When the last echo of his voice faded, the Losveg Skalt said flatly, “The Dag Ulaffa has explained that your transfer token took you to another location, yet you encountered the accused on the tower at Ala Larkadhe, by accounts some two weeks’ travel away.”
Erkric stilled.
“The site chosen by Dag Ulaffa did not afford a close enough view,” Durasnir said. “It might afford a fine view for a mage, but for military purposes, it was useless. I had been told that what the Sartorans call an atan would transfer to the tower.”
Signi leaned forward, her chains clinking slightly.
In the gallery, the dags whispered. Signi caught a note of longing, even envy in the word atan.
The Losveg Skalt said, “So the records show. We sent a dag to test this transfer from tower to atan. They report that the tower archive is closed.”
Durasnir gestured. “I know nothing about that. It functioned at the time.”
The Losveg Skalt turned Erkric’s way.
Dag Erkric said, “The archive was open, and the atan transfer functioned, when I attempted it in my investigation previous to our landing in the north.”
The Losveg Skalt rattled through two papers, jerked one forward, then addressed Durasnir. “In your military opinion, did this water spout prevent our people from taking the city as ordered?”
“Only for the duration of the flood,” Durasnir stated. “Drenga Battle Chief Vringir could have taken the city once the water was spent, but Commander Talkar issued a new order for him to lead his force to the harbor to secure it.”
“The Oneli Commander speaks the truth,” Commander Talkar said from the side, where he sat, stiff in his armor and battle gear, his winged helm on his knee.
The Losveg Skalt turned back to Durasnir. “You saw the accused perform this magical action, raising the geyser.”
“I did.”
“Did Dag Signi state her purpose for her action?”
Durasnir said, “She did not speak to me.”
The Losveg Skalt fussed with her notes again, then jerked her chin up. “She was there on the white tower of Ala Larkadhe when you arrived to witness the progress of the attack?”
“Correct.”
“Did she at any time indicate why she was there?”
“She did not.”
“Did you ask?”
“I did not.”
“So you just stood there in silence, the two of you? The commander of the southern fleet and a sea dag missing for half a year?” Sarcasm crisped the Losveg Skalt’s consonants.
“There was a little talk, and events required our attention.”
“What did you say to her on first seeing her?”
“ ‘I thought you were dead.’ No, I believe it was, ‘They said you were dead.’ ”
Whispers—even laughter—were swiftly silenced.
“Her response?”
“She asked if I had come to witness the fighting.”
“And you said?”
Durasnir paused, frowned, then looked up. “We exchanged a little talk about the progress of events, and I do not trust myself to remember the exact words with any accuracy, for my attention was on the field below. I was there to witness the battle, and our forces were preparing to enter the city.”
“You did not ask where she had been for half a year?”
“No. It has never been my place to question those in the other services.”
“You did not ask what she intended to do?”
“No.”
“When Dag Signi began her water spout, did she say anything to you?”
“She did not speak to me at all. When she began to do magic, I deemed it best to transfer.”
“And that is the last time you saw Dag Signi?”
“Correct.”
Signi’s sight flickered at the edges, and she remembered to breathe as a few whispers, sharp and clear, were quickly silenced. Erkric looked up, a sharp movement revealing impatience, anger.
The Losveg Skalt’s hieratic tone blurred into haste as she spoke the formal words that dismissed the fleet commander, and called forth two dags, Erkric’s followers. She bade them stand opposite Signi. Then she gestured to the Erama Krona.
Signi’s heartbeat thumped in warning as she was flanked by the guards who brought her forward to the witness stand and held her there.
Then began a long list of accusations of magical actions. After each the two dags were asked if they had witnessed the result of a magical act. They testified to it before Signi was called on to admit to having performed them. Signi could feel how the questions had been formed to hide the true cause of Valda’s actions: by deft wording, her defensive measures blurred into Erkric’s offenses.
