Hulda came again, this time after dark, bringing some kind of witchlight with her. It was an odd, misty ball that gave off a red glare that flickered and pulsated; it floated behind her and hovered just above her shoulder, bathing the entire cell in an eerie, reddish glow.
This time Talia was more or less ready for her. She was free from delirium for the moment, and feeling light yet clear-headed. She had managed to put her own emotions and the helplessness of her position in the back of her mind, hoping for some stroke of luck that might bring her a chance to strike back at her tormentors.
She had figured that Hulda was warded, even as the Prince was; she probed anyway, and discovered her guess was correct. So rather than making any other moves, she simply shifted her weight where she sat so that she might be able to get to her feet at a moment’s notice.
Hulda smiled mockingly; Talia glared right back.
“You might rise to greet me,” she mocked. “No? Well, I shan’t ask it of you. You’ll be dancing to my little Prince’s tunes soon enough. Or should I say, ‘King’? I suppose I should. Aren’t you at all curious as to why and 1 how I came here?”
“I have the feeling you’d tell me whether I cared or not,” Talia said bitterly.
“Spirited! You’re right, I would. Oh, I spent years looking for a child like Ancar—one of high estate, yet one who could readily incline himself to what I would teach him. Then once I found nun, I knew within a year that one land would never be enough for him. So once I taught him enough that he could do without me for a time, I turned my attention toward finding him a suitable mate. Dear Elspeth seemed so perfect—” she sighed theatrically.
“Oh?”
“You are so talented, little Herald! What volumes of meaning you convey with a single syllable! Yes, dear Elspeth seemed perfect—coming from a long line of those Gifted magically, and with such a father! Plotting against his own wife! Delicious!”
“If you’re trying to convince me that treachery is inherited, you’re wasting your breath.”
She laughed. “Very well then, I’ll be brief. I intended Elspeth to be properly trained and eventually consolidate an alliance with Ancar. As you probably guessed, I substituted myself for the original Hulda. Things were progressing quite well—until you intervened.”
This time the glance she shot at Talia was venomous. “Fortunately I was forewarned. I returned to my dear Prince, and when he was of an age to begin taking part in the making of plans, we put together a quite tidy plot.”
She began pacing the room, restlessly, the folds of her vermilion gown collecting loose dirt from the floor, dirt which she ignored.
“What is it,” Talia asked the ceiling above her head, “what is it about would-be tyrants that makes them speak and posture like third-rate gleemen in a badly-written play?”
Hulda pivoted sharply about and glared, her hands twitching a little as if she’d like to settle them about Talia’s neck. Talia braced herself, hoping she’d try. Granted, she was as weak as water, but there were some tricks Alberich had taught her ....
“Haven’t you got anything better to do than boast about your petty triumphs to a captive audience?” she taunted.
Hulda’s face darkened with anger; then to Talia’s disappointment she regained control of herself, and slowly straightened and smoothed the folds of her gown while she calmed her temper.
“You’re to be a part of this, you know,” she said abruptly. “Ancar wanted both of you alive, but you alone will do. We’ll all ride together to the Border and wait for your Queen there. She’ll see you with us, and be reassured. Then—”
“You don’t seriously think you’ll get me to cooperate, do you?”
“You won’t have a choice. Just as my Prince’s servant can keep you from sending your little messages, so I can control of your own body from you—particularly you’re in rather poor condition at the moment.”
“You can try.”
“Oh, no, little Herald. I can bring in more help than you could ever hope to hold against. I will succeed.”
She laughed, and swept out the door, then, the witchlight following.
As Talia had hoped, on the tenth day of her captivity, the door to her cell opened, and Prince Ancar and his magician stood before her. And with him was Hulda.
She was in another of the periods of clear-headedness between bouts of delirium. She debated facing them standing, but decided that she didn’t have the strength. She simply stared at them with undisguised contempt.
“My messengers have sent signals telling me that the Queen of Valdemar has turned back at the Border,” Ancar said, gazing at her with basilisk-eyes. “And now they say she gathers an army to her side. Somehow you warned her, Herald. How?”
