Gold Throne in Shadow (43 page)

“One more apology, my lord,” the woman said sadly, and touched the heavy lead-gray locket hanging from her neck, her lips mouthing the words of a spell.

Instinctively Christopher's hands went to his hip. All around him he heard the rasp of steel, as the guards front and back drew their weapons. There were more behind than in front, so he turned, flinching at what he saw, stepping back and whipping out his sword.

Uma had been transformed, her flawless ivory face turned dull red and stirred like a wax painting partially melted. But the same sharp green eyes stared out at him with accusation. Under the horrible face was Uma's body, still shapely and appealing.

“From lust to loathing in an instant, my lord?” Uma's voice, shorn of seductive pretense, was acidic.

“I'm sorry,” he said, once he understood. The woman was disfigured, and he was pointing a sword at her.

Then he realized everyone else in the room was also pointing weapons: swords, crossbows, and in Lalania's case, a pistol. But not at Uma. At him. They stared at each other for an instant, over a sea of sharp and gleaming steel.

Lalania sighed, exasperated, and lowered her gun.

“I
told
you,” she said to the Skald.

Christopher was not comforted by her apparent surrender. A fight in these close quarters would be precarious, even without the disadvantage of paralyzing poison. He had not renewed his spells or his tael, both depleted in the last battle. The best magic he had left was the one that made his sword sharper.

They still weren't attacking him yet, so he took advantage of their indecision and cast it. Graceless, yes, but he was greatly outnumbered and possibly outclassed. He didn't know what rank the Skald was, or what her powers were, but he wasn't fooled by her frail appearance. He'd beaten Black Bart by virtue of sneaking in a spell while the man was blustering, and he aimed to claim the same advantage here.

Nothing happened. They didn't attack, and his sword didn't start glowing.

“Um.”

The Skald waved her hand. “Let us be at peace. Lala was right all along.”

Guards and women lowered their weapons. Christopher decided not to. He'd been fooled too many times by these people.

Repeating the words of his spell had no effect. That was starting to worry him more than being in a small room with a lot of armed people who might or might not be trying to kill him.

“You may go. All of you.” The Skald dismissed her entourage.

“My lady,” protested the handlebarred sergeant automatically.

The Skald gently shook her head. “We have tried the Vicar's patience long enough. Now I owe him an explanation, and I would rather not have to filter my words for your ears.”

Clever old fox. She had hit on the one thing Christopher wanted most. He lowered his sword.

“Yes, I would like an explanation. I would like a Darkling lot of explanations.”

“You can go, too, Lala. It will be easier for me to apologize for how we manipulated you if you are not in the room, reminding me of my guilt.”

“Shall I also leave?” Uma asked. “I do not wish to cause undue discomfort for our noble guest.”

“You may leave, Uma,” the Skald said, “because you already know everything I am going to tell him.”

The room slowly emptied. Christopher wished he'd memorized his truth-compelling spell. Thinking about it, he wished he could cast the damn thing permanently. Then he remembered that Lalania had said she had never lied to him. These people had lived with truth-spells, and the threat of them, for their whole lives. If there was a way to fool them, then they would know. He would have to rely on logic instead of magic to wring the truth out of them.

“Please, my Lord Vicar. Have a seat.” Reaching under the table she produced a bottle of wine and two delicate-stemmed glasses. She set them on the table, next to the crystal ball, and laid out a silver corkscrew. “If you would be so kind. My old hands lack the strength these days.”

Automatically, he sheathed his sword so he could pick up the bottle in one hand and the corkscrew in the other. Then he stopped and put the bottle back down, annoyed at having been so easily disarmed. “Questions first. One: why didn't my spell work?”

“What I am about to tell you is one of our best kept secrets. So first I must ask you to promise not to reveal the answer to any other.”

“At this point, I really don't feel like I owe you anything.”

“No, you don't. But you will be bound by your promise, and I will have it. You can strangle me here with your bare hands, and no one can stop you. But you cannot make me destroy my College.”

