The RuneLords (24 page)

He held it up, as if in defiance, and gazed into Venetta's eyes for a long moment, several heartbeats, until Venetta paled with fear.

Iome glanced at the arm. The bloody cuts in Raj Ahten's wrist had healed seamlessly in a matter of seconds, and now the blackened arm began to regain its natural color.

How many endowments of stamina did the Wolf Lord have? How many of metabolism? Iome had never seen such healing power, had heard of it only in legend.

Raj Ahten smiled, a terrifying, predatory smile.

"Ah, so I cannot trust you, Venetta," he whispered. "I am a sentimental man. I had hoped family could be spared."

He slapped her with the back of his fist, the slap of Runelord. The side of Venetta's face caved in under the force of the blow, splattering blood through the air, and her neck snapped. The blow knocked her back a dozen feet, so that she hit the glass of the oriel.

She crashed through, the weight of her dead body pulling at the long red drapes as she did, and for half a second she seemed to stand still in the night air, before she plummeted the five stories.

Her body splatted against the broad paving stones in the courtyard below.

Iome stood in shock.

Her father cried out, and Raj Ahten stared at the splintered panes of colored glass, the red drapes waving in the stiffening breeze, annoyed.

Raj Ahten said, "My condolences, Sylvarresta. You see that I had no other choice. Of course, there are always those who think it easier to kill or die, than to live in service. And they are correct. Death requires no effort."

Iome felt as if a hole had ripped in her heart. Her father only sat on bended knees, shaking. "Now," Raj Ahten continued, "we were about to conclude a bargain. I want your wit. A few more endowments of it benefits me little. But it gains much for you. Give me your wit, and your daughter, Iome, will rule in your stead, as regent. Agreed?"

Iome's father sobbed, nodded dumbly, "Bring your forcibles then. Let me forget this day, my loss, and become as a child."

He would give the endowment to keep his daughter alive.

In that moment, Iome knelt again, terrified. She could not think, could not think what to do. "Remember who you are" her mother had said. But what did that mean? I am a princess, a servant of my people, she thought. Should I strike at Raj Ahten, follow my mother through the window? What does that buy?

As regent she would have some power. She could still fight Raj Ahten subtly, so long as she lived. She could give her people some measure of happiness, of freedom.

Certainly, that was why her father still lived, why he didn't choose to fight to the death, as her mother had.

Iome's heart hammered, and she could think of nothing to do, could formulate no worthwhile plan, but remembered Gaborn's face earlier in the day. The promise on his lips. "I am your Protector. I will return for you.

But what could Gaborn do? He couldn't fight Raj Ahten.

Yet Iome had to hope.

Raj Ahten nodded to a guard. "Call the facilitators."

In moments, Raj Ahten's facilitators entered the room, cruel little men in saffron robes. One bore a forcible on a satin pillow.

Raj Ahten's facilitators were well practiced, masters of their craft. One began the incantation, and the other held King Sylvarresta, coached him through it. "Watch your daughter, sirrah," he said in a thick Kartish accent. "This you do for her. Do for her. She everything. She the one you love. You do for her."

Iome stood before him, dazed, listened to her father's cries as the forcible heated. She daubed the sweat from his brow as the metal suddenly twisted like something alive. She gazed into his clear gray eyes as the forcible drew away the endowment, sucked the intelligence from him, until she could tell that he no longer remembered her name, but only cried in stupid agony.

She sobbed herself when he gave his final scream of pain, and collapsed at her feet.

Then the facilitator went to Raj Ahten, bearing the white-hot forcible trailing a ribbon of light, and Raj Ahten pulled off his helm, so that his long dark hair fell around his shoulders, then pulled off his scale mail, opened his leather jerkin to expose his muscular chest. It was a mass of scars, so marked by forcibles that Iome could see only a few faint traces of unmarked flesh.

As he took the endowment, Raj Ahten sat back on the throne, eyes glazed in satisfaction, watching Iome narrowly.

She wanted to rage against him, to pummel him with her fists, but dared do nothing but sit at her father's head, smoothing back his hair, trying to comfort him.

The King opened his eyes, regaining consciousness for half a second, and he stared up at Iome, his mouth open, as if wondering what strange and beautiful creature he beheld. "Gaaagh," he bawled; then a pool of urine began to spread on the red carpets beneath him.

