“What kinds of choices?”
Inexplicable ones, Tanis thought, recalling how the perception had first led him to escape from Sinárr and then inclined him to bind with him.
Rafael must’ve perceived this thought, for he cast a grin across the table at the other Warlock. “So this perception seems to be leading you true, Tanis?”
“I’m not sure what you mean by true, sir, but it’s quite impossible to ignore, in any case.”
“I imagine not, what with so many immortals bound to your path.” Rafael settled his void-black eyes on Sinárr. “Do you perceive it as I do?”
Sinárr held his gaze. “That Tanis senses the cosmic Balance? It seems rather clear.”
Tanis didn’t see how this was at all clear.
Rafael tapped a finger on his table while his gaze considered Tanis with new ardor. “You are quite the treasure.”
“I wouldn’t bind myself to the Realms of Light merely for the experience of it, Rafael. That’s your and Pelasommáyurek’s intrigue.”
Tanis was still stuck on their earlier comment. “But…why do you think I’m perceiving the cosmic…Balance?” He almost couldn’t get the word out, the statement seemed so improbable.
“It follows, Tanis.” Rafael waggled a finger at his glass to indicate he should drink again. “Your angiel Cephrael was bound to each of the immortal races, an act which wakened his perception to the cosmos.” He looked back to Sinárr. “I would still like to know which of us bound himself to the angiel. My money, as they say, is on Persephus, though he won’t admit it to me.”
Tanis stammered, “I-I thought that was just a myth.” The idea made him highly uncomfortable—probably since he was haplessly on his way towards accomplishing the same. “Could—”
Rafael raised a finger to halt him. “Not another word,” and he pointed to the glowing goblet.
Tanis reluctantly took another swallow of the drink. He admitted it did slightly settle that sense of imbalance, but it unsettled so many other feelings that he wasn’t sure it was worth it.
He set down the goblet with his face flushing hotly and…other parts also…not quite able to look Rafael in the eye. “That can’t be true, can it?” He turned between Rafael and Sinárr. “About Cephrael?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?” Rafael asked.
“There are many myths in our world that aren’t true, sir.”
“Is that a fact?” Rafael leaned towards him with a meaningful smile. “How do you know?”
Tanis drew back in his chair as if pressed there by Rafael’s challenge. He felt like he often did after the zanthyr had ripped to shreds one of his more illogical conclusions.
“What myths in your world are untrue?” Rafael arched a brow. “Myths of us?” He sat back again and waved vaguely. “I grant, some of Baelfeir’s stories have become exaggerated, which thrills him no end and fuels his tiresome boasting—for instance, I have no knowledge of his ever building a temple from the skulls of kidnapped children, or keeping fifty human virgins chained to his loins.”
“Twenty at most,” Sinárr muttered disagreeably.
“Your Alorin was always his preferred world.” Rafael tapped a finger absently on the tabletop, his gaze narrowed in recollection. “He found Alorin’s children most easily bound to his will. It was his favorite game, seeing how many mortal minds he could control at once.”
Talk of the Demon Lord made Tanis feel off-kilter again. He just wished he could figure out in which direction Balance wanted him to lean—if in fact it was Balance pushing him hither and yon.
Rafael suddenly speared another look at him. “Now that is intriguing.” He shifted in his chair to better study him. “In what direction is the floor leaning this time, Tanis?”
Tanis shook his head, feeling terribly queasy. “It happens every time you mention…the Demon Lord.”
“Baelfeir.” Sitting back again, Rafael laid one hand, palm-up, on the arm of his chair and curled his fingers in and out, reminiscent of a cat flaring and sheathing its claws. He lifted a dangerous gaze to Tanis. “Warlocks have no society, such as it is, yet Baelfeir has made a game of forming one. He gathered to him—you might call them a family of sorts, a congregation…a collection. They’ve merged universes and built worlds in concert with one another—something that has never before been done. They call this conglomeration Wylde.” He shifted a voluminous gaze to Sinárr. “But once their interest in a world is lost, they abandon it, leaving revenants behind to muddle the aether.”
