Mother of Lies

by Dave Duncan

  That thought gave him a great surge of excitement, and he rapped his knuckles hard against the planks. Evil comes calling.

  The chink of light under the shutter disappeared. He heard a step, a rattle of chain. The door opened a crack. No light showed. He could see an eye looking at him, and suspected an extrinsic would not see even that. The homeowner spoke first.

  “Is that you, Gievo?”

  Eeee! Gievo? Who was Gievo? Gievo was a password, that’s what! And Chies didn’t know the other half of the code. Again he almost panicked. His knees trembled with an overpowering urge to run. How could he put the evil eye on someone he could not see? Oh, Mother! But probably the man could see him.

  “My chariot has a loose wheel …”

  “Go away or I’ll call my brothers.” The door slammed shut.

  In a panic, Chies uttered a silent scream: Open that door!

  Chain rattled. The door swung open. The man who stood there wore a Hero collar, but he was young and had only one arm and one eye. The eye was blinking rapidly, as if he did not know why he had just done what he had just done. A man with one arm couldn’t be too dangerous. He couldn’t even battleform.

  “You will obey me.”

  “Evil One take you if I do! You pox-faced, squint-eyed, overgrown little turd, you can stuff—”

  You will obey me!

  “I will obey you,” the man agreed. Then, even louder, “Why should I? What are you doing to me?”

  “Be quiet!” Chies squeaked.

  Silence.

  “Call me ‘lord.’”

  “My lord is kind.”

  “You will not speak unless I tell you to. What is your name?”

  “Eligio Lomotti, my lord.”

  Enjoying himself now, Chies said, “Who else is in the house, Eligio?”

  “Only my wife and children, lord.”

  “Tell her to light some candles, and then you come with me.”

  Chies headed back to the chariot. A moment later he heard a crash behind him as the man stepped in a rut and fell headlong. An outburst of lurid oaths ended abruptly. When he scrambled up, covered with mud or worse, Chies took his wrist and led him the rest of the way to the car.

  “You deal with this and the guanacos and then come back to the house.”

  “My lord is kind.”

  “Come, Aunt, I’ll carry you myself.” He would not have tried that even yesterday—he had been making Sesto do all the heavy work—but he was a Chosen now and thought his abilities ought to include some manly strength. Saltaja did not object when he went to lift her, and was no great burden to carry to the cottage. Aha!

  The house was a better peasant kennel than others he had seen on his travels. The first room boasted a table and stools, a big stone fireplace, and two doors leading to other places. Metal pots sat in with the crocks on a shelf, and nets of roots ands dried fruit hung from the beams. Lingering food scents made his mouth water. Tiles on the floor were a real luxury.

  The girl had lit half a dozen candles, probably about two sixdays’ normal usage. She was cowering in a corner, hugging a weepy infant. Another brat clung to her leg. Chies set his aunt down and went to the girl. She glanced up in fear and he had her.

  “You will obey me, no matter what I tell you to do.”

  Her eyes glazed. “I will obey you.”

  She was a lovely thing, with curly hair and milk-swollen breasts. He felt tremors of excitement under his chlamys, the sort of reaction Babila produced in him. He’d never had any trouble bouncing her! Yes, tonight would be good. This one’s husband was a rebel. He deserved to have his wife raped. He deserved to have to watch.

  “Call me ‘darling.’”

  “Darling?”

  “As if you meant it. Better. Now kiss me like you kiss Eligio.”

  She put down the brat, clasped Chies’s face between her hands, and pushed her mouth on his, exploring with her tongue. Mmm! Wow! Eligio was a lucky man. When she paused for breath, Chies debated priorities, then decided he was too hungry to enjoy anything else before he ate. Sex could wait. “I want food, lots of it. The woman needs soup and help eating it.”

  Saltaja had found a seat by the hearth and was leering horribly. “Think you can get it up this time, sonny?”

  Oh, gods! He should have guessed that he had not been fooling her.

  “She’s going to make up for all the others.”

  “No reason why not, if that’s what you want. There’s not much you can’t do now, lad, as long as you keep pleasing the Mother.”

  “Would a good rape please Her?”

