by Dave Duncan
unison.
"Not nearly as well," Lothaire added.
"They will answer a call from here when they might
not--"
"Besides," said Jongleur, "other people handling the
swords will weaken the personality imprints."
"Then start!" Audley shouted. "No
arguments!" That command was directed at Malinda.
It was crazy. The lancers might arrive before
they had finished their first attempt, and a new
invocation almost never worked on the first try. The
Queen's Men would be trapped; she would be taken
prisoner again or just quietly murdered. Flight
was the only sane course. But Audley rushed
her over to the center, where Savary and Charente were
busily wrapping rope around the great anvil.
She sat on it, then changed her mind and knelt
instead. The conjurers wanted the swords upright; and
as it was obviously not possible to plant them in the
ground when the floor was solid rock, they set
them in the rope binding. She sat back on her
heels within a wall of steel: Sleight,
Sorrow, Suasion, Leech, Farewell,
Justice, Master, Inkling. She thought of
Sword, which had been lost in the confusion and was
probably somewhere at the bottom of the Gran. The
men lined up as they had been rehearsed, one at
each point; outside the octogram they should be
relatively safe. Lothaire handed out the
scripts. There was some cursing as the men peered at
them in the uncertain, flickering light. For some
clandestine reason, sorcerers always wrote
spells on scrolls, which tended to roll up at
inconvenient moments.
"I will summon Bandit to Suasion,"
Jongleur said. "Please read off the
names you are assigned."
"Sir Chandos to Master ..."
"Sir Stalwart to Sleight ..."
And so on around the octogram.
"Thank you. Face toward me, if you please,
Your Grace. This is death point. You have your
lines ready?"
She nodded. "Even if this doesn't work--and
even more if it does ... Thank you all."
"It is for us to thank you, Your Majesty,"
Audley said. "We--"
Jongleur cut him off, bellowing in a highly
discordant voice. The s@eance had begun.
Malinda had nothing to do until--unless--the
dead appeared. Not being sensitive to spirits, she
might have very little warning. The Forge was cold. Its
bizarre acoustics sometimes made the eight
voices reverberate and echo, and at others
swallowed them like a winter's night. The men
invoked time, revoked death. They summoned the
dead by name, each in turn. They revoked death
again, invoked air and fire to reassemble the souls.
On and on, singly or in unison, back and forth
across the octogram.
She had memorized her invocation; it was very
simple, little more than a plea to be taken back
to the moment before the rampage began, before Radgar
squeezed the trigger on the crossbow. That scene
was burned into her memory--the Blades clustered
around her father at the top of the steps, making him an
impossible target, and then opening a way for her,
exposing him. No one had thought of archery,
Radgar had cleverly distracted all of them, as
Durendal had pointed out.
He had been a despot, King Ambrose, but
Chivial had needed him, his iron will, his supple
hand, his very devious mind. One word from her would
save him and see Radgar sail away
frustrated. Princess Dierda would become
Queen Dierda and produce countless litters of
princes to secure the succession, while she, the
disgraced Malinda, rejected by a common pirate
... well she must just face a furious father and be
married off to some other horror--not that Radgar had
impressed her as a horror at all in the few
minutes they had spoken. Queen Regent Martha
had spoken very highly of him.
The fires were dwindling. The Forge was growing
darker and colder, very much colder. Goose bumps
marched on her skin.
The voices seemed locked in endless wheels of
invocation, repeating and repeating the names: Chandos,
come! Screwsley, come! Stalwart, come! Time
had been revoked; perhaps it would never return.
Heat had been revoked; she was freezing.
The chanting had faded into the distance and the trickle
of water had stopped. The glow of the fires had
faded away, and yet the Forge was not dark, rather it
seemed ... foggy? Was this what it was like to be blind?
Even to recognize darkness must be a kind of
seeing. Everything seemed hidden behind smoked
glass, as if the very air were becoming opaque.
She could not see the chanters, only ... only
eyes looking down at her. Disembodied. A
pair of eyes, a faint outline of a hand resting
on Suasion's hilt ... More eyes, to right and
left. Behind her? Yes, some there, also, staring down
at her.
Her mind went blank. She fumbled with the
scroll with her invocation on it. Inevitably it
rolled itself up; she unrolled it, and an icy
breeze lifted it from her hand.
Traitor! The voice was no more than a thought
in her mind.
"No!" she cried, struggling to remember what
she must say. "Blades, you must save your
ward--"
This is the traitor.
She betrayed us, said another.
They were faint, insubstantial, no more than
reflections on water, clustered menacingly all
around her, hands on swords.
