Challenges (53 page)

“But—what—What are you talking about?” Delin stuttered, suddenly noticing the way the others were calmly staring at him. “You can’t know—you can’t speak to me like—What’s going on here? You’re supposed to be drugged…!”

“Not many people can be drugged with plain water,” Kambil commented with a smile after taking another sip of his tea. “And that’s all you added to the service, plain water. The Puredan you paid quite a lot of gold for was never really Puredan, I made sure of that. Letting you have it would have been like putting a weapon into the hands of a small child.”

“A completely insane small child,” Bron added without inflection, still studying Delin. “I missed seeing it at first, of course, but certainly made up for that blindness later. Insane doesn’t necessarily also mean stupid, but you seem to be the exception to that rule.”

“Which at least afforded us some amusement,” Homin said, the faint smile he wore causing Delin to feel chilled. “In the beginning you thought you were controlling Bron by calling him our leader, and never once stopped to wonder why the rest of us saw through the farce, but he didn’t. You simply grew tired of the pretense and made it clear that
you
were leader, and again never wondered why no one argued.”

“It was because we were all humoring you,” Selendi told him, the gentleness of her tone like a slap in the face. “It was amusing to a certain extent, but when we saw how easily you might ruin everything, it stopped being funny. We told Kambil we thought he should control you completely, but he said it wasn’t possible yet.”

“Which, unfortunately, it wasn’t,” Kambil said, taking up the narrative again. “There’s a definite … extra something … which comes from Earth magic in a Blending, but it doesn’t appear if the Earth magic user is being controlled. You might even call it a hidden reserve of emergency strength, but whatever it is it simply wasn’t there when I took full control of you. I had to leave you mostly uncontrolled, then, but we did without the extra anyway. Your terror was so thick that it affected the Blending entity, so you almost caused us to lose all by yourself.”

“I did no such thing!” Delin snarled, humiliation flushing his skin to the point of pain. “I don’t get terrified and I certainly don’t lose, but you people do make me sick! It isn’t me he’s controlling but the rest of
you
! I know you can’t see yourselves from the outside, but you’re not the same people you were!”

“And you’re only just noticing that,” Bron commented while Homin and Selendi showed those faint and horrible smiles again. “We remember exactly what we were like, but Kambil’s been working with us practically from the day we were first put into this group.”

“He just didn’t let us show these much more efficient selves until there was no one around to notice and wonder,” Selendi went on. “We love being efficient and capable, untouched by all those emotions which used to choke us and trip us. We’re the same as we used to be—except for the petty problems we were hampered by.”

“But I do actually regret something, even if the regret is faint,” Homin said, taking his turn again. “It would have been marvelous to be able to show the new me to that offensive Elfini, but your sickness made that impossible, Delin. If not for you, she wouldn’t have had to die.”

“You know I killed her?” Delin demanded, his voice much higher and more shrill than he’d wanted it to be. “But no one was supposed to—I mean, you’re completely mistaken. I did no such thing, so you’d better not say it again or I’ll—”

“Tell your father?” Kambil suggested with sickening amusement. “Or possibly kill us as well? Save yourself the effort of planning our deaths, Delin. You’re marvelous at making those sorts of plans, but you simply haven’t got what it takes to carry them out. You’re a bungler, and you’ve never killed anyone in your entire life.”

“That’s not true,” Delin choked out, his head whirling so wildly that his vision had started to blur. And he’d dropped his cup of tea… “I’ve killed more than once, Elfini and Ollon Kapmar, and those sluts at the pleasure parlors…”

“You did nothing at the pleasure parlors but faint,” Kambil’s voice came through the ringing in Delin’s ears. “After the first time, you mumbled something before you came out of it about how happy you were to have killed the girl. The manager of the establishment took that as his cue about how to behave, and therefore told you that he’d discreetly gotten rid of the body. Your tip to him was so generous that he shared the information about your preferences with the managers of the other parlors you patronized, and thereafter he shared their own tips as well. They lied to you, you fool, and simply kept the ‘dead’ girls out of your way for a while. You never really noticed their faces, so there were some you ‘killed’ two or three times.”