  “Of course. And a dead rebel in the morning?”

  Gulp! “Why not?” Chies preferred to think about the first part of the program, but Papa would expect him to kill a rebel.

  While he ate, he learned that her name was Carmina. If she was one-sixth as good in bed as she was as a cook, then he wasn’t going to get much sleep tonight. Eligio returned and put the two brats to bed. One of them was colicky. Chies told it to shut up and it stopped wailing instantly. Growing tired of the hatred blazing in the Werist’s eye, he ordered him to go out and stand in the rain until the mud washed off. The man obeyed without a word.

  When Chies was done eating and about ready to take Carmina to bed, Saltaja told him to call Eligio back in, they had business to attend to. The rancher was soaked, of course, and grinding his teeth with fury, although he did not say anything. Sesto had been much more subservient. Chies still had much to learn about Control.

  “Question him,” his aunt said.

  “Right.” Chies left Eligio standing and pulled Carmina down on his lap to fondle her. “When was the last time you saw Marno Cavotti?”

  The Werist bared his teeth. His arm trembled violently. He made choking noises, but he had to answer. “Yesterday, lord.”

  “When?”

  “About this time.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “I don’t know, lord.” He smiled triumphantly.

  “Who was with him?”

  “A woman, a man, five Heroes.”

  Chies translated.

  “Their names!” Saltaja shrieked. “Where did they go?”

  Eligio snarled, but Chies dragged out answers. Orlad and Waels had left at sunset to swim to the city. Fabia and Dantio had gone that morning by more conventional means, to be delivered to an agent in Celebre.

  “What agent?” Chies demanded. Father would want to know. So would he, when he was doge. Traitors!

  Eligio had chewed his lower lip bloody, watching where Chies’s hand was straying. “Berlice Cavotti.”

  “You’re lying! She’s head of the Stralg party on the council.”

  “I am not lying, lord.”

  Chies looked doubtfully at Saltaja. Was it possible for the Mutineer’s mother to play a double game and deceive Stralg’s seers while doing it? Or had she deceived her son and betrayed the Celebres? Something to worry about.

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “Lord, you are the Fist’s bastard from the palace.”

  Ah, he would certainly have to die. “Correct. My companion and I need to get into Celebre without being questioned by ice devils. How will you arrange that for me?”

  Eligio snarled. “Just go. Now, tonight.”

  “The gates shut at sunset.”

  “Not tonight. You go outside and listen. The trumpets are blowing. The doge has died. No curfew tonight.”

  Puzzled, Chies translated.

  Saltaja uttered a shriek and staggered to her feet. “Blood! Blood!” She stared in the direction of the city. “I can smell blood!”

  Chies could not imagine how she could smell anything at all with that oozing, rotting stump of a nose. She was crazy. “Um, do we want to go there now?”

  “Yes! Yes! They’re fighting! Stralg may be there. And Fabia Celebre almost certainly is! And the next doge must be there to claim the throne. Tell that one-eyed idiot to harness up a chariot for us.”

  Drive in the d
ark? … “Yes, of course, Aunt. Eligio, we need your best car and best team. Now!” He sighed at Carmina. He would have to postpone his enjoyment until another day. “You go and help him. Aunt, we won’t kill them, will we? That would leave a trail from Veritano to here and then to me, when I’m doge. Show me how to make them forget us, Aunt.”

  Saltaja sighed. “Softie! But I suppose you’re right.”

  DANTIO CELEBRE

  was overloaded, losing detail. Whole areas were disappearing from his vision. Fighting had broken out in Pantheon Way. He knew that men other than Orlad and Waels were invading the palace grounds, but he could not identify them. If any were Werists, he hoped they were Marno’s. They might just be town youths scrambling over the palace walls to view the action, stimulated by the near-riot spreading through the city. Roused by the doge’s death, Celebre was bursting out of its long sleep.

  Like all Witnesses trained in the Ivory Cloisters, Mist had been repeatedly warned of the fate that befell the seers of Jat-Nogul. Trapped in the city during the sack, they had been driven raving mad by the horrors, and so had any other Witness who went near them thereafter. Even some tough survivors of Stralg’s massacre at Bergashamm had succumbed to the emotional storm of Jat-Nogul.