"Father, Father," Iome whispered softly, kissing him, hoping that in time he would at least learn that she loved him.

Finished with their incantations, the facilitators left. Raj Ahten reached over to his sword, pulled it from the Queen's throne.

"Come, take your place beside me," he said. Once again, she saw that undisguised lust in his face, and did not know if he lusted for her body or for her endowments.

Iome found herself halfway to the throne before she realized that he'd used his Voice to order her. To be manipulated this way angered her.

She sat on the throne, tried not to look at Raj Ahten's face, at his incredibly handsome face.

"You understand why I must do this, don't you?" he asked.

Iome didn't answer.

"Someday you will thank me." Raj Ahten studied her frankly. "Have you studied in the House of Understanding, or have you read the chronicles?"

Iome nodded. She'd read the chronicles--at least selected passages.

"Have you heard the name of Daylan Hammer?"

Iome had. "The warrior?"

"The chroniclers called him 'the Sum of All Men.' Sixteen hundred and eighty-eight years ago, he defeated the Toth invaders and their magicians, here on Rofehavan's own shores. He defeated them almost single-handedly. He had so many endowments of stamina that when a sword passed through his heart, it would heal up again as the blade exited. Do you know how many endowments that takes?"

Iome shook her head.

"I do," Raj Ahten said, pulling back his shirt. "Try it, if you like."

Iome had her poniard strapped under her skirts. She hesitated just a moment. It seemed ghoulish, yet she might never have another chance to stab the man.

She pulled it, looked into his eyes. Raj Ahten watched her, confident, Iome plunged the dagger up between his ribs, saw the pain in his eyes, heard him give a startled gasp. She twisted the blade, yet no blood flowed down the runnel. Only a slight red film oozed where the blade met flesh. She pulled the blade free.

The wound closed as the bloody blade exited.

"You see?" Raj Ahten asked. "Neither your mother's poison nor your own dagger can hurt me. Among Runelords, there has never been another of Daylan's equal. Until now.

"It is said in my country that when he'd received enough endowments, he no longer needed to take them. The love of his people supported him, it flowed to him. When his Dedicates died, his powers remained, undiminished."

She'd never read that. It defied her understanding of the art of the Runelords. Yet she hoped it was true. She hoped that such a thing could be, that Raj Ahten would someday quit draining people like her father.

"I think," Raj Ahten said softly, "that I am nearly there. I think I shall be his equal, and that I shall defeat the reavers without the loss of fifty million human lives, as would happen under any other plan."

Iome looked into his eyes, wanting to hate him for what he'd done. Her father lay in his own urine on the floor at her feet. Her mother was dead on the paving stones outside the keep. Yet Iome looked into Raj Ahten's face, and she could not hate him. He seemed...so sincere. So beautiful.

He reached out, stroked her hand, and she dared not pull away. She wondered if he would try to seduce her. She wondered if she'd have the strength to fight him if he did.

"So sweet. If you were not my kin, I'd take you as a wife. But I'm afraid propriety forbids it. Now, Iome, you too must do your part to help me defeat the reavers. You will give me your glamour."

Iome's heart pounded. She imagined how it would be, with skin as rough as leather, the cobwebs of her hair falling from her head, the way the veins would stick out on her legs. The dry smell of her breath. To look, to smell, to be repulsive.

Yet that was not half the horror of it. Glamour was more than beauty, more than physical loveliness. It could be recognized partly as form, but just as much was manifest in the color of one's skin, the glossiness of one's hair, the light that shone in one's eyes. It could be seen in posture, in poise, in determination. The heart of it often lay somewhere in a person's confidence in and love of self.

So, depending on the ruthlessness of the facilitator involved, all these could be drawn away, leaving the new Dedicate both ugly and filled with self-loathing.

Iome shook her head. She had to fight him, had to fight Raj Ahten any way she could. Yet she could think of nothing, no way to strike back.

"Come, child," Raj Ahten said smoothly. "What would you do with all your beauty, if I left it to you? Lure some prince to your bed? What a petty desire. You could do it. But afterward you would only spend your life in regret. You've seen how men look at you with lust in their eyes. You've seen how they stare, always wanting you. Certainly you must tire of it."

