Springwar (56 page)

Eddyn blinked in startled confusion, but by then the man had grabbed him and flung him to the floor. A foot slammed down on his chest, driving the air from his lungs. A sword sliced the gloom to lodge at his throat. Torchlight in the arcade outside lit the man from the back, obscuring his features. But the gold on his armor and the insignia on his surcoat were unmistakable.

“You will tell me how he did it, and you will tell me now!” Barrax of Ixti roared. The sword dug into Eddyn’s flesh just above his sternum. A flick of Barrax’s wrist, and any number of unpleasant things could happen.

“How who did what?” Eddyn choked, as panic burned away lethargy. He thought briefly of fighting back, on the theory that, while he would surely die, he might at least
harm Barrax in the process. But then Barrax barked something in Ixtian, and four more men strode into the room. One promptly grabbed Eddyn’s feet, while two others neatly prisoned his arms, giving the king a chance to back away. But Barrax was still furious.

“You will tell me,” Barrax raged, wrenching off his helm, “how someone in Eron managed to call down lightning on my army!”

Eddyn’s heart leapt. Maybe Eron
had
won. But then what was Barrax doing here? And what was this business about lightning? He knew nothing about such things.

“It was one of those gems, wasn’t it?” Barrax snapped. “It had to be. I knew there was more to them than communication. How many of those things does your King have, anyway? Does he have a mine full of them? Does he—?”

“He had lookouts posted,” a calmer voice inserted. “They gave the word about the flanking—”

“Silence, or I’ll have your tongue!” Barrax flared, rounding on the speaker. “I know something alerted them sooner than I’d hoped. But that isn’t the issue here.” He turned back to Eddyn, eyes glittering in the torchlight.
Mad eyes
, Eddyn thought. Not the eyes of a rational man. This man would do anything. From anger or from fear, he couldn’t say.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Eddyn managed. “Give me imphor if you don’t believe me. What you saw—I don’t know what it was, or how it was done. None of my kinsmen can call down lightning.” Which was probably a foolish thing to tell a frightened man. But Eddyn was frightened, too, and had no mind for lying.

“It wasn’t exactly lightning,” one of the others dared. “There were no clouds, and it … it was like a flare of fire in the air. It knocked men down beneath it. Some died of—”

“I
know
how they died!” Barrax shouted. “What I want to know is how I can do that in turn. Or how to defend against it. This man here—!”

“I know nothing!”

“You know something! You have to! You and your scholars and your artists. There’s no way you could
not
know.”

Eddyn had no reply.

“Bring imphor,” Barrax spat. Then paused. “No, wait. Imphor brings pleasure, too. This man is better broken by pain.”

Eddyn felt that awful twitch in his groin that spoke of fear unalloyed.

“Cut off something,” Barrax rasped. “I don’t care what. But something he can see. Something small, but painful. I don’t want him bleeding to death, but I don’t want him treated.”

“A finger? A toe? A … testicle? His manhood. Or maybe just part of it?”

“From what I’ve heard, he deserves to lose it,” Barrax laughed. “But no, make it … a finger. A joint of a finger. For my son. He’s a craftsman; that will pain him more than anything else he can lose.”

Another chill. And then somewhere Eddyn couldn’t see, the man who held his left hand against the floor began to fumble at his fingers.

“I’ll do it,” the king snapped. Eddyn closed his eyes, but he heard the rasp of the king’s geen-claw dagger clearing its sheath. And he felt the touch of the blade.

The pain washed all that away—that and a hatred that transcended hate.

Eddyn saw the finger, held dripping in Barrax’s hands, but he didn’t bother to notice whether the king had it with him when he departed. Probably because he’d heard his last words to the guards upon leaving. “I don’t care if you’ve had a man before or not. I want every one of you to rape him. Over and over. Until you’re all dry of seed.”

“I
don’t
know what you want!” Eddyn screamed, to the no-longer-silent night. And then someone dragged a gag across his mouth, and tied his arms to the bedposts. And that single strip of fabric drank up an entirely different kind of screaming.

