The Warlord's Domain (20 page)

“Jewel?” Hanar Santon stood up slowly and carefully, not wanting to attract the same level of attention that was still sending after-shock trembles down his limbs. “Gemmel
-purcanyathy
do you mean the… the
Warlord’s
Jewel? The Regalia?”

“Yes, I do.” Gemmel both looked and sounded flattened. “I was going to recover the bloody thing myself— in my own good time. And now he… When did you hear of this?”

“Two days ago.” Dacurre had put his animosity aside as he might have taken off a garment; he knew well enough that he was no longer looking at a sorcerer but at an elderly man whose son (Aymar glossed over the inaccuracy as easily as Gemmel had done) was unexpectedly going into danger in an attempt to do some favor for his father—though he found Gemmel’s use of the word
recover
worthy of curiosity. “If it’s any solace, the… informant made it quite clear that Aldric is as capable of taking care of himself as he always has been. But may I ask the reason—”

“You may ask,” said Gemmel, too shocked to put any snap into what he was saying. His preoccupation with other matters was evident just from that. “At least he’s carrying enough documentation to let him travel freely anywhere within the Empire’s borders…”

“So where’s the problem?” asked Santon. “Except of course for the fact that he’ll have to steal the Jewel. Voord’s hardly likely to hand over the insignia of his rank.”

“Voord? What about Voord? What are you saying?”

“You won’t have heard,” Dacurre said. “It’s not even public information in the Empire yet. There’s a new Grand Warlord: Voord Ebanesj. We know of this one— he was in the Secret Police, and probably achieved his promotion by the usual method.” Lord Dacurre drew one thumb across his throat. “He’s been a thorn in Alba’s side for a long while, but now he seems more taken up with his own concerns.”

“The name is familiar enough,” said Gemmel with venom in his voice. “What worries me is that Aldric won’t know of it. And Voord knows him.”

“Gemmel
-purcanyath
, Voord has known of the Talvalins for a long time; he was the one who planned Duergar Vathach’s spoiling-raid on Dunrath and—”

“Was he indeed? Then damn him for it!”

The Dunrath affair was past, all that Voord
had
done was past and there was no passion in the way that Gemmel spoke of it. All his concern was for what the Grand Warlord might do in the days to come: a concern that was not political, not patriotic, but purely emotional. He had lost the son of his own blood to the Drusalan Empire and its Warlord—he was not about to lose the son he had adopted in the same way.

No matter that Aldric had the same documents as Gemmel carried, declaring them scholars and guests of the Empire, Aldric also had things that Gemmel lacked: enemies who knew him by sight. Enemies among the Secret Police—and now an enemy not only highly placed but in the very place where Aldric would be going. Unless he learned the truth very soon, he would walk all unwittingly into what was an unpremeditated trap.

There was Ymareth the Dragon—but Ymareth was also about its own affairs and no longer obedient to Gemmel’s summons. The recollection of the last discussion with his monstrous creation was still something close to nightmare. Maker-that-was, the dragon had called him, angered by the way he had tried to make use of Aldric by laying a spell into the young man’s subconscious so that he would do…

What he was doing now, unbidden. Gemmel had lost much honor by that spell, and the removal of it had not been enough to bring his honor back—or his control over the dragon, which amounted to the same thing. A. control based on honor was all very well when that being controlled could make no comparisons; but he had also given Ymareth the faculties of reasoning and judgment and that had been his downfall.

Gemmel had attempted to set matters right by commending Aldric to its protection, as it had once been constructed and given life to protect him—but what Ymareth had gained instead was freedom, and freedom of choice. It had provided awesome assistance in Egisburg and seen them safely on their way; then heeled over on one vast wing and flown out of sight. Ymareth was still out there somewhere; but wherever that somewhere was, it was not close enough for Gemmel to dare include the black dragon in the plan he suddenly, desperately, had to put together. Whatever plan that might be…

Giorl’s grim talent with blade and pincer was such that it required no more than twenty minutes—during which the unharmed
taulath
in the chair witnessed his companion suffer three full torments and a fourth barely begun— before he made it quite clear, despite his bonds and the choking-pear stuffed in his craw, that he was entirely ready and willing if not yet able to talk. Directly the interrogation assistants made him able, all manner of interesting things came pouring out, the words tumbling over one another so fast that the Recorder’s flying pen was barely able to keep pace.

