Mother of Lies

by Dave Duncan

  If they ever can, whispered a cold breath of cowardice.

  The traitors have enough men to storm Nardalborg and Tryfors at the same time, countered another.

  She shivered and opened her eyes. The candles had gone out, but faint chinks of light seeped around the shutters. She sat up, aching and feeling her age. She had forbidden Huntleader Fellard to sleep, ordering him to sit on the only stool in the shelter, keeping watch just outside her barricade. He heard her move and peered around, although he probably could not see her. He looked haggard, twice the age he had seemed just a day ago.

  “Is it dawn?” she asked.

  “No, lady. That’s the aurora, the Veils of Anziel.”

  “But we could travel by its light?”

  “Probably, but the men are exhausted. So are the animals.”

  “Warbeasts can run.”

  “Not as far as Nardalborg, my lady! It would cripple them to go that far without meat.”

  “Waken Flankleader Ern. Tell him to rouse his men. I will go on ahead with just his flank as escort. You and the rest will remain here in case Huntleader Karrthin comes after me. Or anyone else, for that matter.”

  He took a moment to answer, eyes struggling to stay in focus. He was already close to the end of his usefulness. “Lady, we have no more food. The animals have no fodder.”

  “Slaughter the onagers. Throw a couple of haunches on my sled, so my escort can eat as we go. They will pull me.” She glanced at the snoring Guitha and decided just to leave her. There were women at Nardalborg. “You have your orders, Fellard!”

  There was no chance of getting lost. They could follow the trail the mammoths had left two days ago, and she would be in Nardalborg before noon if she had to kill the whole of Ern’s flank getting there.

  FABIA CELEBRE

  had shed a few drops of blood on the cold earth before she lay down to sleep. She had prayed the Old One to send her wisdom, to show her some way she might help rescue Tranquility. “Perhaps,” she had suggested, “you could show me Horold’s sentries exchanging passwords?” Knowing those, Orlad could send his men into the camp.

  Suddenly she could hear voices. The dream was dark, but she recognized the cavern, the temple of the Old One under the Skjar pantheon—faint tendrils of light far overhead, shiny rock faces, some moss. This was where she had sworn loyalty to Xaran. She was standing unpleasantly close to the edge of the chasm. Why had she been brought here? Who was talking?

  A man loomed out of the dark … very large, very ugly … bald and bloated, yellow-toothed. His face was too long, not improved by the dirty yellow beard dangling to his belly. He was holding the ankles of a naked girl, who must be still alive, because she was moaning as he dragged her behind him. He dropped her at the edge and rolled her closer with a shove of a bare foot.

  “Holy Mother of Evil,” he said. “Accept what’s left of her.” Another shove and she went over with a faint cry. He stood staring after her, leering as if he could watch her bounce from ledge to ledge, tooth to tooth, all the way down.

  Behind him came Saltaja, equally naked and carrying a slab of rock as if it took all her strength to do so. Her hands were bloody halfway to her elbows.

  The man spoke without turning. “You want to do the boys?”

  Saltaja said, “Of course.” With a great effort she raised the rock and slammed it against the back of his head.

  The blow should have flattened his skull, yet somehow he saved himself from toppling forward into the abyss. He buckled to his knees, began to slide, then twisted and grabbed hold of her ankle. His other hand clawed at the crumbling brink, seeking purchase.

  Saltaja staggered. “Take him, Mother!” She dropped the boulder on his head and he was gone. The rock rattled and crashed down into the chasm. The Queen of Shadows did not bother to stare after her handiwork, as he had. She just laughed and began picking her way back to the great altar rock, moving gingerly on bare feet. Two youths were kneeling there, gazing up at the image of the Mother, and apparently in some sort of trance, for they were paying no heed to the slaughter.

  “That was Hrag, I suppose,” Fabia said.

  Saltaja turned to sneer. “Of course. He is no longer needed.” She was younger than the Saltaja Fabia knew. This was a dream of the past.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Making sure Stralg wins the bloodlordship tomorrow. A major sacrifice is needed.”