“No,” Delin moaned, fists to his temples in an effort to stop the throbbing pain in his head. “I did kill them, I did! Them and Elfini and Ollon Kapmar! You’re lying, you’re—”

“What I am is sick and tired of cleaning up after your messes,” Kambil said from somewhere, unbelievably sounding annoyed. “I didn’t trust you any farther than Selendi could throw you, so I followed you when you so generously agreed to help Homin. You were actually fool enough to go in and abuse that woman, after which you fainted as usual. If I hadn’t been there, she would have summoned the guard and had you locked up and the key thrown away.”

“She certainly would have,” Homin agreed soberly. “She lived for power, so she never would have dropped the charges. You would have stayed under arrest, and we would have been given a Low or Middle talent in Earth magic to round out our Blending.”

“So I had to make her forget about what had happened,” Kambil continued. “You were dreaming happy dreams as usual, but she was straining to recover what I’d forced her to forget. I could tell she’d recover the memories unless I stayed there and kept a constant eye on her, and that was completely impractical. So I gave you something else to dream about, and went back that night and killed her myself. Just in time, I might add, as she was close to remembering what had happened. That was the real reason she beat Homin’s father so badly. The incident was beginning to come back, but she still felt confused about the identity of her attacker. Confused enough to think it might have been the man under her whip.”

“But I was there,” Delin whispered, still writhing in pain in the chair. “I remember every bit of it…”

“Every bit but the killing part,” Kambil said with a sound of scorn. “I couldn’t get your mind to accept that part of it, because it was reality rather than fantasy. You’ve never been able to handle that sort of reality, not after what your father did to you—and made you do. You did clean things up nicely, though, after I told you what had to be done. And while you thought it was your own idea…”

“But you couldn’t let well-enough be,” Bron said, sounding like a disapproving adult speaking to a child. “Your hatred of Rigos was so intense that you had to keep punishing him for being a better man than you despite his lack of talent. Kambil was busy working with us and the servants at the time, and we all thought you were safely off with one of your bored older women. They pass you from one to the other as a group joke, and all the time you believed it was your charm that got you into their beds.”

“Bron woke me when you were late getting back, so we went out searching for you,” Kambil said. “It took a short while to pick up your mental trail, so by the time we caught up with you you’d just finished telling Ollon Kapmar that you’d killed his sister. The man’s obsession was much too strong for me to work through, so he had to die as well. This time I was able to give you the entire scene, because I disguised it as daydreaming. I had you do everything necessary in the way of removing our traces and then kept you from going back into the room, but it was all wasted effort.”

“Because we didn’t know that Rigos had killed himself,” Homin said, his tone just like Bron’s. “That ruined everything, of course, because instead of dropping the investigation with the death of the strongest suspect, they realized that Rigos was innocent after all. So they dug and questioned and checked and cross-checked, and now they know exactly who the real murderer is.”

“You,” Kambil supplied cheerfully while Delin fought to keep his head from breaking open. “Zolind told me so when he and I spoke privately, only he doesn’t remember that he told me so. He also doesn’t remember admitting that it would be impolitic on his part to let us lose in front of everyone, but he’ll never allow us to be Seated, not as long as he lives. That’s why our first concern has to be doing something about the condition.”

“His continuing to live, Kambil means,” Selendi said with a chuckle. “In point of fact we’ve decided not to let any of the Advisors live, and you’ll do your part to help us end them. We won’t need that something extra to accomplish their ends, so from now on you’ll be under complete control. You’ll even be under control when we destroy the present Blending. We’ve already checked, and their strongest member is no stronger than a good Middle.”

“But first we wanted you to know how much trouble you’ve caused us,” Kambil said, for the first time with vindictive satisfaction in his voice. “Your insanity runs much too deep for me to be able to do anything about it, even with Grammi’s help. Oh, that’s right, you don’t know that my grandmother has been helping me. She loves me even more than I love her, and she’d never let anything terrible happen to me. The fact that she’s also a High in Spirit magic has all but doubled my effectiveness.”

