The Brazen Gambit

by Lynn Abbey

  So he stayed where he was, one step into the chambers with his toes worrying the knotted fringe of the carpet.

  "What else, boy? Or will you sit now that we're alone?"

  The man extended an elegant left hand toward a hassock that, after weighing the risks of obedience against those of suspicion, Zvain approached cautiously. He circled the unfamiliar mound of plush upholstery, noting rays of sunlight filtering through the plaster fretwork between the ceiling and the top of the wall. He could guess the time-early afternoon-from the angle and color of the light. But not the day. The morning harangues had not penetrated the walls of his cell.

  He stopped circling and faced his mysterious host.

  "How long was I imprisoned?"

  They were closer to each other now. The lean face lifted slightly; light struck the hidden eyes. They were dead black: hard, sharp, and compelling. Zvain's knees gave out, and he collapsed on the hassock, which breathed a mighty sigh through its seams and tassels. He stiffened as he sank into its depths, then felt foolish: the sound had been nothing more than air escaping the cushions.

  The master chuckled, a hearty, deep-pitched sound. He righted himself in the cushions and found his courage.

  "How long?"

  "No time at all. Imprisoned." Pale lips curved into a smile. "You were delirious when you arrived here. We feared for your life, and-surely you can understand-for our own. You could not answer the simplest of questions: who you were or where you had been before the illness struck. For safety's sake we isolated you. Think of the last four days as quarantine... and consign them to a forgotten past now that you've recovered your wits."

  Lies. He hadn't been struck ill. He'd been struck hard from behind and knocked unconscious. The lump still throbbed. And he'd been imprisoned: a dank, windowless chamber behind a bolted door was a cell, not a sickroom. He tried to shame his silk-voiced host with a dramatic frown, but he was no match for those dead, black eyes. Thoroughly defeated, he stared at the carpet.

  "You have recovered your wits, haven't you?" The pale man chuckled again. This time there was palpable malice weaving through the mirth. He rang a small crystal bell.

  A boy came immediately through a drape-concealed door, a heavy ceramic serving tray balanced on his shoulder. A bright and fashionably elaborate tattoo covered his cheek. Zvain wouldn't have noticed the tiny brand scars if he hadn't been looking for them.

  The slave gasped and stopped short, the tray tottering in his hands. Zvain followed the slave's glance to a short-legged table upended against the wall, where it was obviously not expected to be. He met the other boy's eyes and shared his panic. It would have been no effort to help his age-mate, but the slave-master watched, and he stayed where he was.

  He couldn't breathe as the slave hooked a feet around a table leg, righted it, and dragged it slowly across the carpet. The tray tilted precariously more than once. Crockery slid and clattered, but nothing spilled, nothing fell, nothing broke before the tray sat in its proper place. The slave sank to his knees, trembling with relief. Zvain stuffed his own trembling hands beneath his thighs.

  The tray displayed delicacies guaranteed to attract the attention of any boy, slave or free: morsels of crispy meat, dried fruits glistening with honey and powdered spices. What little he'd eaten in the last four days did not deserve to

  "Eat whatever you want, as much as you want."

  The slave-master's silky voice squelched his appetite. There were countless ways to tumble from freedom into slavery. One way was to perform a slave's work; he'd avoided that. Another way was to fill one's gut before one knew the price of the meal. While me tattooed slave mixed water and herbs for tea, Zvain rubbed the lump on his skull.

  He assumed that he'd fallen prey to one of Urik's innumerable slavers. It seemed a reasonable guess and, in a way, inevitable. Orphaned children didn't starve in King Hamanu's city. If they couldn't attach themselves to someone bigger and stronger, they got snatched by slavers. He'd tried to attach himself to someone bigger and stronger: Pavek, the templar. But that hadn't worked.

  His own fault.

  Pavek had come to him with promises of vengeance, but had seemed more interested in groveling for his old friends at the city-gate. Zvain remembered that last day. They'd quarreled in the morning and barely patched things up before Pavek started working up his day's sweat. He'd promised to pray for the man, then been told to stay put. Pavek was always giving him contradictory orders. To show his mettle, he'd wandered off, but Pavek was gone when he got back. An old man said itinerants had hired Pavek to guide them through the city streets. And he, gith's-thumb fool that he was, had gone searching after his supposed protector.

