Dragon Blood-Hurog 2 (11 page)

didn't answer her. She lived on the hill of Menogue in the ruins of Aethervon's temples outside the city of

Estian. She could not be in the Asylum.

Closing my eyes, I waited for her to go away. After a moment I heard the bowl they'd given me skitter across the floor as she inspected it.

"Good lad, you didn't eat tonight," she said. "Garranon said he thought you were drugged rather than magicked, and that's harder to combat."

It was the water that was dangerous; I felt very clever for knowing that much. I had sweated a great deal

earlier and now my thirst was great—but I knew the water had held as much danger for me as the wizard. I held a straw in my mouth and that had helped keep my mouth moist, but it wasn't working well

anymore.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"Wardwick," she coaxed (I could tell by the change in her voice that she was coming closer), "look at me, lad. You know me."

I pulled my eyes reluctantly away from the wall, and stared into the face of the beast. She was as large as a small northern bear, and her head looked ursine, except for the large golden eyes that were more suited to a tiger. Her thick fur covered a body that was not as bulky as a bear's nor as lithe as one of the big cats'. Her tail curled around her front paws and she purred when my eyes met hers. I thought the sound might have been meant to be reassuring.

The air suddenly felt clearer, like my thoughts, but I knew it was a continuation of my delusions, because

the guardian of the ruins of Menogue had no business in my cell.

I sat up straighter and brushed straw off my shoulders, to give myself time to think. The movement exacerbated the remnant pain that lingered after Jade Eye's rage.

"Leave me," I said. The last time I'd met her, her god, Aethervon, had taken over my sister's body and tormented Oreg. No one hurt my people if I could help it.

"Hold your anger," she said. "I come as a favor for a friend. Garranon was worried about you. He asked me to see you if I could. So I took his request to Aethervon. My master has been interested in you since he awoke to your presence when you visited His temple at Menogue."

"Go away," I said again. Aethervon could hang for all I cared. He had used my sister without her consent and hurt my friend. Granted, the Tamerlain had little part in either—but I despised her master.

"I can help you," she said.

I gave a short laugh and tried to hide how much even such a slight movement hurt.

"You tell me Garranon is your friend," I said.

"Garranon is my friend," she agreed.

I stared at her and she met my gaze steadily. I hadn't really considered the Tamerlain as anything except a servant of a weakened, treacherous god. That Garranon was a friend of the Tamerlain was beyond belief. Had he had such a powerful ally, surely she would have shown herself sooner—saving his brother,

destroying his enemies. Something. If my life had been hard at the hands of my father, Garranon's had been worse.

"How long have you been friends?" I asked.

My disbelief stung and she jerked her chin up, a low growl in her throat. "He has been mine since he came here to Estian, a child, alone and afraid. He saw me—as no one from that place has ever seen me—and he feared me not. Since that night when he slept curled against me, a child even by your short-lived reckoning, he has been my friend."

I believed her suddenly, but it didn't improve my opinion of her. "A friend who watched as the king raped a child."

"It was never rape, that happened before he was here. The king used herbs … magic." Even in her
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
inhuman face I could read anguish. She'd known that herbs and magic don't mean it wasn't rape. While we'd talked, the last of Jade Eye's drugs had left me. Without their aid, my terror of the Asylum, my claustrophobic anger at my inability to fight back effectively against Jade Eyes had been growing in my belly. The addition of bone-deep anger at the pain of a child—for all that he was now an adult well able to take care of himself loosed the ties on my spiteful tongue.

"And now I'm supposed to allow you to help me?" I asked.

She shot to her feet as if I'd hit her, and for an instant the rage in her eyes made me think my worries about my current situation would be over even sooner than I'd believed possible—though I'd been hoping for Oreg rather than death.

She snarled soundlessly, then stalked away from me. Facing the wall she said, "You know
nothing
about it. I was constrained, as was my master. I had to watch and do nothing." The tension left her in a rush and

when she turned back to me, there was only sorrow in her eyes.

"So much damage had been done to the fabric of this world, it was all my master could do to hold it together. Do you think He wanted to let His temple fall to foreign armies He could have destroyed with a

touch? But even so much might have been enough to burst the dam built to keep humankind alive. He … I couldn't even save one child."

I had been ashamed of my words almost as I'd said them. "I'm sorry," I said.

"So am I," she whispered, but I don't think she was talking about the past few minutes. She sighed and shook herself like a wet dog. " 'Tis done now. Know you this, though: I was not the only

one chafed by the little we could do. Aethervon was constricted to giving visions and hoping that they allowed the humans to whom He gave them to make better choices. Then you came to Menogue."

"He gave me back my magic," I said.

"He saw in you the chance to mend one of the greatest rifts—so He did what He could to help you," she replied. "When you cleansed the land of the great evil done at Hurog, you released some of the constraints He has to work through. There are monks now at Menogue for the first time in centuries. Through me he can do a little more to help you."

"I thought Aethervon vowed to support the Tallven kings," I said. "It was a Tallven king who put me in here."

"He has sworn to serve the Tallvens, in so much as a god serves man," she agreed. "It is only that He chooses which Tallven to serve."

I let one eyebrow creep up. "Aethervon supports Alizon?"

She veiled her eyes with pleasure and purred. "It pleases me, this turn of events. Oh, not you here like this—but that Aethervon stirs Himself against that one, that one who hurts my Garranon. Oh, yes, that pleases me. If it were allowed I would tear the flesh from his bones and leave him to rot … " Her tail twitched like a hunting cat's. Deliberately she stilled it and wrapped it around her front feet.

"But

that may come in time. The gods still must leave it to humans to determine their own fate. You might bear

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
it in mind that Aethervon will be inclined to grant favors if He is properly petitioned." She purred.

