He laughed at the look on Ryel's face, his eyes empty black again. "You thought I didn't know that Starklander came to Almancar with you, young blood? You didn't think I knew when he went to the mercenary camp to turn M'Klaren’s rabble against me? You didn't think he'd face instant execution the moment he entered M'Klaren’s tent? Such a soft trusting fool you are, beauty."
Belphira met Ryel's eyes with desperate pleading. "Tell me he lies. Tell me!"
Painfully against his will Ryel replied. "Lord Guyon did indeed come with me to Almancar last night, my lady. But— "
Her voice shook with terror and anger. "He was here? Here, and never came to me? Here, and you never said a word?"
Dagar snickered. "Oh, he'll return safe back to you, trollop—at least part of him. His head, which M'Klaren will send me any minute now."
Belphira gave an anguished cry. Furiously summoning all of his will, the wysard began to utter the words of Lord Garnos, Mastery that would hurl Dagar into the Void before he could emerge again in Meschante's body. But even as he spoke, the daimon's sneer rose over his voice.
"No good, sweet eyes. I know a trick worth two of that." And he hissed a sudden incantation in the secret tongue of Elecambron, mingling Ryel's name with it. Even though he had begun a countermantra, the wysard in appalled wonder felt his body stiffen stonelike as it had in his underwater dream, only his eyes and ears alive.
"One of my own little sleights," Dagar smirked. "You forget that I've a good memory, young blood. Every one of that silver book's words I remembered—especially your precious exile-spell, which I easily found a way to counteract, as you see. Had you used your imagination for a change and tried something of your own, you might have had me. But now I'll have you. All of you, beauty. Every delicious inch." His vacant gaze stripped Ryel bare, used him obscenely. "And I also found this among your goods, while you were playing the loving son and brother." From a tattered recess of his robe he took the lacquered case with its crystal flasks. "Lovely drugs, but none of them a match for this one." Between grimy thumb and forefinger he held aloft a slender glass tube partly full of heavy amber liquid, and Ryel with a pang recognized the vial of xantal he had bought in Ormala. "Here's stunner enough to poison a city far greater than Almancar. All I need do is empty it into any of the palace wells, for all of them connect to the great one deep underground. And then the fun starts." He came close to Ryel, clapping the wysard's stony cheek with a rough sordid hand. "Won't it, beauty." Mockingly he flicked the wysard's nose, yanked his hair, blew breath most unMichael-like fetid into his face. "Won't it."
Priamnor struggled to his feet and flung himself at Dagar, jewel-blue eyes bright with fury. "Don't touch him!"
"You're really too stupid, boy." The daimon made a gesture, barked a word. Within a minute's space drawn out to an hour's horror the young Sovran dropped his weapon as he shrank and warped within his imperial robes, dwindling to a wizened deformity more ape than human, gibbering and grimacing.
"Behold the comely heir of great Destimar," Dagar sneered above Diara's cries of horror. "Though I doubt this land would be ruled any the worse."
Diara rushed to her brother's side, shielding him in her arms as she stared at his tormentor with pleading eyes, and spoke in a voice trembling with tears. "Lord Michael. I know that you despise me, but if you have any humanity left in you…"
"I'm not Michael, little fool." His ghastly eyes fixed again on Belphira, and became stony, dirty brown, Meschante's. "The way of the Master far surpasses that of the Unseen. That I learned in Hallagh, from Theofanu. When Michael Essern left Almancar for the Master's service, I was graced with the lord adept's shape and his powers, and I've used them well, as you've seen."
Belphira recoiled. "It can't be Derain Meschante..."
His teeth flashed like a wolf's. "The very same. Only better. More clever. So you wouldn't have me, slut? Well, I now deem myself too good for Starklander's dirty leavings—and anyway, you're too old for my taste." A few words he snarled, and Belphira's beauty withered and grayed to gnarled toothless senility, her opulent silks sagging into tatters about her feeble slack form. A moment she stood wavering, her wrinkled lips wordlessly twitching. Then she tottered to a chair and with quavering plaintive groans lowered herself into it to sit like an ugly dropped doll, her blotched knotted hands sprawling in her lap.
