The Visitor (14 page)

W
hen Rashel was dropped off at a street corner in Apocanew, she was either on her way to visit one of her dear, dear friends or she was keeping an appointment with her “Uncle Influence.” She often rehearsed upcoming visits in her mirror, mouthing this invented title with some insouciance, even impudence, the merest gloss of insolence which vanished completely when she approached the visit itself. Pretence stopped at the grilled gate in the blank wall a block or so from the Turnaway government house in Apocanew. Even knocking on the gatepost demanded an effort of will, and it was only with great difficulty that she retained an outward aplomb.

Eventually, and only when the street was totally empty except for herself, a wizened and hairy dwarf responded to the knock by appearing out of a hole in the wall, like a marmot. As always, he looked her up and down as though she were spoiled produce left too long at the market. Whichever one of the dwarfish servitors opened the gate, Issel, Gnang, or Thitch, he always waited for her to pronounce the correct name before unlocking it and holding it just wide enough for her to slip through.

Once admitted, she went through the hole to the flights of stairs and lengths of ill-lit hallway that ended in another gate, this one of iron, with a peephole that opened with a peculiar and mind-wrenching shriek.

“Rashel Deshôll, Thitch,” she said to the eye behind the peephole.

“Known to the Hetman?” asked a sepulchral voice.

“You know I am,” she muttered.

Thitch made the slobbering gargle which passed among the Hetman's servants as a laugh. It was derision, not humor. Neither the Hetman nor his minions found anything funny, though certain very horrid things afforded them amusement, but it was amusement of a gobbling kind, more akin to voracity than to joy.

The stony anteroom was lit by several iron-bracketed torches. Rashel settled herself uncomfortably on a roughly squared stone. The wait was likely to be long, and, as always, she was too vividly reminded of the first times she had come here.

It had happened only a day or two after Roger's accident, when Cora had mentioned an “acquaintance,” Hetman Gone, a person of great influence who was in a position to grant Rashel many benefits—if he took a liking to her and if he offered her a job. If he did both these things, Rashel would receive expensive schooling, the finest clothing. She would be given introductions to this one and that one. Her future would be assured.

How did her mother know this? Ah, well, Cora worked for the Hetman herself, occasionally, and she had gained many benefits from that association.

It had sounded tempting. Rashel had gone with her mother to visit him in his lair by the fire, among his dwarfish assistants: Issel. Thitch. Kravel. Gnang. He had complimented her upon her appearance, her intelligence. He had mentioned the benefits she would receive for serving him, much as her mother had.

“Do you agree?” he had asked.

Rashel, age thirteen, had shrugged. “Yes,” she had said. “Why not?”

“And you, Cora?” the Hetman purred. “Do you agree as well?”

“Yes, Hetman,” she had said, her voice shaking slightly.

All during that first visit, Rashel had noticed that her mother was not herself. She had sat quietly, hands clenched so tightly together that they seemed bloodless. Even her face had been ashen, and it took several days for her to recover her usual appearance and manner. At the time, Rashel had thought her reaction a stupid one, for nothing bad had happened. The place had been strange, and the man had been stranger yet, but nothing had happened.

After that, everything happened as promised: schools, clothing, introductions, and the Hetman didn't even ask for a report on how well she was doing. Not until Val, Dismé's father, was installed in the bottle room.

“We must meet with Hetman Gone,” her mother said, when the installation was complete. Her face was again ashen and her hands trembled when she spoke.

“I don't want to meet with him,” Rashel had said in her most arrogant tone. “I have no reason to meet with him.”

Her mother swallowed, gulping at nothing and having a hard time getting it down. “If you want to go on living, you will need to meet with him. If you want to accomplish all those things you desire, then you will meet with Hetman Gone.”

Rashel hadn't believed it. She had thought it ridiculous, believing the actual visit would prove how silly her mother was being. So, she had returned to that dismal, fire-lit cellar and listened while Cora explained that a second one of the Latimer family had recently died, and this failure of her duty had to be reported to the Hetman.

