01 - The Sundered Realm

by Robert E. Vardeman

  The smell of blood filled Moriana’s nostrils like molten copper. Rann’s eyes moved restlessly from her to Catannia and back, as the whips made the nude, dangling body rotate slowly. Moriana winced at every stroke.

  Had she had room in her mind, she would have marked how her sister’s power had solidified. Catannia’s father was a minor noble of some influence among the aristocracy of the city. It was a bold stroke to have the daughter seized and subjected to torture for no more than lifelong friendship with the Princess Moriana. Yet it was a clever move, adding weight to the spurious claims of Moriana’s treason.

  But Moriana’s mind was overcrowded with horror. Not even thought of her impending degradation by the Vicar of Istu could force its way past the knowledge that she was responsible for her friend’s agony.

  Under a new onslaught, Catannia’s cries had grown perceptibly weaker. Now, as both whips gouged at what had been her buttocks, the cries ceased altogether. Rann frowned.

  “Rouse her,” he commanded, irked that his sport had been interrupted.

  The soldiers laid down their whips, fetched buckets of icy water and threw them over the limp figure. Catannia did not stir. The treatment was repeated without success. Then a soldier laid his head to the girl’s ribs, beneath the flaccid ruin of her breasts.

  “My lord,” he quavered, “her heart has stopped.”

  Rann sneered. “A weakling. Such creatures are better off dead. There will be no room for weaklings in the new dawn of the city’s glory.” he sighed. “Well, Darman and Krydlach, why are you loitering? Bring in the next traitor to atone for his malfeasance.”

  The guards went out, then returned supporting between them what Moriana thought to be a skeleton somehow imbued with a ghastly semblance of life. But though it couldn’t stand unaided, its gaunt head was held high. Something in its carriage struck Moriana as familiar.

  The head turned toward her. The sockets were empty, running thin streams of blood. The face was disfigured with half-healed burns—but the princess knew it.

  “Kralfi,” she said, not loudly but in a shocked whisper, as if speaking the name quietly she could deny the reality facing her. The mouth that had smiled down on her in her crib was a jagged hole rimmed with stumps of teeth. Fingers that had frequently stroked her cheek with paternal affection hung limp as worms, their bones smashed almost to powder. To a princess barred by tradition from ever seeing her father or learning his name, Chamberlain Kralfi had been a beloved substitute.

  He had also been the chief of Moriana’s personal spy network, her best hope of countering Synalon’s ambition. All hope was shattered now, shattered with the loyal old retainer’s joints.

  Rann smiled at his cousin’s expression. “I regret that we had already entertained the excellent Kralfi for some time before your apprehension. But now that you’re here, dear cousin, I’ve arranged a most suitable…”

  “Jackal!” The voice that cut through Rann’s was garbled by the old man’s wrecked mouth, but it cracked with authority, defiance and pride. “Save your childish torments, half-man. I have failed my lady. That’s punishment more dreadful than any your feeble wit can devise.

  “Forgive me, my princess,” the ghastly visage said.

  Moriana forced words past an obstruction in her throat. “I forgive you.” It seemed to her that the torn lips formed a smile. Then the old man pitched, face forward, to the floor and lay unmoving.

  Rann knelt by his side. Kralfi was as dead as Catannia. His heart had not been weak, merely old; already he had suffered torture sufficient to kill a man of lesser resolve. Will alone had kept him alive long enough to seek Moriana’s absolution.

  Rann turned livid. He clenched his fists beside his cheeks and squalled with fury. “Cheated!” he screamed in shrill tones. “Twice cheated! But not again!”

  He took personal charge of torturing a string of victims like a procession of memories from Moriana’s past: her ancient serving-maid, her fencing master, the sages who’d tutored her in arcane lore, other playmates. His hand wielded the scalpel that sliced, the heated pincers that tore, the ladle that dripped molten lead into mouths and eye-sockets and other orifices. In the detached voice he used when most caught up with the elation of pain-giving, he informed the princess that he’d even have tortured her war-bird Ayoka before her eyes, except that the eagle had disappeared from the royal aerie.

