by Bunch, Chris
“We did.”
“Did he pay the villagers, too?”
“Hell, no. Tol’ th’ menfolk t’ get outa the village, an’ hide in th’ woods till th’ next day. Guess they thought we wuz gonna tear th’ town down an’ take their women. Would’a, too, but th’ wizard stopped us. Guess he put some kinda spell over us, ‘cause when th’ so’jers showed up, they treated us like we wuz no more’n peasants. Th’ wizard said he’d give th’ sign, an’ he did.”
Kutulu looked at me.
“Do you want any details of what happened next?”
“What was it like, being a snake?” I asked, somewhat irrelevantly.
A most evil smile came across Slit-Nose’s face. “It was nice. ‘Specially havin’ all your thoughts wi’ you, not like a dumb, real serpent. You could move like lightnin', an’ th’ swords never struck home. Mebbe,” and he managed a chuckle, “mebbe when I reach th’ Wheel th’ goddess’ll think bein’ a snake’d be proper punishment for a rogue like me. I’d like that, I would.”
The inquisitor saw Kutulu’s nod, and the knout slashed down on the thief’s gore-splattered back. He gargled a scream, and his head sagged. A bucket of water went across his face, bringing him back.
“You’ll be respectful when you speak to the Tribune,” the warden said.
“Was this the only task the sorcerer wanted of you?” Kutulu asked.
“You ast me all these questions a’ready,” Slit-Nose complained.
“I did. And I may ask them another dozen times, to make sure you’re telling the truth. Now answer me!”
“He said there’d be other jobs like this ‘un.”
“How would he contact you?”
“He said he’d know how.”
“Could you find him?”
Slit-Nose hesitated, then shook his head. Again the whip ribboned his flesh. “No,” the man moaned. “Not direct, anyway.”
“Explain yourself.”
“That ring I was wearin'? Th’ one this bastard wi’ th’ whip stole?”
The torturer started to snarl something. Kutulu’s hand came up, and the man’s mouth snapped shut.
“Go on.”
“Th’ wizard took my ring for a bit, then give it back, sayin’ he laid a spell on it. If somethin’ came, an’ I needed t’ find him, I was to hold it to my forehead an’ think of him. He’d come, or one of his men’d find me.”
Kutulu stood. “You,” he said to the torturer. “I’ll have a word with you. Outside, if you please.”
The burly man’s eyes widened in fear. I followed them out, slamming the cell door. Behind me, I heard a low chuckle of evil glee from the bandit.
The torturer was twice Kutulu’s size, but cowered before his master.
“The ring,” Kutulu said.
The torturer started to protest innocence, but under Kutulu’s hard gaze his hand went, as if self-willed, into his pouch, and came out with a heavy silver ring.
“I di’n't think,” he started. Kutulu cut him off.
“Exactly. You did not think. This is the first time I’ve had to reprimand you, Ygerne. There isn’t a second time. Steal from me, from the state, once more, and I’ll put you on the road back to Nicias alone and on foot, with your trade branded across your forehead!”
Ygerne paled. He’d be lucky to make it out the gates of Polycittara alive with a sentence like that. Kutulu turned to me. “The tale of the ring is the only new information, Tribune, so I think we have all that man knows. Do you wish anything more?”
Only out of this terrible dank stone dungeon, away from its rusting iron and hopeless sobs and screams. I shook my head, and we went up endless flights of stairs, with guards at each barred landing, and at last came out into the great courtyard. I breathed clean air and thanked my family god Tanis for the rain that pelted across my face, washing away the memory of what was below.
Kutulu was examining the ring. “So what can we do with this?” he wondered.
“We do nothing,” I told him. “We don’t try to use it at all. If this wizard’s as careful as I suspect, he’ll have laid some sort of counterspell, so if the wrong person attempts to use it he’ll either be alerted or possibly even send a demon against the interloper. Put that ring in a safe place. Don’t wear it, don’t try to use it for anything until I report what happened to the emperor. We may need far greater magic than we have access to in Kallio.”
