Rebel of Antares (26 page)

The layout of the torture equipment was of vital importance and the positions and relationship of the various items had to be judged exactly. Chains dangled from the rocky ceiling. At the moment they were free of the skeletons one assumed normally remained there until the chains were required again. A massive pot of oil bubbled and boiled. The metal glistened. The pot was of a size to have fed a cannibal city. Near it a rack with spikes and other strategically placed unpleasantnesses had been cleaned up reasonably well; only a few bloodstains remained. The rack was of a down-to-earth kind, a simple stretcher, but near it a device for turning the victim inside out frowned down far more ominously.

Slaves wearing black breechclouts in place of the more usual gray slave clouts stoked up the fire under the pot of boiling oil, and tended the braziers, occasionally poking the implements in further, or pulling them out to inspect their heat color. The whole place stank. I crouched knotted up in the iron-barred box and cursed fat Queen Fahia and longed for her to put in an appearance so we might begin.

When Fahia at last arrived she put on a regal show with all the trimmings. By that time I was aware that unless I could contrive a breathing space before they ran me up and strapped me into the first piece of their diabolical arsenal of devices, I was done for. Her pet neemus with their round heads and wicked fangs and glittering eyes were handled by experts with the silver chains. Her dancing girls were there — and I could only hope they would shut their eyes. The ranks of the courtiers were thinned, there being only a handful present. Her court wizard was there, a fellow of some discipline or other in which she believed devoutly, I felt sure, with his book of power and his wand and tall hat and his face that showed a too-great love of the wine jug. I glared evilly at the lot of them.

Fahia wore a mountain of clothing. It glittered in that dismal place. She walked over to me, and her walk was a waddle. She had been beautiful once. Never slender, her plumpness had been delightful. Now she was grotesque. Some glandular disaster must have struck, swelling her thighs and buttocks, coarsening her face, thickening her everywhere. The clothes disguised much; they could not conceal the pathetic truth.

“Drak the Sword,” she said, and her voice came breathily, her lips red and bloated, “I should have recognized your style earlier.”

If there was any one person in all Huringa who knew more about the Jikhorkdun than Queen Fahia then he was unknown. Looking at her and her grotesque barrel body and ravaged face, the pity in me was perfectly understandable. Her sister, Lilah, I judged, would never have come to this.

That thought made me say, “You did not treat Lilah well, Fahia.”

She flinched. Her sway as queen was absolute.

“Yetch! You talk as crudely as ever. Now you will be sorry—”

“I think I am, a little, for you, fat woman.”

That was cruel and unkind of me, but, by Zair...!

“Your death will not be easy, Drak the Sword. I remember you claimed to be Dray Prescot, and a multitude of other ridiculous names. We have heard of this Dray Prescot. He is the Emperor of Vallia. So you are forsworn. I do not think the Emperor of Vallia would be found fighting in my Jikhorkdun.”

If they didn’t let me out soon I’d never be able to move fast enough...

“Think what you will. I bore you no ill will. Now, you have forfeited what friendship I might have—”

“You were never a true friend to me! I thought you so once. But you escaped with that trollop of a slave girl—”

“Let them begin, mother!” The lad who had fought me spoke pettishly, not looking at me. “I want to see him scream and writhe and beg for mercy — for death he will not come by easily—”

“In a moment, Babb. In a moment.”

This Babb, the queen’s son, wore clothes of a cut that might have made me feel sorry for him. He could hardly be totally blamed for turning out as he had, given the circumstances of his upbringing, which were simple enough to surmise. Perhaps, had he possessed a tithe of the character of Prince Tyfar, he might have stood a chance.

The handful of nobles and the wizard came over to take a closer look at me. The wizard stank. The queen treated him with a marked respect. I had no idea of the sorcerer’s powers, but I did not miss the look of loathing bestowed on him by Babb.

The conversation might be unreal in these surroundings, but Fahia was intrigued by the circumstances of my escape. I told her nothing, and insulted her a few more times. My limbs were dead as rotted timbers. The torturers hovered. She could take no more of my rudeness, and with a parting “You will suffer as only Lem knows how, Drak the Sword!” she waddled back to her throne.

The men in black clustered about my box and the locks were snapped open. The iron-barred side fell away.

