Warlord

by Katy Winter

  While Luton ate, the man squatted on the floor watching him intently. When the boy finished, the huge man rose, took Luton by the wrist, pulled him to another door further along the landing and pushed him through it. Luton realised he was to clean and relieve himself. He was then returned to his room, where he was again locked in.

  This continued for days. Luton lost all track of time. He ate when food was placed in front of him and obediently allowed the black slave to strip him, even to the new sandals Kher gave him. The boy was left naked. Light and dark altered erratically around him from one hour to the next, so his whole former pattern of existence became meaningless. He accepted the conditioning, lying to sleep when his world darkened and responding to the light as it flooded into his room almost blinding him. His mind continued to be a blank. He was totally and irrevocably disoriented, malleable and utterly docile.

  One morning, or Luton thought it was morning because light streamed across his bed some time before, the black slave fed the boy and then pointed at sandals and clothes laid on a chair that he'd not been permitted to wear until now. Luton drew on the sandals and laced them, then stood waiting. He was clad in a long sweeping grey robe that opened over loose pants, his own clothes removed long ago. He'd no identity with the outside world and no memory. Both body and mind were thoroughly cleansed.

  Luton was led firmly from the room. He was taken on a long tour of the Keep where he witnessed many things that were horrific and repulsive, but he accepted all he was shown without reaction. He was taken below the dungeons to the catacombs that Luton instantly liked, although he learned the black slave didn't. The big man hastily grasped the boy's arm to make Luton move further on.

  Over the next weeks, Luton learned to know the Keep from its base to his own landing in the tower and quickly discovered that no one other than the sorcerer, the black slave and himself, ever went near the tower. He wasn't permitted to go beyond the landing and never made the attempt.

  Time passed. Blach watched the boy's development in his mirror. He saw the boy study the fortress and learn the maze and the catacombs slowly and painfully. More than once he got lost until Blach finally guided his minder to where the boy was. Blach watched as Luton was taught self-defence by the guards who treated him harshly, their idea of exercises and training leaving the boy doubled over, bruised but indomitable.

  He learned swordsmanship and knife skills and was taught how to kill with hands and feet. Luton's stamina improved and he became more athletic and graceful, though he still retained the frailty of physique. He studied the destructive and cruel weapons of Blach's guard. He stole them to learn how to use them. The resulting beating administered by one of the guards drew blood, but nothing else. Only once Edlor grasped Luton's chin to stare, for long moments, red eyes meeting black, before Edlor flung the boy away.

  Luton learned to be a shadow and to meld into nothing so the guards couldn't trace him, nor could his minder. He learned infinite patience.

  Blach saw no response on the boy's face when he handled weapons of torture, or watched, uninterested, their expert application. Luton showed no inclination to participate. However, the boy did soon realise, as he watched the torture, why Blach chose mutes for his experiments. But he felt nothing.

  Luton learned, too, that any mute girl or woman occasionally brought to his room was there for a specific purpose and if he didn't immediately physically oblige, the black slave hurt him in ways the boy was allowed to feel. He'd mechanically oblige, with neither passion nor interest, then turn from a girl the instant he relieved himself. Blach smiled grimly, pleased with the boy's maturing.

  During this time Luton didn't see his master once, nor did Blach make any mental contact. However, two incidents stayed clearly in the sorcerer's mind. He watched Luton's careful assessment of the defences of the fortress, nothing Blach noticed, escaping the boy's attention. Even the guards who taunted him in little ways in the earliest days were warier of him.

  The first incident Blach remembered was Luton teaching himself to climb the fortress walls. This was no mean feat when they were so shiny and hard. What Luton discovered were the points of weakness in the walls and also the hidden footholds that only Blach knew existed. That brought a thoughtful look into the sorcerer's eyes. These outside expeditions left Luton alone because his minder remained inside the gates, nor did Luton ever seem to notice the heat. Many times he tried to climb the exterior of the tower in the sweltering heat of a midsun.