  Celebre was not at storm level yet, but winds were rising to dangerous levels. The trumpets had proclaimed the news of Piero’s death, and Celebrians were notoriously demonstrative mourners. Defying curfew, citizens poured into the streets, wailing at the tops of their voices and hammering cook pots, drowning out even the trumpets’ ear-torturing wail. One of the city gates had been opened to admit a cavalcade of chariots bearing at least a full hunt of Vigaelian Werists. All those llamoids and ice devils were trying to force their way through a grief-maddened mob, and there just was not room. Soon they would start hurting people, and then violence would erupt like a volcano.

  One host—four sixty—was a strong force, but a very small part of the Fist’s horde. That it might be Stralg’s personal bodyguard made sense. But Marno Cavotti had both excellent sources of intelligence and extraordinary cunning. He had been smuggling men into the city all day, pod after pod of black seals swimming in through the secret gap in the siphon. He had set up Celebre as a trap. Stralg would never walk into a trap as long as he had his Witnesses to warn him, so Cavotti must have managed to pass along the news that Dantio and the others had brought from Vigaelia, that the notorious compact was broken and they were free to deceive the monster they had served so long. Dantio himself had set this pot a-boiling.

  Whether Stralg himself had arrived or not, Liberators scattered in safe houses all over the city were gradually learning of the Vigaelian incursion and emerging to slake their bloodlust.

  All of this was bad enough and promised to get infinitely worse when the fighting and arson began, but Dantio was also personally involved in the drama around his father’s bier. Orlad and Waels had found their way to the palace grounds and were lurking, naked and wet, in the bushes outside the pillars. They could see the ceremony under way, could see Oliva and her two newfound lambs struggling to restrain their reactions, could even see the bag of clothes lying just out of their reach within the hall. They could do nothing about that glowering, suspicious Huntleader Purque, Stralg’s commandant in Celebre, short of charging in and killing him. Purque had guessed that something significant was happening right under his nose and was trying to learn what it was.

  Oliva was gamely fighting against hysteria, stressed almost beyond endurance by the events of the evening and the continuing threat of the peg-leg Werist. Their plans for a secret, confidential reunion had collapsed into this turmoil. Dantio was being pummeled by joy and grief, fear and frustration, from all directions.

  Just as he braced himself to go and tell Purque that Stralg was looking for him—which must be true to some extent—he sensed agitation outside the north door, where the huntleader had left his escort. With an effort, Dantio unearthed the psychic clues of a Hero having just brought a message from the barracks in Wheelwrights’ Alley. After a moment’s hesitation, the ranking flankleader opened the door and peered in. The commandant frowned and stumped off toward him, thumping along on his spear. Saved! Sure enough, in a moment the Werist was gone, leading his troops back to the barracks.

  Everyone else present smelled trustworthy.

  “All clear for now, Mama.” Dantio trotted over to the bundle of clothes and hurled it out into the darkness. Waels saw it eclipse the candlelight, leaped up, and grabbed it.

  Wiping sweat from his forehead, Dantio turned back toward the catafalque in its lake of candlelight. Completed or not, the ceremonial recording of the doge’s passing had obviously come to an end. The scribes were carrying away their tablets to be baked. Fabia and Mama were locked in a tearful embrace—which was wildly out of character, because neither was naturally demonstrative—and everyone else was staring in bewilderment either at them or at him, the eccentric bag-throwing seer. Neither Quarina nor Berlice had been told that Orlad might attend this meeting also.

  But Dantio Celebre, heir presumptive, was home in the hall of his ancestors. This was the day he had dreamed of. He raised his voice and let it ring back from the vaulted ceiling.

  “My lords and ladies! I am Dantio Celebre, eldest son of the late Doge Piero. This is my sister, Fabia. We have just returned from our exile in Vigaelia.”

  The resultant rush of joy almost knocked him over. The elders curtsied, bowed, and cheered, all at the same time. He detected no hidden reservations at all, not one. Oliva came sweeping to meet him and they embraced. She was sobbing. Holy Mayn, so was he!