The agony in his finger was a distraction he found he needed.

If drugs wouldn’t succeed in breaking the Eronese lad’s infernal silence, and if pain didn’t produce prompt results, either, perhaps humiliation might do the trick, Barrax concluded, as he strode away from the prison and toward his quarters. He had the victory—the plain above South Gorge, anyway, with the Gorge itself, and Tir-Vonees to collect at leisure. His forces were ranged just below the heights of Eron’s Belt—those that had constituted his main strength, anyway. The rest … Gynn would not be sleeping well tonight, because Barrax had made sure that word got out that the ships that had sailed up the Ri-Ormill weren’t the only ones he’d captured at Half Gorge, that another fleet even now sailed for the Ri-Eron. It wasn’t true, but Gynn didn’t need to know that. A man fighting imaginary foes was a man with an unquiet mind.

Meanwhile, he had other things to do.

Like master that infernal gem. He’d had enough of caution. Enough of trying to learn how to use it the scholar’s way. He was a warrior—as he was beginning to discover—and by the Gods, he would master it as a warrior should—by force!

Not only that, he’d do it tonight, while his army celebrated their victory across a hundred shots of Eron. Sure, they’d miss him for a while, or his commanders would, but the double ration of ale he’d granted the former would take care of them, and the latter were accustomed to his caprices. He was king after all. It was their duty to wait for him. When he appeared, he would be the gem’s master.

He’d reached his headquarters by then—a tent, though he could’ve stayed in the much more spacious, substantial, and potentially luxurious quarters that had belonged to the cloister warden before this place had been abandoned. Two guards stood sentry outside, trying not to look as though they’d be happier reveling with their brothers a hundred shots to the north. He wasn’t the only one here, however; Lynnz’s adjoining tent likewise blazed with light. Perhaps his brother-in-law felt the same anxiety he did—that today was not a victory but bait for a trap. This invasion had all been too easy.

Even the fall of War-Hold.

And curse the woman, Merryn, for her escape. He’d have Eddyn raped for that, too—just in case.

By the time he’d reached the middle chamber, he’d doffed his helm and gauntlets. The surcoat followed, with the mail hauberk. But then he could wait no longer. Reaching for the pouch inside his tunic where the gem always resided, he drew it out, and rolled the stone onto a table.

“I
will
master you,” he growled. And snatched it up.

He almost dropped it again, so fierce was the dislike that pulsed from it, like a small animal caught, and fighting for escape. But this small animal had teeth—maybe even poison. He closed his eyes, trying to fight it in his mind—he could feel his will pushing at something, which scared him beyond reason. Minds weren’t meant to do such things. Man had mind, a body, a soul—and that was it. But the mind controlled the body; it was not a thing apart, to do battle on its own.

Yet he was doing that.

Which gave him hope, for how did one master something? By force of body, or of will. And so he wished at the gem. Wished very hard, wished that it would answer him, that it would do what he desired. And while he did that wishing, another part of his mind was haunted by what he’d seen today: a blossom of fire taking form in the sky and smashing down like an invisible hand, flattening men where they stood for a dozen paces around. Killing those in the center. Pounding their bones to pulp.

That was what he wanted—for his enemies.

He squeezed harder.

Wished harder.

A blister he’d barely noticed broke in the palm of his hand. He felt the pain almost like pleasure. A wash of fluid followed.

The gem awoke in truth at that.

Which told him something.

He wanted—

No, the
gem
wanted: A pulse of raw hatred flowed into his hand from that shard of what should be inert stone. Up
his arm, into his shoulder, into his throat. And there that force split, and one half went to his brain, while the other half went to his heart.

And clamped down.

It fought as the gem had fought, but this time the small trapped animal was the organ that drove his blood. It fought like a cornered geen, like a birkit queen defending her cubs.

It lost.

