Mother of Lies (53 page)

His father. The Fist. Now he would never meet his father, never speak with him, offer to help him, hear stories of his conquests. All his glory had come to this? He felt his shock turning to anger. This was Orlad Celebre’s doing. Back in Veritano Orlad had wanted to tear his head off.

Claws grabbed his arm again, his other arm this time.

“We must avenge your father, boy!”

“Yes, Aunt. Yes!”

“Where will she be?”

“She? Luenzi said Orlad did it.”

“Oh, yes, we’ll get the Werist too, never fear! And that eunuch. And the Mutineer! All of them. Chosen look after their own, boy, I’ve told you that, haven’t I? And when we can’t defend them, we avenge them. But we must start with the girl. She’s the dangerous one. Where is the girl? Make her wish she had never been born.”

“Let’s go and find her.” He would not argue with the old bat when she was in this sort of a mood.

It was easy. Four Werists sat outside the doors to the family wing, which meant that Cavotti must be in there. Fabia would be with her husband, learning the joys of married life. Chies strengthened his veiling until the candles were barely visible. Curiously, his aunt became more visible to him, not less. The Heroes were busily fighting the evening’s battles all over again and paid no heed as he opened the door and ushered her inside.

There was even a Werist on a chair outside the state sleeping chamber. Chies shed his veil. The man leaped to his feet with an oath.

“You will obey me! Do not shout. Do not battleform!” This godlike power was very enjoyable. “Is the new doge in there?”

The Hero nodded, flapping his mouth like a fish. He was a veteran, older and well scarred, and his eyes were as blank as glass beads.

“Is his new wife with him?”

“I do not know.”

“Lie down and sleep. Sleep until dawn, no matter what happens.”

Chies turned to smile at his aunt and couldn’t find her. The door swung open by itself. He followed her in.

The hall was so huge that he was startled to find Cavotti and the woman right there, just inside the door. He was wearing a badly stained green chlamys and she a white silk web. Chies had barely had time to decide that he wanted to study her at leisure when his aunt blasted them both. The Mutineer hurtled back against a chair, which collapsed in a mess of kindling. The woman landed on her back several paces away.

Chies closed and bolted the door.

Cavotti was half sitting on a litter of firewood, half reclining against the wall. Only his eyes were moving. Fabia raised herself on her elbows and stared at Saltaja, who was now fully visible in all her mutilated horror.

“You’re too revolting to be a nightmare.”

“You don’t know what horror is, child. I am about to teach you.”

“I don’t think you are.” The dogaressa climbed to her feet with a fascinating revelation of legs. She dusted herself off and adjusted her wrap, frowned at Chies. “What have you done to the boy?” She seemed strangely unworried. Did she not understand that she was being threatened by a Chosen?

Cavotti made grunting noises and twitched. Deciding that the giant was out of commission and posed no danger, Chies turned his attention fully to the two women’s confrontation. His sister was a real stiffener in that filmy, flimsy thing. He did not think his help was going to be needed.

“Nothing,” Saltaja said, drooling and slobbering. “And if you think I’m ugly, wait until you see what I do to your pretty face. I will not kill you. That would be too easy. Belly worms. Tumors. Suppurating sores. Madness, so they lock you up. You will have years to sit in your cell, suffering and mourning your folly.”

“Your time is over,” the girl said calmly. “Your brothers are all dead, did you know? I assume Cutrath Horoldson was with you in the Edgelands. Did you manage to rescue him as well as yourself? If not, then you and this boy are the only two left out of the whole disgusting brood. The Mother has tired of you. She has withdrawn Her favor.” She had not so much glanced at her petrified husband yet, keeping her attention on the hag.

Who chuckled. “No, dearie! I am much more in her favor than you are. Remember those guards I set over you at Tryfors? The Heroes who let you escape? I sacrificed them to Her glory. Fifteen strong, healthy young men bleeding into the cold earth!”

“Yes, I know. I saw.”

