The Fortress at Deal

Bam! The old door trick. This time I had heard the man-mountain stomping down the hall, so I did not react except to ask, “Don’t you ever knock, Bruno?”

No response. Till Whisper stepped inside. “Get up, physician.”

I would have made a crude remark, but something in her voice chilled me beyond the chill due my straits. I rose.

She looked terrible. Not that she was much different physically. But something inside had gone dead and cold and frightened. “What was that thing?” she demanded.

I was baffled. “What thing?”

“The thing you were traveling with. Speak.”

I could not, for I hadn’t the slightest notion what she was blathering about.

“We caught up. Or my men did. I arrived only in time to count the bodies. What shreds twenty hounds and a hundred men in armor, in minutes, then disappears from mortal ken?”

Gods, One-Eye and Goblin must have outdone themselves.

Still I did not speak.

“You came from the Barrowland. Where you were tampering. Did you call something forth?” She sounded as though she were musing. “It’s time we found out. It’s time we found out how tough you really are, soldier.”

She faced the giant. “Bring him.”

I gave it my best shot by playing my dirtiest. I pretended meek for just long enough to let him relax. Then I stomped his foot, running the side of my boot down his shin. Then I spun away and kicked at his crotch.

Guess I’m getting old and slow. Course, he was a lot faster than a man his size should be. He leaned back, caught my foot, and threw me across the room. Two imperials got me up and started dragging me. I went with the satisfaction of seeing the big man limp.

I tried a few more tricks, just to slow things up. They did little more than get me knocked around. The imperials strapped me down in a high-backed wooden chair in a room where Whisper had set up to practice her magicks. I saw nothing especially villainous. That only made the anticipation worse.

They got two or three good screams out of me and were working themselves up to get unpleasant when the tableau suddenly broke up. The imperials ripped me out of the chair, hustled me toward my cell. I was too foggy to wonder.

Till, in the hallway a few yards short of that cell, we encountered the Lady.

Yes. So. My message had gotten through. I’d thought the brief touch I’d received was wishful thinking at the time. But here she was.

The imperials ran. Is she that terrible to her own people?

Whisper stood her ground.

Whatever passed between them did so unspoken. Whisper helped me to my feet, pushed me into the cell. Her face was stone but her eyes were asmoulder.

“Curses. Foiled again,” I croaked, and fell onto my cot.

It was plain daylight when the door closed. It was night when I wakened and she was standing over me, wearing her guise of beauty. She said, “I warned you,”

“Yes.” I tried to sit up. I had aches everywhere, both from maltreatment and from pushing an old body beyond its limits before my capture.

“Stay. I would not have come had my own interests not demanded it.”

“I would not have called otherwise.”

“Again you do me a favor.”

“Only in the interest of self-preservation.”

“You may, as they say, have jumped from the frying pan into the fire. Whisper lost many men today. To what?”

“I don’t know. Goblin and One-Eye.…” I shut up. Damn groggy head. Damn sympathetic voice. Said too much already.

“It wasn’t them. They haven’t the skill to raise anything like that. I saw the bodies.”

“I don’t know, then.”

“I believe you. Even so.… I’ve seen wounds like those before. I’ll show you before we leave for the Tower.” Was there ever any doubt about that? “When you make your examination, reflect on the fact that the last time men died in such fashion my husband ruled the world.”

None of this added up. But I was not worried about it. I was worried about my own future.

“He has begun to move already. Long before I expected. Will he never lie quietly and let me get on with my work?”

Some sums started toting. One-Eye saying something had gotten out. Raven having been caught because of it.… “Dumb shit Raven, you did it again.” On his own, trying to care for Darling, he had damned near let the Dominator break through at Juniper. “What did you do this time?”

Why would it follow and protect One-Eye and them?

“This is Raven, then?”

Screwup Number Two for Croaker. Why can’t I keep my big damned mouth shut?

She bent over him, rested a hand on his forehead. I watched from beneath my brows, unfocused. I could not look at her direct. She did have the power to sway stone.

“I will return soon,” she said, heading for the door, “Fear not. You will be safe in my absence.”

The door closed.

“Sure,” I murmured. “Safe from Whisper, maybe. But how safe from you?” I looked around the room, wondering if I might end my life.

