Lyrec (32 page)

The Hespet’s face revealed that word of the deed had reached the temple.

“Yes,” continued Chagri, “assassinated by a man in Ladomantine uniform. Your king has already sent an eager army out to take his reply to Ladomirus. The assassin, however, escaped rather magically and I believe the girl knows where he has hidden himself. She is an accomplice. I alone am aware of this—as usual. I wish you to question her and then kill her.”

So at last it came, Slyur thought, the task that would damn his soul to the deepest pits of Mordun. He knew better than to argue, although he knew he would never succeed. And as always, Chagri sensed his doubt.
 

“Recall, I gave you the life of a child once. Now you can serve me fairly by evening the score. That’s all I ask. A balance. Think of it that way.”

“I shall,” answered the priest, “balance.” He knew, however, that he would not harm the girl. He had come as far as his ability to deceive himself would allow.

The black crescent of a smile split the bright colorless face again. “You will forgive me for my few lingering doubts about you.” He grasped Slyur’s wrist.
 

The priest’s eyes rolled up as if he had fainted, but he began to rock steadily back and forth.

“The bloodlust has started to trickle in, Slyur, here where your hand was. Taste it—isn’t it sweet? You want to rip the skin from her bones in strips, make her endure impossible suffering because she is a witch. Make her confess about the stranger she brought here. And then—” he placed a bone dagger on the cot in front of the Hespet “—you must relieve her of her head and bring it here as proof.” He released his hold.

The priest stared up at him with sunken, wolf-like eyes in a face no longer belonging to Slyur—a face pulled tight with a hatred no single human being could have mustered. A bubble of spittle grew and popped in the corner of his mouth. His fingers closed on the handle of the knife with familiarity and tucked it into the embroidered ceremonial robes he still wore. He stood and strode out of the tiny room.

Chagri whispered, “And now I must leave you, Atlarma, to prepare elsewhere. But fear not, your night comes soon.” The room was empty, cold and bare.

*****

Bozadon Reket sat with his feet up, across from Pavra, in her room. He watched as she sprinkled a set of oddly shaped stones across a board carved with depressions to capture the stones. He’d been present when Cheybal presented her with the divining board and whispered to her, “They belonged to the Princess Lewyn before.” That meant nothing to Reket, but had caused the child to become demure, though whether this had been real or affected because the princess had been mentioned, he could not have said. Now, however, as he watched her roll the stones and react to them, he concluded that some secret meaning had been conveyed by Cheybal, for the playing of the stones obviously brought her no particular joy. All morning, the more she played the more her expression darkened; sometimes she groaned, other times muttered seemingly nonsensical things to herself. His presence in the room was all but forgotten.

Reket wondered just how long he would have to remain here like this. Eventually, Tynec would discover that he had not left as ordered and have him put out like an offensive cat. And even if, by the grace of the kitchen staff, he went undetected for some time, Faubus could be weeks besieging Ladoman. The child would drive him mad with all of her occult doings by then. He folded his arms and tugged on his mustache.

Pavra looked up suddenly at the door with obvious terror. A moment later someone knocked.

“He’s come,” she said. “All the signs say so. You mustn’t let him in.”

Reket stared at her as if she had just told him that red was blue. Had he been given the time, he might have convinced himself of what she said, but the knock was repeated, more insistently, followed by a call: “Hello, is someone within?”

“Why, that’s the Hespet, girl,” Reket said. He stood. “We have to let him in—a most important man.” He reached for the door.

“He’s sent by the other one—the evil one that killed Commander Cheybal!”

“Child, you go too far saying things like that.” But did she? Was he not himself peripherally involved in a plot stemming from a belief that Tynec was possessed by the same fiend? The notion saved him. He was edgy opening the door, and jumped aside as a bone knife stabbed at him through the opening. He blocked it with animal instinct. The knife gashed his arm, but slid harmlessly past him.

Reket backed against the wall and tried to get his own dagger out. Slyur came at him again. The priest seemed transformed, or driven by some rabid intent: his lips met in foam. He slashed out across Reket’s abdomen.

Reket caught his wrist and shoved the dagger away, but the crazed priest let himself be shoved all the way around and used this momentum to slam the stump of his other arm into the dark man’s temple, smashing Reket’s head against the wall. Dazed, Reket slipped to one side, his hands out to ward off any attack from above. Slyur instead kicked his knees out from under him, then pounded the dagger’s hilt down across the back of Reket’s skull to clinch the attack. For a moment he stood like an animal over his downed prey, eyes lustrous with sweet joy.