“You lie!” Saltaja shrieked. “She would not let you spy on me. Then there were two score I marched into the Dust River so I could walk across on their bodies. There were others we ate. And the Werists on the Altiplano—another ten! What have you offered Her that would compare with that?”

Fabia grimaced. “I do not believe that the Old One values Her Chosen by tallying their murders, but if you want to keep score by body count, then I counter with the whole escort you took on the Nardalborg Pass trail. It was my idea to let you close it behind you all the way to Fist’s Leap and then slam the gate in your face. I had to talk even my Werist brother into that! All those deaths—a whole hunt, wasn’t it? They were already dead men when you started eating them. They count to my credit, not yours.”

Saltaja screamed and hurled a bolt of black fire at her. Fabia must have been expecting something like it, for she countered with one of her own, and they coalesced in a wall of black flame midway between them. It crackled and flared—and slowly advanced toward Fabia. The two Chosen were locked in a trial of strength. Chies could hear his aunt wheezing with the effort it cost. Then Fabia started to back away, and at once the flames leaped at her. She went down, screaming and writhing in an unholy blaze.

Saltaja laughed and released the evil. Fabia lay naked on charred and smoking rugs, struggling feebly to rise. She had apparently saved herself from harm so far, but she was clearly the loser of that round.

“Now that we’ve established who is the stronger, dearie, we can begin the entertainment. I think those pretty breasts first.”

Chies decided he did not approve of this. Even if Saltaja was winning this battle, she had lost all the others and he had his own future to consider. Fabia had befriended him at Veritano. How could he favor a horror like Saltaja over her? Watch her be tortured and mutilated? No! He lifted one of the rock-crystal lover cups from the table and swung it with all his strength. The impact threw wine over Cavotti and shattered the carving into a shower of hail. It didn’t do much for the old bat’s skull, either.

FABIA CELEBRE

felt as if she had just been dropped from the palace roof onto a gravel path and the palace was about to fall on top of her. Marno’s eyes were bulging. So were Chies’s, although for different reasons. Saltaja was probably not dead.

She said, “Thank you, Chies. Bring me a couple of sheets, quickly!”

He reluctantly dragged his eyes away from the scenery and strode across to the platform. The carpet was sharp with slivers of rock crystal, so she stayed where she was, but now she could concentrate her attention on Marno. She ripped at the vile shadowy net that entrapped him. It came away easily and disappeared.

“You all right?” she asked hoarsely, voice quavering. Her marriage was ended before it started, of course, and she would be very lucky if he did not hurl her into an open grave beside Saltaja.

He sat up, wincing. “I took a few splinters in places I won’t show you. You?”

“Shaken, is all. I don’t think she’s dead.” She saw Chies returning, clutching two silk sheets. His eyes were all over her again in that very un-brotherly way. “Give me one of those. Now tear the other one up and blindfold her quickly!”

She wrapped herself. Marno flowed to his feet, shedding fragments of chair and crystal, then picked his way through the gravel and helped her stand. He did not stun her or break her neck, at least not yet. She was starting to shake with delayed reaction.

Chies said, “She’s coming round. I can’t tear this, my lady!”

“Cut it, boy! You’re standing ankle-deep in broken glass!”

Marno took the sheet and ripped it. “There!” He used the first strip to bandage the Chosen’s eyes, and two more to bind her wrists and ankles. “Will that hold her?”

“I think so,” Fabia said. She finished adjusting her new sarong. “For now. Watch where you’re walking.”

“Here, let me!” Chies had shoes on. He hauled a rug in from nearer the center of the room, where no glass had landed.

“That’s quick thinking, too,” Fabia said. “Chies, I am forever grateful for what you just did. Did she harm you?”

It was story time. He shook his head solemnly. “No, my lady. But I was forced to do whatever she told me. She did something to me so I had to obey her! It was horrible.” He stared down at her with eyes as big and innocent as dark forest pools. But forest pools were notorious for harboring water snakes.

Mother of Lies, have you enlisted a new pupil?
Fabia remembered Witness Mist warning her that there was never any way to tell.