Rashel had looked up at this. She had never heard of any duty her mother owed the Hetman.

The Hetman reached for an iron-bound box on the table beside him, opened it and took out a journal from which he read a list of all the benefits Rashel had received through his efforts—her schooling, her clothing, certain luxuries with which she had been provided.

She thanked him nicely, assuming that was what was wanted.

He had smiled, and for the first time she had felt afraid, for it was a terrible smile.

“These gifts were not so inconsiderable as to be given for a mere thank you, Rashel. They constitute an indebtedness much larger than that.”

“Then you should collect from her!” she said impassively, pointing at her mother “It was she who arranged it all. I never did.”

“Oh yes, you did,” said the Hetman, in a particular tone that seemed to cut her tongue and freeze her throat. “You said, ‘Yes.' You said, ‘Why not?' You agreed. You owe the debt.”

“Now, Rashel,” her white-faced mother had begged. “Listen to the Hetman.”

“Children are often encumbered by their parents, with chains of one kind or another.” He had smiled his terrible smile. “Even though you are the cause of your mother's breach of her duty, your chains will be relatively light. You will merely visit me here, regularly, either spontaneously or at my invitation. You will merely do, from time to time, what you are told to do. These duties will not be onerous. They will be within your capability.”

“And if I won't?” she had gasped, her anger still riding atop her fear.

The Hetman made his peculiar gargling, slobbering sound. “Then, surprisingly, the school you attend will find it made a mistake in admitting you. People will not want to meet you or work with you. You will find yourself isolated, friendless, and poor, as your mother once was. Soon you will catch the Disease. You will be Chaired. Your life will end.”

“Rashel?” her mother begged in a frantic whisper.

“Oh, all right,” she had gasped as the Hetman had turned away from her to summon his assistants.

What happened after that, Rashel preferred not to remember. At the age of fifteen, she had been dedicated to the Fell, as, evidently, her mother had been before her. The Hetman had insisted upon it. Issel and Thitch had held her mother so she could not interfere, not that her mother tried to interfere, for she merely hung there between them, ice white, with her
eyes shut tight pretending she did not hear Rashel's screams. Kravel and Gnang had held Rashel. Each time Rashel screamed, she promised herself she would not scream again, and each time a new cry was wrung from her until her throat was as raw as the parts the Fell concentrated upon as he had his horrible way with her, his excruciating and dreadful way that left her bleeding and bruised and terrified. The Fell had teeth where no other creature had teeth. The Fell had poison that did not kill but only excruciated. No one had ever…ever before done…anything like that to her. Scarcely conscious, barely able to walk, she had been taken home.

Outwardly, she had healed, without scars. Inwardly, she quivered with remembrance. Since that time she had been punctilious in meeting the Hetman's expectations. Since that time, she had come here, as he ordered, regularly.

The iron door across the anteroom screeched open on rusted hinges, and the dwarfish form of the particular creature called Gnang leaned through the opening. “Are you expected?”

“I believe he knows I'm coming,” she said. He always knew when she was coming, whether or not she herself had known it before she actually approached the gate.

The dwarf stood back, allowing her to enter Hetman Gone's home, or perhaps his office, or perhaps only a place in which he transacted business from time to time. The only parts of it she had ever seen were the lengthy hallways she had just traversed and this single overheated room where he waited.

As always, he was seated in a large chair before an open fire with his back to the door. The fire gave the room's only light as well as its excessive heat, though Rashel did not remark upon this. As had been pointed out to her on a previous occasion, the fire was not there for her convenience or comfort. She circled the chair to come into his view, bowing slightly.

“So, you've come visiting.” Gone's expressionless voice was belied by the intent gaze of half-lidded eyes that glowed redly in the firelight. Despite the ruddiness of the fire-glow,
Rashel believed his flesh was rather gray, a hue she detected where the sides of his face and neck curved into shadow. Dark, stiff hair rose from a point almost between his brows and ran back along the center of his head in a bushy crest. His long, thick fingers bore several heavy rings set with worn intaglios, and he habitually fondled a dagger that ticked and tinged on the rings as he juggled with it. She had always seen him seated, and each time she saw him she was surprised anew that from hip to crown he did not appear to be much taller than she.

