The door swung closed behind them, smacking Nimue's bottom. Her attention, however, was on the shackles set high up on the wall, high enough so that a man with his wrists chained would dangle painfully, his feet not touching ground. Whips, of course. And thumbscrews. She recognized the back-breaking wheel and its cousin, the rack. Also an iron maiden. There were other devices with which she was thankfully unfamiliar. There was also a large metal cage where prisoners could be held, presumably to watch others being questioned before their own turn. It was from this dark corner that a voice called out, "Romola?"
"Dolph!" Romola ran forward, bringing the circle of light with her so that Nimue could see Dolph and the five youths with him.
Nimue paused, mid-step.
"The keys, Nimue. Hurry." Romola hugged her husband through the bars.
The five youths...
Oh, no. Oh, no.
"Nimue." Finally Romola stepped back, looking at Nimue. "What's the matter?"
"Dolph..." Nimue counted off. Somehow she managed to keep her voice relatively even. "Then there's the cooper's nephew, Boy, cobbler's apprentice, wainwright—I'm sorry, I don't know all your names." A tremor worked its way into her throat. "So what is Evan—whose body I saw Halbert take—what is Evan doing in there with you?"
The sixth man, who hadn't approached the front of the cage with the others, remained seated. Finally, slowly, he lifted his face to her: all curly hair and teeth, Evan, just as she remembered. But: "I don't be Evan nor Halbert," he said hoarsely. "I be Wystan."
Nimue didn't dispute it. She knew it for truth as soon as he spoke, and she called herself a fool for having missed all the signs the false Wystan had let pass.
The young men in the prison called out to her:
"Wizard made a second change..."
"They kept asking about you..."
"He said fight magic with magic..."
"It was the same as before..."
They all spoke at once, except for Reynards Boy, who may—for all Nimue knew—have been too simple for speech. "I know, I know," she said, too drained to fight the realization.
"Well, I don't," Romola said. "I don't understand any of it. What is going on?"
Nimue felt cold and numb. Which was good. The pain would set in later. What had she done?
She said, "Halbert transformed himself again—this time before he started to age. Now Halbert looks like Wystan, Wystan has poor dead Evan's body, and I,"—she closed her eyes—"I told Halbert enough to get Sir Mordred killed: The trap was down here all along." She hadn't trusted Mordred, but she was the one who had betrayed him.
Wystan scrambled to his feet. Now he grabbed her hand through the bars. "You be a famous sorceress—Dolph sez. You tell me: What of this body? Will it wear out like all of wizard's other bodies?"
"I don't know," she said as calmly as she could. She wished ... she wasn't sure how to wish, and so wished, once more, for everyone's well-being. Much good that wish had done so far. "I just don't know, Wystan," she admitted.
Romola said, "Well, talking is not going to help anything. Here, give me the keys." She handed Nimue the almost exhausted torch.
But none of the keys fit.
Of course they wouldn't.
"Maybe there's another set of keys out in the guard area?" one of the prisoners suggested hopefully.
Nimue mentally reached out, but this time the barrier was no longer cotton-stuffing soft. "We won't be able to get the door to this room open," she said.
Romola looked up, startled, from trying a key she had already seen wouldn't work. "That door doesn't have a lock."
It didn't. Wizards didn't need locks.
Nimue said nothing.
Romola looked at her quizzically. "It doesn't have a lock," she insisted. She started to back up slowly, then turned and ran to the door. She pulled, she pushed, she beat her hands on it. "It doesn't have a lock!"
The torch sputtered one more time, then went out entirely, leaving the darkened room with an oily, singed smell.
Nimue blindly eased down with her back to the torture chamber's cage. She could hear Romola still raging against the door and someone behind her, presumably Wystan or maybe it was the wainwright with his broken fingers, whimpering softly.
Calm down. Think rationally. Think like Halbert. She closed her eyes, mere habit for there was nothing in this total darkness that could interfere with concentration. What would the wizard's next move be? Her mind fluttered off in several directions at once.
And suddenly settled on: Sir Dunsten.
She bit her lip and clenched her hands to keep from crying out loud. That was something else she had told Halbert—blithely handing out lethal information—that they'd sent to Camelot for help. She went over the conversation trying to remember the exact words. Had she actually volunteered the portly knight's name?
No, she decided. She had not spoken his name. And the wizard hadn't pressed, perhaps afraid to arouse suspicion.
Now, if she were Halbert, how would she stop an unknown knight from alerting the King? Men sent after him tonight would never catch up. Magic? Difficult, very difficult on a nameless, faceless man. He'd need more details first.
A shiver coincided with the memory of what room she was in. A room made to wring details out of the reluctant.
Oh, Merlin, she moaned to herself. What have I done? And, more importantly, What should I do now?
CHAPTER 8
A long time passed in the darkness.
Then, finally, from the other side of the unlocked door that wouldn't open, a voice warned, "Do not try anything. Sir Bayard has a knife to Sir Mordred's throat."
