The Golden Sword (32 page)

“Estri,” he whispered, “help me.” Sereth, Lalen, and Chayin removed their masks.

“I will do what I can,” I said softly, leaning forward. I saw Sereth turn his face away, to hide the smile upon it. “Obey them, and perhaps you will live.”

“Sit up,” Chayin said again, and this time his tone was not gentle.

As Dellin struggled to get his legs under him, Lalen leaned down from behind and twisted his fingers in Dellin’s black hair, pulling him savagely up upon his knees. Sereth knelt behind him and looped the leather around each ankle in turn, threading it, before he tied the ends together, between the manacles’ middle link. Dellin sat upon his heels, most effectively restrained.

“Let him go,” Sereth commanded, and Lalen released his grip in the Liaison’s hair.

Sereth walked around his prisoner once, slowly. His arm flashed down twice, ripping first tunic, then breech from him. The sound of the material tearing was loud in the silence. Dellin, naked, trembled visibly. Sereth stared at him, hands upon his hips.

“What do you want from me?” Dellin begged.

“Some answers. If they suit me, then I might allow you to serve me. If your service pleases me, we will see about the rest,” Sereth said, very low.

“Anything,” the Liaison First whimpered. “Estri, tell them. You know me. I will do anything!” He pleaded. I said nothing. It is discomforting to me to see a man grovel.

Chayin laughed his harshest laugh. Lalen squatted down where Dellin could see him, crossing his massive arms. Sereth took out his knife and cleaned his nails.

“Sereth, please!” His eyes were desperate. “I did not mean—”

“Who were those men? Where were you bound?” Chayin snapped.

“Gerin and Faer, of the hostel. They ... stay with me. We were going to dinner, with Celendra, in the Well.” The words tumbled from his mouth, so anxious was he to please. I wondered how I could have ever felt anything for him.

Sereth nodded.

“You will call Celendra. Tell her that you and your boys”—his voice snapped like a huija—“have been detained.” Dellin bobbled his head in acquiescence. The sweat ran in streams down his corded neck.

“What could keep the three of you here, inaccessible, for a set’s time?” he demanded.

“I do not know,” said Dellin, after a silence, fearfully.

“Think of something,” Chayin advised, shifting his dark bulk enough to draw his gol-knife, “or I will feed you your own eyeballs, one at a time. If by then you have no answer, I might find more work for my blade. There are many parts of a man that may be removed.” He eyed Dellin’s maleness suggestively.

The color drained from Dellin’s face. He called upon the gods of his mother, just before Lalen’s blow bent him double, gasping. I saw the tears in his eyes, turned my head away.

“Have you a thought?” queried Chayin.

Dellin had a thought.

“Contagion,” he moaned. “Sometimes ... hot experimental medicines ... come through here ... I could call her, tell her that. Tell her we are ill, and must stay isolated until the keep cleans itself and the sickness passes out of us.”

Chayin got up upon one knee and took Dellin by the hair. Lalen, behind, held him steady as he writhed in terror. Sereth merely watched, until the touch of Chayin’s gol-knife upon the Liaison’s cheek tore a scream of terror from his throat.

“Hold,” said Sereth. “I cannot believe,” he said softly, “that such as you can wear the black chain.” And with that he bent and cut from Dellin the Slayer’s chain, and threw it across the room. Dellin, held immobile, could only tremble.

“I will not free your hands. Call her. And take care she suspects nothing.”

I saw cunning flicker upon Dellin’s face.

“You must do it from the desk communicator, else she will see us also,” I said, and his feral look was replaced by hopelessness.

Lalen unbound Dellin’s feet, and pushed him, stumbling, to the steel and sueded chair behind the wistwa desk. There he rebound the Liaison’s feet to the chair’s legs.

Sereth motioned to me, and I readied the small-screened desk communicator. Dellin had to give me the call codes; when I ruled in Astria, there was not one machine in the Well.

I motioned the men back from him, that they not be caught in the wide-angle viewer. Facing Dellin, behind the desk, I leaned over and punched up Well Astria. As I did so, my queasy stomach was settled by the hatred rising in me. Call codes for Astria, had they? Not for long!

I jerked my hand back, out of sight, as the red light upon the tiny console came on.

“Celendra!” snapped Dellin, his face anguished, to someone we could not see from behind the screen.

