A Wizard In Peace

by Christopher Stasheff

  "North to Milton Town. Rumor has it that he'll be promoted to inspector-general."

  "What a coup that would be!" one of the bandits breathed. "A blow for the New Order indeed," Miles agreed, "so tell the city to send two men." Then the glow died from his eyes, and hunger replaced it. "Tell them to send Ciletha, too, to meet me a mile outside of Grantnor."

  A few of the men gave lascivious grins at that, but the leader only looked sympathetic. "Of course, Miles. No doubt she'll have a lot of news for you." He glared darkly at the bandit who opened his mouth with a ribald look on his face. After a moment, the man closed his mouth and lost his leer.

  Ledora had tried to catch a magistrate, but one of the local girls with less mind and more beauty had caught him instead-so she had found a place as a cook with a reeve's guardsmen. The Reeve's Guard was a small army a thousand strong, and as she dished food onto their plates, she heard them talking about comrades who were ill. She spent her free hours seeking out the sick ones and curing them, and before long, she had become the army's nurse. That gave her time alone with men who were feeling too poorly to try to molest her, but well enough to listen to the occasional word she dropped about the ways in which they were all just virtual puppets of the Protector and his reeves and magistrates. The soldiers turned thoughtful as they recovered, and now and again at mealtimes, she heard them discussing the ideas she had planted. Her bosom swelled with pride at the good work she was doing for the New Order, and she prided herself on how quietly and secretly she had done it-until the heavy hand fell on her shoulder.

  CHAPTER 20

  Pain bit through her thumbs, and Countess Vogel woke up screaming. She looked about her frantically, looked up at the stone walls, the smoking torches, the strange, macabre machinery with the brown stains, and the bare-chested men in black hoods.

  She also saw the gaunt man with the burning eyes, dressed likewise in black-black robes, round black hat, even a black stone in his ring. He leaned forward over her, demanding, "Tell us what you know!"

  "I know nothing!" she cried. "How did I come here? Fiend, you have kidnapped me!"

  The man nodded at someone behind her head-she realized she was lying on her back with her hands bound above her coiffure-and the pain bit into her thumbs again. She screamed; the man nodded, and the pain eased. She lay gasping in terror.

  The man saw, and nodded, pleased. "Tell us what you remember, Nurse Ledora."

  "Nurse? What nurse? I am the Countess Vog-" The black-robed man nodded again, disgusted, and she broke off, screaming. The pain lasted longer this time, and when he nodded again to ease it, and she had managed to stop her screaming, he said, "Look about you, and see how much worse the pain could be." He pointed. "That is a rack, to stretch you and hold you stretched until your bones begin to pull apart from one another. That is the iron boot, to hold your foot imprisoned for days until the pain becomes excruciating. That is the iron maiden, and that is the cangue and that is . . ."

  He listed them all for her, and she turned to jelly withinbut she could only protest, "I am no one but the Countess Vogel, and know nothing but dancing and dalliance!"

  "I am the Questioner Renunzio." He nodded at the unseen torturer, and pain bit through her thumbs again. Over her scream he bellowed, "Tell me what you remember, nurse!" Nurse ...

  Ledora spun about to stare into the stern face of a bailiff she had never seen, a face that spoke and said, "Nurse Ledora, I arrest you for sedition and treason against the Protector and the Realm!"

  "I remember a hard-faced man who arrested me!" she cried. "Before that!" that same hard-faced man snapped.

  "Before that ... before that . . ."

  "You were a nurse!" he thundered.

  Yes, Ledora had been a nurse, had talked with wounded soldiers about human rights, about people being subject only to themselves, but how did Countess Vogel know that? It must have been a dream....

  Even as this was a nightmare.

  "Did you tempt men into treachery!" Renunzio thundered. "Ledora did!" the countess screamed. "It was Ledora!"

  "You are Ledora! You are the traitor! You must suffer the punishment!"

  "I'm not Ledora! I'm the Countess. . ."

  Renunzio struck her mouth with the back of his hand. "You are the nurse Ledora, and your lies shall do you no good!" He twisted about and commanded a torturer, "Take off her shoes!" She felt her shoes being ripped from her feet, and cried out in fear. Renunzio snapped his fingers at the torturer, and a thin rod smacked across her soles. Ledora screamed, terrified and amazed that it could hurt so much.