“I reluctantly admit your wisdom, although I don’t like having to beg for help from Nicias,” Kutulu said after consideration. “Shall I get a report ready for a courier?”
“No,” I said. “There’s something far quicker, if chancier.” The emperor had said no one was to be told about the Seeing Bowl, but sometimes orders are made to be broken, and as I spoke I realized two others would now have to be told. “We’ll have to take a chance this sorcerer may be able to eavesdrop on the sending, for we must move at once before he learns the killers are taken and flees.”
“Very well,” Kutulu said. “With the emperor’s help, we’ll give him a real surprise when he encounters a different sort of serpent.” He smiled, and I laughed, for I’d not known he was aware of his sobriquet.
• • •
In bed that night I told Marán a somewhat edited version of what had happened in the dungeon.
“Do you think you’ll find this seer?”
It was quiet and peaceful, with no sound outside our high window but the drum of rain and the occasional comfortable challenge of the sentries as they walked their post. She had her head on my shoulder, her hand cradling my cock.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I think it’ll be a matter of magic against magic, and I know little in that area.”
“But it’ll be the emperor’s magic?”
“I think so.”
“Then we’ll find him,” she said confidently. “Maybe he’ll tell you how to track down some other people.”
“Like who?”
“Like all these elders and counts and so on and so forth that don’t seem to be around. Don’t you think something’s very odd about that?”
“Surely. But there’s been the war, and then we’ve occupied Kallio. Maybe those who lived through the madness have good reason to keep low.”
“Of course they do. And I’ll bet I can tell you what it is. Ruling, or at any rate being noble, is something I know something about.”
“Go on.” I was suddenly wide awake. Marán was right — she had generations of gentility in her bones.
“Start with something basic,” she said. “A lord likes being a lord.”
“Never imagined he didn’t.”
“I mean he likes it more than almost anything. Change that to a lot more than anything. So what made all these people suddenly duck into the nearest badger hole, instead of just changing lords to bow and scrape to and being able to keep on being noble?” Marán sat up quickly. Even in the dimness, I could see the excitement on her face. “The only way Lord Hibble and Lady Hobble would go to ground like the hounds were after them, instead of wanting to cut whatever slice of Prince Reufern’s pie they could, is they’ve been ordered to keep low. Either they’re afraid, or they’ve been promised something — and knowing bluebloods, it’ll have to come quickly to keep them in line.”
“But who could promise them — or threaten them — with something like that?”
“Maybe your magician?”
“Hmm.”
She lay down again. “But probably I’m not making any sense, and just imagining things.”
Marán was like that — a sudden burst of perception, and then a huge wave of self-doubt would strike. For a time I thought she’d been beaten down by that utter shit she’d been married to before me, but lately I wondered if maybe it came from her family. It didn’t seem, from the little time I’d spent around her father and brothers, that a woman’s ideas were especially welcome in the Agramónte world.
“Don’t talk like that about yourself,” I warned, and slapped her bottom. She
yelped in mock pain, and snuggled closer.
“Now, that’s something we haven’t done!”
“I didn’t know there was anything left,” I said.
“Let’s see … silk ropes tying me facedown, spread-eagled so I can’t move,” she said, her voice becoming throaty. “I’m blindfolded, and gagged, so I’m utterly helpless. There’s a bolster under my hips, and your cock is buried in me. I can feel your balls against me.” Her breathing came a little faster. “Then you have a whip, and it’s silk, too. You stroke me with it, then you hit me, and it stings. Then you move in me, hard, then lash me again, again and again.”
My cock was getting hard, then, very suddenly, I remembered another whip, one wielded not in passion, and the broken face of the bandit in the reeking dungeons below us, and my passion died.
“Very well,” I said. “Put it on our list.” We had a mythical list of things we hadn’t yet managed in bed — some of which would require more apparatus than a siege — that one of us had heard of and, giggling, told the other about.
I yawned and let sleep approach, listening to the rain.
“Damastes,” Marán said, “can I ask you something?”