And then I heard her voice, soft velvet, as I had remembered it. In my mind I could see her, dusk upon midnight, imposing. She was not pleased at Dellin’s message. Her voice grew petulant, and she demanded to know what ailed him, and how he dared, with his clumsiness, interfere with her plans. For a moment I thought she might sense us. Sereth raised his eyes from nails, and his gol-knife to a ready position. Dellin found art enough in him to placate her. His obsequiousness sickened me. Finally, with a vengeful curse upon his manhood, Celendra broke the link from where she sat in Astria.

I let out the breath I had been holding and slapped the off switch.

Chayin chuckled in satisfaction. Even Sereth smiled. Dellin did not, but slumped in the chair, despondent.

“What,” asked Chayin, throwing one leg over the desk, “did she mean when she asked you if her will had been done?”

Slowly, miserably, Dellin raised his head. His face was contorted. He licked his lips.

“If I tell you that, you will surely kill me,” he rasped.

“It iss not a question,” explained Chayin patiently, “of whether or not we kill you. If I were you, I would crave death. It is merely a matter of how long it will take you to die.” And he leaned forward until he peered into Dellin’s face. “In Nemar, we can keep a man alive a long time. Be assured that you will tell us everything. In fact, you will beg to do so. When you have left no eyes with which to see, no tongue with which to speak, no fingers with which to hold a writing instrument, you will take that instrument in your teeth, to write for us that which we would know. If you still have mind by that time. Do not doubt me, M’ksakkan, I have had a great deal of practice.”

Dellin closed his gray eyes, and his lips moved silently. I turned away from the sight of him, my own hands trembling as I put them to my head to cover my ears.

Sereth watched me coldly. His lips twitched, and he held out his hand to me. I took it in my icy, sweat-drenched grip, and leaned faint against him.

“Perhaps,” he said in my ear, “you are not as fierce as you thought.”

“Let me go and shower.”

“No.” His tone let me know appeal was useless. I put my cheek against his shoulder.

“It is one thing,” I whispered, “to kill
an
enemy. Have pity. I once couched him. I cannot stand and watch this!”

“Would you rather help? It would give you something to do.”

I turned and ran from him, from Chayin and Lalen and Dellin, whom I once loved. I ran, and the doors made way for me. Into my old keep I stumbled, and through it, until I stood shaking behind the washroom door. Only Sereth’s laughter had followed me. I sank down upon the cool tiles, sickened.

When I could, I got up from the floor and stripped. Then I let the hot needle spray calm me, leaning against the shower wall a long time.

Dripping puddles upon the tile, I combed the snarls from my hair very slowly, seeking the simple, thoughtless labor of working the strands free, one by one. It hung smooth and snarlless over my hips, raining drops upon my thighs, when Chayin at last came to fetch me.

The door slid aside, obedient to his identity, Dark and savage he seemed, framed against that room full of star things. It came to me, looking at him, that he was doubtless capable of doing just what he had threatened to Dellin, or to any who opposed him. He had grown strong since I lifted his affliction from him. It had been so simple. He scrutinized me slowly, leaning in the doorway.

I put down the comb, dressing wordlessly, turning away on the pretext of applying salve to my self-inflicted wound. Chayin, cruel, powerful, crouched upon the moment in my sensing. He would take what he could, when his time was right. He caught me there, searching the source of his strength. I withdrew as he moved toward me; backed away until I could back no farther. The wind from the abyss pebbled my skin.

“I did not know you had that skill.” My voice trembled. He pressed me back against the wall.

“What were you seeking?” He ran his hands down my face, touching my throat.

“Is he dead?” I asked faintly.

“Not yet. He is less a coward than he first appeared. Sereth wants you there; he feels your presence might aid us. But that is not what you sought in me.” His hands closed about my throat, I found it necessary to raise my head. His thumb pressed painfully into the hollow below my ear.

“If you ask, I might tell you. Do not seek me that way again.”

I gasped his name. His grip loosened. The membranes snapped once, back and forth, across his dark eyes.

I did not ask. I did not have to. The veil served him; he saw and was not afraid.

“Sereth wants me there,” I reminded him, He smiled, mirthless kill-smile.

“He will wait this little while longer.” I serviced him while he leaned back against the wall, silent. It was a thing of moments, of a man’s simple use of that which is available to him.