“I am astonished,” he mused in an unsurprised tone. “I hear your husband may have acquired the Disease.”

She remained silent, head bowed. It was not wise to comment to this person, and a bad idea, as she had to remind herself after the fact, to argue.

“So soon after his father vanished, too? Remarkable how it runs in the family. You, of course, have nothing to do with it.”

“I do not know that my husband has the Disease. No one has suggested it,” she murmured. “But it takes those whom it will.”

“I am sure he has it. I am certain someone will soon suggest it…”

She flushed.

“And how is our little golden bird?” the Hetman asked.

“Less full of song than formerly.”

“I'm sure you thank the Fell for that.”

She swallowed deeply but could not keep from sounding strangled. “Of course, yes, I thank the Fell.”

He made the sound, one peculiar to him. More like a gulp, she thought, than anything else, but not exactly that. More like a stone falling far down into a well, with echoes.

“I can remember a time when you didn't appreciate the Fell,” he said, making another of his sounds, this one a counterfeit chuckle: metallic, mechanical, the rattling of a metal door or the sound of a cage shut up,
guh-khrang, guh-khrang, guh-khrang
. “Well, most of his brides don't appreciate him immediately. His ardor can be…agonizing. And
then too, you were upset with your mother for bringing you to the Fell, and to me.”

Rashel fumbled for words. She couldn't lie. The dedication to the Fell had been a ritualized violation, repeated so often by its practitioners that they had acquired a dreadful proficiency at it. The wounds still hurt, some would never heal, and the Hetman knew it.

Still, she did not dare tell the whole truth, the depth of her revulsion, her formless, furious intention to escape the Fell at some time, in some place. She temporized. “It was just that I felt annoyed she had not asked me first.”

“Well, I'm sure you worked it out in time. And what of Ayward?”

She allowed herself a lifted lip. “He teaches. He writes. He collects.”

“Boring for you, no doubt. And our little bird still hops and chirps? Wouldn't she be better in a smaller cage?”

“She hops. She doesn't chirp. As you once told me, Faience is a cage, and she is in it. The place is so isolated she's no trouble, now that she's given up talking all the time.”

Hetman Gone showed his teeth. This was not an expression of pleasure but a voracious gape, accompanied by the lollop of a large, gray tongue. “I can understand why you would think so.”

“Because it is so,” she said, unwisely.

“No,” he whispered, like a hot wind, like a furnace, the word drying her skin, her mouth, her eyes. “Not because it is so but because you enjoy your career, you enjoy the power it gives you over people, those who have magic in their hearts for you to destroy. You like that destruction. You enjoy pushing your authority down the girl's throat, like corn down a goose, every chance you get. It's fun, torturing her. It amuses you, seeing her and Ayward together, both of them impotent to love or be loved. You think it a diversion, heh? Entertaining and tasty to see her grieve over the old man, and the younger one. That's why you let her have her small freedoms, as an angler does a fish. The fisherman calls
it play, as you do, but we know how the fish is tortured as it tries to escape the line.”

As usual, she had overstepped. As usual, he had brought her back to her boundaries. “Having her there instead of locked up somewhere just makes it simpler, that's all,” she murmured.

The Hetman smiled more widely, a terrible sight, from which Rashel averted her eyes. “Where did Arnole Gazane go?” he asked, almost offhandedly.

“I don't know,” she answered, genuinely surprised.

“You're sure you had nothing to do with his disappearance?”

“Nothing.” She raised her head and dared give him stare for stare. “I would hardly have compromised myself in that way. It did not further my reputation. In fact, it made some trouble with the Regime that I'm just now overcoming.”

“Through your dear, dear friends.”

She flushed, the heat of it lost in the greater heat of the fire. “Yes. Through my friends.”

“Thank the Fell for the…skills you have learned that make you so alluring,” he said. “And your new project? The artifact under the Fortress?”