He is condemning me, spell by spell, for Valda’s actions in thwarting his Norsundrian magic.
Signi denied each with all her dwindling strength. Her arms throbbed with red pain as the Erama Krona held her upright; she could no longer stand on her own.
She braced for the conviction, or thought she was braced, but there was a yet another horror waiting.
The Losveg Skalt said, “The testimony of the witnesses proves that these actions occurred. The council agreed that in the event of your denying having performed them, you prove the truth of your words by naming the person or persons responsible.”
And there at last was the true purpose of this trial.
Signi was too weary to raise her head. This trial was not hers, though she stood accused. On trial was Brit Valda, whom Erkric dared not name because he did not know how much she knew, he did not have her in hand, and because her actions had all been taken directly against him when he had twisted the tree of Ydrasal into the clawing, soul-devouring dragon of Rainorec by claiming that his orders all came from the prince.
Cold to the bone, Signi knew what must come: execution, public atonement not just for Erkric’s secret deeds, but also for Valda’s secret attempts to thwart him. Because of this last, Signi’s path was clear, through cruel. She must not speak, she must not betray her vows.
“I repeat,” the Losveg Skalt stated, louder. “Can you name the person or persons responsible?”
Valda is the only mage who can withstand Erkric.
Signi made an effort that took all her remaining strength, and raised her eyes to the golden banner of Ydrasal. Through the sheen of tears in her burning eyes, she saw past the gold-worked, much-repaired banner tree to the Great Tree beyond it, twelve branches intertwined above the rising sun, the whole coruscating with pale fire.
And its reflection glowed in her face.
He seeks to make my bones warp and my blood weft, but I will not betray my vow to laws above political boundary.
The great laws were the weaving of civilization. And so Signi gripped the spindle of sacred light and spun pain and degradation away, threaded by the frantic beat of her heart.
From above, and around, came whispers: Vision . . . she is a Seer!
Signi was beyond hearing, but Erkric wasn’t. The light that seemed to radiate from the banner, or from beyond the banner, shafted down to touch Signi’s filthy face, and the whispers that made clear how many saw it, pierced him with needles of pain. That light must be merely a mere trick of the glowglobes, a stray reflection from somewhere outside.
Too many stirred, faces raised in wonder and awe and even fear, to sustain the comfort of that assumption. So here he was, witnessing a Seeing at last, but he was not the Seer. Bitterness roiled in his stomach. What a waste! Proving, he thought, that such things were random trickery on the part of the unseen. The visions of the Yaga Ydrasal, the inward eye, belonged only to poets and to the insane, who were often indistinguishable from one another.
“Do we wait all day for the accused to answer the question?” he asked Ulaffa, just loud enough to prod the Losveg Skalt, who stared at Signi with her mouth half open behind her mask.
The Losveg Skalt jerked her attention back to the moment. “Dag Signi! I ask you a last time. Will you name the person or
persons responsible for performing the treasonous magic that you deny performing yourself?”
Signi started and looked around in weary bewilderment. Those closest witnessed in the bracing of her thin body under its weight of chains, the tension inscribing lines in her face, her acceptance of the burden of time, place, and situation.
“I witnessed no treason,” she stated, because that was the truth. In the resulting outcry, her low, exhausted voice was nearly inaudible. “I never committed treason.”
In the following uproar, Erkric struggled to remain outwardly impassive, to mask his wrath. He knew what those words meant: she did know whose will and skill opposed his. She was rejecting the offer of mercy he had so carefully designed to come as relief, release, at the end, when she gave him Valda.
Let’s see how brave you are alone with my Biddan. He will wrench Brit Valda’s secrets from you, one cracked joint and bloody strip of skin at a time.
Chapter Twenty-nine
DAG Agel had not mistaken the old, old signs, almost unnoticed on the lintel above the archive door: a tiny white stone. When they were all young magic students, they used to arrange meetings in the archive by those stones. One above the emerald-eyed dragon meant dragon hour, when the twelve-hour glass was turned: midnight. A stone above the carved and gilt sun meant midday, and one above the moon meant the nine-glass hour, or nightwatch.