Sinárr’s golden eyes reflected the same indignation that Tanis perceived in Rafael’s tone. “How many worlds?”
Rafael’s gaze tightened. “Beyond counting.”
Tanis felt the floor suddenly tipping him violently—and it was finally leaning in one obvious direction.
“Sir?” His voice sounded a little weak against his suddenly pounding heart, frail compared to the sense of momentous portent gripping his chest. “Could we…go there?” He looked entreatingly to Sinárr. “Now?”
Seventy-two
“Man plans and the gods laugh.”
–A popular desert saying
The Nadori Commander Lazar hal’Hamaadi walked Khor Taran’s lower ramparts with a scowl rutting his bearded face and his deep brown eyes surveying the fires in the valley.
Whether distraction or diversion, those fires had to be investigated. He could’ve done no less in his duty as the fortress commander. And if he was sending his men out into the night, he had to send them in force.
Yet the wielder Kifat’s words—warning—still rankled. Ever since arriving at the fortress, the untrustworthy man had asserted his superiority, though what power he claimed flowed down a different channel of command than Lazar’s own.
Nadori military commanders were not subject to orders from the Shamshir’im, but this didn’t keep the Shamshir’im from using the commanders in their machinations. This is what was troubling Lazar at that moment. Kifat could be trusted about as far as a weasel in a henhouse, and maybe not even as far as that.
Inanna, Goddess of War, watched over M’Nador’s soldiery, but the Shamshir’im walked firmly within the crafty and ill-disposed auspices of Ha’viv the Trickster God. Lazar misliked the whole bloody business Kifat was mixed up in—holding the Dannish soldiers prisoner, especially when Dannym was supposedly M’Nador’s ally, and who-knew-what ill dealings with that band of Saldarian refuse.
If not for the fact that the Dannish soldiers had attempted to mutiny, showing their ignoble color, Lazar would’ve ousted Kifat and the lot of them from his fortress.
Now, as he came in view of the granary where Kifat was holding the King of Dannym’s men, Lazar felt that same ill apprehension that always overcame him whenever he went near the place. His own men protested even entering the storehouse, though it was necessary to feed the prisoners and escort them in groups to the privies. But you couldn’t be around them and not stare morbidly, what with the way the Northmen moved so unnaturally, like life-size dolls made of soft clay. It was bloody unnerving.
So he didn’t begrudge his men their complaints when their turn came for the duty, and he was privately relieved that his own position exempted him from the rotation.
A grey dawn was shedding light into the alley beside the granary as Lazar strolled past, drawing his eye. He expected to see two soldiers at their posts but noticed instead a set of empty steps. His gaze dragged him to a halt while he searched for answers. Eventually he found them in the guise of two dark forms crumpled in the shadow of a wall.
Lazar hissed a curse. So Abdul-Basir’s Converted hounds were inside his fortress, after all, like rats in the walls!
Well…he knew how to flush vermin into the open.
Lazar ran down the parapet shouting orders to his men.
***
Trell and Loukas selected an officer for their first attempt to break the spell. Loukas held up the braided silver rope that connected the officer’s wrist to the collar at his neck, while Trell held a
torch beneath it. White smoke blossomed upwards.
Loukas withdrew from it violently. “Fethe,” his eyes widened, “it smells like—”
“I know.” It smelled like burning blood.
The rope should’ve caught the flame, but it only molted smoke.
“Try pulling, Loukas.”
Loukas strained to tear the rope in two. Trell even pressed the flame directly on it to help him. At last the silver threads started to fray, and the rope burst in a puff of foul-smelling smoke.
Both Trell and Loukas looked to the soldier, but the man’s eyes remained glazed.
Grimacing, Loukas waved his hand to clear the air. “Hard to imagine anything smelling worse than this place already does.”
Trell let out a slow breath. “Let’s try the other rope.”
They moved to the soldier’s other side and repeated the process. Even after the second rope split, still he merely stared ahead.
Loukas motioned to the band at the officer’s wrist and the link of rope that chained him to the man beside him. “We’d best try breaking the link between them.”
That link was barely the span of a man’s two fists. Trell handed Loukas the torch and took up both men’s hands. He held their arms apart, pulling taut the braided rope that connected their wrists. This did not leave much room for error.