  He fell often and injured himself with a cracked ankle, a wrenched thumb and once a torn muscle in his upper arm, but always he was drawn back to try again. In the end he reached his own level of the tower, where he hung perilously as he tried to gain purchase on the ledge of his chamber window preparatory to hauling himself in. When he achieved success, the boy never repeated the feat.

  The second incident concerned the black beasts of the Keep. Blach didn't expect the boy to easily survive the handling of these legendary animals, because they were fiercesome creatures with wills of their own. Their origin was shrouded in mystery over time, but, by carefully scanning each of the dozens of faded tapestries around the fortress, Luton learned that the horses had been rounded up from what had once been lush plains surrounding the Keep.

  The lord of the Keep had the power and control to break these horses, but when he died the animals turned savage. They mated, had foals and died. It was whispered, over the generations, that magic mutated them. Perhaps that was so. It was acknowledged the horses could kill with a look if they chose and they accepted only the handling of Blach's guards.

  So Blach watched as the boy approached the stables, his face wearing a mirthless smile. He felt a mild tinge of regret that he might now see Luton possibly about to be badly mutilated before he was rescued and patched up. He watched in the mirror. He was suddenly intrigued by the unexpected. Luton stood at the entrance to the stables. He waited for one of the horses to neigh a warning, only realising, belatedly, that these animals were as mute as himself. They stamped restlessly in their stalls and flicked their ears warningly.

  When Luton swung open the gate, the nearest stallion swung round, his front legs pawing the air in fury and red eyes blazing. Luton stayed quite still. He watched as the lashing and pawing transmitted itself to all the other horses and within minutes there was a chaos of rearing enraged equines.

  Calmly, and without fear, Luton walked up to the near stallion and stood beneath the threatening hooves. The stallion was confused - he swung his front legs to one side and his large head looked down, fury now mixed with surprise. Luton put up a hand while the stallion watched him, his back legs ready to lash out. Luton grasped the mane and, with a real effort, hauled himself up onto the stallion's back.

  This was so unexpected and such an outrage the horse just stood still, quivering with passion from head to tail. Saliva frothed at the stallion's lips and he rolled his eyes, but still he did nothing. Luton sat motionless, again waiting. The noise in the stables abated, as all the horses, in unison, turned to stare at the stallion with the boy quietly astride. The guards, who'd come in response to the din of stamping and flailing hooves on the stalls, stood by the entrance, their expressions disbelieving. Luton remained where he was for such a long time Blach got bored watching him and turned brusquely from the mirror. The sorcerer's lips were pursed thoughtfully.

  The only contact Luton had with his master over those days was extremely unpleasant. It was connected with the essences that gave the sorcerer so much joy, but which he'd not bothered with for some seasons. Luton thought the essences looked like prisms caught and held in tiny cages. His minder had, early on in Luton's Keep days, shown them to the boy, but Luton passed them by after the first glance with a total lack of interest. He didn't know that the sorcerer had his father's essence that flickered weakly in one corner of the musty room. If he'd known, he'd have been indifferent.

  The sorcerer discovered the disappearance of Lian's essence. The fragile prism was nowhere in the fortre
ss. Blach's subsequent fury was terrible. It left Luton unmoved. He took himself to the stables where he remained until the worst of the atrocities were over, then he climbed the tower stairs to throw himself onto his bed, his eyes staring at nothing. Baulked of further prey, Blach turned on the boy.

  Luton drifted asleep. He was totally unprepared for the brutal entry into his mind from an infuriated sorcerer and came bolt awake to a mental rampage that was the nearest thing to agony Luton had experienced. He was pinned to the bed, unable to move. A probe of white heat speared this way and that, tearing him into mental fragments of isolated pockets of pain. A voice echoed distantly to which Luton struggled to respond.

  "Answer me, Luton!"

  "Master, what have I done?"

  "His essence, you young cur. Where is it?"

  "Master?"

  "Did they send you, did they?" snarled the voice, becoming ever more distant.