Kill her. Take her mind. Twist,
rend, scatter ...
Icy touches, wind or fingers ...
"No!" she screamed. "Save the King!
Save your ward! There was a massacre. You
died. Hundreds died." She had forgotten her
text. She gabbled. "The baby prince died
later and I was dispossessed." She wondered why
the chanters were still wailing away in the distance. Could
they not hear her screaming at the ghosts? "Take
me back with you! Back to that moment and before. When
I was walking back along the jetty--I will
shout--"
Traitor, traitor!
Make her plead.
Make her scream.
She slew our ward. ...
"I did not! I want to save him
now, save you, all of you. Start again. I will shout
a warning. You cannot shout, but I can. Take me
back--"
Make her suffer, suffer, suffer. ...
"Sir Bandit!" she yelled. "Dian was
left a widow. She wept for you, but she married
another man."
Dian? Must I remember Dian? That
silent thought was Bandit's voice, all that was
left of a fine man.
"Take me back to the jetty! I will save you
all."
Ghostly anger.
Brothers, she also was our ward, our ward's
heir. That was Bandit. We swore,
brothers.
Let us trust her a little. If she
fails us, we can still twist and rend.
Ghostly murmurs of complaint ...
"Yes, yes, please!" she shouted. "Quickly!
To the jetty. The Usurper's men are coming."
She betrayed Eagle! That was Chandos.
"I didn't! Aid me and you will live again, the
Blades will live again."
Let us do what Leader says, brothers.
... That was young Stalwart. Remember our
oaths.
A surge of giddiness, of nausea ...
Light? The fog brightened. A scent of water, the
sea. A faint memory of rain. Grass under
her feet.
And screams, screaming people, screaming horses.
"No!" she yelled. "This is too late. This
is when you were dying."
Ghostly moans and wails of despair:
See, we fall! Madness! Shame! The
eight wraiths were still with her, figures of mist
around her, and apparently too engrossed in viewing
their own deaths to heed her pleas.
"Take me back! Back farther, before my
father died. Back, farther back ..."
Somewhere a new voice shouted, "Surrender in
the name of King Neville!" and the distant chanting
became shouting and clashing swords. The Yeomen
had arrived at the Forge. More blood, more death.
Malinda was in two places at once, two
times at once. She was going to go mad. The
conjurers had warned her. ...
"Quickly!" she cried. "Spirits! Save the
King! These are the last of your Order, save them.
Take me back to give the warning!"
Brothers, we must help her! Again, that was
Bandit, and then she felt Chandos add his silent
voice. And again Stalwart: She can save us.
Another surge of giddiness, the anvil
rocking, the grass moving under her feet, a misty
rain in her face ... A smell of the sea
filled her nostrils, and she stared up at two
brilliantly green eyes.
"How kind of him!" Radgar said angrily.
"Such was not his opinion when we met twelve
years ago. It seems he came very close
to lying to you about our acquaintance. Would you agree that
he was trying to deceive you?"
Too soon! The spirits had placed her back
on the longship as it still drifted aimlessly on the
rain-speckled water. The crew sat in silence,
watching their king interview his new bride. The
oars were spread out like wings, motionless. She could not
disembark yet.
"An honest answer, my lady! Did your father
deliberately hide from you the fact that he and I
know each other personally?"
She heard her own voice reply. "Perhaps he
forgot--" In some far corner of her mind she could
still register the screams and swords, back in ...
in the Forge! Hard to relate to that and to this other
place. Two places at once. Must not forget
why she had come back. Soon she would disembark and
warn her father that this green-eyed pirate was a
monster. Must remember.
The eight shades would be no further help--
Killer! Monster! Oath breaker!
Murderer! They were still there, but now their attention was
all on the hated King of Baelmark. Liar!
Deceiver! They flitted and flickered around him in
frustrated, transparent fury, slashing at him
with ghostly swords. Traitor! Traitor!
Obviously neither Radgar himself nor any of the
crew could see or hear them as Malinda could.
Her mind was being ripped in pieces.
"I am sure he did not!" Radgar
snapped. "What other tricks did he use on
you? What threats did he make to force you into this
marriage?"
Again her voice spoke for her--the other
Malinda spoke for her. "Your Majesty, I
wrote to you! I testified before the--"
"Yes, you did, because I would not sign the
treaty until I was given assurances that you were not
being forced into a union you found distasteful.
I must still hear it from your own lips."
Thwack! Clang! Those were the terrible sound
of crossbows. The Yeomen were shooting through the
windows at the men trapped in the Forge and at
Malinda herself. The quarrels rang from the stones.