Pavra had scrambled off her bed while the two men fought. She crept toward escape, knowing that she was the priest’s true target. She neared the door, and Slyur as if sensing her spun back and kicked it shut. He brandished his knife in her face. “Oh, you aren’t to leave, no … except if you tell me things I have to know about the one who came here last night, I’ll let you leave then. Your head will come with me at least.” He laughed giddily. She saw that he was sweating as if burning with fever. “What was that one to you? Did you call him here? How did you get him to come? I want to find him. I want to know how to call him. How did you call him?” He stepped closer to her. She had nowhere to run and could only back away, toward a window too narrow to climb through. “Who is he?”

Pavra shook her head. “He’s not known to me.”

Slyur laughed again. Some of the foam bubbling out of his mouth poured toward his chin. “No-o, that earns you pain and nothing else. Beginning at the soles and working up, up. And each time you pass out, I’ll awaken you and begin again, travel up, up. You will tell.” He came at her, cackling to himself. He became all she could see, his laughter all she could hear, masking even the sound of her own voice screaming in her head.

The priest flicked the dagger through her hair. She could see how large were the pupils in his eyes. He pulled a long lock of her hair over the dagger, then snapped his arm, jerking the hair tight before it cut. She tensed at the pain but refused to cry out. He moved his thumb and the severed hair floated down. “Maybe,” he said, “I’ll start at the top instead.”

Then all at once he jerked up onto his toes. His dilated eyes accused her of some cruel jest. He began to turn away from her, tilted to one side and collapsed across her bed. His bone dagger skidded off the bed and onto the floor against the boot of old Ronnæm. The old man held a blood-dripping dagger of his own and wore a grin of feral delight. The door behind him hung ajar.

“This one wiped out our village,” he said. “On his orders Trufege came.”

Pavra found herself crying. She ran to Ronnæm and let him hold her and murmur gently to her, “It’s all right now.”

She didn’t cry long, and wiped at her eyes when Bozadon Reket groaned and attempted to sit up. He tipped back over the first time, then touched his head where the blood was flowing through his scalp. The scrape on his brow was beginning to swell. He saw the old king and the girl, and then the priest lying across the bed. The Hespet’s hand clutched a clump of the coverlet and was squeezing it as if in time with his heartbeat.

“If you allow him to remain there long,” Reket observed softly, “he will ruin that fine quilt.”

“He’s to live long enough for execution,” answered Ronnæm. “That’s why I haven’t killed him myself. That is the only reason.”

Reket pushed himself into a sitting position. When the galaxies stopped whirling behind his eyelids, he said calmly, “If you’re expecting Tynec to read out his crimes and pronounce sentence, you are wasting your time and wrath.”

“My grandson will make a just king.”

“Possibly. If
he
ever gets to rule.”

“And what is that supposed to mean?”

Reket nodded at Pavra. “Ask her. She can tell you what you would know already had you not been dogging the priests of Chagri these past days—not that I’m complaining, mind you. All the same, ask her.”

Ronnæm glared at Pavra. “What does he mean about my grandson?”

She surprised him by meeting his gaze, refusing to be intimidated.

“Tynec is under control of a force that sees everything. It killed his father and tried to kill me once when I saw it—and now again, through the Hespet. It’s not him, either. It’s the evil one who came here in his body. Last night it killed Commander Cheybal.” Reket watched Ronnæm all the time she spoke, anticipating the moment the old king would choke on his disbelief and deny everything she said. But as Pavra had frustrated Ronnæm now he frustrated Reket by merely gesturing at the priest and asking her, “What am I expected to do with him, then?”

“He is like Tynec,” Pavra said. “If he made others go into our village, I think it wasn’t his fault.”

Reket was rewarded at last by a growl from Ronnæm. The old king pushed Pavra aside. He was willing to accept a great deal, but not the loss of his prize villain. He kicked the priest’s leg. “Let’s wake him and see if you speak truly.” He shoved at Slyur again. “Let me see your eyes, Hespet, before they lose their shine for the last time. And don’t warn me of a god’s wrath for touching you. I’m long past fear of your sour war god. I’ve sown the fields he reaps too many times to worry how he likes
me
.”

Slyur said softly, “My back feels cold.”