I shivered, upon the tiles, and shook out my hair, which still dripped. He arranged himself in his breech, regarding me oddly.

“Have you read much in the ors?” The uritheria glared at me, golden, hostile.

“Only that little, while we were in the undertunnels,” I replied.

“You should read it.” He crossed his arms, and the tattoos upon them slithered.

“What did Dellin tell you?”

“Not what we wanted to know. Yet.” And he pushed himself from the wall, turned, and strode down the hall, without waiting to see if I would follow.

I ran and caught him. He gave me
a
sidelong glance. The whites of his eyes gleamed.

“Chayin ...” I touched his arm, that which bore the winged slitsa wound around a Parset blade. “Let me have your pouch.”

“He does not want you to have it. He is right. You grow dependent.”

“You use it!” I flared.

“I know how to judge its use! I said no, once ...” He stopped. We were before M’lennin’s quarters, where Sereth held the Liaison First.

“This is no arbitrary decision upon my part,” he said. “You strain your body with your mind’s demands as it is. Can you not get the help you need from the helsar’s teachings, from your own hesting?”

“There is no one truth, no one hesting. A number of powerful minds have invested in the point of time we approach. I am surely not the strongest. The strain upon the moment is fantastic, the result, to me, unknowable. I doubt if any know it. Even Estrazi, who made this whole world, cannot foresee everything that occurs upon it.”

“The ors knows,” he said positively.

“Does it know whether or not I will live? I see only so far, and then there is nothing.” And I spoke my fear for the first time aloud.

It knows,” he said “But perhaps it is kinder if your mind holds certain things from you. You will not die in this battle.” And he pushed me toward the door, which opened obediently.

I saw Dellin.

He was slumped over, still secured to the chair, which the men had moved back from the desk. There was no blood upon him; he was unconscious. Sereth lounged upon the wistwa desktop, one leg thrown over its creamy expanse. He twisted around as we entered, and again I was struck by the animal ease of him.

“It took you long enough,” he said “Come here!” I went to him, and he put his hands upon my arms.

“Perhaps you can get him to tell you what he will not tell us.”

“Let him be. All that is left to any of us is to do what the time demands. Celendra can get no help against what will be, any more than you or I.”

“You cannot know that.” Sereth’s grip tightened upon me. “I cannot make decisions on the basis of riddles. Do what I say!”

Anger rose in me, born of Chayin’s offhand use, slapped into life by Sereth’s contempt. “I will, but it is time wasted. You have done enough to him. He cannot harm you; what he knows cannot harm you. Whatever seeds he and Celendra have planted will not bear fruit.”

“I must know what Celendra meant, and why he keeps back that knowledge from us.”

“Have Chayin ask the ors. Either you believe me, or you do not. In the end, it will be the same.” And I jerked my arms from his grasp and went to DeIlin.

I took his black-haired head in my hands and lifted the deadweight of it. He breathed unevenly. Kneeling, I brought his face, slippery with sweat, close to mine. I could see the swelling and darkening of their work upon him.

“Dellin,” I called him softly. Then again. I could feel him give up his pretense, his refuge. He opened his eyes, and I saw suddenly the trapped animal, who would gnaw its own leg off if it could. But even that had been denied him. It took some time for him to know me.

His eyes focused, and his swollen lips moved, I asked for water, and Sereth sent Lalen, all this time squatting in the corner, to fetch it. When he had done so, I gave him drink. He winced. There was a lot of blood in his mouth, and more when he coughed.

He squinted at me, as if from some great distance. “What is it?” I whispered to him. “Tell me. I will not let them hurt you again.” I wondered if he knew that they would not have to hurt him again. I brushed my hand over his neck, up against his ears, and found my fingers, when they came away, dark with his blood. Then I knew that he did know. He was loath to die here upon Silistra, so far from all he loved. And I saw us as he did, barbarians all. What brought an ache inside me was his confusion. He did not understand. And he wanted desperately to understand for what he was dying. I had, for him, no answer.

“Estri,” he mumbled through his broken mouth, “help me. I hurt.” A spasm of coughing wracked him. I closed my eyes and held his head against my breast, and his injuries came clear to my sensing. Without thought, I sent what I could of strength and healing to him; what small skills I had did their work. I demanded more.