  "What did you tell the soldiers!" Rununzio thundered. Ledora bathed the soldier's brow, telling him, "All men have the right to live without fear of the Protector making them disappear in the night! All men have the right to be free-to decide for themselves what work they will do, who they will marry, and to stand up for themselves if someone tries to hurt them, or their wives or children! All men have the right to make these choices for themselves, so that they can at least try to be happy! "

  "Rights!" the countess screamed. "I told them that all people are born with rights that no government can take away from them!"

  One of the torturers looked up, startled, and behind the mask, his eyes grew thoughtful.

  "Sedition!" Renunzio snarled. "Treachery! Who taught you these vile notions?" He snapped his fingers again.

  The wand struck her soles, the thumbscrews bit deeper, and poor Countess Vogel, confused and terrified, cried out the first memory that came to her mind....

  She sat in a room with many other men and women who had been lords and ladies (but how had they become anything less?), and before them stood a young man wearing peasant's clothes, saying, "One by one, the men will go out to take the places of magistrates and reeves, and the women will go out to try to fascinate and marry other officials, then teach them very slowly about the New Order. Those who can't, will become nurses to the reeves' soldiers, and teach the fighting men about human rights and self-government, little by little. "

  "And what will you do, Miles?" one of the other women asked.

  "I shall disguise myself as an inspector-general, " the man answered, "and go from magistrate to magistrate, telling you all what progress we're making, and helping where I'm needed-or calling for help from the city. "

  "Who told you!" Renunzio thundered. Pain bit again in hands and feet both, and the countess screamed, "Miles! Miles told us!"

  "Us?" Renunzio pounced on the word. "Who else? Who else?"

  "All the lords! All the ladies! Count Lorif, and Prince Parslane, and the Grand Duchess Kolyenkov, and. . ."

  "Her wits are going," one of the torturers muttered. "Silence, fool!" Renunzio snapped. "I will say when she's in danger of breaking! Woman! Where is this Miles you speak of?"

  "Anywhere! Anywhere!" she cried. "He's an inspectorgeneral! He could be anywhere!"

  "An inspector-general!" Renunzio stared, his eyes bright with unholy excitement. "A real inspector-general, or an impostor?"

  "An impostor! We were all to be impostors, every lord and lady of us! But it was all a dream, just a dream!"

  The torturer swung his rod up for another blow, but Renunzio stopped him with a raised hand. "One more, and her mind will be worthless junk. Take her back to her cell. With a few days' rest, she may tell us more."

  The word ran through the revolution's cells that Ledora had been taken. Nurses melted away from reeves' bands overnight, and in the Protector's Army, no man spoke of anything but his duties and his home. Miles disguised himself as a beggar and went into the forest to work his way back to Voyagend. He stared into his campfire in the night, trying to ignore the fear that seemed to wrap itself about him, trying not to panic at every slightest sound, the cry of the owl, the call of the nightbird, the rustle of a badger in the underbrush, the snap of a twig...

  The snap! He whirled about, swinging an arm up to block, and saw the two foresters looming over him for a split second before pain exploded through his head,
and he sank down into the safe, warm, darkness.

  Miles came to with a splitting headache. The caution of the outlaw made him lie still, opening his eyes just enough to peek through the lashes. Stone, gray stone all about him, dimly washed by light high on the wall.... A stout wooden door bound with brass, a tiny hole at eye level for a standing man.... He knew a prison when he saw one.

  But he kept looking and wished he hadn't, for his gaze led him to a gaunt, black-clad man with ravenous eyes who sat beside him on a low stool.

  "Come now, I know you're awake," this apparition said, quite companionably. "Open your eyes, and let's get on with it."

  Miles lay still, hoping the man was bluffing.

  "I heard the change in your breathing," the man insisted, "and I've sat by the beds of enough traitors to the Protector so that I know the difference. Come, you're wasting time, my time, your time, and"-his voice stayed quite mild, even casual, "you may not have a great deal of time left. So be a good fellow and open your eyes, eh?"