“That’s where my knife went in.”

In spite of the difficulty and pain, the priest turned over and faced him. “Then it
is
you, Ronnæm. I thought I heard you in a dream.” His eyes focused on Pavra. “But it was no dream, was it? Oh, child, what I nearly did. Forgive me.”

“For what you succeeded in doing, you’ll hang,” said Ronnæm.

Slyur lay on his side with his knees drawn halfway up. “It no longer matters,” he said. “Once Chagri finds out that I’ve failed, I won’t live long enough to be tried. He may even know already. He knows even what I think.”

“Chagri? You see him?” asked a doubtful Bozadon Reket.

The Hespet nodded heavily. “He has been appearing to me, ordering me for months. Who to assign, who to promote. Who to kill. When he ordered me to harm her and I said I would, he knew I was lying and took control of me. He’s so powerful.” He shivered at the memory of being caged within himself. “It was like being a hungry rat. He wanted information about the stranger who—is this correct, is Cheybal truly dead?”

“Yes,” answered Reket.
 

In the same instant, Pavra said, “But the stranger isn’t guilty of Cheybal’s murder, and the one who comes to you is not Chagri, either. It’s something so huge and awful that it can be anyone or anything it chooses. It was the tailor who tried to kill me. And it killed Cheybal before I could tell him, I know it did!”

“It isn’t Chagri?” cried Slyur. He sat up, numb to his pain—his worst fears had been confirmed. “I’ve destroyed an entire village, hundreds of people dead, and it was nothing but quicksilver promises from a god I never even
believed in.” He shook his fist at the ceiling.
“I never believed!”
he shouted. “You are right, Ronnæm, I should be hanged. I’ve murdered so many, I deserve no mercy.”

Bozadon Reket reached out to brace the priest, but the Hespet rejected his help, doubling over at first from the sudden effort but then standing as straight as he could. “I must seek out the true gods, solicit their help. I’ve ignored them. I’ve been misled. And this is my punishment. I’ll go where I have to, I’ll find them.” Before anyone could stop him, he pushed himself away from the bed and lurched out of the room. Reket watched the door rebound off the wall and swing shut. He glanced at Ronnæm, expecting the old man to give chase. Then he sank down on the bed. “So, what is the next thing to be done? Whose turn to go mad?”

“This force or this god or whatever, once it meets up with the Hespet again, we will be in obvious danger here,” said Ronnæm. “If—
if
my grandson is possessed by this monstrosity of Pavra’s, then we must escape before it finds a way to brand us traitors and have us taken.” He turned to Pavra. “The stranger you defend, did you—did the village—call him here as Slyur thought?”

She shook her head. “I’ve only spoken with him.”

“Then, tell me where is he now, do you know? He’s escaped the prison.”

Rubbing the lump on his head, Bozadon Reket said, “He stole off with Faubus and the army this morning, dressed as one of the soldiers.”

Utterly astonished, Ronnæm asked, “How do you know that?”

Reket smiled with chagrin. “I, ahm, helped him escape.”

Ronnæm stared at him for a long moment. “And to think I used to let you play with my son.”

Chapter 22.

The sacred chamber of Anralys was an octagonal room in the center of the temple. Eight was the goddess’s sacred number. Eight benches stood empty on the polished wooden floor. The intaglio panels on the walls were separated by eight stonework columns. In the center of the room a single smooth wooden stand held an oddly twisted black-metal sculpture, something like thorny twining branches, each branch ending in a cup containing a candle; eight candles in all.

Being the omphalos of the temple, the shrine contained no windows. Light came from directly over the candles through a single skylight comprising a series of triangular panels of a relatively new substance—glass.

The panels were uneven, dark and rippled; the light they let in was bleak. A distorted sun crossed the sky overhead and the shadows in the chamber crept from the corners as if to encroach upon the brazier of candles.

This day the shadows took on more life than usual. One in particular rose up and detached from the rest, moving clumsily and ponderously into the light. The shadow stepped into the light and took substance, became Slyur, the Hespet. He had entered through a secret tunnel, bypassing all the Sisters of Anralys. Upon seeing him they would have forsaken their usual greeting of “No men” and torn him to pieces instead. His god and their goddess had always been at the head of warring factions in Voed’s celestial city. The Hespet was the Sisterhood’s most bitter enemy. Never would they have dreamed that he knew of the escape tunnel door out of—and into—this shrine.