“Anything, so long as it lets me go to sleep pretty soon.”
“How much longer will we be doing this?”
“Fucking like bunny rabbits? I hope forever.”
“No, you loon. I meant you being a general and never having any time to be at home.”
“That’s the lot of a soldier,” I said. “I go where the emperor wishes, when he wishes. That’s the oath I took.”
“Forever?”
“Oh, I suppose one of these years I’ll get tired. Maybe have too many creaks and groans to take the field.” I’d been about to say wounds, but caught myself. “Then you’ll have more than enough time to get tired of me.”
“I hope so,” she murmured, then sighed. “Good night, my love.”
“Good night.” I kissed the top of her head.
For a time I lay awake, wondering what her last words meant. I’d known women who married soldiers not realizing the nature of their trade, and then grew hateful about it. But that wasn’t Marán. She was far too bright, and her family had spent all too many years in the service of Numantia, as diplomats and governors. Besides, given the nature of my trade, it was highly unlikely I’d live to see retirement anyway. Some barbarian’s arrow would keep me from having to worry about old age. Strangely comforted with the thought of dying in my prime, dying well, hopefully at the head of my soldiers in battle, and being commended by Isa to Saionji when I returned to the Wheel, although I couldn’t imagine what a better life could be, I fell asleep.
• • •
The next morning I told Kutulu of Marán’s thoughts about vanishing nobility.
“The baroness is even brighter than she is lovely,” he said.
“I certainly know that. But what made you realize it?”
“One task when I arrived here was to examine the archives of Kallio. That, of course, is a task that’d take an army of clerks an eternity, but I set three men to checking events of the last ten years, which they’re still at. Perhaps if we understand the history of this caterwauling province we might be able to rule it more effectively. What they’ve found is less impressive than what they haven’t found. The records had been tooth-combed, and almost anything to do with Chardin Sher’s court has been removed. I suppose, in time, we can find duplicates, or memoranda with court members’ names on them in the central records in Nicias, but time is something we’re a bit short of.
“My chief clerk thinks, interestingly enough, this destruction was done after Chardin Sher was first defeated beyond the Imru River and began retreating.”
“That makes no sense,” I said. “That’d mean that Chardin Sher knew he was beaten after the first battle, yet wanted his satraps to be able to go underground and fight on.”
“Chardin Sher … or someone else,” Kutulu said.
“Such as?”
“Perhaps our mysterious seer knows. I really wish to have converse with him, for your wife’s contribution confirms what these files suggest by their absence — that there are two conspiracies here in Kallio. One is the mob, the spontaneous risings.
“The other is far more serious and is composed of the surviving members of Kallio’s ruling class, who are hidden waiting the day and the signal to rise up and destroy every vestige of imperial rule. That is the conspiracy that really frightens me.”
• • •
“Hold the object up so I can see it,” the emperor ordered. “Just for a moment, though, in case we’re being observed.” I obeyed, turning Slit-Nose’s ring this way and that over the Seeing Bowl. “I think your brigand was telling the truth,” he said. “It’s nothing innately magical. Probably the thief took it in a robbery and the person we seek then laid an incantation on it, to make it into a talisman. Now, if you’ll move out of the way, so I may speak to your seers?”
I motioned Sinait and Edwy forward. Both showed considerable awe. Edwy probably would have seen the emperor in person, since he was part of Reufern’s household, but I knew Sinait had not.
“Here is what we shall attempt,” Tenedos said, sounding like the careful teacher he’d been. “A certain spell comes to mind that I learned in a village back in my youth, from someone who called herself a witch-finder.” He held up a scroll. “Both of you write down, quickly, what is on this parchment. I must not say the words, for fear of being overheard.”
The two wizards obeyed, their lips silently forming letters as they wrote. Sinait finished first, and Edwy a moment behind her. Seeing them look up, Emperor Tenedos put the scroll aside.
“Read what you have written now. I tried to make the instructions as clear as I could.”
They did as told. “This one word,” Sinait asked. “Meveern? Shouldn’t it be Maverhn?”