As Meschante laughed at the terror-stricken grief of Diara and the gurgling howls of Priamnor, Ryel looked on powerless, trapped within that unavailing stony husk, wondering how it was that his anger could not burn away the spell that bound him, so white-hot it was. And at least a little of his rage came from witnessing the proud nobility of Michael Essern's outward form defiled by the brute baseness of Meschante's mind, that sullied and cheapened features once stern and high-souled; a fate worse even than that of the lifeless body of Michael's mistress those years ago in Markul, subjugated and exploited by an obscene srih. Dagar's doing, all of it; and Ryel felt as if he would lose his mind, trapped as he was.
With contemptuous satisfaction Meschante regarded his work. "Now we'll see how many hearts you break, whore. Something younger I'll have—something fresh." He stretched forth his arm to the Sovrena, and his eyes emptied and blackened. "You. Come here, girl."
Diara had looked upon her brother's and Belphira's transformations with horror, but at Dagar's command she only lifted her chin, staring defiant loathing into the daimon's cruel empty eyes. "Never think to command me, daimon."
"Ah, you're proud now, aren't you? But you'll learn who's your Master, when I rule Destimar. For who's better to reign, lovely? Not that waddling halfwit there, and as for the bastard sibs Catulk and Coamshi, I'll have them strung up the moment they set foot within these walls, which won't be long now. At midnight their army enters the city, and after a good look at the slaughter we'll to bed, you and I--although I can promise I'll not give you much chance to sleep." As he said the last words, he leered and licked his lips with obscene relish.
"You monster…" Diara seized the dagger that hung at Ryel's belt and threw herself at Dagar, driving the blade deep into his side. Dagar gave a howl of pain, but in another instant had closed up the wound, and seized her with his blood-drenched hands.
"You think to match your virgin's Art with mine? You're even more an idiot than your brother." Yanking her by the hair, Dagar pulled the Sovrena to his blood-fouled face and kissed her with lewd-tongued brutality, his empty leer mocking Ryel's paralyzed rage. Then he shoved her from him, his black slits fixing upon Ryel, and made as if to approach the wysard to inflict yet more scorning injury. But suddenly he fell silent, cocking an ear. "Ha. Listen to that."
As Dagar spoke, a great roar as of many armed men in hard battle went up outside the palace. Ryel's heart froze as the daimon grinned and shifted selves to Meschante, eyes and voice shifting to dirty and deep. "So. My friends outside the walls got restless, and found their way past the gates early." A din of arms and shouts clattered and rang in the corridor, but Meschante lifted his voice above it. "In here!"
At those words a hulking Shrivrani mercenary pushed into the anteroom and bowed in salute, awaiting further command.
"Did you bring it?"
In reply to Meschante's demand the aliante nodded and unwrapped the bloodstained bundle he carried, revealing a human head spoiled almost beyond recognition by the desert heat, but its hair unmistakably Ralnahrian in cut and only too unique in its tawny color. The teeth had been smashed in, and the eyes gouged out.
Ah, Guy, Ryel thought, his own eyes burning. I only hope you weren't alive when it happened.
Meschante grabbed the head by its hair. "Ha. So there you are, Desrenaud." He brandished it aloft, waving it in the wysard's face. Ryel endured the stench as best he could, powerless to move away from it. "You see I wasn't joking, Steppes beggar." Then he turned to Diara, who had shrieked at the head's unveiling. "What, sweetheart? You don't think he's handsome this way? No?" And he shoved the head toward her, howling with laughter to see her recoi
l in horrified revulsion. "Time was that women couldn't get enough of this face. And you don't want a kiss?" He seized the putrescent thing in both his hands, contemptuously jeering. "You were always such a beauty, Guy. Weren't you." He spat on it. "And you knew you were, didn't you. But look at you now." He tossed the ghastly orb upward, catching it like some obscene ball as he giggled and muttered to himself.
Sick within, Ryel strained his glance sideways to Belphira who sat all but hidden in the shadows, and was glad at least to find that she looked on with vacant incomprehension, her dull stare not even trying to follow the ascent and fall of Meschante's loathsome plaything. But the big mercenary watched the ghastly sport with keen absorption as he waited for further orders, his bloodshot eyes intent between his cowl's swathings.
Tired at last with his play, Meschante hugged the head under one bare begrimed arm, and indicated Priamnor with a brusque sweep of the other.
"Cut him open." He gave a wolf's grin as his eyes emptied to black. "I'm hungry."