When he put it that way, in such a silky voice, Iome felt wretched. It seemed vile and selfish to want to be beautiful.

"In the desert near where I was born," Raj Ahten said, "a great monument, a statue, stands three hundred feet tall, half tilted in the sand. It is the statue of a king, long forgotten, his face scoured away by wind. A banner at his feet, written in an ancient language, says, 'All bow to the Great Ozyvarius, who rules the earth, whose kingdom shall never fail!'

"Yet all the scribes in the world cannot tell me who that king is, or how long ago he reigned.

"We have always been such fleeting creatures," Raj Ahten whispered. "We have always been so temporary. But together, Iome, we can become something more."

The craving in his voice, the hunger, almost drove all reason from Iome's mind. Almost she felt willing to give him her beauty. But a wiser voice in the back of her mind nagged. "No, I would die, I would be nothing."

"You would not die," Raj Ahten said. "If I become the Sum of All Men, your beauty would live on in me. Some part of you would always remain, to be loved, to be admired."

"No," Iome said in horror.

Raj Ahten glanced at the floor, where King Sylvarresta still lay in a foul heap. "Not even to save his life?"

Then Iome knew, she knew, that her father would tell her not to make this bargain. "No," Iome shuddered.

"It is a horrible thing, to put an idiot among the torturers. All that pain your father would have to endure, never understanding why, never knowing that there is such a thing as death that could bring him release, with the torturers repeating your name each time they put the hot irons to him, so that in time, even at the mention of your name, he would cry out in pain. It would be truly horrible."

The cruelty inherent in such an idea left Iome numb. She looked at Raj Ahten, her heart breaking. She could not say yes.

The Wolf Lord nodded to one of his men. "Bring in the girl."

The guard left the chamber, returned quickly with Chemoise. Chemoise, who should have been in the Dedicates' Keep, comforting her father. Chemoise, who had already suffered so much this week, lost so much to Raj Ahten.

How had Raj Ahten known what Iome felt for her dear friend? Had Iome betrayed the girl with a glance?

Chemoise had wide, frightened eyes. She began weeping in terror when she saw the King lying on the floor. Shrieked when Raj Ahten's guard took her to the broken window, poised to throw her over the edge.

Iome's heart hammered, as she watched her childhood friend begin to gibber in fear. Two lives. Raj Ahten would be killing two--Chemoise and her unborn child.

Chemoise, forgive me for this betrayal, Iome wanted to say. For she knew, she knew with her whole soul, that surrender was wrong. If no one had ever surrendered, Raj Ahten would be dead by now. Yet she also knew that to give her glamour to Raj Ahten would benefit him little, while it saved the lives of Iome's friends.

"I cannot give you an endowment," Iome said, unable to disguise the loathing in her words. She could not give it to him. Not to him personally.

"If not me, a vector, then," Raj Ahten offered.

Something in Iome's heart tripped. A balance was found. She could give her beauty--give it for her father, for Chemoise. So long as she did not have to give it to Raj Ahten. Her voice broke as she said, "Bring your forcible, then."

Moments later the forcibles were fetched, along with a wretched woman who had given her glamour. So Iome looked upon the hag in dirty gray robes and saw what she would become, and struggled to see what beauty had ever been hidden inside the woman.

Then the chants began. Iome watched Chemoise, still poised on the ledge, and silently willed her beauty away, willed herself to buy something lovely and eternally precious with it. The life of a friend, and the baby she carried.

There was a rustling in the darkness, and a tiny glowing streamer of phosphorous fire as the facilitator approached, put the forcible low on her neck, almost against her bosom.

For half a moment, nothing happened, and someone whispered, "For your friend. Do it for your friend."

Iome nodded, sweat pouring down her brow. She held the image of Chemoise in her mind, Chemoise holding a child in her arms, nuzzling it.

Iome felt the unspeakable pain of the forcible, opened her eyes, saw the skin of her hands dry and crack as if they burned in the infernal heat. The veins rose on her wrists like roots, and her nails became brittle as chalk.

Her firm young breasts sank, and she grabbed at them, feeling the loss keenly. She regretted the trade now, but it was too late. She felt...as if she stood in the river, and the sand at her feet flowed out from under her, undermining her. Everything that was hers, all her beauty, her allure, flowed out and away, into the forcible.