  Luton was soon unable to respond. The pain in his head was excruciating. His awareness dimmed as the probe continued to whip back and forth. It withdrew as suddenly as it entered. Luton's skull felt on fire, until very quickly his mind went blank, he felt nothing, and all he later remembered when he woke was that he'd experienced a taste of his master's anger in a way he'd no wish to know again. He didn't forget the experience, though had no understanding of its cause.

  ~~~

  Nearly two seasons after Luton was brought to the Keep, Malekim made contact. Luton was sixteen cycles and even taller than he'd been when he left Kher. He wasn't as thin but was still too slender, his eyes alert and sharp. He was no longer a boy.

  Malekim sent a summons. After opening his door, Luton obediently waited. While he stood there, he found Malekim standing quietly observing him, a keen look in the sorcerer's eyes. After a long scrutiny, Malekim turned. He ascended the stairs. He stopped at the third landing above Luton's chamber and waited as Luton followed expressionlessly but made no attempt to go into the room. The sorcerer beckoned the youth forward. Quietly Luton advanced. He closed the door behind him. There was one chair in the room. The cool voice entered his mind.

  "Sit, Luton." He obeyed. The implacable monotone continued. "It's time you were educated, even with a smattering of knowledge."

  "As you wish, Master." Malekim stood regarding Luton, a smile writhing on thin lips.

  "You've learned a very little, boy, but there's much of which you're lamentably ignorant, isn't there? You read and write."

  "Yes, Master."

  "And you understand Churchik?"

  "Yes, Master."

  "Every hour of every day, you'll learn. Eventually, you'll sleep little. You'll discover for yourself that you don't need rest, as I don't, and you'll also learn to control your mind and use it as a weapon. I'll ensure you're not undernourished. All your bodily needs will be met." Blach's meaning was quite clear and Luton had no difficulty understanding him.

  "Yes, Master."

  "The mind controls the body, Luton, so the body ultimately becomes unnecessary, as you'll doubtless find out for yourself." Malekim moved forward and grasped Luton's chin in one hand, jerking the youth's head towards a closed door. "My library and laboratories are through there, slave. Enter and -," Malekim's smile was vicious, "- you'll die most painfully. Do you understand?"

  "I do." Luton made a mental note never to near that particular door.

  "You'll eat and study in this room."

  As he spoke, Malekim opened another door, a heavy, wooden panelled one that in turn opened into a small room. The room had a narrow bed that was slatted without cushions or mattress, a chair, and a huge desk that both swamped the room and was backed by a bookcase containing ranks of large bound tomes. The room was stark, cheerless and lacked any amenity suggestive of comfort or appeal. Malekim nodded at the desk. Luton pulled up the chair and sat at it.

  "Your life is this chamber, slave. You'll not move from here unless I give you leave, or Pic collects you. Your specific and designated function is to learn so you may, perhaps, be of use to me. You have no other reason to exist. Fail me, and you will cease to be." Malekim's voice in Luton's mind was clinical. The sorcerer pointed at the volumes, and curtly nodded at the one on the far left, that Luton obligingly pulled out and opened. "You'll copy each volume without mistake and remember all you copy, slave. Be warned. You'll recite everything you learn to me. Any error you're foolish enough to make will merit a punishment you'll be allowed to feel and vividly remember, only to encourage you to work correctly, of course. You'll never, Luton, repeat a mistake."

  "No, Master."

  "Each word and symbol speaks as you write it. Copy it both as it sounds and as it looks, memorising each one as you go. Don't ever forget each symbol as you value your miserable, misbegotten life."

  "No, Master," responded Luton automatically, looking briefly up at Malekim before bending his head.

  "Your minder will beat you if you do not work constantly." There was the hint of cruel laughter in the voice. "I have many entertaining moments of your discomfiture to come, Luton, haven't I?"

  Luton didn't reply. He'd already begun to write.

  Malekim was true to his word. Luton worked ceaselessly but punishment wasn't needed because the youth's appetite for learning was insatiable and he was increasingly conscious of his ignorance. Unlike his master, his lack of knowledge imbued Luton with humility, and, as he learned more he lacked arrogance, always aware he'd yet more to discover. Malekim didn't see this in his apprentice. He wouldn't have comprehended it if he had. He was arrogance personified.