This was shaping up to be as aggravating as bandying words with Uma, if in a somewhat different way. Only two minutes ago an armed squad had been threatening him with swords, and already he missed them.

“Fine.” He pulled out the other chair and sat in it. “I won't tell anybody your secret, unless I determine that doing so would be in the best interests of the Kingdom. Is that good enough?”

“Acceptable, my lord.”

“Stop calling me that. Call me Christopher.”

“Very well, Christopher. We shall not tread on formality here; you may call me Friea. The locket around my neck is a null-stone. When targeted by a spell, it generates a field that suppresses all magic. You can guess that the range of the effect is the size of this room; indeed, the room was constructed to fit the locket. I apologize for all the preceding theatrics, but this irreplaceable item is of limited charges and we did not wish to use it save for the last resort.”

It made sense. In a world with so much magic, there would naturally be an anti-magic defense. It also explained Uma's transformation.

“So that's what happened to Uma—you dispelled the magic she used to disguise herself.”

“Yes.”

He frowned. The answer seemed somewhat ungenerous. Friea apparently agreed, and volunteered a little more with a concessionary nod.

“Uma has long ago made her peace with her disfigurement. It causes her no physical hardship, and no psychological harm now that she has magic enough to take whatever face she desires.”

He almost asked if the Invisible Guild had access to that magic—if so, he could stop trying to fix the serving girl's face in his memory—but he didn't want to waste a question, and anyway the answer was pretty much obvious.

“If it's so valuable, why did you use it just to unmask Uma?”

Friea put her hands together. A subtle signal, but he understood. She thought the question was stupid. “We did not; we used it to unmask you.”

He drew back, shocked. Before he could speak again, Friea continued.

“Christopher, you've already asked three questions. I believe it is my turn.”

Too late he remembered the very first time he had met Lalania, and how difficult it had been to have a conversation with her without giving away secrets. Now he was talking to the woman who had taught her those skills.

Friea smiled disarmingly at him. “First: are you going to open that wine?”

It was as infuriating as sitting down to play chess with someone, and the first thing they did was knock half their own pieces off the board. The old harridan was toying with him.

Driving the corkscrew into the bottle and yanking out the cork released some frustration. He filled her glass. He left his own glass empty. She was too polite to mention it.

“Second:
why are you here
?”

“Possibly because you kidnapped me and carted me here in a box.”

She pursed her lips disapprovingly.

“Seriously, Friea. What do you mean by here? This room? This county? This Kingdom?” He stopped himself before he added,
this planet
?

“We already know you are not from our realm. I have heard your Saint's tale, that you are merely a victim of a random gate. I do not find it terribly convincing.”

The last thing he wanted to do was tell these people the one thing the Saint had told him to keep quiet.

“How about if I tell you what I'm trying to do here?” That he could at least answer. “I want to make a change to your society. One I think you'll agree with.”

“I have read Lala's report of your cultural revolution. I am not as certain as you that the gain is worth the cost to the small folk; in a clash of titans the grass is always trampled, and yet you seek to change not just our ruler but our rules. But to clarify my question: why have you agreed to do this? What do you get out of it?”

Another easy answer. “I get to go home.”

“So you're here to go home.” Friea arched an eyebrow at him.

“Yes. I didn't want to come here, and I don't want to stay. I was promised a way home, if I did . . . something.”

“By whom? Did what?”

How much could he tell her? On the other hand, how much could the truth hurt?

“By Marcius. And I don't know what. He didn't seem to know, either. So I'm doing what I can. I'm pretty sure I'm on the right track.” He had to be. There was nothing else he could offer this world, other than the gift of technology.

“You are still hiding something.”

“Yes. But it isn't important. It doesn't affect my task. I'm going to give everybody guns and teach you how to run a democracy. Then I'll get to leave.”

He hurried on before she could keep ‘clarifying' her ever-expanding question. “That was three questions on your part. My turn.
Unmask
?”