  “Doubtless he died unnoticed and alone, and fell from the city for the scavengers to gnaw his bones,” the prince said, as he slit open a shrieking serving-maid with surgical exactness.

  Through it all, Moriana felt every pang suffered by her friends and loved ones. Synalon had been wrong and Rann horribly right: being made to witness the final agonies of those she held dear was infinitely worse than merely waiting her tryst with the Demon of the Dark Ones.

  With a raucous cry and a flurry of wings, a raven entered the small opening near the top of the arched window. It fluttered down to perch on a shelf laden with books. Beside it rested the bust of an ancient poet. The statue seemed to be contemplating the feathered invader of his sanctuary with quizzical interest.

  Moriana slumped in a chair. The nightlong ordeal had left her exhausted, physically, spiritually, and emotionally. The raven cocked its head at her, regarding her from small, bright, evil eyes. With a derisive caw, it took off and flew back out the window, unwilling to associate with one already condemned.

  After Rann had finished his grisly entertainment, Synalon had ordered her sister conveyed to the rooms she had once occupied in the palace. For the moment, the captive had allowed herself a frayed wisp of joy, if not actual hope. Some unacknowledged scrap of decency must exist in Synalon, if she was willing to let Moriana lighten her final hours by a return to the chambers that had been home for most of her life.

  Guards had escorted her into the tower nearer the leading edge of the city, and then pushed open the door. Moriana saw inside and knew she was a fool.

  Of all her sister’s aberrations, Moriana found few less palatable than Synalon’s preoccupation with her poison-taloned ravens. The beasts were a sorry contrast to the lordly war-eagles of the Sky City. Filthy, craven, unmannered things they were, eaters of carrion and the lice that swarmed through their matted ebon feathers. They imitated human speech, but that made them more disgusting to the golden-haired princess. Their clacking, wheezing conversation sounded like crude parody of a consumptive.

  Synalon had not allowed Moriana’s chambers to rest idle in the months since she had departed the city in her quest for Erimenes and the amulet. Synalon had converted them to a mew for her reeking pets.

  The door opened. Moriana looked up listlessly. Synalon stood in the door, clad conservatively in a deep gray and ochre wrap belted firmly against the chill. Her pale skin glowed with its own luminescence in dawn light the color of soured milk.

  “Good morrow, sister,” Synalon said softly.

  Moriana ignored her. She turned away. Her eyes brushed shelves bowed under the weight of cracked and ancient tomes of history, poetry, sorcerous lore. Shelves and books alike were fouled and streaked with the white excrement of Synalon’s ravens. Moriana stared at the bare stone floor and wondered if despair could be more complete than hers.

  “No kind words for me, your beloved sister?” Synalon glided in and sat in a chair facing her captive. The door closed quietly. Moriana did not doubt that a score of guards waited outside, poised to lunge through to the rescue at the first sound of trouble. Fit though she was, Synalon lacked her sister’s skill at physical combat, armed or otherwise.

  Yet Synalon’s mere presence was a flaunting of her own superiority. Face to face with her sister, Moriana would not have the least chance to outmatch her in a test of magic. Moriana’s skills were great, her powers sharply honed, but interest and temperament had led her to the pursuit of bright magic, healing magic, that magic bringing peace and plenty. Synalon had steeped herself in the lore of the Dark Ones. She glanced death, and gestured with thunderbolts; her
destructiveness was as invincible to Moriana as it was alien.

  The Amulet of Living Flame would have changed that invincibility. With the Athalar magic to restore her life, she could weather the hellstorm of Synalon’s deathbolts. With luck she could draw on the life force within the amulet to add power to her own conjurings.

  “You should not have returned,” said Synalon.

  Moriana paled, holding in a breath of air tainted by the sharp, stale-sweet stink of the ravens.

  “You wished to see our dear mother again, didn’t you? You felt concern over her health.” Synalon’s lips curled. “Sentiment was always your weakness, my darling sister.”

  “You may be right.”

