The suffocating terror of such a small place welled up, threatening to smother him. He couldn’t get his breath. He pressed a hand to his throat, trying mightily to pull a breath. He was certain he would go mad being confined in such a small pen.
Maybe it wasn’t Nyda, after all. This did have all the marks of his insidious mother’s doing. Perhaps she had been watching from the world of the dead, gleefully conniving, plotting how she could harass him. The troublesome sorceress had probably helped her. The swamp-witch had no doubt butted in to offer her assistance. Together, the three women had managed to reach out from the world of the dead and help the vixen Nyda lock him back in a tiny place.
He raced around the cramped little room, feeling the walls, terrified that they were shrinking in toward him. He was too big to be in such a small room where he couldn’t even breathe. Fearing he might use up all the air in the room and then slowly suffocate, Oba threw himself against the door and pressed his face up against the opening, trying to suck in the outside air.
Weeping with self-pity, Oba wanted nothing so much at that moment as to bash his lunatic mother’s head in all over again.
After a time, he listened to the voice counseling him, reassuring him, calming him, and began gathering his wits. He was smart. He had triumphed over all those who had conspired against him, despite how evil they were. He would get out. He would. He had to pull himself together and act up to his station in life.
He was Oba Rahl. He was invincible.
Oba put his eyes up to the slit to peer out, but he could see little more than another dim space beyond. He wondered if maybe he was in a box inside a box, and for a time he pounded at the door, screaming and crying at the terror of such a sinister torture.
How could they be so cruel? He was a Rahl. How could they do this to an important person? Why would they treat him this way? First, they locked him up as a common criminal, in with the scum of humanity, for doing the right thing and dispensing justice to rid the land of a lawless thief, and now this wicked persecution.
Oba concentrated, putting his mind to something else. He remembered then the look on Nyda’s face when she had first gazed into his eyes. She had recognized him for who he was. Nyda had known the truth, that he was the son of Darken Rahl, just by looking into his eyes. Small wonder she had wanted him so badly. He was important. Selfish people were like that; they wanted to be near those who were great, and then they wanted to keep them down. She was jealous. That was why he was locked up—petty jealousy. It was as simple as that.
Oba pondered that look in Nyda’s eyes when she had first seen him. The look of recognition on her face had sparked memories that enabled him to put odd bits together. He mulled over the new thing he had learned.
Jennsen was his sister. They were both holes in the world.
It was too bad she was kin; she was seductively beautiful. He thought her ringlets of red hair were quite bewitching even if he worried that they might signify some magical ability. Oba sighed as he pictured her in his mind. He was too principled to consider her as a lover. They shared the same father, after all. Despite her ravishing looks and the way thinking of her made his groin wake, if painfully, his integrity wouldn’t allow such a breach of decency. He was Oba Rahl, not some rutting animal.
Darken Rahl had fathered her, too. That was a wonder. Oba wasn’t sure what he thought about that. They shared a bond. The two of them stood against a world of jealous people who wanted to keep them from greatness. Lord Rahl sent quads to hunt her, so she would have no loyalty there. Oba wondered if it could be that she might be a valuable ally.
On the other hand, he recalled the anxiety in her eyes when she looked at him. Maybe she recognized in his eyes who he was—that he, too, was the son of Darken Rahl, like she was. Maybe she already had plans of her own that didn’t include him. Maybe she was upset that he existed. Maybe she, too, would be an adversary, intent on having it all for herself.
Lord Rahl—their own brother—wanted to keep them down because they were both important, that much seemed likely. Lord Rahl didn’t want to share all the riches that rightfully belonged to Jennsen and Oba. Oba wondered if Jennsen would be as selfish. After all, such selfish tendencies seemed to run in the family. How Oba had avoided that wicked aspect of heritage was a wonder.
Oba felt his pockets, recalling as he did so that he had done the same thing when he had been in the other room with the criminals, but his pockets were empty. Lord Rahl’s people had stripped him of his wealth before locking him away. They had probably taken it for themselves. The world was full of thieves, all after Oba’s hard-earned wealth.
Oba paced, as best he could in such a confined place, trying not to think of how small it was. All the while he listened to the voice advising him. The more he listened, the more things made sense to him. More and more items on the mental lists he kept began falling into place. The grand tapestry of lies and deception that had so afflicted him knitted itself together into a broader picture. And, solutions began to solidify.
His mother had known all along, of course, how important Oba really was. She had wanted to keep him down from the first. She had locked him in his pen because she was jealous of him. She was jealous of her own little boy. She was a sick woman.
Lathea had known, too, and had conspired with his mother to poison him. Neither had the bold nerve to simply do away with him. They weren’t that kind. They both hated him for his greatness, and enjoyed making him suffer, so their plan from the first appeared to have been to poison him slowly. They called it a “cure” so as to soothe their guilty consciences.
All along, his mother wore him down with menial chores, treated him with contempt, heaped endless scorn on him, and then sent him to Lathea to retrieve his own poison. Loving son that he was, he had gone along with their devious plans, trusting in their words, their instructions, never suspecting that his mother’s love was a cruel lie, or that they might have a secret plan.
