The Last King's Amulet Part 15

My tone of voice, incredulous, accenting the word master, was lost on no one. No patron of the city acknowledged anyone as master. There were no superiors, only equals of one's own cla.s.s. The very idea was shocking, horrifying, and utterly impossible. He couldn't mean it.

But he did.

"Kukran Epthel has opened my eyes to the evil the city represents, taught me the error of my thinking, given me belief in a better way, a new dawn of man that will see the old evil of the city ground into dust and scattered like ashes." The fever in his eyes was that of the convert, his voice rising and falling in cadence of remembered speeches, the hallmarks of the non-thinker, the faith holder, the madman, and I stopped listening. He wasn't going to say anything rational, but that didn't worry me. What frightened me was that he wasn't going to do anything rational either.

Hettar made the mistake of interrupting him. "What are you talking about boy? Did you take a blow to the head?"

Ferrian had been pacing up and down the corridor as he spoke, looking at each of us as he pa.s.sed. He took one long pace and struck the old man a blow with his fist that snapped his head to one side, his neck thumping into the wood of the door. "Like this?" Hettar tried to pull back at once but it was a second blow that sent him from sight. I heard him fall. At the end of the corridor the two barbarians laughed, harshly. "A blow to the head like that, old man? No," he turned back to the rest of his seemingly rapt audience, "it was no blow that opened my eyes but the wise words of a kind and thoughtful man. I see what you are, you greedy, cruel, evil petty men, seeking only your own ends, without thought to the price others pay for your actions. Your slaves outnumber yourselves! Your oppression stretches a thousand miles, beyond even the borders you choose to hold! Seven centuries you have marched where you will, destroyed what you chose, looted with impunity, stolen away men and women and children from their loved ones and d.a.m.ned them to lives of brutal slavery!" He was working himself up into a rage.

"Not all of us keep slaves," I said mildly.

He froze, turned slowly on his heel and came to stand in front of me, eyes bulging, breath heaving. "You!" He spat the word, then took several breaths, calming himself visibly. "You freed a slave, just recently. I remember. It was the talk of the camp. They ridiculed you. Mocked your kindness. They called you weak, said they would never serve such a fool." His voice was raising again.

"I didn't do it for them."

"No. You did it because it was the right thing to do! No man should be a slave to another!"

I nodded. Trying to keep him calm. "What does your master want?"

He turned sharply away. "You will teach him and his acolytes how to use stone. You will teach him how to use magic. And that magic will aid us in bringing down the city and sharing its bounty amongst the oppressed that we will set free!"

He went on, working himself up into a rage again. I glanced around from face to face of my companions, seeing what I felt, what I already knew. They would teach him nothing and we would all die here.

"Pick one!" The guards were getting bored with his diatribe.

"Him!" He stabbed out an arm, ramrod straight, pointing at Gatren.

The young man's eyes widened but he didn't let his fear show more than it must. His face paled and he withdrew his head into his cell, knowing it would make no difference. I didn't envy him. We don't have torture chambers - sorcerers can cast a truth spell at need - but we know what they are.

We remained silent a good while after they had gone.

"Well, on the whole I think that went rather well."

Kerral laughed at my shabby attempt at humor, a couple of the others snorted laughs but couldn't make them stick.

"Hettar! Are you all right?" Larner called out to his fellow battle mage.

"Not good."

"What do you make of it?"

Hettar reappeared at his door, pus.h.i.+ng his head through the hole and turning to look down the corridor at us. The old man's nose was broken and blood covered his face. "He's crazy, one way or another."

"Is he acting do you think?"

Hettar shook his head after a moment's consideration. "No. He's been broken some way. Broken and remade."

"Does anyone know the name Kukran Epthel?"

Lots of shaking heads sticking through doors. I tried not to laugh, wondering if my humor was a hysterical reaction. This wasn't going to go anywhere good for any of us. "I guess the chances of ransom are minimal."

Another laugh from Kerral. "Well, we still have our health."