Whisper took me out to look at the carnage where hounds and imperials had overhauled One-Eye and Goblin. Not pleasant, I’ll tell you. The last I saw the like was when we went up against the forvalaka in Beryl, ere we joined the Lady. I wondered if that monster was back and tracking One-Eye again. But he had slain it during the Battle at Charm. Hadn’t he?

But the Limper survived.…

Hell, yes, he did. And two days after the Lady took off—I was imprisoned in the old fortress at Deal, I’d learned—he made an appearance. A little friendly visit, just for old time’s sake.

I sensed his presence before I actually saw him. And terror nearly unmanned me.

How had he known?… Whisper. Almost certainly Whisper.

He came to my cell, buoyed on a miniature carpet. His name no longer really described him. He could not get around without that carpet. He was but the shadow of a being, human wreckage animated by sorcery and a mad, burning will.

He floated into my cell, hovered there considering me. I did my best to appear unintimidated, failed.

A ghost of a voice stirred the air. “Your time has come. It will be a prolonged and painful ending to your tale. And I will enjoy every moment.”

“I doubt it.” Had to keep up the show. “Mama won’t like you messing with her prisoner.”

“She is not here, physician.” He began to drift backward. “We will begin soon. After time for reflection.” A snatch of insane chuckle drifted in behind him. I am not sure if he or Whisper was the source. She was in the hallway, watching.

A voice said, “But she is here.”

They froze. Whisper went pallid. Limper sort of folded in upon himself.

The Lady materialized out of nowhere, appearing first as golden sparkles. She said nothing more. The Taken did not speak either, for there was nothing they could say.

I wanted to interject one of my remarks, but the better part of valor prevailed. Instead, I tried to make myself small. A roach. Beneath notice.

But roaches get squished beneath the uncaring foot.…

The Lady finally spoke.” Limper, you were given an assignment. Nowhere in your brief is there an allowance for you to leave your command. Yet you have done so. Again. And the results are the same as when you slipped off to Roses to sabotage Soulcatcher.”

Limper wilted even more.

That was one damned long time ago. One of our sneaky tricks on the Rebel of the day. What happened was, the Rebel attacked Limper’s headquarters while he was away from his demesne trying to undermine Soulcatcher.

So Darling was whooping it up on the Plain.

My spirits rose. It was the confirmation I’d had that the movement had not collapsed.

“Go,” the Lady said. “And know this. There will be no more understanding. Henceforth we live by the iron rules as my husband made them. Next time will be the last time. For you or anyone else who serves me. Do you understand? Whisper? Limper?”

They understood. They were careful to say so in so many words.

There was communication there beneath the level of mere words, not accessible to me, for they went away absolutely convinced their continued existence depended upon unquestioning and unswerving obedience not only to the letter but the spirit of their orders. They went with a crushed air.

The Lady faded the moment my cell door closed.

She appeared in the flesh shortly before nightfall. Her anger still simmered. I gathered, from hearing guards gossip, that Whisper had been ordered back to the Plain, too. Things had turned bad out there. The Taken on the scene could not cope.

“Give them hell, Darling,” I murmured. “Give them hell.” I was working hard on resigning myself to whatever fate’s horror shop stocked for me.

Guards brought me out of the cell soon after nightfall. They brought Raven, too. I asked no questions. They would not have answered.

The Lady’s carpet rested in the fortress’ main court. The soldiers placed Raven upon it, tied him down. A glum sergeant gestured for me to board. I did so, surprising him by knowing what to do. My heart was in my heels. I knew my destination.

The Tower.

I waited half an hour. Finally she came. She looked thoughtful. Even a little disturbed and uncertain. She took her place at the leading edge of the carpet. We rose.

Riding a windwhale is more comfortable and much less trying to the nerves. A windwhale has substance, has scale.

We rose perhaps a thousand feet and began running south. I doubt we were making more than thirty miles per hour. It would be a long flight, then, unless she chose to break it.

After an hour she faced me. I could barely discern her features. She said, “I visited the Barrowland, Croaker,”

I did not respond, not knowing what was expected.

“What have you done? What have you people set free?”

“Nothing.”

She looked at Raven. “Perhaps there is a way.” After a time: “I know the thing that is loose.… Sleep, physician. We’ll talk another time.” And I went to sleep. And when I wakened I was in another cell. And knew, by the uniforms, that my new prison was the Tower at Charm.