  “Dantio! Dantio! …” she exclaimed. Then came the shock of finding unbearded lips on a man nearing thirty.

  Before either of them spoke, someone cried out in fear. Two Werists came striding in through the pillars—Florengian Werists, unarmed and barefoot. Dantio led his mother forward to meet them.

  “Mama, this is Orlad. And this is his liegeman, Waels Borkson.”

  The dogaressa ignored the liegeman. She just stared in disbelief at her Hero son, as if petrified by that sinister collar. Orlad stared back with his emotional defenses higher than mountains. Since leaving Nardalborg, he had begun to shed his crust of enforced brutality. Hints of a decent human being were starting to emerge, but he did not know how to respond to a mother. Or any woman, for that matter.

  “So big!” she whispered.

  “You think that’s big, you ought to see Benard!” Fabia said. “Orlad, you chump, hug her until her ribs creak.”

  Orlad forced a smile and did more or less that. The tension broke, if not the ribs. Oliva said “Oh, Orlando, Orlando!” about fifty times, kissing him as she did—his face did not lack stubble. Dantio and Fabia exchanged relieved smiles. Had there ever been so much joy at a lying-in-state? Were Benard there, he would be blubbering like the triple fountain. Somehow Dantio did not think his father would have regarded this celebration around his bier as disrespect.

  “Oh, Orlando, my baby!”

  Dantio caught Fabia’s eye and they exchanged grins.

  The dignitaries were pushing forward to greet the revenants, giving Dantio precedence as the eldest, of course. He would certainly not be the heir, but he could not explain that now. It was all he could do to withstand the waves of riot and emotion washing in from the city. The first fires had started. Mobs of enraged extrinsics were savaging golden warbeasts but paying a terrible toll for their presumption. Black warbeasts were swarming out of hiding to aid them.

  More palace officials streamed into the hall. So the news had escaped: The children are back! Elders of the council, summoned to the palace by the trumpets, were shoving to the head of the line to pay their respects. Heads of families famous in the city’s history: Giordano Giali, Ritormo Nucci … The temple of Ucr was burning. A seer was running along the corridor outside, and Werists were coming too. Vigaelian Werists.

  Screaming gods!

  Only one man could emit that fearful stench of de
ath and evil. Dantio dithered in panic. Had he miscalculated? What if the Fist’s seers had not heard about the broken compact after all? Perhaps it was not a hunt for his Chies bastard that brought Stralg to Celebre this night, but a craving for revenge on the legitimate children! Therek, Horold, Saltaja all dead, and their killers gathered here?

  “Out!” Dantio yelled at Orlad. “Stralg’s coming. He’s almost here! Hide!” The rest of what he tried to say was lost in screams of alarm. Half the assembly thought he was addressing them. They bolted for the pillars and disappeared into the night and the rain. Then the rest had second thoughts and followed.

  Oliva remained, with Dantio and Fabia beside her. Speaker Quarina, the high priest, Berlice, ancient Nucci … yes, the elders and only the elders, eight of them so far. They were more than a little flustered, but they were standing their ground, gathered around the catafalque.

  “Fabia, you should leave, too!” Dantio said, but he was too late and knew she would not have gone anyway.

  The north door flew open, shedding light that was immediately blocked by the bloodlord himself. He strode in without bothering to have his bodyguard inspect the hall. He had no need to, because a white-shrouded seer scuttled along at his side like a dog on a leash. For thirty years Witnesses of Mayn had kept him safe from harm. Incongruously, and unknown to anyone but Dantio, the stooped little woman with him was blazing joy like the sun. She did know that the compact was ended. She could smell the trap awaiting him. She luxuriated in it, savoring her hate.

  Stralg slammed the door behind them, thundering rage like a sea storm. Out beyond the pillars, a steady thumping drumbeat of fear from the onlookers in the rain failed to hide one great bugle call of hatred. Dantio knew that emotional note as well as he knew his brother’s voice. Orlad saw the cause of all his troubles at last, and he had left his bodyguard outside. With his faithful Waels to help him, Orlad would never resist this temptation.