His mind outlived his heart by a dozen breaths. And then, like stars winking out, it, too, started dying. The last thing he knew as a conscious entity was what sounded like a million souls—or a million grains of sand—every one laughing.

Lord Lynnz, Warlord of Ixti and chief of torturers, was getting very impatient. The king should’ve summoned him by now, to assess the day’s victory, to toast it afterward, and then to join the soldiers in the celebration they would be expecting.

Not that such things were Barrax’s style; he was a known recluse. Still, he’d made no mention of wanting to be alone tonight, though it didn’t surprise Lynnz, as angry as Barrax had been when he’d left the battlefield. Left Lynnz in charge of it, in fact, responsible for securing lines and seeing that the fronts were manned and guarded. After the day’s events, there was no certainty the cursed Eronese wouldn’t call the sun back to the sky to smite them in the dark.

Which was probably why Barrax had ridden half the night to return here, and was now in his tent, sulking.

Which, Lynnz reckoned, he’d indulged long enough.

A pause to finish the wine he’d been drinking while studying the revised charts they’d acquired that day from an abandoned villa in the near end of the gorge, and he started out of his tent. This would be an informal meeting and shouldn’t take long—not as long as the one he’d have afterward, at any rate, during which he’d have to brief his subcommanders, review charts and supply lists, and generally do those things it really took to win a war. The things one
did when one didn’t have the dubious added distraction of being king. Probably the men—whoever was left in camp—would be wanting to see flash, glitter, and royal panoply, and so he paused in the outer room to don his cloak, helm, and sword. Thus attired, he stalked into the night.

“Is the king within?” he asked the closest soldier, as he reached the outer entrance.

The man nodded solemnly. “He is.”

“For how long?”

“He’s been there—” the man paused uneasily “—for some time. He went to see the prisoner Eddyn, and returned very angry.”

“No surprise,” Lynnz muttered. Nor was it. The man was a thorn in Barrax’s side. Someone who lived because he knew too much to be killed. But perhaps it was time Barrax reconsidered.

Which probably meant the king
was
sulking. Lynnz started past the guard. The man hesitated, then thrust his spear ahead of the commander to block his way. Lynnz smiled warning, and pushed the shaft gently aside. “The king has these moods; you should know that. But I think he’ll see me.”

The man exchanged glances with his companion, who looked younger. “It’s you who’ll suffer if you interrupt,” he dared.

Lynnz thought of killing him right there. Instead, he marched straight down the short entry passage, through the common room, and into Barrax’s private quarters, where the light was strongest.

“Your Majesty,” he began, even as he dipped his head in the obligatory courtesy bow upon entering. He’d glimpsed the king but briefly, a dark shape behind his table. Lynnz’s eyes scanned the rich carpet.

Your Majesty,” he began again, eyes not moving. “I apologize for this intrusion.”

Silence.

He looked up, angry. Tired of indulging monarchs who ought to know what was expected of a king who would also be a soldier.

The king looked back at him, unmoving. Staring.

Gape-mouthed.

Not moving.

Not breathing.

Dead
.

“Dead,” Lynnz whispered, not believing.

And then he was acting. A quick inspection told the tale. It was that infernal gem. He should’ve known. Should’ve read the signs of the king’s growing obsession with what Lynnz mostly considered a conjurer’s trinket, its reported powers a dream conjured by Kraxxi and Merryn during a night of lust.

Yet he was still wary enough not to touch the thing directly. Drawing on his thick war gloves, he removed the stone from Barrax’s clenched fist and replaced it in its pouch, which he then, on impulse, stored inside his tunic.

And then it struck him like a blow.
The king was dead!
On the night of his first victory, the king was dead. The armies were half a world from home, and the king was dead. Which meant …

Well, it meant that Kraxxi was king—legally. Sentence of death or no, he was still Barrax’s heir. But that was an impossible situation, and frankly not one he was equipped to reckon with at the moment. Not on the eve of a crucial battle.
That
was the important thing. Never again would they have so good a chance to subdue Eron. And he would certainly not be the man who threw that chance away.