  Laughing, Synalon rose, walked to stand beside her sister. Moriana did not turn. She tensed as Synalon laid hands on her shoulders but made no sound.

  “You wish to know of Queen Derora’s last hours?” asked Synalon. “How she died, and if her last thoughts were of you?”

  “Of course.”

  Synalon began to knead her sister’s shoulders. Icy feathers brushed along Moriana’s spine.

  “Our mother had not been well for quite some time. Her condition was not improved by the way you vanished in the middle of the night without a word for those who loved you. I think she entered her final decline with the news that you’d gone.”

  Moriana tried to guard against heeding her sister’s words. Yet they touched a guilt that had burdened her since her last departure from the city. She had abandoned her mother in the queen’s final illness—abandoned her to the tender attentions of a daughter who hated her.

  “She died badly. There was much pain.” Synalon made no attempt to hide the relish she felt mouthing those words. Moriana went bowstring-taut with the sudden impulse to lash out, to strike down her sister.

  With a quicksilver peal of laughter, Synalon glided back. “Transparent as always, sibling,” she said mockingly. “Will you never learn? You cannot compete with me.”

  “What did Derora die of?” asked Moriana. “She had sickened before I left, but the doctors offered no cause.”

  “No mystery there. It was of a poison most subtle.”

  Moriana’s head snapped around. Synalon giggled with girlish delight at her expression of horror. “You he,” Moriana said in a dead voice. “Not that I doubt your capacity for such vileness. But Derora was wily, more than either of us. She could scent any venom-brew you could concoct before your hand finished conjuring it.”

  “Quite true. So my hand never concocted it. It was instead prepared by the hand of an Elder Brother of the Brethren of Assassins, and used to permeate a stole sent by Emperor Teom of High Medurim to mark the anniversary of his conception.”

  Dizziness whirled within Moriana. Though she knew her sister must have murdered their mother, still she dreaded admitting it. If even Derora was powerless to stop Synalon, Moriana could hold out little hope for besting her sister.

  “She had the Sensitivities,” Moriana said. “She could have detected any substance in lethal concentrations.”

  “In lethal concentration,” Synalon said, nodding. “But not in a dose nicely tailored to sicken, without being potent enough to kill. Similar dosages pushed her nearer to earshot of Hell Call. It took time, Istu knows; our mother was as cunning as a bitch-fox with a lair of kits. But I’m the bitch’s bitch-kit, and am cunning, too.”

  “Who gave her the poison? She would never trust you.”

  “True, nor Rann or any of my retainers. But she trusted Kralfi.”

  Had Moriana eaten she would have vomited. Kralfi, who was tortured to death not seven hours before, had died proclaiming his fealty. She didn’t believe Synalon.

  Synalon watched her closely, shrugged and spoke. “You’d divine the truth soon enough, so I shall tell you. He did not know. He thought he was bringing his queen a present of great beauty and value. She stroked over it, the poison insinuated itself through the pores in her skin, and slowly she died.” Synalon laughed. “Did you say something?”

  “Yes,” Moriana said, almost inaudibly. “I asked, did he know?”

  “Of course. Rann told him—later. Watching his reaction gave our cousin the most exquisite pleasure, I’m sure. Dear Rann must have almost recalled what ejaculation feels like.”

  Moriana sat unmoving, unspeaking. Sadness for a mother murdered and a loyal servant who died knowing he had helped murder her crowded out all thought of her own impending doom.

  “So,” she said at length, “Derora the Wise succumbed to poison. A shabby end for a great monarch.”

  “But she did not die of poison.” Moriana looked up, eyes wide with surprise.

  “You said…”

  “Yes, we weakened her with poison. But, Istu gnaw her entrails, she hung on in spite of all we did. We pushed the quantities of the toxin as high as we could without alerting her. I think she had magics of her own that helped her cling to life so tenaciously.”

  “How did my mother die?” demanded Moriana.

  “Why, I smothered her with a pillow.”