  “Will Weru let you interfere in His rituals?”

  The Queen of Shadows laughed harshly. “What a sweet innocent you are! Even He cannot resist Death Herself! My boy will find his opponents strangely lethargic.”

  “Stralg is both your brother and your son?”

  “They all are, dearie.” She limped forward, closing in on Fabia. Smiling.

  “And you molded them into warriors from the day they were born?”

  “It’s called Shaping. It works best when there are blood ties, but you could have Shaped Cutrath into something bearable. There were sixty-sixty such things I could have taught you!”

  Fabia did not want such skills. Paola Apicella had been a Chosen and a fighter, but not a monster wallowing in horrors. “This is happening before I was born.”

  “What does that matter? Dreams are no respecters of time. I know who you are, slut.”

  “Then you know that my brothers have defeated you. Therek is dead. Horold is trapped and doesn’t know it yet. Stralg will be cut off. You are finished, spawn of Hrag!”

  The Queen of Shadows chuckled throatily. She was very close now. “You think so? Let me give you another lesson, child.”

  The cavern shimmered and flowed and became somewhere else—a damp jungle in misty gray daylight. High walls enclosed it, but everywhere was damp and rank and neglected, and it stank of evil. Fabia recognized Tryfors stonework. Saltaja was a vague naked wraith at her side.

  “Watch!” She pointed a bloody hand at a door in the corner. This was only a dream of course, so it flew open instantly. A line of Werists came trotting in. Even more dreamlike, they were carrying spades and picks. “Your guards from last night.”

  “They didn’t guard me very well.”

  “No, they didn’t. They are about to suffer for their error.”

  Belatedly, Fabia wondered if she had any clothes on and decided it did not matter because this was only a dream. The men could not see her, or her companion. More Heroes came running in, the last one being that rakish huntleader she had met … Fellard. Suddenly dream became nightmare. As he closed the door, yet more men sprang up all over the courtyard and all the Heroes battleformed, so the place was instantly full of fighting warbeasts.

  “No! No! Stop them! That’s horrible.” Fabia screamed and covered her eyes, which did no good at all, because she could still see. She heard Saltaja’s coarse chuckle very close to her and backed away quickly, unwilling to come within reach of those gory claws.

  “No, it is beautiful! It is an offering to the Mother, our lady. Look again, child!”

  Fabia obeyed reluctantly. The living Heroes had departed, leaving mangled bodies everywhere—some human, some bestial, some both. And blood! Everywhere blood. The only living thing in the wasteland was Saltaja herself, rolling and wallowing in the gory mire, spreading it on herself, eating it.

  And Saltaja was also at her side. “Do you understand now, foolish child? They were my gift to the Ancient One! You gave her Pukar, yes? And Perag. But I have given her multitudes in my time, and just this morning these fifteen strong young men. There was a girl, too, later. You cannot win, Fabia Celebre. I am stronger. I will always be stronger. Come and serve me!”

  Her eyes—very dark eyes for a Vigaelian—seemed suddenly to blaze. “You will obey me!”

  “No!” Fabia twisted away from her clutch and dove into the cold earth of the garden, down into the realm of the Mother. Like most Skjarans, she was a strong swimmer, and she swam swiftly through the darkness. The rock felt like water, offering no more resistance. This is a very odd dream,
she thought, but I expect it means something. She saw the dead, standing like pale water weeds, rank on rank, watching her, rippling as she went past, but never trying to block her. Nor would they ever help her. They were dead and nothing mattered to them now, deep in the abode of the Most Ancient. Groves of them, a forest of wraiths, watched her pass through; they knew she was there, but they did not care. When she felt she was a safe distance away from Saltaja, she turned on her back and let herself float upward until she was back on her sleeping rug.