The aliante bowed obedience. Diara screamed, and rushed to protect her brother, but in vain. Clutching her arm, Dagar jerked her away, holding her fast. As if searching for a fit weapon to execute his master's order, the Shrivrani mercenary looked about him, and saw Ryel's Kaltiri tagh. Above the dirty veil of his headcloth his long eyes glinted, rapacious and sly.
This is more than I can bear, Ryel thought, desperation dissolving him within his useless flesh as he helplessly witnessed his sword's theft and Diara's desperate terror. This will kill me. This...
Dagar glared at the aliante. "Get on with it, fool. What are you staring at?"
As if in merest curiosity the mercenary had peered full into Ryel's face, and the wysard's heart had all but stopped. Long dark eyes aglint with all too familiar irony shone above the Shrivrani veil, and one of them winked. As if to free up his sword-arm the brigand threw off his cloak, tossing it in offhand mockery over Ryel's shoulders as if over a clothes-rack. The wysard felt a shock of liberation as it dropped around him, for now he discerned its color past the layer of dust. Deep purple-tinged red, like wine-lees.
Father, Ryel thought, his heart hammering, each thud weakening the Art-wrought encasement, taking him closer to freedom. Ithradrakis. You, here—
Dagar stamped his bare black-soled foot, and his voice shrilled. "Faster, you stupid scum!"
The aliante laughed in a way Ryel had heard a thousand times, deep and mocking. "How's this for fast?" Instantly the rune-bright blade rang from the sheath, drawing the air's blood. Dagar doubled over, hewn through the guts by razored Art-strengthened steel.
The blow shattered Ryel's trance, freeing his body to action, his tongue to utterance. Blurting out words agonizingly long-pent he flung all his Mastery's force against his Adversary.
He invoked no spell from Lord Garnos' silver book, nor any of Markul. He used his own words, his own Mastery. The World fell away from him, until it seemed that he hovered in an incandescent dimension where his heart no longer beat, but vibrated in exultant ecstasy. He no longer knew what he said, or even if he spoke at all. He only knew that in that transcendent radiance Dagar shriveled screaming, consumed first to blaspheming cinders, then to silent dust, then to nothingness that the ineffable brilliance took to itself and made shining, pure, one with its own luminous infinity that surrounded Ryel like the center of an endless sun. The wysard gave himself to the light, floating upon it as if upon a sea, wishing only to remain forever in that scintillate bliss. He drifted off among the stars, gathering glittering handfuls, blowing them into the blackness like dandelion-seed caught fire. Far off, very far off, he could discern all the worlds that were—Cyrinnis glowing sweet blue and green, marbled with shining white; twin-mooned Drihaytn, sere and bare; bright nebulous Naja, huge Trantor splotched and striped, Ashrog with its rings—these he saw and others, their shining colored spheres pretty as a child's game carelessly left to roll where it would. It was so beautiful that Ryel would never have filled his senses with anything else.
Chapter Twenty-Four
But in another moment he felt the World's air again enwrap him and the World's ground hold him up. Opening unwilling eyes, he found that the feigned form of Michael Essern had evaporated, and now Meschante's ugly real semblance lay writhing at the veiled mercenary's feet.
"Ryel! Ah, Ryel…" White arms cooled him, transcendent balm wrapped him like a dream, tears sweet as the sea dampened his neck. "I had thought everything lost. What he might have done to you—"
"Shh. That's over, now." Ryel steadied himself with his arm around Diara's waist, taking consolation from that touch, disoriented by his return to vitality. Gently he took her hand, healing the maimed wrist with a kiss. "He hurt you."
"He would have done far worse, were it not for this man." The Sovrena's lovely eyes shone next on the mercenary. "A hundred times welcome, our deliverer."
The Shrivrani aliante reached to unfasten his headcloth, and Ryel waited unbreathing. With a jerk of his gauntleted hand the mercenary uncovered his face, and the wysard gave a cry; for now the eyes he stared into were as green as a wild Northern forest, and the face was the face of Guyon Desrenaud.
"I 'd a notion you'd be glad to see me, sorcerer." The Northerner half-smiled, his grim pallor sternly pleased. Turning to Diara, he bowed deeply. "Guy Desrenaud I'm called, most exalted, at your service--for by your Dranthene beauties and your kindness to my friend you can be no other than the Sovrena. And it may be you've heard my name mentioned here and there." Ungloving he took her fingers in his, bending his brow to them.