She returned him stare for stare. “If you two are so all-powerful,” she asked contemptuously, “why don’t you read my thoughts?”
His race reddened with anger. “Damn you Heralds and your barriers—” he spat, before Hulda managed to hush him.
Talia stared at him in astonishment. Brightest Lady—he can’t read me—they can’t read me, can’t read Heralds—no wonder we almost caught Hulda before—For one moment, she felt a stirring of excitement, but it faded. The information was priceless—and useless. It only meant they would not be able to pluck truth from her thoughts, and so would never know when and if she lied.
So start now. Tell them a truth they would never believe. According to Elspeth, Hulda had never believed that the Companions were more than very well trained beasts. She had been convinced it was the Heralds who picked the Chosen, not the Companions.
So. “My horse,” she said after a long pause, “My horse escaped to warn them.”
Ancar smiled, and ice rimed her blood. “An imagination, I trow. You should have been a Bard. This will only delay things, you must realize. I have been working toward my goals for years, and I can easily compass a little more delay.” He turned toward Hulda, and brushed his lips along her hair. “Can’t I, my dear nurse?”
“Easily, my Prince. You have been a most apt pupil.”
“And the pupil has exceeded the teacher, no?”
“In some things, my love. Not in all.”
“Perhaps you will be interested to hear that I know of your quarrel with the young Heir, little Herald. It would seem that she is quite crestfallen, and determined to make it up with you, since my informant tells me she is most eager to be meeting with you again. A pity that won’t happen. It would have been amusing to watch the meeting—and you under my dear nurse’s control.”
Talia tried not to show any reaction, but her concentration slipped enough that she bit her lip.
“Do tell her who our informant is, my love,” Hulda murmured in Ancar’s ear.
“None other than the trusted Lord Orthallen. What, you are not surprised? How vexing. Hulda discovered him, you know—found that he had been working at undermining the Heralds and the Monarchs so long and so cleverly that no one even guessed how often he’d played his cards.”
“Some of us guessed.”
“Really?” Hulda pouted. “I am disappointed. But have you guessed why? Ancar has promised him the throne. Orthallen has wanted that for so very long, you see. He thought he had it when he arranged for an assassin to take Selenay’s father in battle. But then there was Selenay—and all those Heralds who persisted in protecting her. He decided to do away with them first—it’s a pity how little luck he’s had. He has been so surprised at the way you keep eluding his traps. He’ll be even more amazed when Ancar gives him the dagger instead of the crown. But I am disappointed that you had guessed at his perfidy already.”
“My poor dear—two disappointments in one day.”
Ancar turned his cold gaze back on Talia. “Well, since you have denied me one pleasure, you can hardly blame anyone but yourself when I use you for another, can you? Perhaps it will make up for the entertainments your actions denied my dear nurse.”
“Ah, but be wary of this wench, my lord King,” Huld
a cautioned. “She is not without weapons, even now. Your servant must not let the barrier break for even a moment.”
He smiled again. “Small chance of that, my love. He knows the penalty should he fail to keep her trapped within her own mind. Should he weaken, my heart—he becomes yours.”
She trilled with delight as he signaled to the hulking guards that stood behind him.
They seized Talia and dragged her to her feet, pinioning her arms behind her back. Anguish threaded her body as the wound broke open anew, but she bit her lip and suffered silently.
“Stubborn as well! How entertaining you will be, Herald. How very entertaining.”
He turned and led the way from the cell with the magician and Hulda in close attendance and the guards following with Talia. There was a long corridor that smelled of mold and damp, and an iron door at the end of it. Beyond it was the smell of fear, and blood.
They shackled her arms to the cold stone above her head, putting an almost intolerable strain on her wounded shoulder.
“I consider myself an artist,” Ancar told her, “There is a certain artistry in producing the most pain without inflicting permanent damage, or causing death.” He removed a long, slender iron rod from the fire and regarded the white-hot tip thoughtfully. “There are such fascinating things to be done with this, for instance.”