The bitches. The conniving bitches. They had both gotten what they deserved.
And now Lord Rahl was trying to hide him, to deny to the world that he existed. Oba paced, thinking it through. There was too much he still didn’t know.
After a time, he calmed and did as the voice told him; he went to the door and put his mouth near the opening. He was, after all, invincible.
“I need you,” he spoke into the darkness beyond.
He didn’t shout the words—he didn’t have to, because the voice inside added to his own would make it carry.
“Come to me,” he said into the quiet emptiness outside the door.
Oba was surprised by the calm confidence—the authority—in his own voice. His endless talents amazed him. It was only to be expected that those less endowed would resent him.
“Come to me,” he and the voice spoke into the empty darkness beyond.
They had no need to yell. The darkness effortlessly bore their voices, like shadows traveling on wings of gloom.
“Come to me,” he said, bending unsuspecting inferior minds to his will.
He was Oba Rahl. He was important. He had important things to do. He couldn’t stay in this place and play their petty games. He had had enough of this nonsense. It was time to assume the mantle of not just his birthright, but his special nature.
“Come to me,” he said, their voices oozing through the dark cracks of the deep dungeon.
He kept calling, not loudly, for he knew they could hear him, not urgently, for he knew they would come, not desperately, for he knew they would obey. Time passed, but did not matter, for he knew they were on their way.
“Come to me,” he murmured into the still darkness, for he knew that a softer voice yet would draw them in.
Off in the distance, he heard the faint answer of footsteps.
“Come to me,” he whispered, enthralling those beyond to listen.
He heard a door in the distance grate open. The footsteps grew louder, closer.
“Come to me,” he and the voice co
oed.
Closer still, he heard men shuffling along a stone floor. A shadow in the dim light fell across the small opening in the door beyond.
“What is it?” a man asked, his echoing voice tentative.
“You must come to me,” Oba told him.
The man hesitated at so pure and innocent a declaration.
“Come to me, now,” Oba and the voice commanded with deadly authority.
As Oba listened, the key in the far lock turned. The heavy door rasped open. A guard stepped into the space between the doors. The shadow of the other guard filled the outer doorway. The guard edged closer to the small slit where Oba waited on the other side. Wide eyes peered in.
“What do you want?” the man asked in a hesitant voice.
“We wish to leave, now,” Oba and the voice said. “Open the door. It is time for us to go from here.”
The man bent forward and worked at the lock until the bolt snapped back with a metallic clang that echoed in the darkness. The door pulled back, squeaking on rusty hinges. The other man stepped up behind him, looking in with the same lifeless expression.
“What would you like us to do?” the guard asked, his eyes unblinking as he stared into Oba’s eyes.
“We must leave,” Oba and the voice said. “You two will guide us out of here.”
Both guards nodded and turned to lead Oba away from the dark pen. He would never again be locked in confining little places. He had the voice to help him. He was invincible. He was glad that he had remembered that.
Althea had been wrong about the voice; she was just jealous, like all the others. He was alive, and the voice had helped him. She was just dead. He wondered how she liked that.
Oba told the two guards to lock the doors of his empty cell. That would make it more likely that it would be a while before he was discovered missing. He would have a small head start to escape Lord Rahl’s greedy grasp.
The guards led Oba through a labyrinth of narrow, dark passageways. The men moved with unerring steps, avoiding those halls where Oba could hear men talking in the distance. He didn’t want them to know he was leaving. Better if he simply slipped away without a confrontation.
“I need my money back,” Oba said. “Do you know where it is?”
“Yes,” one of the guards said in a dead voice.
They went through iron doors and onward through passageways lined with coarse stone blocks. They turned down a passageway where there were men in cells to each side, coughing, snickering, cursing through the openings in the doors. When they approached the row of doors, filthy arms reached out, clawing the air.
As the somber guards, carrying lamps, led the way down the center of the wide hall, men grabbed for them, or spat at them, or cursed them. As Oba passed, the men all fell silent. The arms drew back in through the openings. Shadows trailed behind Oba like a dark cape.
The three of them, Oba and his escort of two guards, reached a small room at the bottom of narrow twisting stairs. One guard led Oba up the stairs while the other followed. At the top, they took him into a locked room, and then through another locked door.
The lamps the guards carried in cast angular shadows through the rows of shelves heaped with things; clothing, weapons, and various personal possessions, everything from canes to flutes to puppets. Oba scanned the shelves crammed with odd things, stooping to look low, stretching up on his tiptoes to check the upper shelves. He guessed that all these things were taken from prisoners before they were locked away.
Near the end of one row, he spotted the handle of his knife. Behind the knife was a mound of the tattered clothes that he had taken from Althea’s house so that he could make it across the Azrith Plains. His boot knife was there, too. Piled in front were the cloth and leather pouches containing his considerable fortune.
He was relieved to have his money back. He was even more relieved to once again curl his fingers around the smooth wooden handle of his knife.
“You two will be my escorts,” Oba informed the guards.
“Where shall we escort you?” one asked.