Above his bowed head Diara's smile waned. "Belphira…Priam…" she whispered. And more she would have said, but Ryel pressed her waist warningly, and bent to her ear. "Not yet."
Straightening again to his full height Guy reached out to Ryel, taking the wysard around the neck in a rough hug. "I thought you might not have pulled through, enchanter. You're lucky I came when I did."
Ryel returned the embrace with all his heart. "I never thought I'd see you alive again."
The Northern earl thumped the wysard's back, ruffled his hair. "You almost didn't."
Ryel stood back to look at him. "I can't believe how fooled I was. I could have sworn that head was yours."
Desrenaud laughed. "Not a bad bit of fakery, was it? One of the M'Klaren’s men died in a dicer's brawl last night—a Northerner, by lucky chance. Rodhri was so loath to part with me after our reacquaintance, that he decided to make the dead do a good turn for the living. No matter that the corpse was more than a foot shorter than me— Meschante only wanted my head. All it took was a bit of clipping, some rough surgery, a dab of dye and a few hours in the sun with the flies, and there I was ready for wrapping. Needless to say, I lent no hand in the doing—that business I left to Rodhri, who took rare zest in his work. But I gladly took charge of the delivery, though I must say it made my flesh crawl to see that dirty swine Meschante defaming the shape of Michael Essern, playing pitch and toss with carrion he called by my name."
"You remember that?"
"Most of it."
Ryel tensed. "What do you mean?"
"I blacked out for a while," Desrenaud said. "Or rather I was there, but not there. Myself, but someone else…I don't know. Maybe you do."
"I might," Ryel replied. "But there isn't time to tell you now."
"I can wait. Here, sorcerer, you'll be wanting this." And he gave Ryel back his tagh. "Let's put Meschante's toy away." He threw the covering over the head, holding the bundle at arm's length. "Where should I stow the thing?"
Having knelt to rifle Meschante's rags and safely pocket Riana's book and his drugs, Ryel stood up again. "I'll show you," he said, grateful of a chance to guide Desrenaud away from the main chamber and its ensorcelled captives.
Desrenaud deposited his burden in the corridor and returned to the anteroom, wiping his hands on his dusty breeches with grimacing distaste. "I could use some water."
Diara herself brought a basin and ewer freshly filled, and
the Northerner first poured some of the water over his hands to wash them, then splashed his face, then lifted the ewer's edge to his lips and drank deep. "Gods, that's good. I'm not used to this desert air. My profoundest thanks, most exalted."
Diara smiled, but not with entire joy, and only the wysard knew why. "I'm glad to be of help," she replied.
"You were of aid well before this. I'd no idea you were so wicked with a blade."
At that the Sovrena colored slightly. "You two surely have much to discuss. I will be in the next room." And she turned swiftly, and went to where her brother and Belphira were ensorcelled.
"She could have stayed; I'd not have minded," Desrenaud said. "But to business. Have Meschante's warlock powers left him?"
Ryel nodded. "Completely."
"And what of Dagar?"
"Gone forever."
Desrenaud looked doubtful. "Meaning he's once more in the Void, seeking another way out?"
"Better than that," Ryel answered. "He's destroyed. Reduced to nothingness."
After a moment to let this news sink in, the Northerner gave a deep relieved sigh. "About time. Good work, conjurer. Matters seem like to do not overbadly henceforth. It took some ticklish dealing and great persuasions—not to mention a deal of deadly drinking—for the M'Klaren to come round, but he did at last. And now the best of his troops are ranged about the palace guarding it strongly, whilst others are making war upon Michael's—or rather Meschante's—armed followers, cutting them down right and left should they be foolish enough to put up a fight."
"What of the Zegry army?" Ryel asked.
"It's still locked out of the city."
"That won't last."
"We'll see," Desrenaud replied. "Whilst in the mercenary camp I learnt from the M'Klaren’s scouts that the Rei of Zalla is even now coming up from the south in swift secret march, with all his power. The M'Klaren once might have warned Priam's traitorous half-siblings Catulk and Coamshi, but he's no friend to them now, and is more than eager to swear his loyalty to the Dranthene dynasty. So we've some good news, at least." Desrenaud turned to the sprawled prone form of Meschante, whose groans had become very faint. "Will the beast live?"
The Ryel Saga: A Tale of Love and Magic Page 64