  With an eagle’s cry of killing rage, Moriana launched herself from the chair. Synalon’s moon-pale skin turned the color of a waterlogged corpse. She leaped back, stumbled and struck the floor in a tangle of slender limbs and expensive cloth.

  A frantic heave took her oat of her sister’s path. Then she was on her feet, interposing a writing table between her and Moriana. Moriana wrenched it from her and threw it away with such force that the hardwood broke like glass against the wall. Her fingers sought Synalon’s throat.

  But Synalon’s lips moved rapidly. Moriana heard no words above the roaring of her own pulse. Her nails touched skin. Then a light exploded in the center of her brain.

  Strength fled her limbs. She fought to stay on her feet, to keep her arms reaching out for her sister’s life. A yellow glow surrounded her like fog, growing brighter in gradual pulses. Her legs gave way. She dropped to her knees not even feeling the pain as they raked along the floor.

  Synalon loomed over her. The black-haired enchantress’ shape wavered like an elemental. Moriana blinked. Her stomach surged with nausea.

  “Sometimes I despair of you, sister,” said Synalon. “You never learn.” She turned and walked to the door.

  Once there she paused to look back. “Your strength will return in a short while. My Utile spell did you no permanent harm. We can’t have you ill on your wedding day, can we?”

  She danced out through the door. Moriana felt sensation return to her limbs in a many-pointed prickling. The sickness in her stomach subsided slowly.

  But even when the paralysis had left her, Moriana did not weep. It was not courage that kept her eyes dry; it was simply that her state transcended tears.

  A wind sharp with autumn chill whipped across the Circle of the Skywell, scattering small bits of rubbish. Fost held the bulky cloak close about him, grateful for its warmth as well as its concealment. The air was noticeably cooler here, a thousand feet above the prairie.

  Few people stirred. Those whom Fost and Luranni encountered ducked their heads and hurried by without so much as a greeting or a glance. The grip of fear had clamped the city’s heart.

  Luranni’s great golden eyes moved constantly, alert for the purple tabards and black breastplates of the Monitors, the dread police instituted by Rann. Seemingly, they were as much under the spell of tension as ordinary citizens. Luranni and Fost had seen a squad of them a few blocks away, but they had gone on without challenging the pair.

  For the hundredth time, Fost dropped his hand to the reassuring feel of his new broadsword in a bird-leather scabbard swinging at his hip. Uriath had done well by him. The new sword was a far better weapon than the one which had gone into the fumarole with the faceless ape-thing in Kest-i-Mond’s castle. Broad and wide of blade, the sword was lightened by a wide blood gutter, and tapered to a serviceable point Its blued-steel basket hilt protected the hand that gripped it without restricting the wrist. The High Councillor’s daugh
ter told him he’d have small need for it today. His height made him conspicuous, but the merchant-nobles often employed big outlanders for their personal guard.

  Fost could see why. Aside from the elite bird riders and the royal family itself, the Sky Citizens didn’t seem a prepossessing lot. The tall courier was only too aware of the limitations of his own co-conspirators. Leaders and followers alike came from the aristocracy, which was comprised of merchant princes such as Uriath and his leisure-loving friends. They might be adroit at convoluted palace intrigues, but they were innocents in the gutter-fighting realities of insurrection. Fost had ample evidence of their clumsiness, and he knew that the reason they were so eager for his aid was that they had no other swordsmen of any skill. Fost doubted that the lithe girl walking beside him knew which end of a sword to use. He couldn’t help contrasting her with Moriana.

  Moriana!

  Tomorrow would tell whether he lost her to some awful fate none had yet fully explained to him. With her would go all hope of immortality. His only allies would be dilettantes and amateurs who knew nothing of stealth, security or battle. They’d lost Moriana within a few hours of her arrival; Fost had seen through their clumsy attempt at a trap even as it was being set; and this very morning a knot of soldiers out tacking up Synalon’s proclamation had thrown Uriath’s underground into desperate panic.

  Nervously, he fingered his sword. He almost wished someone would challenge him. Then he could quench his anxieties in the hot rush of action.