Bayard. According to Dunsten and Mordred, Bayard was the lord who held Castle Ridgemont. A lord who, apparently, had no complaint against aiding a wizard-uncle who stole young men from the countryside and used them to prolong his own life. A lord who either took his orders from a renegade wizard, or had similar goals.
If Romola, still by the door, had a plan, and if someone having a knife to Mordred's throat disrupted it, she made no sound to indicate so.
The heavy door banged open and the room was flooded by the light of torches, which flickered and Crackled and stank of pitch. A dozen armed men crowded m, the first of whom did, indeed, have a knife to Mordred's throat.
Nimue scrambled to her feet. "Don't let him into your minds," she warned the prisoners, remembering how Evan, Roswald's son—the real Evan—had died not even struggling. "Make him fight for every advantage."
The man she now knew as the wizard Halbert, dressed in Wystan's body, swept into the room. "Ah! So nice to have everybody back together again. I do enjoy a good reunion, don't you? Get up off the floor, my dear, there is no telling who has died on that spot." This last was addressed to Romola, who was on her knees by the door. Apparently the sheer number of armed knights and guards was enough to persuade her not to try to take them on. Then Halbert grinned at Nimue, which twisted the baby fat of Wystan's face into a leer. "At last we meet properly, my Lady Nimue. I have looked forward to this occasion for the past several years."
Ignoring him, Nimue asked, "Sir Mordred, are you unharmed?"
"He is quite undamaged," Halbert answered before Mordred had a chance to say anything—assurance that he was unharmed, or complaint that her foolishness had brought them all to this. "For the moment," the wizard added. "Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for several of Sir Bayard's guards." He gave his leering smile again. "Sir Bayard is quite distressed."
Nimue did not think Sir Bayard looked at all overcome by grief.
"You will be next," Mordred promised Halbert in his quiet, dispassionate voice.
Though Bayard twisted Mordred's arm a bit higher, his uncle never reacted. He only said, "Bring the girl."
Nimue braced herself, but it was Romola they went after. One of the men grabbed the innkeeper's daughter by the arm and hauled her to her feet. The wizard smiled at each of them in turn: Nimue and Romola. '"Word has been sent to Camelot,'" he said, N
imue's own words come back to haunt her. "By whom?"
"Don't answer," Nimue said. "His power is less not knowing."
Romola had joined them after they'd parted with Sir Dunsten and had no way of knowing his name, and she simply continued to glare at her captors.
Mordred's face showed not a flicker, but Halbert had caught to whom Nimue meant her warning. He said, "We have time. There is no way any messenger could have reached Camelot yet. Except for Merlin. And Merlin is no longer with us." He smiled a bit too benignly. "Is he, Nimue?"
By his patronizing tone, he believed the stories that Merlin was her prisoner: As though a powerful magician who could tell the future would suddenly go mad for a silly young thing—unable or unwilling to stop her from implanting him in an oak tree. She said nothing to correct the misperception.
His left hand clutched at his chest, at the ruby pendant she now knew was hidden beneath his shirt. But he reached out with his other hand and touched her hair. "Pretty," he mused. "I like pretty things." The back of his hand rubbed her cheek.
She flinched, which he seemed to like. His finger traced her jaw, caressed her neck.
There was a momentary disturbance: Mordred twisted to break the hold of the knights who held him. Halbert's nephew, Bayard, kicked Mordred's leg out from under him, which caused the arm already twisted behind his back to go higher yet One of the other knights reached in and yanked the back of his hair, bringing his chin up so that Bayard could get his knife in closer. Halbert's men all moved quickly and efficiently.
In the interval between two heartbeats, Nimue tried to impose her own will on the wizard while he was distracted. But she knew she was outmatched, and she doubted her decision even as she made it.
Which lessened her power still more.
The cell was totally silent as the knights waited for their orders, and the prisoners waited to learn what would become of them.
None of them was aware of the struggle that had decided everything.
In the silence, the wizard's voice sounded inside her head: Shall I give them the word, my Lady?
She answered, also without words: Please spare him.
Give me the ring.
Nimue closed in around herself.
Halbert raised his eyebrows at his nephew. The knife, already touching Mordred's throat, started to indent the skin. Bayard grinned, not averse to follow his uncle's orders.
Nimue saw that he was going to do it. She pulled the ring off and threw it at Halbert's face. "Use it and die," she said, halfway between warning and threat, with a bit of wish thrown in.
The wizard caught the ring in midair. He slipped it on his little finger, then slapped her with the same hand. "Stupid girl," he hissed. "I do not like children, and I do not like children's games. Did you think your silly disguises could fool me long? Hmmm? Young boy? And this." He indicated the mud-daubed scar on Mordred's cheek. "Wash that off," he ordered.
"Tell me," Mordred demanded of Bayard, "do you enjoy being this second-rate wizard's lickspittle?"
Unperturbed, one of the castle knights knocked the lid off a large barrel in the corner, and Bayard finally put his knife away to free both hands so that he could be the one to force Mordred's face into the water.
Mordred came up sputtering and spitting. But before he could catch his breath, Bayard pushed him back under.
