubbling noise as she emerged into another room. Light streamed through a barred window onto three bodies and Darad gloating over them. Killer and floor and furniture were splattered with brilliant red. She had never seen so much blood.

  This was a talent for fighting magnified to genius by a word of power.

  One of the men on the floor began to groan, and move. Darad casually chopped off his head.

  Kadolan spun away from the sight, thrusting knuckles into her mouth to stifle a rising scream. The room began to sway, but she was granted no time for hysterics or fainting. The door flew open and a brown-clad man burst in and stopped, staring down aghast at the slaughter. Darad crossed the room in a blur, grabbed the newcomer by his tunic, hauling him forward and slamming him back against the stonework … once … twice. Then he dropped him.

  They listened. Silence.

  The jotunn leered at Kadolan’s expression. “Only djinns!” he said, sheathing his bloody sword. “Come here. You listen good.”

  He stopped and raised the man he had stunned, pushed him against the wall again, and this time held him there with no visible effort. He slapped his victim’s face a few times to rouse him, then pulled the man’s own dagger from his belt and held the point before his eyes.

  “You know where the faun is?”

  The guard was barely more than a boy, one of the family men. He sported a pink mustache, but his beardless cheeks had turned a sickly pale mauve. His turban had fallen off, loosing torrents of ginger curls, and all the knives and swords and blades hung on his person were going to do him no good at all. He made some incoherent gibbering noises.

  The point of the dagger went into his left nostril. Ruby eyes bulged and his neck seemed to stretch.

  “You know where the faun is? Else you no good to me, djinn.”

  “Yethir.”

  “Tell me how to go there.”

  “Ug … ug …”

  “Tell or die!”

  “Go right. Second left. Right. Downstairs all the way.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Yethir!” Suddenly he screamed: “I swear it!”

  “Good!” Darad cut his throat and dropped him. He said, “Come, lady, shut the door,” and shot out into the hallway.

  Kade reeled after him, closing the door. Darad was already only a fading drumbeat of footsteps, and he apparently did not need her assistance with the simple directions.

  He met only one more man on the way. Kade heard an oath, but by the time she turned the corner, the wide corridor was empty. She hurried along the trail of blood, wondering if Darad was taking the corpse to use as a shield, or if he was just expecting to hide evidence. Many of the stains must be dribbles from Darad himself, for he had bathed in it.

  Left … right … She came to a dark opening, access to a spiral stair. Faint muffled thumps of boots came from below. She ran on to the next corner and stretched on tiptoe to remove a lamp from its hook. Then she came back to explore the stairs.

  They were narrow and uneven and tricky, the only handhold a thick rope hanging by the newel, winding down into the unknown. She was grateful for it, though, thinking that a broken leg now would not help the cause at all. Darad must be far ahead of her, committing Gods-knew what sort of atrocities on her behalf. Shadows danced for her lamp. She almost tripped on a body, and lost more time clambering by it to continue her descent. It was probably the one Darad had been dragging.

  She emerged into a dark and extremely fetid cellar, and the feeble lamp showed nothing but floor anywhere. She listened and heard nothing but a faint dripping … only water, hopefully … and an echoing hollowness that suggested a large space. Then she thought to examine the floor and found a few spots of blood. Of course they led to another opening, another stair, right by the one she had just left. Even Darad had found that.

  The second stair was narrower and steeper, and carved from solid rock. There was no rope to cling to, either. Up in the real world, night had ended. Here it never would, but her lamp was already guttering and its supply of oil might be timed to run out just after dawn. The air was indescribably thick and fetid. She shivered convulsively, and she would have fled anywhere in the world had she been able to think how to go about it. Five men dead already! Somehow the jotunn’s command to follow seemed to be the only option open to her, and her feet continued to obey without any further instructions from her.

  Then a monster reared up out of the dark in front of her — pale eyes glaring in a blood-covered ogreish face … white canine teeth like fangs … Great scarlet hands reached for her, snatched her lantern away, and extinguished it. Shocked and blinded, she overbalanced and would most certainly have fallen had the giant not taken her bodily in those gory hands. He carried her as he backed down to the foot of the steps.

  Breathless and giddy, Kadolan found herself in a bare room like a cave, its rock-carved roof low enough to be oppressive even for her, while Darad was forced to stoop. She saw no furniture, only some ominous chains heaped in one corner and corroded staples set into the walls. Somewhere she could hear voices.

  There were a few doors set in the side walls, all closed and very likely hiding nothing but empty cells. Even for a dungeon this place had a very unused feel to it.

  The end wall, facing the stair, held two doorways, side by side. One door was open, showing the cell beyond it utter black and presumably empty; but the other door was closed, and light was streaming from a barred grille in that closed door. This was horribly reminiscent of a chapel, the bright window and the dark. But the voices also were coming from the illuminated cell.

  The air was nauseating. She wondered how anyone could stand it, and was glad she could not identify all the mingled stenches. Yet she thought she registered a slight breeze, and of course this sewer would become a deathtrap very soon if it had no ventilation at all.