“Which he needed when he had you under partial control,” Homin said negligently. “We
had
to give the commoners the keying phrase to release them from the control of others, but you almost refused to send it. Kambil did some very thorough research when he was supposed to be napping all those times, and he discovered that our peers in the other Blendings were all incompetent fools. They were also not nearly as strong as we are, so if the commoners were freed they would eliminate our peers
for
us—leaving us as the only ones the Advisors could support in order to save everyone’s face. Kambil also found out that that one Blending would not hesitate to pass on what they learned, so they had to be the ones to be given the information—which you regretted sending even while you were doing it. You just have no imagination or the courage to take a chance, Delin.”

“And now that we’ve had the pleasure of telling you the truth, you’ll be put under Kambil’s complete control,” Bron said with the same smile that Homin and Selendi showed. “You’ll no longer have to be coddled, and you’ll do exactly as you’re told. You certainly won’t like it, but you also won’t be able to do anything about it. Goodbye, Delin.”

Delin had been trying to scream, but nothing in the way of sound came out. The ice of terror had formed all through him, and then it froze him solid—

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Lorand awoke—to a certain extent. His head ached in a way that he’d never felt before, the pain so intense that he wished he were unconscious again. And there was nothing he could do to stop the pain. Even if he’d been able to work around it—and the blurriness covering his mind—he couldn’t seem to figure out where the power was…

“Look, he’s tryin’ t’wake up!” someone said, sounding alarmed. “He ain’t ’sposta try t’ wake up!”

“So what if he does?” another voice countered, male like the first voice. “They got him so doped up that he won’t even know what day it is. When you feed him later, you’ll probably have to keep shaking him to remind him what he’s about. But you better not let him start wasting away, or they’ll skin you alive.”

“Why?” the first voice demanded, a heavy whine to it. “I heared he’s prob’ly all kindsa damaged like, ’cause a th’ way he got yanked outta that Blendin’. Gettin’ yanked out’s ’sposta damage ’em real bad, so why’d they still want ’im? An’ if he ain’t damaged, how’m I ’sposta handle a High?”

“Why do you insist on worrying about things that are none of your business?” the second voice asked, sounding angrily impatient. “Even if he’s left with no more than Middle talent, they’ll still want to find that out for themselves. They’ll be able to use him even like that, but if his talent level remains intact, he’ll be much more valuable. They’ll dose him with Puredan to make him docile, and then they’ll use him until they burn him out. You, personally, have nothing to fear, because they’ll transport him to where the army is before they let him come back to himself. Are you satisfied now?”

“Yeah, yeah sure,” the first voice muttered, and then there was silence again. But it wasn’t silent inside Lorand’s head, where fear joined the unending pain. He had no idea what the men were talking about, and couldn’t even remember what had happened to him. He lay on something hard in a place with a terrible stench, but he didn’t know where the place was. He was supposed to have been doing something, but he couldn’t remember what that something was.

All he knew was that someone was going to try to burn out his mind.

A long moan escaped Lorand’s lips as he tried to free himself from whatever held him down, but it suddenly came to him that he wasn’t chained or even tied. Something insubstantial held him in its grip, but its lack of substance did nothing to limit it. It held him tightly, like the arms of a very strong woman…

A woman. Hadn’t there been a woman in his life somewhere? The memory of her hid just out of reach, teasing him with hints and suggestions. Had she been like that, a woman who teased? He’d always wanted to meet a woman who would tease him lovingly and gently…

Gently. That word didn’t fit anywhere in his world. He’d tried gently to open his eyes, but they’d refused to work. He’d wanted his head to pound more gently, but he couldn’t make it happen. Nothing was working right…

Working … was he working? Had he had an accident? Someone really should have come by to tell him what was going on, it would only have been common decency. Now…

Now he wished he knew where he was … and what had happened … and who was he, anyway…?

* * *

Jovvi felt as though she floated in a heavy sea, she herself heavier than usual. Everything around and about her was heavy, even the air almost too thick to breathe. It was a strain to draw that air into her lungs, and struggling to do it made her head hurt more. But it also seemed to thin the sea a bit, enough so that she could just touch the outer world…