Instantly, before any of them could reach down to grasp me, I was rolling. Like a bundled-up heap of laundry I rolled over and over across the stone floor. The internal torturers were at work. They inserted a red-hot needle into every joint and muscle, they trailed white-hot streams of agony through my veins. Still I had to keep on rolling. I hit the pot of boiling oil. It tipped. It overturned. Boiling oil foamed out in a broad flood. That was useful. In the abrupt yelling and shrieking, it was not yet enough. On I went, shaking and trembling, feeling as though I were being stretched out on the rack and being turned inside out on that fiendish device, on and toward the braziers. Slaves ran.

A black-clad tormentor jumped in the way, raking down to grab me. I hit him in the knees and he staggered and fell into a brazier. He screamed. Burning coals flew. The next brazier could be hooked over with a foot which felt nothing — there’d be a burn there the size of three deldys — and I had a wooden handle of a red-hot iron in my grip. I swung it about like a sword, and already I was beginning to overcome the cramps and the constrictions and the fresh surge of blood. I felt like a single scarlet bloom of agony, but I was getting back into action. The red-hot iron cleared a space.

The bedlam rang and boomed confusing echoes in the dungeon. Dungeons are called chundrogs on Kregen. Chun means jaws, and my jaws were tightly clenched so that their ache struck through as a welcome relief to the torments tying me up in knots. I caught a torturer an almighty thwack across the face with the red-hot iron and, branded, he shrieked and fell away. Others were running up, but I was getting back to being myself again. It was quick, thanks to the Krozair Disciplines. Without those I would have been a mere mewling bundle of agony writhing on the floor.

Fahia went nowhere these latter days without her guards. Now they clattered down from the observation area. They’d settle my hash too damn quick — if Fahia let them. The chances were she would order them to take me alive, for later attention. I slashed about and ran and dodged, clumsily, looking for the way out.

The boiling oil held up the guards. Fahia was shrieking at them: “Hurry, you rasts! Seize him up! Oh, my heart, my insides!” And then, in a veritable scream: “No! Babb! Do not go down to face him — he is a wild leem, a monster — Babb! Come back here!”

“I’ll pull his insides out, mother—”

“He will chew you up and not spit out the pips! Babb! I am your mother and the queen! Do not go down!”

The red-hot iron went sizzling through a torturer’s eyeball and I yanked it out and slashed away at another, and sent the pack of them running. I was becoming a little heated. There had to be a way out of this foul place. I saw Fahia, leaning on the shoulders of two of her courtiers. Her face was ghastly. Smoke lifted and the place smelled of oil and stink, and I jumped aside with something like my old agility as crossbowmen loosed.

The bolts whistled past. Everybody was shouting. The guards ran on. I whirled the iron which was cooling and blinked away sweat. Where was the confounded exit?

Up behind the observation area a door opened. It was opened from the other side. That, then, was my way out. I started to run for it, skipping past the edges of the spreading pool of oil. A man appeared in the doorway. He held a small earthenware pot. He threw the pot. It arched in the air, trailing smoke, and landed full among Fahia’s guards. It burst. Fire vomited forth.

I looked up.

“Norhan the Flame!”

“Chaadur! Over here!”

Other men ran down into the dungeon from the doorway, kaidurs, men of the silver sand, men running with skilled weapons to destroy the queen’s guards and those with her. She was screaming and screaming and nothing, it would seem, would stop her. Babb went down with a stux through his guts.

Frandu the Franch cut the wizard’s head off. It was a quick and clever blow. The head bounced amid the feet of the slave damsels, and they shrieked and cowered away. It rolled among the black neemus and they devoured it, hissing and chomping. The great golden-bound book of power tumbled in a flutter of dried pages from the wizard’s hands. So much for Fahia’s hopes of sorcerous aid, stilled and stillborn by a Fristle’s sword!

These courtiers in their silks and jewels had mocked and laughed as kaidurs bled and died. They paid gold to their mercenary guards to beat and humiliate the men of the silver sand. The kaidurs did not spare courtiers or guards. As for the neemus, golden-eyed, pricked of ear, they died, every one, struck through by stuxes hurled by experts. The damsels in their gauzes and pearls were not slain, being but poor deluded slaves, chattels just like the fighters of the Jikhorkdun. The dungeon fell to a sudden and eerie silence. I ran up to Frandu, who picked up the golden-bound book and shut it quickly. Smoke hung laced with the smell of charred flesh. The oil bubbled quietly.