  Untroubled by heat or stink or religious symbolism, Darad was standing, listening, and literally scratching his head. Beyond the door dice rattled, and some men laughed. Master Rap must be in there. Azak had ordered that the prisoner was to be guarded at all times.

  Perhaps Azak had also given orders that the prisoner was to be killed at the first sign of a rescue attempt. Most certainly the door would be bolted on the inside. It would not be opened to strangers, nor without this empty space being inspected through the grille. Those were obvious precautions.

  There seemed to be at least four or five men in there. How many could one jotunn killer handle at a time? How could the intruders persuade the defenders to open the door? How long before someone found the shambles upstairs and the guards arrived in force?

  Kade leaned weakly against the wall and wondered why she had ever expected to outwit Azak at his own game. The sultans of Arakkaran had been practicing this sort of iniquity for centuries; he had probably imbibed a skill for it with his mother’s milk.

  Darad turned to glance at her, and she could just see the hideous expression on his bloody face. He had drawn his sword again and didn’t know what to do with it. She was in command.

  “Andor,” she whispered.

  There was a pause, and then the man holding the sword was Andor. He almost dropped it, and the point struck the floor with a clink that sounded terrifyingly loud. Andor staggered, then recovered. He had not been heard; the gaming and laughter continued.

  He stared down in horror at his sodden garments, and then scowled at Kade. “Now you know how it feels to have Darad’s memories.”

  “How do we get in there?” she responded urgently.

&
nbsp; Time was desperately short. There was a trail of blood, there were bodies … there was certainly no time to wonder how they were ever going to get out.

  Andor belched and wiped his mouth with his free hand, pulling a face. He blinked at the solitary square of light. “Haven’t the foggiesh,” he whispered.

  “Can you talk them into opening the door?”

  “How many?”

  “At least four.”

  He shook his head, and swayed. “Too many. Just one, maybe. But they’ll cluster near the door for a sshtrnger — stranger. Beshides, ’m not at my best today. Take too long.”

  He blinked fondly at Kadolan and smiled a sheepish grin that called up all her mother instincts to understand and forgive.

  She suppressed them. “Then call Doctor Sagorn and see if he has any bright ideas.”

  “At least he’s sober,” Andor agreed solemnly, and vanished with a final circumspect hiccup.

  Sagorn snapped, “Come!” Moving awkwardly, as if trying to avoid the touch of wet cloth, he led the way across the cave and ducked into the empty cell. Kadolan followed, wishing she was going to the light, not the dark — to the Good, not the Evil. Even she almost had to duck for the low doorway. The place was rank, a kennel, and the putrid, ammoniacal stench told her what it was being used for. But it was dark, and they could not be seen from the grille.

  “How do we get in there?” she repeated. “Or separate them?”

  “I don’t know! Warfare is not my skill. I think we just wait and trust our luck. Be quiet and let me think.”

  Kade stood and trembled, and knew that she was doing no useful thinking at all. All those deaths to save one man! And likely two more deaths would follow when she and her varying companion were discovered. It was terribly wrong. She had sinned dreadfully. She was serving the Evil.

  A clatter of metal from the other door sent more icy tremors through her. Hinges creaked. Sagorn grunted and pulled her back, away from the faint gray rectangle of the doorway. Then the man holding her arm was Darad again.

  “Have one for me, too, Arg!” a voice called, and there was laughter.

  “You hold your own, Kuth!” a clearer voice shouted, out in the dark antechamber. The hinge creaked as the man closed the door behind him. “I couldn’t handle anything that size!”

  There was another chorus of laughter and shouted agreements from Kuth. The door slammed and the bolt scraped. Arg brought no lantern, so there was only one place he could be going.

  His shape darkened the entrance. He stopped and spread his feet. Darad waited until he was in full stream before he moved. Kade had already closed her eyes. When she opened them, the giant was dragging the body away from the doorway.

  And was Sagorn again.

  He stared down at the latest corpse. “That was unexpected,” he muttered.

  “Does it help?”

  “I can’t see how, except that it feels like luck. Two people with words of power ought to be twice as lucky, I’d think,” he muttered. “And right now anything would help … Ah!” He released a long sigh of inspiration.

  “What — ” Kadolan said.

  “Just watch. Here!” He pulled a dagger from his belt — a dagger that might still be warm from cutting a boy’s throat. “Even Darad may need assistance this time.”

  The handle was sticky. Kade accepted it reluctantly, unable to conceive that she would ever bring herself to use it. She opened her mouth to say so, and discovered she was facing yet another man — a shorter one, but not Thinal. Pale jotunn hair shone in the darkness. She should have recognized him, but she guessed first.

  “Jalon?”

  As Andor had, the minstrel looked down at his bloodstained clothes and he shuddered even harder. His teeth chattered briefly. She knew Master Jalon to be a gentle, sensitive person, a dreamer. Never a killer.

  “Why you?” she demanded. She could not take very much more of this. No more at all! She chewed knuckles again, fighting down a crazy urge to scream. She was a princess and at least half jotunn and she must behave accordingly. But perspiration was pouring from her, and the foul air was making her head thump, and she had never done anything more violent in her life than fly a hawk.