That got them. "And our sanity," Sheo chipped in, his laughter sounding slightly mad.

The laughter didn't last long. It couldn't.

"I a.s.sume we are all agreed not to tell them anything?" Larner was looking at me.

"I was trying to calm him," I snapped. "Sorry. Look, Meran became a friend. I don't know how that happened exactly but I treated him shabbily for years and he did a good job anyway, looked after me, was always ahead of my needs so I never had to ask for anything. h.e.l.l, I liked him and I wanted to do something for him just in case... Well, this happened." I fell silent and no one commented. It hadn't done him much good, I reflected. No freemen sons or daughters to follow him. "Do you think they killed everyone?"

"I wish they had," Hettar spat.

I nodded agreement. It would be better. My sister would continue the family name; father could still have other sons. Better if I were dead. If I were I wouldn't have to live through what was doubtless to come.

"I'm going to sleep," I said and pulled my head back into my cell.

"Good luck with that." It was Sheo, but I was done laughing for now.

I had my head back through the door. It was better to have company.

"How much does Ferrian know?" Sheo asked the question.

The mages Larner and Hettar exchanged guarded glances.

"How much damage can he do us?" Sheo rephrased the question more insistently. "I'm not asking for your secrets!"

Larner nodded and Hettar answered. "Not as much as we do, by a wide margin. He has ball of fire, the mustard cloud, bolt of lightning, earthquake; plus shock and some other personal offense spells."

"Earthquake?" I asked.

"To bring down walls, localized but can be large if you have enough stone."

I wanted to wave him to silence because I knew what he meant now. Whole cities had been leveled with that spell in the past. I knew it from history and my studies of war.

"Has he enough stone? How many stones do they have?"

Larner and Hettar exchanged glances again. "The largest was ten carats."

"G.o.ds," I swore. "When were you going to use that?"

"I didn't plan to," Hettar said mildly. "I brought it for emergencies. Used it, you may recall."

I didn't. "Well, he has it now. I'm just glad stone isn't c.u.mulative."

Everyone nodded, including Larner and Hettar I was very relieved to note. I hadn't known for sure; just because it's common knowledge doesn't make it true, but if these experienced battle mages believed it that was good enough for me.

"I make it twenty stones, maybe one or two more. I don't know who had multiple stones, but doubtless the healers did," Larner was thoughtful as he spoke. "Not that it matters to us, and we can hardly send a message home."

No one spoke. It was true. I pulled my head back in and went to lie down.

They brought Gatren back a day later. We all heard the bang of the door opening and went to see what it was. Gatren was a b.l.o.o.d.y mess. Unconscious. They threw him into his cell and left, smirking back down the corridor at us and waving before they shut the door.

We all exchanged glances. There was nothing to say.

"We need a healer," Sheo muttered.

"They have one," I said.

"What?!" Hettar protested loudest but he wasn't alone. "How do you know?"

Lentro answered for me. "It's Ormal."

"You knew?"

He nodded. "I woke during the healing, just enough to see his face. He looked dreadful. Terrified. Horrified."

The memory came back to me. The voice I had not known saying 'make him live.' Not let him, or heal him, but make him. I hadn't thought about it, but it made sense now. Control. Whoever said this was all about control. What had Ormal said? I didn't remember, but I had recognized the voice.

It was Ormal.

"I heard his voice. I just remembered. He's with them, for whatever reason."

"I can't imagine..." Lentro trailed off, then withdrew, his usually calm and friendly face looking unbearably sad.

The crash made everyone jump. It came from Kerral's door. He had withdrawn a little while back but we no longer noticed or commented on who we could see, and who only hear. The crash came again. The door opened inward. There was no chance of kicking it open.