Norhan came back with his sack of pots and his wicks and flame equipment and looked at Frandu and then at the dead wizard.

“He’s headless!”

“Aye,” said Frandu. “From the neck up.”

“Well,” I said, most unkindly, “it would be wise not to look into his eyes, which the neemus spat out, even though they had no head and the head no body.”

Then the babble of reunions took place. The rebellion had begun and the kaidurs were running wild through the city. Ordinary citizens had retired to their houses and shops and barricaded them to await the outcome of the revolution.

“And our people outside?”

“They have begun their attack. We are assisting from within.” Hundal the Oivon sweated the good news out. “We came to see what had happened to you. Our fanshos are fighting the mercenaries, and Cleitar Adria leads them on. The rasts are caught between two forces now.”

“Then we will go up and help our comrades.”

I looked about before we left. The dungeon presented a welcome sight with overturned and smashed torture equipment and dead tormentors in their black clothes lying twisted here and there. I gave thanks to Zair and Opaz and Djan that I had been spared.

Norhan the Flame said, “I thank Sarkalak we got here in time, Chaadur — although you had them worried; you had them worried.”

As we went up through the chill stone corridors, Frandu laughed and stroked his whiskers and said, “Oh, we were much too smart for them.”

Huringa roared to the skies with the noise of combat. We hurried to join the kaidurs who had attacked the mercenaries from the rear, and I was minded of my thoughts about dropping airborne troops here if we wished to take this city. Instead of warriors flying down astride saddle birds, or jumping from airboats, we had struck with a force already within the city, pent-up, trained, expert with arms and passionate with hatred for their oppressors.

Vollers-sailed up against the brilliance of the sky, and we learned they carried the regiment of Hamalese. Those professional fighting men of Hamal knew when a battle was lost. Let the Hyrklese fight it out among themselves, the swods of the iron legion would have said, by Krun, let them kill themselves off so there are fewer to resist when we return. I wondered if their conduct would have been different if they’d known Vallia had taken a hand in this struggle.

Sandwiched between two forces and yet still fighting bravely, the mercenaries were worn down and hemmed in and, finally, forced to throw down their arms. There was a certain amount of revenge killing, but our chiefs, acting on the most stringent orders from the Princess Lildra, managed to restrain indiscriminate butchery. The paktuns might take service with Lildra, or leave Hyrklana.

The battle was over, our two forces met and the rejoicings began. The celebrations would thunder on for days.

Jaezila and Jaidur were safe, as were most of the chiefs. Nath the Retributor had taken a trifling wound, and Hardur Mortiljid had broken three swords in the fighting. Orlan beamed as his dreams began to be realized, and Princess Lildra was radiant. I asked after Gochert, the one-eyed man of mystery, and was told he had left the city after Vad Noran’s failure, fearing he might be taken up as an accomplice. Of course, it had been Jaezila who had betrayed Noran. I could see that now, and the way she had attempted to save Tyfar and me, and would have, but for that damned stupid net. As for Ariane nal Amklana, it was rumored she had flown to Hamal to throw herself at the feet of the Empress Thyllis.

“Much good that will do her,” said Jaezila.

“It is not over yet.”

“No, it is not,” said Jaidur. “But it is a beginning!”

I said, “Where is Queen Fahia?”

Huringa was searched, the high fortress of the Hakal, the villas of her adherents, everywhere. She was not found. Those of her pet neemus not slain in the dungeon, penned in luxury in one of her high palaces, looked sleek and well-fed. Well, it was a thought, and an interesting one. A brooch was found in the pen, a brooch slaves swore was Fahia’s. But, for all that, no one in all Kregen ever saw Queen Fahia of Hyrklana again.

Chapter twenty

A Wedding and a Promise

The high fortress of the Hakal in Huringa contained within its grim walls a palace of splendor and magnificence. I stood on a costly carpet of Walfarg weave and I said, “You may be desperately in love and willing to consign the world to oblivion to satisfy your passion, but you are not getting married without your mother present.”