She was going to die there. The last of the Queen's
Men were going to be picked off like fish in a
barrel, dying around her corpse.
"Your Grace ..." The multitude onshore
had fallen silent, staring at the longship. They
did not know what was going to happen, which was, er
... which was a murder. Someone, yes, her father ...
"Why did you not wait for your two ladies
to board?"
"My lord husband, why don't we sail?"
"Later!" he said angrily. "Because you knew
they did not want to come? Because they had been forced
into accompanying you? So what about you? You are
happy at the prospect of spending the rest of your
life in Baelmark bearing my children?"
"I am honored to wed so fine a king!" Could this
man really be as bad as he was painted? Yes,
yes! That was why she had come back! Back from
where? Remember! She was fading. The real
Malinda was driving out the wraith from the
octogram. She seemed to be losing power. She
wanted to scream. Perhaps she was dead. Was that
Audley screaming?
"Oh, rubbish!" Radgar said. "You may be
terrified or disgusted or shivering with excitement.
You cannot possibly feel honored. I'm a
slaver and a killer of thousands. But my mother was forced
into her marriage, and I will not take you as my
wife unless I am convinced that you are truly
happy at the prospect. I think you were
bludgeoned into it. Speak! Persuade me
otherwise."
He was bullying her, just like her father. "You
call me a liar?" Without thinking, she swung.
Her hand struck his cheek with a crack like an ax;
with all her strength behind it, the blow made him
stagger.
The crew whooped and roared approval. The
crowd ashore rumbled. She gasped with horror
at her folly.
The wraiths had gone.
Radgar straightened up, rubbing his face, which was
already turning pink. His eyes were wide with
astonishment, and yet they shone with devilment. "Do
that again!"
The eight had gone; the chaos in the Forge
continued. Yes, Audley screaming, and
Lothaire ... and Malinda. Pain! ... More
dead. And all of this was ultimately Radgar's
fault--
"Your Grace, I beg your--I can't
imagine what--"
"Do it again!" he said. "Go on, I dare you!"
He offered his face.
Dare her? How dare he dare her?
Crack! Right hand last time, left hand this time.
The sounds of the Forge stopped instantly, and she
had a sudden vision of History like a huge
rambunctious scroll breaking loose and rolling
itself up. ...
Radgar had been expecting the slap, but she was
still fast enough to connect. He reeled back against the
side of the ship. Her hand stung. Spirits! What
would he do to her?
The pirates cheered, howled, stamped feet, and
shouted obviously lewd suggestions. The King
reached out and gripped Malinda's shoulders. The
marks of her fingers were clearly visible on his
face, yet he was grinning widely, like a boy.
"You have convinced me! No one bullies you
into anything. Make a wake, helmsman! I have
a bride to take home."
Leofric yelled, "Yea, lord!" and something
else in Baelish. His mallet hit the rail,
the oars dipped and bit. The ship leaped forward.
Malinda staggered. Radgar folded her into an
embrace and kissed her. He was not Dog.
The scroll, rolling faster, ever faster, ever
shorter ...
But the ship was moving! She had not done what she
intended, but she had done enough. Radgar had
discarded his planned assassination. SHE HAD
WON! It was enough. Ambrose would live. There
would be no Wetshore Massacre. The eight
wraiths would live again. All of them would live.
Dian would stay married to Bandit. There would be no
massacre at Sycamore Square.
Granville would never rule. Horrible
Lambskin would never rise above Grand
Inquisitor. Courtney would rot away in
Mayshire. Neville would never rule.
Malinda would never rule, but she had beaten them
all in the end! TRIUMPH! Ambrose might
go on for years. Dog would live again--she would
never meet him and even if they did
meet, they would mean nothing to each other, but he would
not die for her. Take back your life,
darling, and find happiness. ... The man kissing
her was not Dog, but it was with a sense of farewell that
she returned his embrace, putting fervor and her
heart into it. Good-bye ...
Click! The scroll closed.
Radgar released her, eyes like green fire.
"My lady, you honor me!"
"Your Grace, I am so ashamed!" Surely
ladies did not behave like that when they were being
kissed? What an astonishing slobbery business!
And her fingers digging into him like that! What must he
think of her? "I swear I will never--"
He misunderstood. "Don't swear! Any time
you think I deserve a good whack, whack away!
Always, always tell me when I am wrong, because that
is what I need more than anything. Even the friends
of my boyhood will not tell me what they really
think now, because they all have too much to lose. Be