As from a century distant she recalled Alberich discussing some of the more unpleasant realities of becoming a Herald with a small knot of final-year students in which she was included.
“The possibility of torture,” Alberich had said on that long ago afternoon, “is something we cannot afford to ignore. No matter what it is that the stories say, anyone can be broken by pain. There are mental exercises that will enable one to escape, but they are not proof against the worst that man can devise. All I can advise you if you find yourself in the hopeless situation is that you must lie; lie so often and with such creativity that your captors will not know the truth when they hear it. For the time will come when you will tell them the truth—you will be unable to help yourself. But by then, I hope, you will have muddied the waters past any hope of clarity ....”
But Ancar did not want information; he was getting that in plenty from Orthallen. All he wanted was to make her hurt. She was damned if she’d give him satisfaction before she had to.
So the “fascinating things” failed to drive a sound from her, and the Prince was displeased.
He proceeded to more sophisticated tortures, involving complicated apparatus. He handled all of this himself, his long hands caressing the bloodstained straps and cruel metal as he described in loving detail what each was to do to her helpless body.
Talia did her best to keep herself shielded, and to retreat behind those mental barriers to pain and the outside world she had long ago learned to erect, but as he continued his entertainment, her barriers and shielding gradually eroded. She became nauseatingly aware of every emotion he, Hulda, and the nameless magician were experiencing. The intensely sexual pleasure he derived from her pain was worse than rape; and she was in too much agony to block it out. Hulda’s pleasure was as perverted, and as hard to bear. In fact, both of them were erotically aroused to a fever-pitch by what they were doing to her, and were a scant step from tearing the clothing from each other’s backs and consummating their passion there and then.
Twice she tried to turn her agony back on him, but the magician always shielded him. The magician was deriving nearly as much enjoyment from this as Ancar and his “dear nurse” were, and Talia wished passionately (while she was still thinking coherently enough to wish) to be able to strike out at all of them.
After a time, she was no longer capable of anything but screaming. When they crushed her feet, she was not even capable of that.
They dragged her back to her cell when her voice was gone, for the Prince did not derive half the pleasure from her torture when she could not respond to his experiments. He stood over her, gloating, as she lay unable to move on the straw where they’d left her.
“So, child, you must rest, and recover, so that we can play my games again,” he crooned. “Perhaps I will tire of the game soon; perhaps not. No matter. Think on tomorrow—and think on this. When I tire of you, I shall still find a use for you. First my men will again take their pleasure of you, for they shall not mind that you are no longer as attractive as you once were; some of them would find your appearance as stimulating as I do, my dear. Then you shall be my messenger. How will your beloved Queen react to receiving her favorite Herald, but a small piece at a time?”
He laughed, and swept out with Hulda at his side, already fondling one of her breasts as the door thudded shut behind him.
It took every last bit of her will, but she remained where she was until it was dark, dark enough that she knew that no one would be able to see what she was doing. She rolled to one side then, pushed aside the straw, and uncovered the place where she’d buried her precious bottle of argonel. It had been the knowledge that she had it that was all that had sustained her this day, and she prayed that they had not searched the cell and found it. They hadn’t.
She kept her mind fastened on each tiny movement, knowing that otherwise she would never be able to continue.
Her fingers were so swollen as to be all but useless, but she had anticipated that. She managed to scrape back the loosely-packed dirt with the sides of her hands, clearing away enough so that she could get her teeth around the neck and pull the bottle out of the hole that way.
The effort nearly caused her to black out and left her gasping and weeping with pain, unable to stir for long moments. When she could move again, she braced the bottle between wrists rubbed raw and pulled the stopper out with her teeth.
She lay for a long, long moment again, while her mind threatened to retreat into blackness. That would only be a temporary escape, and she needed a permanent one.
She spat the stopper out and rolled onto her side while her body howled in anguish, and poured the entire bottle into her mouth. It burned all the way down her raw throat, and burned in her stomach where it lay like molten lead. It felt as if it were eating a hole through to the outside.