Her heartbeat sounded loud in her ears as she passed into the stillness of the old archive. Four levels up, a storm pounded the coast, evidenced only by a faint quickening of the channeled air vents in the public corridors. Here in the oldest archive the air slowly changed every decade. Longer.
She carried her candle, causing it to stream and waver, making the gilt scrolls worked into the mosaic patterns appear to leap and jiggle. She did not clap on the glowglobes, for those were too often bespelled to capture evidence of who trespassed these spaces these days.
She had checked for wards herself.
In the oldest chamber, where the fragments from their long ago past were preserved, there was a stir of blue robe, a glimpse of silver, grizzled hair, and Fulk Ulaffa came forward, holding his hands out wide.
Dag Agel set the candle down on a scribe’s high writing table and held out her own empty hands.
“Thank you for meeting me.” Ulaffa’s voice was husky with exhaustion and defeat.
Agel’s lips tightened. “Is this trial the end of our way of life? Do you not see how the distrust engendered in us as dags is going to shadow us far beyond the problems we are facing now?”
“At this moment,” Ulaffa said, “I do not see myself surviving the problems we face now.”
Agel raised her hand in the hearken signal, a silent reproach.
Ulaffa said, “Yes. I know I sound facetious. Agel, maybe it is time for our purpose to be examined, and not just by us, but also by those we swear to protect. You and I both remember Abyarn Erkric as an earnest and dedicated dag. Perhaps you still see him that way, yet.”
“I did, but the more I ponder how life has changed by incremental degrees over the past fifteen years, the more I perceive his hand causing these changes. We were not so afraid of one another then, so wary in our daily steps. We did not distrust what we were told. We accepted one another’s dedication to Drenskar, we recognized one another on the golden path, even if our branches diverged.”
Ulaffa breathed out slowly. “Yes. Yes.”
“So. There are two items that you and I must resolve.”
“You investigated the kinthus in the king’s chamber?”
“I did. The records all matched everyone’s testimony. But then I brought the king’s healer down to the clean room. He cooperated willingly. We went through all the events. When we got to the night of the king’s death, his account was just a little too smooth, too devoid of . . .” She groped for words. “I hardly know how to explain what I heard. It was as if he repeated someone else’s experience, not his own. So I tested for traces. And found one. The merest hint of magic, so subtle I would not have found it had we not been in the space where no magic at all is performed, vigilant as I was.”
Ulaffa leaned forward.
Dag Agel’s aged face furrowed with distaste, and fear. These words were difficult to say. “Fulk, his mind had been tampered with. He had no actual memory of that night, and was not aware of this lack of memory. All his previous memories of eventless days had taken its place, and he did not know it. How is that even possible?”
“Have you visited the prince, as I requested?”
“I have not. There is no getting near him: his own guards have strict orders from him not to permit access. They insist it is for his safety. But . . .” Dag Agel looked away, ashamed. “I summoned the laundry thrall and had him submit to kinthus.”
Ulaffa nodded; thralls had few rights.
“And what he told me about the prince during private times is profoundly disturbing. He no longer reads or debates. He is not even lying with women. He just sits in the dark, as if dreaming.” She drew in a steadying breath, but it did nothing for the churn of her insides. “We hold to tradition, because it gives us order and meaning. When our traditions are twisted to an end we cannot see . . . well, the House Dags have fractured even worse than the House Hyarls. Oh, I need time to think.”
“We do not have that time. We must rescue Dag Signi. Dag Erkric did not obtain what he really wanted, which is the whereabouts of Dag Valda. I think—I believe—Erkric will contrive a way to send the Biddan to her.”
“He can’t.” Agel’s body tightened, almost a flinch. “It’s the law . . .”