  Reluctantly, Miles opened his eyes completely, and was relieved not to see any torture instruments, nor any of the dreaded men in black masks. "My head aches abominably," he muttered.

  "Aches? Well, let it serve as a lesson, for other parts of you will hurt far worse if you don't answer my questions with the truth." The tone was still quite mild, making Miles shiver with dread. "I am Renunzio," the human vulture went on, "and my task is to make you renounce indeed-renounce the treachery you have committed, or renounce life. It is, lamentably, your choice-lamentable because I'd far rather have true answers than your mutilated corpse."

  Miles knew better than to claim it wasn't true, that he hadn't even thought of treachery. "Water," he croaked.

  "Yes, a few drops, for you're no use to me if you can't talk," Renunzio told him. He reached down and brought up a tin cup, then scooped an arm under Miles's shoulders and yanked him upright with astonishing strength for one so skinny. The pain rocked through Miles's head in waves; his stomach lurched and the room darkened about him. He wouldn't even have known the cup was there if it hadn't pressed hard against his lips and tilted. Water flooded into his throat; he coughed, drowning for a moment, and shoved the cup away, coughing still. When he was done wheezing, he realized Renunzio had done as he said-only a few drops had actually stayed in his mouth. The-rest soaked the front of his shirt.

  "This is my case," Renunzio informed him. "I am the spymaster who began to suspect your plot from hearing the reports my agents brought of the talk circulating in the Protector's Army. I put on a uniform and walked about, listening myself, and found that men who had never breathed a word against the Protector, but who fell ill and went into hospital, uttered sedition with great excitement when they came out. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised, for I've long known that treason is a disease, and one anyone may catch. Still, I was surprised, so I feigned illness myself, and while I lay abed in hospital, a nurse named Ledora began to speak to me of a strange notion called `rights.' Would you know of this?"

  Words of denial leaped to Miles's tongue, but he remembered all of his tormentor's cautions and said warily, "I've heard the idea spoken."

  "Yes, and spoken it yourself, too, and loudly and long, I'm sure-but we'll hear of that later. For now, all you need to know is that we arrested the woman and put her to the question. She denied it all, of course, even though I told her I'd heard it myself, from her own lips. We put the thumbscrews on her, and the most amazing thing happened."

  Miles shuddered at the tone of wonder in the man's voice, at the eagerness with which he spoke of torture-but he saw Renunzio was waiting, and thought it best to humor him in small things. He took his cue and croaked, "What?"

  "She went mad. For a while I thought she was shamming, but the thumbscrews and the baton on the soles of her feet wouldn't make her admit to being Ledora again. She insisted she was some sort of countess, though anyone could see she was only a peasant, though I'll admit she's a graceful one."

  Is! Miles's heart leaped with relief, but he was careful to keep the look of foreboding that had been growing within him. "I might have thought she was lying," Renunzio went on, "if she hadn't answered every question I asked-and with no more pain than thumbscrews and baton, though I had to watch my phrasing. Asking her what she had done was useless; asking her what she remembered did the trick."

  Miles let the look of foreboding deepen to impending doom. Renunzio leaned forward and hissed, "Five years! She told us this rot has been growing for five years! It's amazing that it hasn't infested the whole of the army-or perhaps it has. There was no way to tell how far it stretched, for before she was strong enough for a second bout of questioning, she fell sick with some sort of brain fever. Again, I would have thought she was faking, but every other prisoner in that wing fell ill, tooit's obviously some sort of epidemic, and only one brave cook is willing to go in to shove food to those madmen."

  Relief washed over Miles, though he tried hard not to let it show. The cook must have been a convert to the New Order, and had laced the prisoners' gruel with some sort of herb that made them rave, made them temporarily mad.

  At least, he hoped it was temporary.

  Renunzio leaned even closer, breathing his words right into Miles's face. "So, since I can't ask her-I'll have to ask you."

  Ledora had told Renunzio a bit more than that, it seemed-he threw out random bits and pieces as. he talked with Miles, enough to make him sweat with worry, not enough to give him any idea of the limits of the torturer's knowledge. All he could be reasonably sure of was that the nurse hadn't told Renunzio the identities of any of the substituted officials, for he hadn't received word of any arrests before he was taken himself, and as he paced the dungeon hallway with the inquisitor, none of the groans he heard seemed to be in familiar voices.