Loukas carefully set the flaming torch against the rope chain linking them.
When it started smoking, Trell started pulling their hands in opposite directions. After a strenuous effort and a curse or three, the rope split apart.
An audible snap echoed through the room.
Trell laid the soldiers’ arms back down and studied the officer for any sign of life.
Gradually his blue eyes blinked and came into focus. “Wh…what’ve you done to me?” His voice was hoarse, his consonants clipped in the accent of the north.
“We’re here to help.” Loukas handed him his canteen, which the officer accepted in a daze. “You’ve been bewitched.”
“Aye—my dreams were dark.” He winced as he handed the canteen back to Loukas. His eyes shifted between Loukas and Trell. “Who are you?”
“I’m Loukas n’Abraxis of Avatar, and this man is your own Prince Trell val Lorian, who has just freed you from a wielder’s compulsion.”
You could see the confusions compounding in the officer’s blue eyes. “But…our prince is dead.”
“Radov abin Hadorin certainly wanted you to think so.” Trell squatted down beside the officer. “I’ve spent the last five years in the Akkad, protected by the man my father thought was his enemy, when Dannym’s true enemies have been masquerading as our allies all along.”
The officer stared at him. Meanwhile, the other four men who’d been linked to him began recovering.
The officer studied Trell’s face. Then his blue eyes lifted to the sword behind Trell’s shoulder, a Kingdom Blade, like his own.
“I’m here to rescue you at the behest of my father,” Trell said. “We all fight now for the same cause.”
Uncertainty still clouded the officer’s brow. He angled a look from Trell’s sword down to the rope chains around his wrists. “What is all this?”
Trell cast his gaze to include the other men, who’d roused now and were watching the exchange with cautious eyes. “The ropes you wear held your will in thrall to a Shamshir’im wielder.”
The Dannish soldiers exchanged looks at this.
Slowly, the officer nodded. “Aye, I recall it now. The bastards made me watch while my men fell prey to it one by one, until the end, when my own vision went—”
“Dark,” one of the men said hollowly.
“Everything just blurred.” Another looked around at his mates as if for confirmation of a similar experience. “It all seems an ill dream after that.”
One of them asked, “Where are we?”
“The thirteenth level of hell,” another said grimly, gazing at the dim sea of unmoving forms.
“Raine’s truth,” several others grumbled in unison.
“You’re at the Fortress of Khor Taran on the border of Abu’Dhan.” Trell settled a significant look on all of them. “A Nadori fortress. You and the rest of my father’s men are the captives of a Shamshir’im wielder sworn to Viernan hal’Jaitar, Dannym’s true enemy.”
One of the men blew out his breath. “Daw, it must be Raine’s truth. Magic rope and wielders and the ghost of our dead prince—who could possibly make up something so cockeyed?”
“Hold your tongue, Donovan.” The officer flashed him a sharp look of warning.
“Cockeyed is a kind way of describing the wrongs you’ve endured.” Trell angled his compassionate gaze to include all five men. “You have my word I will explain more when time permits, but right now, the rest of the men need our help.”
The officer regarded him with a deep furrow between his brows. He might’ve seen thirty name days, if told from the faint lines etching the corners of his blue eyes. A beard hugged his lean jaw. For all he’d been months in captivity, he maintained an air of nobility.
The other men looked to him, clearly waiting to follow his lead. Finally, he seemed to make up his mind and pressed a fist to his heart. “Captain Gideon val Mallonwey at your service, Your Highness.”
“And I,” said the soldier named Donovan. The rest quickly offered their service as well.
Trell gave them a grateful nod, then shifted his gaze back to Gideon. “Val Mallonwey…” he frowned slightly.
The hint of uncertainty roused once more in Gideon’s gaze. “Do you know not my family name?”
Trell shook his head. “For a long time, my memory was lost to me—a result of a truthbinding from Raine D’Lacourte and some very nasty interrogation by a Saldarian mercenary, which I’d rather not recount. It’s a long story. But I do recall your name, of course. You’re the nephew of Duke val Mallonwey, eldest son of his sister, the Lady Miranda.”