  Shivering, she tried to force herself awake and rid her mind of the lingering taste of horror. It was hard to believe that even the Queen of Shadows could be as evil as she had appeared in the nightmare, but it had not been a nightmare, it had been a vision, a sending. Would the Mother of Lies lie about one of Her own? Had She been warning Fabia of the depths of Saltaja’s evil and the strength of her powers, or had She been explaining that murder was a necessary part of Her worship and Fabia would have to start behaving like a faithful devotee? No! Fabia would not become another Saltaja. She would be like Paola Apicella, who had been a loving, caring foster mother and wife, not a murdering monster! Yes, Paola had killed Karvak Hragson and at least one of the assassin gang that slew her, but only in self-defense, yes?

  How can you believe that? whispered a scathing inner doubt, a fading echo of Saltaja’s mockery. You think you know these things only because She told you so. She never showed you how Paola was initiated. She never explained how Paola’s own baby died, did She? Can you blame the poor woman? She had lost her husband while she was giving birth and both she and the child were sure to starve to death, since the Fist’s men had taken all the food. Much better to give the babe to Xaran right away.

  “No!”

  Certainly. The Old One rewarded her with another child and a new life. Why do you suppose She is called the Mother of Lies? She tricked you into swearing allegiance and now She is calling for her due.

  Trembling with doubt and terror, Fabia hugged herself in the darkness. Had she been a fool when she chose to follow her foster mother’s goddess? Was she destined to descend from horror to horror? Must she be a Princess of Shadows, following in the Queen’s bloody footsteps?

  No! Feeble though her powers must be by Saltaja’s standards, Fabia would use them for good, not evil. Rescuing Witness Tranquility would definitely not be an evil deed. So, had the vision contained any guidance? If it had, then Xaran was willing to help her in doing good. In her prayers earlier, she had asked to overhear the satrap’s passwords, thinking that this might be the sort of help she could give Dantio without blatantly declaring her allegiance. What she had received instead had been very horrible. Why?

  Why that impossible illusion of swimming through rock? If Chosen could do that, people would not bury them alive.

  The poky cowhide tent the riverfolk had set up for her was as black as the depths of the earth had seemed in her dream, but warmer and smellier. And quiet. The camp was asleep, so the satrap’s men had not invaded. The night was running away and the seer remained captive—unless those crazy brothers of hers had already tried something and gotten themselves killed.

  She reexamined the conclusions she had reached before drifting off to sleep. Orlad, bitter and confused, was trying to adjust to a new world, to the mere idea of friends and family—poor Orlad! And poor Benard, facing responsibilities for the first time in his life with the knowledge that no Hand could ever be practical or responsible. And Dantio, who could never marry, never have family of his own, still trying to play big brother to all of them—Dantio plagued by the debt he owed his foster mother Tranquility. And Fabia herself, wanting to mother them, because she was a devotee of the Mother, the goddess who would eventually gather them all to Her bosom. That still seemed like her duty, though. She must encourage this fragile family cooperation by helping out with the mad rescue.

  She unlaced the door and peered out. The fire pit was a faint glow of embers, the only landmark, because clouds had covered the stars. Extrinsics would be effectively blind. The seer would not be and probably not Orlad if he battleformed. Even Benard, when he had rescued her in Tryfors, had been very sure of his way through the dark streets, so his gentle goddess might help him see in the dark, too. The bright side of the darkness was that a Florengian would need very little veiling to be completely invisible to sentries, both Horold’s and Orlad’s. A reconnaissance should be in order, or at least a preliminary look at what a reconnaissance would involve. It would be horribly easy to get lost in a maze of scrubby little islands with no stars to guide her.

  Oh! So that was what the dream had been telling her!

  She whispered a prayer of veiling, cloaking herself in darkness more impenetrable than any she ever had tried before. Then she slipped out of the tent and picked her way carefully through the prickly undergrowth to where Free Spirit had been beached. If Orlad had posted sentries, none of them would see the naked Florengian moving through the night.

  The water was cold, but not impossibly so. She stepped in, treading squishy mud and weeds, until the channel was deep enough to swim. Even then she kept her head above water and floated in a sort of crouch, propelling herself with her feet. There was just enough current to tell upstream from down even with no stars visible. If she was detected, she could vanish into the dark waters just as her dream self had escaped from Saltaja. Werists could not track in water.