"Garranon, my friend, asked me to see you, and I will tell him how I find you. But it pleases Aethervon for me to help you as well.

"The king is waiting for your relatives to come so he can present you and them to his court," she said.

"Word has come from Iftahar that your uncle is at Hurog. It will take them time to travel here. When you

stand before them, I will take their poison from your flesh—so much I can do. It is for you to keep them

from destroying you until then."

She left. Just vanished, and I thought I might have imagined her except that my thoughts remained clear.

So, I thought. The Tamerlain means to help me.

The king would see me broken. He wanted a madman to present to his court. This was more than just a power game between the king and my uncle, more than a simple attack upon me. But my abused mind couldn't work through the convolutions other than to know that Jakoven was working against my whole family.

The Tamerlain promised a way to save myself. I just had to keep sane until my uncle came. Or until Oreg found me and rescued me.

The thought of Oreg brought me relief so strong, I shook. He knew where they were taking me—he'd get me out. Taking a deep breath, I decided I had to act as if he weren't coming. Prepare for the worst, my aunt said.

So I thought of how to let Jade Eyes think he'd broken me.

Over the past few years, Oreg had managed to teach me a little about the magic that was still coming back to me, like drops from a bucket. I lit a dim magelight, just enough so I could see clearly, and I looked at my body. It hurt to move. It was worse than when Stala set out to teach me a lesson and beat me into the ground in an all-out while training. But there wasn't a bruise anywhere, as if Jakoven had ordered his mages not to leave a mark on me.

So if Jade Eyes continued in the way he had begun, all I had to worry about was pain. That was fine, pain and I were old friends—my father had seen to that. I could take anything they could give me as long

as I knew there was no real damage taking place.

But they could find another way to break me, unless I let them believe their methods were working. A small, arrogant part of me wanted to object, but Stala had taught me better than that. Anyone could be broken. All I could do was convince them that it had already happened before it really did. The pitcher of tainted water sat upright on the floor—I could reach out and knock it over; but then I'd have to pretend to be overcome by the drugs. I could do that, but I didn't know if I could do that while I was in enough pain that even the memory of it made me sweat. And who was to say that they would give

me the same herbs every time? What happened if they switched them?

The first nineteen years of my life had been a contest between my father and myself. I won it because I'd

learned control at the hands of a master. Control, Stala said, was the thing that kept you alive. Control your emotions, control your body, and you were more likely to survive a battle than a man who could not. Control had become something of a religion for me—a means of survival and a way to differentiate

myself from my father.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
I stared at the worn pottery pitcher.

To survive, I'd have to throw away that control and trust my instincts. Trust that even drugged, I wouldn't fight the pain.

There was a murmur outside my door. " … take four men this time, Jerron won't be using that hand for a

month."

Guards.

I took the pitcher in my hand and remembered the sour taste of fear, knowing that I had to deceive two wizards into believing they'd broken me completely. Or I would lose.

Drinking that water was one of the most difficult things I had ever done. Only losing would have been harder.

Writhing monsters came into my cell. One had yellow snakes with black eyes growing out the sides of his head. They stared at me with dead eyes that laughed at my struggles to break free of the myriad hands that gripped me.

The monsters took me to see the green-eyed mage. He did things to my head and to my body, things that left me shaking and nauseated, things that didn't leave so much as a bruise. He used magic to hurt me, but it was only pain. I knew its nature and its name; it had nothing more to teach me. When the wizard brought agony in liquid waves over my body, I accepted it and became it. My body cried out and fought, but my mind rode the fiery demon and was untouched. I had my limits. I could tell that eventually the pain would devour me, but for now I was safe. The wizard didn't
see.
He observed the surrender of my body, without seeing the patience that waited beneath.

After a few days the demons who dragged me from cell to wizard's den and back quit being frightened of me. When I cried, they seemed sad.

"He was a rare fighter," said one. "I'd have liked to have him at my back."

"You want an insane man fighting at your back," bleated a little sheep—

"
Lad
," corrected my little voice. "
Just a boy, not a sheep.
" As always the pain had made the voice closer to me—if I wanted to, I could see as the voice did. Later the remnants of the session would make it difficult to hear my silent, hidden self. I blinked carefully and saw a boy, younger than Tosten. The monster under my left shoulder grunted. "If you think this place holds the mad, you haven't been paying attention, boy."

There was fresh water waiting, and after the monsters left I picked it up in shaking hands,

"
Drink
," urged my little voice, already growing fainter. I pressed the clay rim against my lips and drank it

until the pitcher was dry.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
6—TISALA

My aunt says that if common goals make good friends, common enemies make better ones. Tisala sat in the private room of the tavern and watched the door. She'd sent out a message over an hour ago, but there was no telling when Rosem would get it. She sipped at her drink and then leaned her head

against the wall. The hood of her cloak shielded her eyes from the candlelight and she fell asleep.

"I thought you were dead," said a quiet voice, waking her. "Let me see your face." Tisala blinked at the man standing beside her table. He was shorter than she, but broad through the shoulders. A scruffy, bright red beard hid the features of his face except for the wide nose that had been broken more than once. She pulled the hood away from her face. "Hello, Rosem."

"Gods, girl," he said, sitting across from her. "When the house you were rooming in burned down, I waited for you to turn up for a full week. Then I wrote to your father."

"The house burned?" she said. "Did everyone get out?" Tight-mouthed, he shook his head. Tisala swallowed and rubbed her face, as if that would wipe away the faces of the people she'd lived with for the past few years. Jakoven must have had the house burned to cover her disappearance.

Rosem reached out and caught her hand, pulling it into the dim light of the tallow candle.