“You saved the day, lord Chies!” Marno proclaimed. He pumped the boy’s hand and thumped his bony shoulder so he staggered. “Let’s drink to a very narrow escape.” He handed Fabia the remaining lover cup and Chies the flagon. Then he opened another for himself. “Is that the end of the Hrag farrow?”

“Except me,” Chies said.

The Mutineer had the grace to look abashed. “I wasn’t counting you. You’re my brother-in-law now.”

“So I am!” Chies smiled shyly. “A great honor, my lord. Congratulations on your election. And on your marriage. You, too, my lady.”

“I want to hear what happened at Veritano,” Marno said, “but first, what do we do with the Chosen?”

Fabia wondered,
Which Chosen?
“The traditional treatment is horrible, but she has more than earned it.”

“We can arrange that very easily tonight. They won’t have finished filling in the palace rose garden yet. Can I just carry her out there?”

All Fabia knew for certain was that Saltaja Hragsdor knew a lot more tricks than she did. “It would be safer to carry her in a sack, I think. If we roll her in a sheet, then you could hold one end; Chies and I could take the other.” She would not dare let Chies out of her sight until she knew how safe he was. Marno must be feeling the same way about her. Whose funeral was this to be?

Saltaja moaned and twitched when they tried to move her. Her head wound was bleeding copiously. Marno gagged her. They rolled her in another of the incredible silk sheets.

“I think I can manage this end by myself, my lady,” Chies said earnestly. “She’s not too heavy. At times she made me carry her.”

“You must be very strong. How can we get out to the rose garden?”

“This door. If you would be so kind as to open it?” Chies knelt, pulled one end of the cocoon over his shoulder, then stood up. Marno raised the other and they went forward with Saltaja slung between them.

Fabia drew the bolts and almost fell over a Werist snoring on the floor outside.

“It’s not his fault, my lord,” Chies said. “She commanded him to go to sleep. This way …”

A heavily bolted door at the end of the corridor led outside, to a paved terrace overhung by a leafy trellis. Rain pelted down harder than ever, making the fires in the city glow golden through clouds of steam.

They rounded a corner and came to what must once have been the rose garden and was now a wasteland of muck, a macabre scene lit by a hissing bonfire, smelling of wood smoke and wet loam. Two men stood chest-deep in a pit, hurling out shovelfuls of mud, while a third leaned on a spade, watching them. Light shone on their brass collars and wet skin; also on a stack of Vigaelian corpses waiting on a cart nearby. From the number of spades and picks she could see, Fabia guessed that the total workforce must be at least a dozen, so finding only three men here was good luck. None at all would have been even luckier.

The watcher jumped in alarm, recognizing the Mutineer.

Marno said, “I just killed an ice devil hiding in the palace. We’ll bury him here.”

The Werist took one look at the draped bundle, which was definitely starting to writhe. Then another, at Cavotti.

“My lord is kind. You two—out!” He offered each workman a hand in turn to haul him out of the pit. Marno and Chies swung their load and let go. Saltaja dropped into the grave with a splash. There was enough water in there to drown her. Fabia braced herself, waiting to see if she was going to be thrown in there also, and perhaps Chies as well. She knew very little about her husband, except that he could be utterly ruthless. She doubted that she could Control four Heroes at the same time. Whose side would Chies take?

Cavotti single-handedly lifted a corpse from the cart and tossed it on top of Saltaja. “Now fill it in.”

“My lord is kind.”

Holy Xaran, accept back Your faithful servant Saltaja Hragsdor and deal with her as she deserves, according to Your wisdom.

All three workmen shoveled vigorously. Chies eagerly grabbed a spade and lent a hand. In moments the hole was half filled and a great evil had gone from the world.

“You will not mention this to anyone,” the Mutineer told them. “I do not wish people to be alarmed.”

Fabia could have ensured the men’s silence more certainly, but did not offer to do so. Marno put an arm around her and they headed back to the palace, feet squelching in the mud.