She wept with pain, conscious of nothing but pain, for what seemed to be an eternity. But then numbness began to spread from the fire, pushing the pain before it. It spread faster as it moved outward, and soon she could no longer feel anything, anything at all. Her mind seemed to be floating in warm, dark water.
A few thoughts remained with her for a while. Elspeth; she hoped the child really had forgiven her—she hoped the next Queen’s Own would love her as much as Talia did. And Dirk. Perhaps it was the best thing that he should not know how much she loved him; he would be spared much anguish that way. Wouldn’t he? She was glad of one thing; that he and Kris had made up before they’d left. It was going to hurt him badly enough when he learned of Kris’ death as it was.
If only she’d been able to tell them—if only she’d known for certain about Orthallen. He still was there, the unsuspected enemy, waiting to try yet again. And Ancar—master of magicians and possessed of an army of killers. If only she could tell them somehow ....
While she still had the strength and the will, she tried again to Mindcall, but was foiled by the mage-barrier.
Then her will went numb, and all she could do was drift.
It was odd ... Bards always claimed that all the answers came when one died, but there were no answers for her. Only questions, unanswered questions, and unfinished business. Why were there no answers? One would think that at least one would know why one had to die.
Maybe it didn’t matter.
Kris had said it was bright. The tales all said the Havens were bright. But it wasn’t bright. It was dark—darkness all around, and never a hint of brightness.
And so lonely! She would have welcomed anything, even a fever-dream.
But perhaps that was just as well, too. In the darkness that damned magician couldn’t find her to bring her back. If she fled
away far enough, he might get lost in trying to find her. It was worth the effort—and the warm, numbing darkness was very soothing, if the loneliness could be ignored.
Perhaps elsewhere, where the mage couldn’t follow, she would find the Havens ... and there would be light.
She let the darkness pull her farther along, closing behind her, and thoughts began to numb and fall away as well.
As she retreated away down into the darkness, her very last thought was to wonder why there still was no light at all, even at the end of it.
Nine
When the Queen and her entourage set out at last, Dirk was part of her honor guard despite the vehement protests of Healers and fellow Heralds that he was not well enough for such an expedition.
He had responded that he was needed. This was true; the Collegium had suspended classes and all Heralds normally teaching were serving as bodyguards, with the sole exceptions being those too sick or old to travel. He also argued that he was far healthier than he looked (which was not true), and that he would rest just as well at the easy pace of the baggage train as he would fretting in the infirmary (which was marginally true). The Healers threw up their hands in disgust when Selenay agreed to his presence, and pronounced her to be insane and him to be the worst patient they had ever had since Keren.
He knew very well that Teren and Skif had quietly decided between themselves to keep an eye on him, not trusting his protestations of health in the slightest. He didn’t care, it was worth not being left behind—even being over-protected.
He was right about the leisurely quality of the pace—this was to be an easy trip; the most exciting thing likely to occur would be when they met Talia or Kris at the Border. The bodyguard of Heralds was more for tradition than suspected danger. After all, Alessandar was a trusted ally and a firm friend of Valdemar, and it was as likely for harm to come to Selenay and Elspeth in her own capital as it was for them to come to harm in Hardorn. Dirk figured he should be as safe with them as in his own bed.
There were other reasons why Dirk wanted to accompany the others, although none that he was willing to disclose to anyone else. His enforced idleness had given him ample time for thought, and he was beginning to wonder if he hadn’t made a bad mistake in his assumptions about the relationship between Talia and Kris. While he hadn’t precisely left the field clear, Kris hadn’t spent much (if any!) time alone with her since they’d returned. Instead, he’d had a brief fling with Nessa, then returned to his old semi-monastic habits. Nor had Talia sought him out. He knew these things to be facts, since he’d been keeping track of their whereabouts rather obsessively. Now that he thought back on it, Kris’ frequent paeans of praise for the Queen’s Own seemed less like those of a lover lauding his beloved, and more like a horsetrader trying to convince a reluctant buyer! And the one whose company Talia had been seeking was the one person who had been trying to avoid her—himself.
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