Lord of the Isles (51 page)

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Authors: David Drake

BOOK: Lord of the Isles
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Garric stepped back so that Liane could close the tomb door. Tenoctris said, “Your father must have worked here for many years. He imprinted the bricks and even the soil with his power. I've never seen anything like this except at the site of ancient temples.”
Liane closed the door firmly and relocked it. She stepped into the street and waited while Garric pulled the iron gate to.
“We'll find Polew the Banker, my father's contact,” she said. “From him we'll find the person who actually hired my father. And then …”
And then
, Garric thought,
what?
There wasn't an answer to that question, even in Liane's mind.
They started back toward the harbor and Polew's offices. The day was wearing toward evening.
“Your father was a very powerful wizard, Liane,” Tenoctris said musingly. “I wonder what he might have accomplished if your mother's death hadn't so warped him. And if he hadn't been killed, of course.”
A
rat startled by the torchlight ran over Sharina's foot. She heard the Outer Sea surging and sighing through the drains cut beneath the dungeons, though she'd have guessed that Callin had already brought his prisoners below sea level.
“Not the most luxurious lodgings for our guests, hey boys?” Callin called cheerfully from the back of the line. “But they're clever people so I'm sure they'll adapt.”
Perhaps they
were
beneath the sea. Like the mill in Barca's Hamlet, the castle was Old Kingdom masonry: great stones fitted without mortar. But the castle was also wizard's work, and perhaps a wizard could contrive that water drained upward.
“If I'm not able to deal with you myself, Callin,” the procurator said, “then I'll at least have the satisfaction of knowing that the queen will do it for me. She's the only person whom I'd describe as even more treacherous than you!”
Asera's voice had its old authority again. The immensity of sea and storm had beaten her spirit down, but no human enemy would cow her.
Meder was shivering so violently that two of the soldiers half-dragged, half-carried him down the circular stairs and along the corridor of black stone. Callin thought Meder was shamming; Sharina was sure that he wasn't. The young wizard had been exhausted when the guards loosed him from the horse to which he'd been tied, but it was only after Meder entered the lowering castle that he'd begun to shake and stumble.
Sharina didn't like Meder, but she'd had too many proofs to doubt that he was really a powerful wizard. The soul of
the man who'd built this castle a thousand years before still imbued its stones. To Meder's receptive mind, it must be as overwhelming as being imprisoned in a drum while a giant pounds it.
“I understand!” Meder cried. He began to laugh. “I really understand!”
The soldier holding the wizard's left arm snarled in disgust and anger. He punched Meder on the side of the head, an awkward blow but a hard one.
Meder went limp for a moment. The soldier on the wizard's right said to his fellow, “Why'd you do that? Do you want to carry him yourself?”
Meder resumed walking, though his eyes were closed and his knees would have buckled if the soldiers let him go. He giggled occasionally.
The low ceiling dripped, and condensate beaded on the twisted pillars in the center of the corridor. The pair of soldiers at the head of the procession held their torches out at waist height; even so the air hissed and steamed with moisture which their flames licked off the stone.
Another torchbearer walked beside Callin. There were candles and lanterns in the living quarters upstairs in the castle; from the glimpse Sharina got as the soldiers led her downward, she realized that Callin had come to Gonalia with the furnishings to create what he thought of as civilized surroundings out of barbarous wilderness. His men used torches here because he knew their flickering light would make the dungeons seem even more wild and terrifying.
They were bad enough as it was. Sharina wondered what the rats ate normally; certainly they found something to keep them healthy. The largest of the rodents must weigh several pounds.
“Quite extensive, aren't they, these dungeons?” Callin said. “The original owner must have been a very interesting man.”
He laughed. Like the torches, Callin's banter was intended to break his prisoners' spirits. It wouldn't work with Meder,
because the castle's aura had driven him mad. It wouldn't work with Asera, because the procurator's pride and hatred for Callin were too strong.