“You and I both know that the moment Rajnir becomes king, Erkric will be the law,” Ulaffa said. “Further. If he can submit a dag to torture, then where can he stop? Will you be next if you cross his will publicly? Will I?”
Agel made the sign of Rainorec. “Nowhere, yes, and yes. But Ulaffa, if she vanishes, there will be riots.”
“There will be riots if he executes her. Too many people who have no cause with any of us saw her sustain a vision the other day. No dag created that light, though we all saw it. It takes no discernment to descry that most from high to low degree believe her testimony now.”
“I know,” Agel said, and let her breath out slowly. It did nothing to relieve her tension. “Dag Egal thinks that if this gathering had not been a Frasadeng the riot would have happened then. And of course the Erama Krona were out in force, so everyone stayed peaceful. But they were all talking.”
“They do not know the truth. I do,” Ulaffa stated. “Those accusations he made against Dag Signi were mostly his own actions. He taught Dag Mekki death magic. We know that we cannot bring someone out of a stone spell, but I can take you to the mountain height where Mekki is going to move with the slowness of ice over the next century and a half; you will sense Valda’s signature in the trace magic.”
Dag Agel knew that Valda would not put a stone spell of that magnitude on a fellow dag without just cause. And by acknowledging that she knew it, she had to take the next step, and acknowledge that she had crossed the bridge between Erkric’s side with its semblance of order and law and Ulaffa’s cause, which seemed to overthrow the rule of law.
Ulaffa said, “We are agreed that Dag Erkric has twisted the laws to his own ends politically. He is not going to stop working to gain control of us.”
Agel dropped her hand, and rubbed her fingers. “Then you must act. And I will cooperate.”
In the darkness of her cell Signi struggled to reconcile herself to a terrible death, light and love and sense ripped away by pain and humiliation until the death birds picked her bones clean.
She was startled by sounds outside the door. Before the rattle of the lock had come at dragon hour and first watch—after supper and before breakfast—when they came in with the bucket of plate scrapings soaked with spoiled vinegar to be poured into her face.
But the man who entered did not carry a bucket. He bore a tray with a glowglobe set on it, next to rus
t-streaked metal rods and probes and pincers.
Terror closed Signi’s throat. She closed her eyes, and forced herself into hel dancer breathing.
The man said, “The pain will cease as soon as you tell me where Brit Valda is, and what you know of her plans.”
Signi closed her eyes as cold fingers gripped her wrist. She recoiled, then frantically tried to resume the protection and control of hel dancer breathing. But she was so very cold, so tired.
Chains rattled as the man chuckled. His breath stirred her hair as he leaned close. “I’ve always liked locks and puzzles. People are puzzle-locks. You take them apart piece by piece. And you find the secret inside.”
A pricking poke at a fingertip, then hot, searing pain through her entire body, radiating from her fingernail.
“Just the outer locks first. Everyone always needs to be convinced of my truth, before they unlock theirs for me.” He did not sound angry, or even passionate; at first his complete lack of emotion was more frightening than what he did.
That rapidly changed.
Another thrust, endless, deep, remorseless: the high keening from somewhere matched the rhythm of the burn in her throat. And now she had to learn about pain, how very many shades and intensities it encompassed. Pain came in colors, in burning, rusty, acid tastes: it distorted sound, even when one was not screaming one’s throat raw.
The instructive voice went on with the lecture. “With so many women it is the face. Young ones, usually. With men, it is what cannot be seen. For you? The agent of doing, not of being, we begin with the hands . . .
“Just give me a location . . .”
Her senses billowed with red clouds and clashing metal and voices that made no sense as Biddan finally broke her tenuous mental hold, and discovered in her babble that she knew far more than anyone might have guessed.
Secrets are power. Now his passions kindled at last, to possess secrets that even Erkric had not guessed. In probing and twisting and wrenching for more, more, Biddan failed to grant her the mercy he’d promised. Intent on his acquisition of power, his questions blended with her shrieks so that he failed to notice the opening of the door.
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