Oba mulled over the question. “This is my first visit. I wish to see some of the palace.” He restrained himself from calling it his palace. That would come in time. For now, there were other matters that must come first.
He followed them up stone stairwells, through corridors and past intersections and myriad flights of stairs. Patrolling soldiers, off in the distance, saw his guards and paid little attention to the man between them.
When they came to an iron door, one of his guards unlocked it and they stepped through into a corridor beyond with a polished marble floor. Oba was taken by the splendor of the hall, the fluted columns to the sides, and the arched ceiling. The three of them marched onward, around several corners lit by dramatic silver lamps hung in the center of marble panels.
The hall turned again to open into a grand courtyard of such staggering beauty that it cast the hall they had been in, that had been the finest place Oba had ever seen, as little more than a pigsty by contrast. He stood motionless, his mouth hanging, as he stared out at pool of water open to the sky, with trees—trees—growing on the other side, as if it were a woodland pond. Except that this was indoors, and the pond was surrounded by a low benchlike enclosure of polished rust-colored marble, and the pond was lined with blue glazed tiles. There were orange fish gliding through the pond. Real fish. Real orange fish. Indoors.
In his whole life Oba had never been so struck dumb by the grandeur, the beauty, the sheer majesty of a place.
“This is the palace?” he asked his escorts.
“Only a tiny part of it,” one answered.
“Only a tiny part,” Oba repeated in astonishment. “Is the rest as nice as this?”
“No. Most places are much more grand, with soaring ceilings, arches, and massive columns between balconies.”
“Balconies? Inside?”
“Yes. People on different levels can look down on lower levels, down on grand courtyards and quadrangles.”
“On some levels vendors sell their wares,” the other man said. “Some areas are public areas. Some places are quarters for soldiers, or staff. There are some places where visitors may rent rooms.”
Oba took this all in as he stared at the well-dressed people moving through the place, at the glass, marble, and polished wood.
“After I’ve seen some more of the palace,” he announced to his two big, uniformed D’Haran escorts, “I will want a quiet and very private room—luxurious, mind you, but someplace out of the way where I won’t be noticed. I will first want to purchase some decent clothes and some supplies. You two will stand watch and make sure that no one knows I’m here while I have a bath and get a good night’s rest.”
“How long will we be watching you?” the other man asked. “We will be missed if we’re away for too long. If we’re gone even longer, they will search for us and find your cell empty. Then they will come looking for you. They will soon know you are here.”
Oba considered. “Hopefully, I can leave tomorrow. Will you be missed by then?”
“No,” one of the two said, his eyes empty of everything but the desire to do Oba’s bidding. “We were just leaving at the end of our guard watch. We shouldn’t be missed before tomorrow.”
Oba smiled. The voice had chosen the right men. “By then, I’ll be on my way. But until then, I should enjoy my visit and see some of the palace.”
Oba’s fingers glided over the handle of his knife. “Maybe tonight, I might even like the company of a woman at dinner. A discreet woman.”
Both men bowed. Before he left, Oba would leave the two as nothing more than a stain of ashes on the floor of a lonely passageway. They would never tell anyone why his cell was empty.
And then . . . well, it was nearly spring, and in spring, who could tell where his fancy might turn?
One thing for sure, he was going to have to find Jennsen.
Chapter 44
Jennsen’s astonishment was wearing o
ff. She was becoming numb to the sight of the endless expanse of men, like some dark flood of humanity across the bottomland. The vast army had churned the broad plain between the rolling hills to a drab brown. Inestimable numbers of tents, wagons, and horses were crowded in among the soldiers. The drone of the horde, cut through with yelling, hoots, calls, whistles, the rattle of gear, the clatter of hooves, the rumble of wagons, the ringing rhythm of hammers on steel, the squeals of horses, and even occasional odd cries and screams of what almost sounded to Jennsen like women, could be heard for miles.
It was like gazing down on some impossibly huge city, but without buildings or pattern, as if all of man’s ingenuity, order, and works had magically vanished, with the people left behind reduced to near savages under the gathering dark clouds, trying to make do against the forces of nature and having a grim time of it.
Nor was this the worst of the conditions Jennsen had seen. Several weeks before and farther to the south, she and Sebastian had passed through the very place where the army of the Imperial Order had wintered. An army of this size wore heavily on the land, but she had been shocked at how much worse it was when they stopped for any length of time. It would be years before that vast, festering wound in the landscape healed.
Worse still, throughout the long harsh winter, men by the thousands had fallen ill. That dismal place would be forever haunted by an endless expanse of haphazardly placed graves marking those left behind when the living had marched on. It was horrifying to see such a staggering loss of life to sickness; Jennsen feared to imagine the far worse carnage to come in the battle for freedom.
With the frost finally out of the ground, the muddy soil had dried and firmed enough that the army had at last been able to strike out from those befouled winter quarters, to start their drive toward Aydindril, the seat of power in the Midlands. Sebastian had told her that the force they brought up from the Old World was so huge that while the leading edge was stopping here to set up camp, it would be hours before those at the tail end caught up and halted for the night. In the morning, the head of the great army would have to start off, stretching itself out, long before the end could have room to begin to move.
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