Sharina was determined that she wouldn't break either, but being surrounded by the dripping black stone was like being buried alive. When the soldiers left, they would take all the light with them … .
The leading torchbearers halted. They'd reached the end of the corridor. There were cells on all three sides of the terminus.
“Put the boy here,” Callin said, kicking the bars of the cell on the right. Like everything else Callin did, “boy” was chosen to demoralize his prisoner; there was truth to the word nonetheless. Though Callin was scarcely thirty himself, he had a worldly sophistication that Meder would never equal.
The barred door was closed. A torchbearer unlocked it with an iron key and pulled it screechingly open. He thrust his torch inside so that the three prisoners could get a good look at their surroundings.
The cell's floor and back wall were seamless, part of the bedrock on which the castle rested. The sidewalls were masonry eighteen inches thick, sawn from the same black basalt as the rest of the castle.
The long bones of a man's forearm hung from a manacle riveted to one wall; a few human teeth lay in the slimy detritus beneath, but the remainder of the skeleton had disappeared. Sharina thought of rodents gnawing at bones. She wondered if the rats waited for prisoners to die before starting to devour them.
Meder looked at Asera with a lopsided grin. “I should have come here sooner,” he said, then giggled again. “It's all so simple when you—”
One of the soldiers holding the wizard cursed in disgust. They hurled him into the cell and banged the door closed.
“Put Mistress Asera across the corridor,” Callin said. His drawling voice was deliberately nonchalant. “That way she and her wizard can look at each other.”
He laughed and went on, “But wait! I forgot that there won't be any light for them to see by! What a pity.”
Sharina caught one soldier grimace at his partner as a third man unlocked the indicated cell with the same key. The men didn't like the commander who'd been sent to them from Valles, though that didn't prevent then from carrying out their orders efficiently.
Asera walked into the cell with her head high and a look of cold disdain on her face. Water pooled in the rough oval pattern a man's feet would wear in dense stone over decades of pacing his cell. Eyes glinted from the shallow pool, then vanished in a swirl of ripples.
The guards closed and locked the door behind her. The hinges were stiff. While the stonework could date—doubtless did date—from the Old Kingdom, iron would have rusted away long since in this dank environment. Bone decayed in even less time. Somebody had been using the castle more recently than Meder believed, though it might not have been any time in the past century.
The guard unlocked the cell facing down the long corridor. It was only six feet square; the floor and walls were covered with a gelatinous slime that glimmered pale yellow in the torchlight.
Callin put a hand on Sharina's shoulder. “I'm afraid the third one's for you, my dear,” he said. “Unless …”
He smiled the way a weasel smiles at a pullet trapped in the henhouse. “You know,” he went on, “I'm sure there can be a better outcome for a sweet girl like you. Why don't you come upstairs with me and we can discuss matters while we have a bite to eat?”
Callin set off briskly down the corridor, still holding Sharina. The soldiers, obviously told what to expect, fell into step at once; the torchbearer who'd been in the rear with Callin now led the procession.
“Have a pleasant night, Asera,” Callin called over his shoulder. “Perhaps I'll send some food down to you tomorrow.”
Sharina kept her back straight and her face set, ignoring the feel of the wet stone beneath her feet. The dungeons smelled of salt and corruption, like a sailor's corpse.
The columns supporting the dungeons' roof seemed to have been cut from the living rock. The flaring torchlight made them appear to writhe in pain.
She wouldn't weep. She wouldn't beg. Nonnus would save her.
They climbed three full rotations of the circular staircase to the hall which in turn led to the apartments Callin had marked out for himself on the castle's ground floor. The walls were the omnipresent basalt, but they'd been covered with tapestries and there were fresh reeds on the floor.
The soldiers lighted oil lamps and tossed their torches onto the massive hearth, igniting the wood already laid there. The wind moaned, but the sky visible through slit windows in one wall was bright with moonlight; the storm had blown over.
“Here, my dear,” Callin said, pulling a cushioned bench closer to the fire. “The men will bring a meal in to us. Cold meats, I'm afraid, but I'll try to do better in the future. I didn't know exactly when you'd be arriving, you see.”