  Inos! She was doing this for Inos! The thought seemed to steady her.

  But Jalon also was teetering on the brink of panic. His teeth clattered again briefly, ending with a click as he clenched his jaw. Then he began to whimper. “I can’t! He’s crazy! Impossible!”

  Kadolan had no idea what plan Sagorn’s brilliance had devised. She knew only that a hundred family men would be pouring down those stairs any minute. There was just no time! She tried the argument that had worked so miraculously on Thinal.

  “Please, Master Jalon! Try! For Rap’s sake?”

  The whimpering stopped in a gulp.

  “Yes. For Rap! You’re right!” The minstrel brought himself under control with an effort that Kadolan heard more than saw. He put his head out of the doorway, cleared his throat quietly, and then shouted. She almost dropped her dagger from shock.

  “Hey! Kuth! Look at this!”

  It was a Zarkian accent. It was the voice of the dead man. It was perfect mimicry.

  A muffled query … then a clearer one, as someone inside came to the grille. “Who’s that?”

  Jalon moved back a step. “It’s Arg, stupid. Who else would it be? Come and see this, for Gods’ sake.”

  “See what?” The unseen Kuth was suspicious.

  A lesser artist might have overdone it; Jalon knew when to stop. He went away, by becoming Darad, who crouched low, sword at the ready.

  The bolt scraped. The hinges groaned. Kuth put his turbaned head out. “Come on, Arg — you know the rules. Five in here always. You want me to go see something, then you gotta come here and — ”

  Darad went. Gritting her teeth and brandishing her dagger, Kadolan followed — out one door, in at the other, and don’t fall over the corpse, into the painful brilliance of the lamplit cell. The heat and stench struck her like a flood of boiling sewage, the stink of men and oil smoke, and excrement, and also a sweet rank rottenness that was worst of all.

  The gamblers had been sitting on a rug at the far end of the room. Three were still scrambling to their feet, drawing their swords. Another had perhaps been already upright, for he was charging forward as Kade came in, and she saw Darad’s blade twist into his belly. It didn’t kill him, but the sound he made showed that it hurt. And right in front of Kade, where she must be careful not to trip over it, was …

  That was where the awful smell was coming from. Naked, spread out like a chained butterfly, swollen, twisted, blackened flesh rotting alive … Could he possibly be still alive? Mercifully unconscious, of course.

  Then she saw that Darad was backing. The cellar was just wide enough for three men abreast, and three men were what he faced. They all had scimitars. Two had drawn daggers also. They stepped over their screaming, writhing companion and continued to advance in line abreast. They were all stooping because of the low headroom, and Darad’s size was a handicap now.

  In the romances Kadolan had read in her younger days, more action-related than those she preferred in her maturity, heroes were always taking on three or four villains at once. They held one off with a sword, another with a chair, and likely put the rest out of the fight with a kick. Rap had used chairs against Darad.

  There were no chairs in this cell. There was a rug, with some cushions, and there were two dying men on the floor, one of them fastened there. And one swordsman could not handle three unless he took them by surprise.

  Kadolan remembered that she was carrying a dagger.

  A dagger was very little use against a sword, and Darad was back almost as far as Rap, with nowhere else to go. She changed her grip, stepped to the left, and threw the dagger with all her strength at the man on that side. She would never have gotten in a second blow with it, anyway.

  Even if the family men had registered that she had a blade, they might not have
guessed that she would throw it, or could do so under that roof. At that range she could not miss, and yet she almost did. The blade struck the man’s shoulder and fell, but it distracted him, which was all the assistance Darad needed. He battered the center man’s sword aside, feinted at the Right-hand face, lunged before Center could restore his guard, slitting his sword arm from wrist to elbow. Then he parried Right-hand’s attack and riposted with a cut across the face. The wounds gave his opponents pause. Left-hand was still clutching his shoulder; Darad ran a sword into his heart and then took him by the belt. As the other two lunged simultaneously, he used the body as a shield against Center, while he parried Right-hand with his blade. Then he threw the body at Center and riposted under Right-hand’s guard. The rest was just a matter of tidying loose ends.

  Satisfied he had won, Kadolan turned her face away. Out beyond the doorway, on the far side of the anteroom, the stairway entrance glowed bright. Someone was coming!

  She slammed the door shut — boom! — and struggled with the great bolt until it grudgingly scraped home. Through the grille she heard boots on the stairs.

  Then she turned and dropped to her knees beside the prisoner and whispered, “Master Rap?”

  Darkling way:

  She hurried at his words, beset with fears,

  For there were sleeping dragons all around,

  At glaring watch, perhaps, with ready spears.

  Down the wide stairs a darkling way they found;

  In all the house was heard no human sound.

  Keats, The Eve of St. Agnes

  THREE

  Best-laid scheme

  1

  The aurora had faded, the lights, the blazing stars. The trumpets and meadowlarks had fallen silent, the dark returned.

  Darkness and silence — deeper now, because he could hold the pain away altogether instead of only partly. Lately he hadn’t been able to do very much about the pain, because his will had been sapped by weakness and creeping death. Now he could banish all feeling, shut out everything. That was good. Much better.