  Malekim often opened the door of the small room to look at the hunched, intent figure industriously copying. Though Luton's learning only began, the sorcerer could see very clearly the future he'd laid out for his apprentice. Luton would be driven to succeed, because it was his master's will.

  Malekim never told Luton how he'd been found. Malekim remembered quite distinctly the wandering essence, barely making a ripple in the aethyr, and saw, again, the thin line of the essence attached to a boy who hung motionless on a pole, high up in the Dakhilah mountains. The memory always brought an unholy glow to the depthless, hollow eyes.

  This particular day Luton was so engrossed in his work he didn't hear, in the recesses of his mind, Malekim's echoing laugh. Luton was everything the sorcerer hoped he'd be.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  A gathering of mature ice dragons was an august occasion and rarely called in these days of their existence on Ice Isle. Younger dragons had never attended a gathering such as this. Nor had older dragons, not since dragons withdrew from the affairs of Ambros, so very long ago, after the defeat of Malekim. At that time they'd suffered and had no desire to become involved again, no one having seen dragons on Ambros for as long as could be remembered. They were a myth. They still bonded with the mages on Yarilo and they always answered to the Unseen, but none had been in contact with the Rox for hundreds of Ambrosian cycles.

  The eldest dragons, some like Estbane and Grengol, ancient, but with clear memories, were all there in a display of raw power, agitation and not a little anger. That they were there at all caused bellicose rumblings and threatening growls, steam issuing in puffs from flared nostrils. Most lay sprawled with wings carefully furled to avoid offence because dragons were notorious for scrapes over imagined slights or insults. Others half-lay, their leathery tails curled round them and their chins rested on manicured feet. The gather had been in progress for several hours.

  There was an expectant hush when Estbane spoke. His eyes changed colour with incredible speed and astonishing beauty. To look into dragon eyes could court death, but it would be impossible not to be drawn into the intensity and depth of those far-seeing orbs. Estbane spoke in a deep and measured voice.

  "We fought in past cycles, as most of you know. Those most ancient among us remember even older times. Our kind don't forget. We were called and we answered. It caused us much suffering. Our kind was torn and ravaged as we made demanded sacrifices. I ask, now, why we shou
ld once more be asked to touch the affairs of Ambros." There was a long contemplative silence, broken by the booming voice of a huge older male dragon whose eyes were only slightly dulled by the passing cycles.

  "Having briefly touched the young Ice Crystal's mind, are we no clearer in our understanding of her actions?"

  "We know," responded Grengol, with a belch of flame and a hiss, "she was asked to assist with the taking of an Ambrosian essence from the Keep of a sorcerer. He resides in the south of Ambros."

  "Who is the sorcerer?" demanded a female voice.

  "We don't know," came Grengol's growled reply. "It would be better if we made it our business to know. Maybe Harth will return with knowledge, if his bane can be lifted." There were rumbled growls.

  "Who asked her to do this?"

  "The Rox."

  "For what purpose did the Crystal steal an essence?" came a fretful query.

  "That we have no answer to either," said Estbane calmly. "She's given the essence into our keeping, but the purpose of it being here isn't clear."

  Wings began flexing with the beginnings of stress and deepening anger. Steam grew hotter and bodies became restless.

  "The mind link between our ancients and a hatchling can't be doubted," offered a younger female, her body changing from red to green, then back to red again.

  "Our concern isn't with that," came Estbane's testy reply. "It's our link with her that shows us clearly the Rox are again active on Ambros. I don't deny this causes me grave anxiety. Long-lived as we are, none of the most revered and ancient among us expected to see Sophos Rox again in our lifetimes. That we do, leads me to have serious misgivings all's not well on Ambros. Roxes don't just appear without very good reason. Nor have we had any inkling of possible trouble through our bond with Yarilo. We only know about Harth and that raises worrying questions in itself. Who bound him?"

  "We need to find out. Only extreme agitation would have caused Sophos' call to dragonkind," said a very old female, named Leone.