The clouds in Gideon’s gaze cleared. “Aye, Your Highness.”
“Well met, Gideon.” Trell held his hand to him.
Gideon clasped wrists with him. “It is my honor, Your Highness.” He let Trell pull him to his feet.
As the other men stood, Loukas cast a despairing gaze across the sea of heads. It had taken nearly ten minutes to free those five, and nearly five hundred still needed their ministration. He blew out a forceful breath. “Fiera’s fiery hell, this is going to take forever.”
***
“Fire!”
Lazar hal’Hamaadi watched with deliberate hard-heartedness as half a dozen fire-flamed crossbow bolts lodged themselves in the granary roof.
“Fire!”
Another volley shattered the high windows on their downward flight.
“Fire!”
Upon the third fiery volley, Lazar assumed a confident smile. The Akkadian Emir’s arrogant dogs would not long stay within the granary once flame started raining down around them. Already Lazar’s men were lining up in front of the building waiting for the hounds to emerge, choking and blistered. His men would make short work of teaching them humility.
Khor Taran, Crown of Abu’Dhan. This was his fortress. To think of Akkadian hounds invading Khor Taran—his impenetrable, undefeated Khor Taran? In all of his years there, no force had ever breached its walls. The gall of these Converted made his blood boil.
“Al-Amir?” One of his subordinate officers moved to speak close—a sure sign he meant to question his orders. “We burn out the dogs, but what of the prisoners?”
Lazar kept a steely gaze leveled on the granary. Smoke was already rising from the roof of the burning structure. “Mutineers. What of them?”
The junior officer dropped his gaze. “But they shall perish—”
“They are traitors, and prisoners of the Shamshir’im.” He turned the man an uncompromising stare. “Let Kifat spare them if he so—”
The explosion ripped Lazar’s words off his tongue.
Nay, it ripped his very breath from his lu
ngs!
He spun to the north. Disbelieving eyes watched as an avalanche of water came raging down the mountain, darkly chalky in the grey dawn. The wave of churning water crashed around the northernmost tower like a storm-maddened sea against a lighthouse, and tumbled on in muddied whorls into the upper fortress, washing away everything in its path—men, wagons, racks of arms. Nothing withstood it.
Lazar was still staring in mute disbelief when the raging water churned down through the stairway tunnels and began flooding the middle fortress. In moments, it would reach the lower fortress and his men.
Lazar shouted orders as he ran.
***
Within Khor Taran’s northernmost tower, a cyclone spun a constant vortex. In the center of this soundless whirlwind, Tannour questioned the wielder Kifat—invisible, protected, isolated from all save Time’s countdown towards consequence. The cyclone’s walls of spinning air caught and trapped any sound, so no one would hear the wielder’s screams.
But at the moment, the wielder’s screams were not the issue.
“What did you say?” Tannour placed his finger over one of the holes in the hollow needle piercing Kifat’s chest. If a captive was reticent to answer his questions, Tannour could play that needle like a pipe, to his captive’s acute agony. But in Kifat’s case, he was simply impatient.
One black-gloved hand played the needle while the other held Kifat’s arching throat, which was vibrating with a moan. Tannour brought his mouth closer to the wielder’s ear. “What did you say about Trell val Lorian?”
Kifat’s eyes were streaming tears. Air bubbled through his bloodied mouth. “…stopped…all costs…”
Tannour heard dual strains of truth in these answers, chords of duplicity. The wielder was holding something in reserve—a truth, a trick? He couldn’t yet say.
‘The scales holding application of pain and relief from pain must be carefully weighed. Overabundance of either defeats the interrogator.’
Relief from pain reflected many colors. Tannour found it more effective to layer different kinds of pain upon a baseline torment, rather than to relieve all pain completely, which only bolstered the strong-willed. T’was better the captive understood that pain could always be intensified, such that they came to look upon the first torment as a kindness—sought relief in it, in fact. An interrogator who played the harp-strings of pain with expert fingers made quick work of his duty.
Kingdom Blades (A Pattern of Shadow & Light 4) Page 113