Woydach
Voord listened to the stream of secrets and betrayals, editing out the occasional blubbering plea for mercy as being irrelevant. “Quite fascinating,” he said, speaking as was customary to the Recorder and the Questionmaker but loudly enough for the
taulath
to hear. “To learn so much so fast, I would have thought we might need something like,” he looked toward Giorl, “Thirty-seven.”

In response to his cue, she administered Thirty-seven to the other Subject, so that for a short space conversation became impossible. Voord distanced himself from the noises that echoed within the tiled and spattered chamber. He could see only the movement of mouths as both men screamed and begged and spilled out everything they knew in the hope of making Giorl stop or prevent her from shifting her attention.
They aren’t breeding
tulathin
as tough as they once did
, he decided.
The hiring-fees should be reduced
. Then the Question-maker tapped him on the arm and showed a fresh list of questions based on answers to the first set and augmented by various matters which had been revealed unasked.

Voord nodded, there was already enough information to provide excellent leverage on certain of his lords and generals, who until now had seemed pure as the snow and quite free of any handle he could employ to bend them to his will. Not any more… He smiled, lifted a pen and marked the questions of particular interest, then looked as the first Subject lost consciousness and the room returned to reasonable quiet.

The Drusalan Empire had long ago considered the various aspects of torture as a means of gathering information; there were those who said that the victim would answer any and all questions with whatever his interrogators wanted to hear, just so long as they would stop. Another school of thought insisted that if a man was put under sufficient stress his mind could no longer formulate convincing lies to protect himself or his associates, and the only thing left for him to tell was the truth. Voord was of a third persuasion: that everything a Subject said, whether pressed or not, should be noted down and collated with known facts, and that pressure should then be applied to discover any deviation from the recorded testimony. It was wryly known as the
let’s just make absolutely certain shall we
method of interrogation, and the best way of all was with two Subjects, playing one’s pain against the other’s fear of it. Of course, even then the information had to be cross-checked—in the appropriate fashion…

“Leave that one be for now,” said Voord. He glanced again at the list of questions, and then at their ultimate source sitting shivering and immobile in his iron chair. “Get me confirmation of these instead.”

As the implications of the Warlord’s words sank into his fear-fuddled mind, the other
taulath
began to thrash to and fro, trying impotently to break free of the padded steel bands holding him in place. “I want you to consider Question Seven,” said Voord’s voice over the rattle of unyielding metal, “concerning what you mentioned about
Hauthanalth
Cohort-Commander Tayr. Help him remember with Chair, ah… Chair Three. But don’t light the heating-wick until I tell you.”

Voord watched with mild curiosity for a few minutes as Giorl’s assistants operated screws and levers—he and she both considered Chair torments a deal too crude for her personal involvement—then returned his attentions to the newly-corrected question/answer sheets which the Questionmaker had given him.

He gathered together the various other papers which had resulted from the interrogation and got to his feet.

“Enough for now,” Voord said briskly, patting the papers together. “Clean up.” He met Giorl’s unspoken question without blinking, and nodded. “Yes, and finish up. I’ll not need to interview either of these two again.”

“My lord
Woydach
... ?”

“Yes, Giorl, you’re dismissed. And thank you for good work.” Voord laid a hand against his side and felt no more than a dull, hot ache. “In both respects, I hope the child will soon be better…” But he was speaking only to the assistants; their chief was already gone. He shrugged and followed her out.

“But what about us?” demanded Aymar Dacurre.

“I told you before, my lord,” said Gemmel. “This is not my country, and its concerns are not my concerns except in the matter of my son.”