Two soldiers entered carrying a table already laid with cheese, ham, and bread. A third man carried two bottles of wine in one hand and a pair of glasses in the other. They seemed both competent and willing to act as Callin's stewards; surprising after the sudden violence with which they'd burst into the inn.
Sharina seated herself carefully, facing the fire. The couch sloped; it was intended to be used reclining in the style of the royal court and those aristocrats who aped the royal court. Lora had made sure that her daughter was acquainted with court fashions, but Sharina had no intention of attempting to eat lying down now. For one thing, she knew it would please Callin if she did.
The soldiers set the table near the end of the couch. Callin pulled a second couch onto the opposite side and reclined on his left elbow, looking up at Sharina with his usual mocking
grin. He prodded the serving fork into ham and held a slice out to her. “Try a little of this, my dear,” he said. “I think you'll like it. It's a pepper cure from my own estates.”
“Thank you,” Sharina said, but she picked up a wedge of cheese with her fingers and nibbled at it. She was ravenously hungry; it took all her control not to stuff the whole chunk in her mouth and reach for more. “How long have you been waiting here, master?”
Callin chuckled and took a bite of the ham himself. “How we came to meet, my dear,” he said, “is a matter for the past and therefore of no importance. What you and I need to consider is your future. You're a very valuable person—to others. It's important that you not neglect your value to yourself.”
“I'm a lady's maid,” Sharina said. She finished the cheese and reached for one of the large round loaves of bread.
Callin extended a hand to help, then paused when the girl's strong fingers ripped the tough crust without difficulty. He raised an eyebrow and said, “I think we can drop that fiction, my dear. The fact that I was here waiting for you should convince you that I know perfectly well what's going on. Rather better than you do yourself, I'm sure. You're descended from the last great King of the Isles, worthy to be queen yourself. And able to make the right man king.”
The soldier with the wine filled both glasses, placing one on the table near either diner. “I hope you won't spurn the wine also,” Callin said archly. “It's a vintage I'm quite fond of, though I admit that it's none the better for a sea voyage.”
“Thank you,” Sharina repeated; she raised the glass and drank. The wine was sweet and very strong. She didn't care for the taste, but the bread was dry and her mouth was extremely dry.
“You see,” Callin said, “as things stand at present you're merely a pawn. I'm very much afraid that this is as true if you're in the hands of my mistress the queen as it would be if Asera delivered you to the king as she intended. Neither king nor queen would have any compunction about using you or even disposing of you if it suited their convenience.”
There was the faintest hint of irritation in Callin's voice. Sharina took a slice of ham. Her coolness had been having the effect she intended, putting the courtier off-balance although he was in total control of the situation.
“What you need to do is to become a player yourself,” Callin said as Sharina chewed deliberately. “Since you have no power of your own, you need to marry the power of a well-connected aristocrat whose family is very nearly as old as yours. I offer myself, of course.”
He reached for Sharina's hand as she tore off another piece of bread. She turned the loaf slightly to block him.
A flash of anger turned Callin's expression into something real and unpleasant; it then smoothed into cultured neutrality.
“You needn't be concerned that this arrangement will hinder your personal life,” he said in a voice whose edge was just below the surface. “You can have any number and type of lovers you please, as I assure you I will myself.”
Sharina looked directly at the courtier for the first time since they'd returned from the dungeons. “I'd think making love to a mirror would be at best uncomfortable,” she said, “but I can't imagine you caring about anything else. Or anyone else caring about you.”
Callin's face went as blank as a shark's. He caught her left hand; his wrist and fingers had a swordsman's strength. He dragged her toward him. She threw the wine in his face and tried to gouge his eyes out with the glass.
The nearest soldier dropped the bottle and grabbed Sharina's arm. Callin let go and jumped up from the couch, wiping his face with his velvet sleeve. Sharina's couch went over as another soldier seized her left arm.

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