  Pavek's fault.

  If that blundering templar hadn't blundered into his life he'd never have been wherever he had been when the slavers caught up with him.

  The slave finished making the tea. He bowed to his master and left the chamber without having said a word. Belatedly, Zvain wondered if the other boy's tongue had been cut out and, not surprisingly, his own tongue soured. "There's caution, Zvain-"

  He sat bolt upright; until that moment he'd believed- hoped-the slavemaster hadn't known his name. He didn't remember giving it away, but the lump on his skull covered an empty spot in his memory. Maybe he had been delirious___Certainly, he couldn't be too cautious, now.

  "And there's foolishness. I can taste your fear, Zvain: that's the taste of foolishness. I know you're thirsty; I offer you tea." Using his left hand only, the slave-master filled a shallow bowl with fragrant, red-amber tea and pushed it closer.

  He shrank away as if the tea were poison, as it could well be.

  "A man can starve himself in the presence of food, but he can't not drink. You're thirsty, Zvain. Desperately thirsty. Why not slake your thirst? What are you afraid of?"

  Zvain shook his head, not daring to speak. The hard-eyed slave-master was right. With each breath, each heartbeat, the tea grew less resistible.

  "Watch-I'll drink from your bowl myself-" And the half-elf did, draining it in two deep swallows. When he lowered his hands, the tea had stained his lips crimson. "Would I do that if it were poisoned?"

  Possibly, poisoners usually developed a tolerance for their preferred poisons, strictly to reassure their victims. But Zvain's concerns weren't about the purity of the tea.

  "I won't eat your food or drink your tea. I won't take anything from you. I'm free, and I don't want to become a slave."

  The slave-master sat back with a dramatic sigh. "First it's prisons, now it's freedom and slavery! Where do you get such suspicious thoughts, Zvain? You were brought to my house sick and witless. If it's awing you're worried about"- his voice turned harsh and Zvain looked up; owing was exactly what he was worried about-"it's a little late for caution. You already owe me your life, boy."

  Zvain was speechless. His jaw dropped, but words refused to form.

  "Eat the food I offer, Zvain; you've eaten it already." The slave-master brought his right hand out of the folds of his tunic, revealing red-and-black enameled talons fastened over the tip of each finger. He speared one of the spiced fruits and brought it delicately to his mouth. He reached for another, but paused with one talon pointed at Zvain's heart "If I meant you harm, boy, nothing would spare you. Do not tempt me with what you do not want."

  An enameled talon flicked downward, piercing a honeyed bit of fruit. "Take what I offer you," the slave-master purred as he raised the talon.

  Touch that food, Zvain told himself, and he'd be fed, clothed, sheltered, and owned as surely as if he'd been paraded naked through the slave market. But freedom was precious only when you had coins in your pocket.

  Deliberately ignoring the morsel on the slavemaster's talon, he selected the smallest of the remaining fruits. He chewed it slowly. The spices crunched, the honey filled his throat with a subtle warmth that tickled his nose from the inside and made his eyes water. He'd seen folks drinking mead, broy, and the other liquors that reddened their faces and made them
laugh too loudly at things that weren't funny. He'd seen folks slumped in corners, half-empty bowls still clutched in their hands, and he'd seen them retching when the morning sun struck their eyes. He'd sworn to his mother that he'd never be so foolish.

  And his mother was dead.

  He reached for a second morsel and chewed it as slowly as he had the first, meeting the slave-master's black eyes as he did. The fear was still there, but far to the back of his thoughts. He pretended it was gone, and, after a moment, it was.

  "How did a fine, intelligent boy like you come to be dressed in rags, scrounging garbage in the elven market?" Wariness nudged his rapidly blurring thoughts: He didn't now where he'd been when he'd been hit over the head, but

  "Not th' elven market. Not scroungin', neither." His mouth felt... odd. His tongue, odder.

  "What were you doing?" the slave-master asked patiently, using his unencumbered hand to pour another bowl of tea.