“And what of his concerns, Gemmel Errekren?” snapped Hanar Santon. “You seem to forget that he’s a high-clan-lord and as such has certain obligations, certain duties—”

“You mean that he should mobilize the Clan Talvalin troops, lock himself up in Dunrath-hold and snarl like a manger-dog at every other lord who dares approach? I doubt he’d see the need to bother.”

Dacurre looked at the enchanter and said nothing. Gemmel was right. None of his fellow clan-lords had acted toward Aldric in any way that would incline the young man to return. When Rynert had sent him off to the Empire on whatever crazy mission had been in the dead king’s mind—and Dacurre didn’t have all of the details even now—those of the council lords who might have taken Aldric’s part had remained silent, so that the only voices heard were those of men glad to see him gone. Some of course were merely conservative old men expressing conservative opinions—but there were others, Lords Uwin and Gyras especially, who even then had had an eye on the Talvalin lands. Scarcely a memory that would make either Aldric or his foster-father look on the present troubles of those lords with anything but a sense of poetic justice long delayed.

He began to wonder, as he had done more and more frequently in the past few days, whether it would not be better—or at least more practical—for himself and Santon to abandon the echoing corridors of the palace where they had done little good that any of them could see, and simply run for the shelter of their citadels as everyone else had done. So far no one had moved to use the situation either for advancement or for profit, but once the last two stable influences joined the rest on the edge of anarchy, falling over that edge would be only a matter of time. Probably their flight alone would be enough, either through misinterpretation or because someone like Diskan of Kerys chose to regard it as deliberately provocative.

If only someone, anyone, had sufficient courage to leave the doubtful safety of fortress walls and come here to talk, that would be enough. But—Dacurre smiled grimly—Aldric Talvalin would be the only man other than himself and Santon who would dare to do it… the only man crazy enough. All the others would do just as they were doing now. Nothing. He glanced toward Hanar and nodded.

“Very well then,” the young lord said. “Go find him, wherever he is. Go help him. And afterward ask him, ask our friend if he would have helped us had he known. But I refuse to ask for aid from
an pestreyr-pesok’n
, a petty-wizard with no notion of what honor means.”

Gemmel’s back stiffened. If Santon had pondered for a week he could not have come up with an argument as powerful. His words sounded uncomfortably like those used by Ymareth the dragon, with their accusation of lost or lacking honor and their disdain of everything the enchanter thought himself to be. There had been a time, not so very long ago, when the notion that he might have been swayed by the same arguments these people used on one another would have been a joke, and not an especially good one either. But now… To live with them was to live by their rules, like it or not. Each in their own way. Aldric and Ymareth had taught him that much.

“What do you know of wizards and their doings, Hanar Lord Santon?” he asked softly. “Or of what
I
do, and know, and am?”

“Enough to understand what a reminder would do to your so-haughty pride, Gemmel,” replied Aymar Dacurre.

“We both of us know Aldric,” Santon said. The anger was gone from his voice, as if it had never been there at all—or had been skillfully feigned. “My… my grandfather”—Gemmel looked sideways and lifted one eyebrow—”knows him as one lord knows another, and as the last son of a good friend. I knew him less well than I might have done, but enough to understand what kind of man you must be for him to call you
altrou
and
father
.”

“So. A nice trap, nicely baited, nicely sprung. A most symmetrical stratagem indeed.” Gemmel didn’t trouble to sound bitter about it. There was a very pretty elegance about their web of words that he would appreciate—later, when the sting of it wore off. “Very well. You shall have my help. Enough of it, at least, that the country will remain at peace while I attend to… shall we say, family matters?”

Dacurre and Santon nodded their agreement to the enchanter’s terms, knowing them to be far better than any other proposition of the many they had considered and discarded; but when Gemmel laughed they looked nervously at one another, wondering perhaps too late what they had started. They were not kept long in suspense.

“Understand this,” said Gemmel, twisting Ykraith the Dragonwand from where it was embedded in the floor. “If the giving of that help delays me so that harm befalls Aldric or his lady Kyrin, then the civil war you fear will be no more than a soft summer breeze beside the havoc I shall wreak in Alba. And remember for the future, gentlemen: I do not like traps.”