Friea's lips softened into a discreet smile. Finally he had asked a question she thought was sensible.

“Lala says you did not recognize the word
lich
. I trust, then, that you will not recognize the word
hjerne-spica
.”

“You trust right.” He'd learned this language by magic. It had rarely let him down. But the word she used was utterly foreign to him.

“Try it as two words, Christopher.” She repeated the term slowly, so the words became distinct. “Brain. Eater.”

The two words hung in the air while his stomach turned.

“OK, I get it. But what does it mean?”

“It means death, doom, and destruction. It means the Black Harvest.”

“Um. Yes. About that. What does
that
mean?”

She took a sip of her wine. “Lala did not exaggerate. You are . . . mystifying.”

“Trust me, Friea. You're plenty mystifying to me, too.” This poised and genteel old lady ran a high-class brothel, a national spy ring, and had recently come perilously close to killing him. Now they sat in a dungeon, chatting. How weird could he be, compared to that?

“Tell me: what is the most horrifying creature you have ever seen?”

Black Bart was at the top of that list, but he knew she didn't mean monsters of the human kind. Ulvenmen weren't that bad: just eight-foot tall wolves that walked on two legs and carried axes. Even their dinosaurs weren't horrifying. Terrifying, yes, with teeth the size of his thumb, yet not truly grotesque. For that appellation he would have to stick with ten feet of slimy, deformed green man-beast, creatures that got up again no matter how many times you shot them and only stayed dead after cleansing fire.

“Trolls.”

“Fearsome indeed. You are lucky to have seen one and lived. Yet I tell you, if a troll were to catch sight of a
hjerne-spica
, it would piss itself and run gibbering in terror.”

She didn't sound like she was exaggerating.

“Imagine a bushel of tentacles, black and oily, as hard as leather but spongy to the touch. A lopsided sack flops at the root of these limbs, and two dreadful yellow eyes gaze out at you with malevolent intelligence and unadulterated contempt. The creature lurks in the darkness, waiting for you to stumble into its trap, a deadfall, a snare or pit, or worse. When you are helpless, or merely distracted, it springs on you with an unnatural animation. Horned tentacles crush your skull; its greasy skin smothers your face. The creature unfurls its penultimate horror: a slender tentacle tipped with adamantine. With unbelievable force it drives the spike deep into your forehead. You are not dead, not yet: you can still hear the sickening slurping as it begins to suck out your brain. The creature deliberately prolongs the act, allowing your pain and consciousness to persist as long as possible.”

Christopher poured himself a glass of wine. He felt a need for some fortifying.

“But the worst is yet to come. Afterwards, it gnaws off your head and discards it, like a crushed and empty eggshell. Now it unveils its most horrifying aspect: a long, thin tentacle with a delicate spider-web of cilia. It inserts this tentacle down your neck, the cilia digging into and meshing with your spine. Then it restarts your heart, your lungs, your vital organs, and your body rises under its new master. You have given the creature legs, arms, hands. All it lacks is a human face, and that it creates with magic. It transforms itself to all appearances as you. It walks in your stead, speaks in your voice, shares in your memories. And there the nightmare truly begins. The Black Harvest; the Feast of Souls. Many will fall before its appetite is sated. And it will feed first on those closest to you.”

He poured them both another glass. The first one hadn't lasted long.

“Gods, Friea…”

“No! Not gods. Never that. Monsters of ancient lineage, yes, masters of the underworld, Lords of the Night if you must. But not gods, no matter what tales they spread.”

Halfway through his second glass, he finally understood.

“You thought
I
was one of those?”

“It was a possibility, Christopher. You are new to our realm. You have strange ideas and stranger tricks. Your rise to power is swift beyond reckoning, and you are apparently indestructible. It was a possibility.”

“So you trapped me in a small room with a null-stone. To dispel my disguise.”

She smiled at him. He liked her ever so much more when he was asking intelligent questions.