  Zvain slurped the amber liquid eagerly. He was wiping his mouth on his forearm when the chamber began to spin. A fast grab to the cushions steadied the chamber, but sent the bowl flying. The slave-master held out his taloned hand. The bowl slowed, swerved, and drifted to a halt on the pale palm.

  "Oh, no-" Zvain murmured. His gut rolled. Color drained from his vision.

  "What were you doing in dyers' plaza? Why were you running? What were you looking for in the cloth maze? What or whom?"

  Dyers' plaza...? The cloth maze? Yes, he began to remember more clearly. The people he'd asked about Pavek and the itinerants bad said that they'd seen a quartet of that description going into the dyers' tangle of freshly colored lengths of cloth. He'd entered the maze blindly, full of anger that Pavek had abandoned him before he'd been able to abandon Pavek. An errant breeze had brought a familiar voice to his ears.

  ... that... powder... turned into... Laq-

  Laq.

  Zvain and his anger lurched sideways, then righted themselves.

  Pavek's groveling and sweating had been part of a plan after all: he'd found the Laq-sellers. If vengeance was to be had for his mother's death, for the death of the man he called his father, he'd been determined to be a part of it. Deep in drunken memories of unusual vividness, he flailed through the dyers' cloth, but the air was still. Pavek's voice no longer came to him.

  He almost shouted Pavek"s name aloud before he remembered that there was a price on the former templar's head.

  "Who, Zvain? Who are you looking for? Who do you seek?"

  He blinked and rubbed his eyes. A shadowy outline of the slave-master's gaunt face rippled across the lengths of red and yellow cloth. "No," he whispered, something was terribly wrong, but he couldn't quite decide what it was. He shook bis head. A mistake: everything started to spin. "No one." He reached for the cloth to keep himself from falling. It melted in his hands.

  "Who, Zvain?"

  He heard the cracks and groans of a man being beaten. Pavek. Templars weren't clever, not the way boys raised beneath the city streets were clever, the way he was clever. Pavek had blundered in some typically templar way, and the Laq-sellers were pounding him.

  The dyers' cloth became gauzy, then transparent, then disappeared completely and the square was deserted, except for three people beating a fourth. The itinerants were an ugly trio, the worst-looking specimens of their kind he could imagine: a warty human woman, a hairy dwarf, and an elf with a pendulous nose and sagging belly. But they had the better of Pavek, who was on his hands and knees, blood pooling on the paving stones.

  Once again, the templar's name formed in his throat; once again he swallowed before it escaped.

  "Who, Zvain?"

  The voice came from behind. He spun and saw nothing.

  "Who?"

  He spun around again. The Laq-sellers continued to pummel Pavek, who was crawling toward him.

  "Answer me, Zvain!"

  There was nothing to account for the voice that echoed off the walls of the empty square. The speaker was unseen.

  Unseen...

  Mind-bending masters of the Unseen Way were, by the very nature of their talent and practice, more hidden than those who wore the Veil. To his knowledge, Zvain had never met an Unseen Master, but he knew how mind-benders could turn a young man's world inside out, trapping him in his own memory, attacking him with the horrors of his own imagination. Tales said that every sentient creature had the instinctive power to cast out even the most potent mind-bender, but he, staring in panic at the cloudless sky of his memory and imagination, had no idea how to defend himself.

  "Zvain!"

  A different voice this time. Familiar and focused. Pavek, no longer a blundering, unclever templar, but a strong and brave man who fought with an obsidian trident. Blood no longer streamed from Pavek's face, but from the Laq-sellers who lay in heaps at his feet. Zvain ran toward the fighter who would, surely, rescue him.

  "Who am I!"

  The question came from Pavek's mouth and echoed off the walls. Zvain skidded to his knees. His savior was not Pavek, not a savior at all, but the mind-bender. And not wanting to see his own death reflected in Pavek's familiar eyes, he tried to lower his head, but he'd been transfixed.