“No,” Tenedos said. “That would call, not send. You’re attempting to reverse the incantation.”
“I’m not sure,” the older man said, “what, if this works, will be produced.”
Tenedos looked exasperated, exactly like a lycée instructor trying to help a not particularly swift pupil, then caught himself. “You’ll be drawn in a certain direction, toward the one who cast the spell on that ring.”
“We’ll be like a compass needle, Edwy,” Sinait said. Obviously she understood quite well. Edwy looked embarrassed and nodded.
“Cast the spell as I told you, write down what it gives you, then break it instantly,” Tenedos continued. “This incantation is an open path. Don’t give this unknown one a chance to use it against you.”
“I, at least, will move like the wind,” Sinait said, smiling.
“Cast it once,” Tenedos continued. “Then Tribune á Cimabue will escort you to another location, at least fifty miles from where you are now, and you’ll cast the spell again. Lay those two directions out on a map …”
“… and our villain’ll be at the intersection,” Sinait said excitedly.
“Exactly.” Tenedos smiled warmly. Sinait blushed like a young girl just paid her first compliment.
“Now I wish to speak to the tribune privately,” the emperor said, and the two seers and Kutulu bowed out.
“I’m not sure this is going to work,” Tenedos said. “The man we seek is very careful. I’m already considering other things we might attempt if this fails.”
“If it succeeds, what do we do next?”
“Take him alive,” the emperor said.
“I’ve never tried that before,” I said. “I understand trapping wizards is a bit like catching a serpent in your bare hands. You think you have him, but the question is whether or not he has you instead.”
The emperor grinned. “I’ll prepare incantations to be laid by your seers on devices to make sure this particular serpent’s fangs are blunted so he won’t be able to slither out of your grasp.
“But he must be taken, and alive. I sense he’s the linchpin, the
key for many things that have troubled Numantia, things that must be ended at once!”
• • •
That night the spell was cast from a turreted room in one of the castle’s towers. The bare room held only seven tall braziers of wrought iron and, between them, seven candelabra of the same material, in a large circle. Semicircles were drawn on all the walls, each figure about three feet in diameter. In each a different symbol was chalked. In the center of the room a large triangle was laid out, with an arc drawn at each angle. Along the sides words were written, in a script I didn’t know. Herbs had been assembled: goldenseal, hyssop, rock rose, wintergreen, white willow, others, to be burnt in the braziers.
The incantation was quite simple, Sinait told me. The emperor’s instructions said its potency depended more on repetition than length.
Edwy was clad in dark robes worked with silver and gold devices, representing star formations, magical tools, and such, tied with a spun-gold belt, very much the wealthy court magician. Sinait wore her usual brown.
I’d been greatly concerned with what Tenedos had said about danger. Sinait said she doubted they’d need help, but Edwy told me rather nervously, that it might be well to have soldiers ready, so I had ten men, including Karjan, standing by in light armor, weapons ready, on the narrow, winding stairs. What use they, or I, would be against a sorcerous opponent, I had no idea. But it was better than doing nothing.
The heavy oak door boomed shut, and we waited outside. And waited some more. None of us was bored, but we were increasingly ill at ease. I heard a wind building, and looked out a loophole. But the air was still. It was near dawn. The wind song grew louder and louder still, and I heard a man shout from within. My sword was in my hand as the shout became a cry of surprise and then pain. Sinait screamed, and I yanked at the door handle, but they’d barred it from within. I slammed against the door with my shoulder. The stout wood never budged. I hit it again, then was unceremoniously yanked away by Lance-Major Svalbard, a huge bruiser of a man. He smashed a great mace against the door twice, high and low; the hinges ripped and the door fell away.
Edwy sprawled in a sea of blood at one corner of the triangle. Seer Sinait was backed against the wall. Moving purposefully toward her was a huge warrior, far taller than I, wearing the armor of the Kallian Army of nine years before. He turned his head toward me, his eyes were pools of burning fire, his face a swirl of black.