  They could probably turn into seals or lobsters if they had to, though. And finding her way back was going to be a lot trickier than she had expected. She had forgotten just how many islands and channels there were. Sometimes she found open water, wide and deep, and had to swim. At other times the branch she was following twisted around or died out in a tangle of weeds and mud, forcing her to backtrack. She passed a score of beached or tethered boats, many of them solitary and easily mistaken for Free Spirit. Then suddenly both sides of the channel were lined with them and she knew she had arrived at the Heroes’ camp. She put her feet down and paused to consider the problem. The boats had been beached along one side, tied up on the other, where the bank was steeper and the water deeper. But which one did she need?

  Why had she been such a fool as to come alone? She should have gone to Dantio and Orlad and told them her brainwave about swimming. Then she could have gone back to bed and left them to handle the heroics. But obviously they had thought of it for themselves, because there they were—under some shrubbery at the deep side of the channel, chin deep, four eyes and four rows of teeth gleaming in the night. They were staring across at the far bank, obviously balked.

  She was equally stymied, because she did not know which boat contained the prisoner. Dantio would. She considered revealing herself and decided to investigate first. She slid away into the water, across to the shallows, then floated, walking on her arms, until she came to the boats. They had been pulled up in a herringbone pattern, sterns still in the river, bows ashore. She sat down between the first and second, with only her head above water. Now what? Four sixty Werists within half a bowshot were not good odds. And the sky was starting to brighten in what must be the east.

  She thought back to her vision. Control works best when there are blood ties. But it would work with strangers, too. She had Controlled Pukar. She had watched Saltaja Control sentries in Therek’s palace. Those doomed boys kneeling in the cavern had been under Control. Fabia could deal with the guards if she could locate them. Well, the Mother of All must be able to find Her children.

  Guide me, I pray You, holy Xaran. Show Your servant where the …

  Where the what? Guards? Or victims? Perhaps her brothers had brought knives with them, but she had not. Paola had not gone around cutting men’s throats. But if Witness Tranquility escaped from her captivity, there could be no doubt what would happen to any Werist set to guard her. The vision had shown her how the Hrag spawn dealt with negligence, and she could not expect Horold to be more merciful than his mother-sister. Fabia would be killing two men just as surely as she had kil
led Master Pukar by pushing him into the chasm.

  On the other hand, they were keeping an old woman chained up. That was an evil act. Besides, they would almost certainly die in the morning, when New Dawn arrived. Were those arguments strong enough to justify murder?

  And if Dantio and Orlad tried to rescue Tranquility on their own, they would both get killed. That felt like a better argument. Fabia had to help her brothers. She shivered in the chill air.

  Holy Xaran, my goddess, I dedicate their deaths to Your glory. Show me, I pray You, where to find them.

  Ah! Now there was a familiar river sound! A faint shape was standing upright in the stern of the fourth boat, watering the water.

  “I vaguely remember that this thing has other uses,” he confided to the night air. “You suppose Eriander has a temple in Tryfors?”

  Fabia lay down and floated, pulling herself closer.

  “A garrison town?” said a voice from the bow. “Streets will be full of cuddlies. I’m planning to set a world record the first night.”

  “Follow my arse,” said the man in the stern. “’Tween you and me, Truk m’boy, I’m not too happy at getting so close to Nardalborg. Got a feeling the satrap may not take all of us home with him.”

  Fabia floated close in under the stern, below the first Werist. When he finished his business and was about to sit down, she stood up and let him see her. He started. He blinked and peered uncertainly at a hazy shape, dark on dark … Then he found her eyes and she had him.

  There is nothing here. Sit down and sleep.

  It was easy. He was already drowsy and would see no need whatsoever to stand guard over a chained, frail, elderly female prisoner. In a few minutes he was fast asleep. Deeper! She waited.