  The false Pavek regarded him with undisguised disgust as he raised his trident. Zvain found enough strength to tremble and whimper. But the mind-bending imposter aimed the trident at himself and, laughing manically, thrust the tines into his own head. With razor-edged talons he slowly peeled Pavek's face away from his skull

  No-Not his skull. Unable to look away, Zvain gaped in horror as a gold-etched black mask appeared where the mind-bender's face should have been. And, by King Hamanu's infinitesimal mercy, he knew the patterns on that mask-

  The interrogator's mask was fully revealed; Pavek's inside-out face hung in tatters from red and black talons that had replaced the vanished trident. The templar shock it once; the slashed parchment reformed itself, right-side out.

  "Pavek. That misbegotten jozhal's still got his nose where it doesn't belong."

  The templar shook his talons a second time, and Pavek's face floated away on an intangible wind. Then Elabon Escrissar turned toward him, and he would have vomited up his fear, if he'd been able to do anything at all. Laq was deadly, but Elabon Escrissar was worse, and the two together, as it seemed they were, was evil beyond measure.

  "Don't be afraid, Zvain. Your loyalty is commendable, for all that it was misplaced. You shall be rewarded-"

  Sheer terror finally broke his paralysis when the talons were less than a handspan from his nose. He flopped onto his side and curled into a tight, quivering ball. His heart stopped when cool fingers caressed his cheek.

  "There, there, Zvain. Don't be afraid. Truly. When you fear the worst, it manifests before you; that is the mind's nature. Banish your fears and be rewarded. Raise your head. Open your eyes."

  Slowly, unwillingly at first, he began to relax. His heart calmed, and the knotted muscles in his neck loosened. When his eyes opened, he looked upon a wise and kindly face, a face so pale it seemed to glow with its own gentle light.

  "No," Zvain whispered, trying to recall his fear and the slave-master's true face.

  Black talons traced a feather-gentle line across his cheek. He felt his skin open.

  "Banish your fears. Accept what I show you as the truth."

  The talons were gone, replaced by soothing fingertips that sealed his wounds. Blood became tears.

  "Pavek would not help you-Pavek did not love you."

  Elabon Escrissar gestured toward emptiness. It filled with a swarthy, stoop-shouldered human dressed in a dirty, sweat-stained yellow robe. The scars on Pavek's face pulsed malignantly. His eyes squinted, and his lips twisted into a beasdy sneer.

  "He abandoned you, didn't he? He consorted with your enemies, the Laq-sellers-"

  The itinerant trio, as ugly and depraved as before, appeared around Pavek, bound to him by chains of congealed blood.

  "And you thought he was your friend. My poor Zvain- you thought he
would rescue you, protect you. But he betrayed you instead-"

  A cool fingertip touched his tears, drying them, so he could see with perfect clarity.

  "What can I give you for a reward, Zvain?"

  "Vengeance."

  "That is not enough. What else do you want?"

  "Magic."

  "They are yours. Take them."

  He felt parchment fingers touch his forehead, then withdraw.

  "Take ashes and dust."

  The conducive substances appeared on the ground. He gathered a handful of each before rising to his feet. He could see the templar's face-stern and vengeful now, but still glowing with inner wisdom-and Pavek's-turning more bestial each time his scar throbbed-and the truth was very, very clear in his mind.

  "Open your mouth. Speak the words on the tip of your tongue-"

  He obeyed, willingly. Harsh syllables hung in the air. They summoned the dust from his right hand and the ash from his left. Pavek began to scream; his tongue lengthened and swelled grotesquely until it plugged his throat. The screaming stopped, but the tongue continued to grow as Pavek's entire body was consumed by one of its lesser parts.

  Completely enrapt by the horror and magic, Zvain watched as the slug-thing burst its yellow robes and writhed on the paving stones. It sprouted countless wormy fingers, each with a throbbing scar, a single Pavek-eye, and a silently shrieking Pavek-mouth. As the last of the dust and ash evaporated from his clenched hands, the Pavek-thing began to shrivel. The tiny eyes turned to ash, the open mouths filled with dust, and the wormy fingers shriveled into black splotches that spread and merged until what remained of Pavek resembled nothing so much as the tell-tale black, protruding tongue of a Laq-eater's corpse.