I considered trying to persuade him to give it up, but there was no point and h.e.l.l, he might succeed. For the first time I wondered where we were. If he did get out, kill a guard, get keys, let us out...I was fantasizing and knew it but what the h.e.l.l... where were we? Undralt, I guessed. It was a barbarian town long ago, but remodeled in part six hundred years ago when first taken. As it developed, control pa.s.sed back and forth many times. I guessed this part of this building was built with our masons by a barbarian ruler centuries ago. Why Undralt? Simple. We had been dying when brought here. It couldn't be far from where they had taken us.

One crash was followed too closely by another as a door banged open. For a second my heart leapt into my mouth and I moved fast to my door, sticking my head out. I was disappointed.

It was Ferrian and his two thugs.

They came for me and took me away.

They dragged me through a room, along a corridor and into another room where a stout chair was fixed to the floor. Struggling did no good. I'm no figure from mythology, no golden hero of the past. Just one man, strong enough and fit enough but no match for several other strong and fit men, sometimes not even for one. I stamped on one foot and thought I heard bone break. It just made the pain start sooner. I was already bruised and battered before they tied me into the chair. Half a dozen of them. There was no fighting it. When they were done most of them stepped back to the walls, presumably to watch.

"There is no escape," Ferrian said.

"Go to h.e.l.l," I told him calmly.

He stood in front of me. I looked around the room. It was bare apart from a table with tools on it. I didn't like the look of them. There was dried blood.

A slap on the face got my attention. Hard enough to rock my head, hard enough to make my ears ring. "Now that's what I call reasoned argument," I said.

"Just because you freed one slave, doesn't make you a good man. You owned a slave, own slaves."

I tried to shrug. It's the culture I was brought up in. It's the done thing. "Everyone with money owns slaves. You did."

That got me another slap. Same result.

"Every culture has slaves."

"Not in the north."

The north? North of here? What the h.e.l.l was north of here? Beyond the mountains was wasteland. And Battling Plain. Well, the tribes there fought each other tooth and nail over that puddle of fertility and doubtless always had. What made them so virtuous?

"In the north the men are free and virtuous." There he went, reading my mind again.

Good for them, I nearly said. In a way I was feeling detached, free to say what I wanted but not yet letting myself off the leash. They were going to torture me. Him or them, what difference? Doubtless they had broken him this way. Tortured him until he broke, then re-made him as a tool for their own purpose. Now it was my turn but they wouldn't win. I knew about torture; I'd read about everything, even things I didn't want to know about. Torture becomes a race; get the information before the victim dies. I wasn't going to give. I was going to die. My spirit would be free and I would learn what Dubaku meant when he told me that spirits didn't perceive reality as we did.

Then the door opened and Ormal came into the room. He looked frightened, twitching and timid in the presence of those he feared. My heart sank at the sight of him and the reality of the situation came cras.h.i.+ng down on me. They would beat me and heal me and beat me and heal me until I went mad or broke and became what they wanted, a willing tool like Ferrian or an unwilling one like Ormal.

One of the barbarians pointed to a spot behind me and Ormal went there, moving out of my sight.

Ferrian hadn't seemed to notice Ormal enter the room. He had been talking the whole time but I hadn't been paying attention. I tried to catch up lest I miss some salient point in his argument.

"Kukran Epthel is determined to wipe the evil ways of the city from the world and you will help him, willingly or unwillingly."

"Freely or as a slave?"

That tipped him over the edge.

It just didn't get any better after that.

I was expecting them to throw me back in a cell as they had Gatren. They didn't. During one of my lucid moments, just after Ormal had spent a little time healing something that would have killed me, I asked why that was.

"Gatren was reasonable. He agreed to help us."

"So you threw him back in the cells?"

"Kukran Epthel is not a fool, don't delude yourself that you can match him in any way, you worthless piece of dung." Ferrian was taking a break; I didn't have any inclination to be introduced to the scabrous monster who was currently my interrogator. "He will work on their will, subtly weaken their resolve, and he will spy on them until he is a.s.signed another task."

"And me?"

"You will break, one way or another, some time or another, everyone does and everyone is useful to the purpose in some fas.h.i.+on or another. What use will you be?"

"None."