  But why had Renunzio taken him out of his cell? Two guards marched behind them, and Miles went down the corridor side by side with the torturer, not daring to resist too much, but feeling the fear gather and build within him.

  "She told us about you, of course," Renunzio said for the tenth time, "told us the leader of the traitors was one Miles, who was masquerading as an inspector-general. It took quite a bit of searching, mind you, for inspectors-general disguise themselves as all manner of wanderers. We brought in a hundred vagabonds, at least, and found three of them to be real inspectors-general indeed, which took some fast talking-but finally we found you." He gave Miles a toothy grin. "Or are you going to try to tell me you aren't the leader of this foul little nest of traitors?"

  Miles chose his words carefully. "I don't think I'll try to tell you a single word, Renunzio, since you won't believe anything but what you want to hear anyway."

  "Oh, but you will," the vulture purred. "And you're wrong about what I won't believe. Come watch!"

  He clamped bony talons around Miles's upper arm and dragged him through the door at the end of the hallway. The guards followed.

  They stepped into a nightmare.

  The room was windowless and dank, filled with vile smells, lit only by the orange flames in half a dozen braziers, each of which held pokers and branding-irons and other instruments that Miles didn't want to know about. A man was strapped down to a table with a wheel at the end, arms stretched tight above his head, groaning. He was naked except for a loincloth.

  Renunzio came and sat by the victim, smiling. "Hurts a bit when you've lain stretched out like that all night, doesn't it? But I promise you the pain will be much worse, my chuck, if you don't tell us what we wish to know."

  The victim eyed the irons heating in the brazier and moaned, "Anything!"

  "Ah, you wish to cooperate! Still, let us be a bit more sure that you'll tell us the truth. Torturer, fit the thumbscrews on him."

  "I'll confess! I'll confess!" the man cried.

  "Confess that you lay in wait for the Protector and struck at him with a sword?" Renunzio asked.

  "Yes, yes! I'm not so much a fool as to deny it!"

 
"Of course not, since a dozen guards saw you do it, before they beat you senseless and dragged you in here. But I'm not so much a fool as to think you were able to sneak into that shrubbery by yourself, or forge your own sword, either. Who helped you?"

  "No one!" the would-be assassin cried in mounting fear. Renunzio gestured. The torturer turned the screw, and the prisoner howled with pain. Renunzio made a chopping gesture, and the torturer backed off the screw. "Tell me their names," the inquisitor urged.

  "I ... I can't think of any," the prisoner panted.

  "Surely you can," Renunzio coaxed. "Bring a hot iron, to brand it on his memory."

  The prisoner screamed even before the iron touched him, screamed raw and hoarse as it bit his skin. As the iron came away, Renunzio asked, "Was it Okin Germane?"

  Miles started with dismay. Okin Germane was a Protector's Minister!

  "Who?" the man gasped.

  Renunzio signaled to the torturer again.

  When he could stop screaming, the criminal gasped, "Yes! Yes, it was Okin Germane!"

  "Liar!" Renunzio snapped. "Okin Germane is the most trusted of the Protector's Ministers! He would never move against his master! Now tell me the truth!" He gestured again, and the torturer moved in.

  So it went, with Renunzio playing a fantastic, warped guessing-game with the prisoner, wherein the man on the rack had to guess whether or not to agree with the inquisitor, 'and Miles became more and more sick within as he watched. Finally he realized that Renunzio was drawing it out far longer than necessary, just to make Miles realize how horrible the torture could be. Guilt struck deep then, but there was nothing he could do to stop it.

  But perhaps there was! "Stop, stop!" Miles cried. "Let him die! I'll tell you everything I know!"

  "That you will, but it's not your turn yet," Renunzio chuckled, and gestured to the torturer again.

  That sickened Miles more than the torture itself; that struck the terror more deeply into him than the victim's screams--the pleasure Renunzio took in his work. He could only watch from then on, sick and weak with the pain of the poor thing that writhed and shrieked before him.