Mordred's free hand tried to grab hold of him, but one of the other knights twisted that arm too. Bayard let him up for one gasp, dunked him again, kept him in this time.
"Word has been sent to Camelot by whom?" Halbert asked.
Nimue kept her mind blank.
"Word has been sent to Camelot by whom?"
She fought away a mental picture of Sir Dunsten.
"Word has been sent to Camelot by whom?" Halbert was losing his temper, and that affected his concentration, making him less difficult to withstand.
Bayard jerked Mordred back, which allowed him to slump to the floor, coughing almost to the point of retching.
"Wrong tactic, wizard," Mordred finally managed to gasp. "She doesn't like me enough to care what you do."
Though Nimue would have wished for this to be true, somehow it already wasn't.
The wizard smiled. "We shall see."
But Bayard jerked his head toward the door and said to his uncle, "We need to talk."
Between great hacking coughs, Mordred said, "What makes you think he cares what you have to say?"
Nimue hoped the moment of satisfaction he got from saying this was worthwhile, for Bayard gave him a vicious kick before leading his uncle away from the group.
Nimue strained to hear their conversation in the far corner, but couldn't make out anything. Once she realized this, she knelt beside Mordred, who was pale and still bent double, with his hair hanging limp and dripping. The guards did nothing to stop her as she anxiously laid her hands on Mordred's shoulders—a swordsman's powerful muscles there, she couldn't help but notice, despite his professed disdain for knighthood and the chivalric code.
One of the other knights stepped forward and pushed her away with—not exactly a kick—but a foot placed squarely on her shoulder.
"No talking," Bayard snarled, coming up behind them.
"Got you all straightened out now, has he, Bayard?" Mordred asked.
Halbert scowled, but Bayard, the one belittled, smiled. Actually he had a pleasant face which, along with his too-round body, hinted at good humor and an enjoyment of the easy life. But his eyes had nothing of laughter in them. "Lord Halbert has special plans for your body, boy, or I would cut out that foul tongue of yours and shove it down your throat."
But Mordred only said, "You could try."
Nimue cringed inwardly at this reckless bravado, which at best could get Mordred killed.
Bayard's hands curled into fists, but he kept them at his belt. "Oh, believe me, I will. If there is anything left after my uncle is through with you."
Once more Nimue pictured Evan—his body being dragged out of the cell, crumpled and maimed. And still alive? She had assumed they were removing his corpse. But he may have been simply dying, not yet dead. With Evan, surely it didn't make that much difference: He must have died within a very short time. And the guards had no grudge with him. Still, she reflected, whether the wizards victims died as part of the magical process, or soon afterward, Mordred wouldn't want to spend his last moments with a vengeful Bayard. All she had to do was look around this room to know he had the skills and equipment to make someone's last moments interminable.
"Well-trained lap dog," Mordred goaded Bayard. "You're incredibly fearless—virile even—with a wizard behind you."
Bayard's breathing was suddenly audible.
"Enough," the wizard snapped at Mordred. He put a hand on his nephew's arm. "He is all talk because he knows he is helpless—a snapping little dog."
"His prattling bothers me not one whit," Bayard said, trying for the supercilious smile again. But then he dropped it. "He just seems to have such delicate sensibilities for what he is: bastard. Bastard born of incest."
Mordred's expression was set. No doubt he'd had this thrown in his face often enough before.
"I don't know how he can stand to think what he is," Bayard continued. "An abomination before God and man. If I were you, Uncle, I would be revolted at the idea of inhabiting his vile body, no matter what the gams."
Gains? Nimue thought.
Mordred said, "Which shows why he's the master and you the lackey."
"Just put him in the cell," the wizard commanded before Bayard could answer. "He would say anything to delay." Then, as one of the guards yanked Mordred to his feet, Halbert cautioned, "Gently. Gently. I don't want any bruises on what will soon be my body."
The guard who shoved Mordred into the cell, then jerked his head toward Nimue and Romola, in a questioning motion.
Halbert said, "The women stay out."
Which surely did not bode well.
As the door clanged shut, the wizard continued
in a conversational tone, "Sir Mordred, you may be interested to know it was Sir Bayard who pointed out that we should not kill you. I wasn't thinking properly, what with memories of old times and all. You have cost me dear. But if that gives you any joy, think what you have cost the peasants around Castle Ridgemont. Consider—if you had minded your own business four years ago—all the young men who would still be alive, contentedly working the fields hereabouts today."
Nimue could see a spasm in Mordred's hand as he held on to one of the bars of the prisoners' cage.
Halbert continued. "All I needed was the right opportunity. To get back at you. To get back at that wretched woman and miserable child who ruined everything last time. Their turn will come later, when I go to Camelot and everybody thinks I am you. And, oh Nimue, think of the possibilities there."
It made sense. Oh, damn, it made sense. She had had a hard time reconciling Merlin's dire predictions with the young knight she had come to know over the past day: Stern. Arrogant. Ruthless perhaps, but not cruel. And in fact probably not nearly so ruthless as he would like to be thought. But Halbert ... Halbert in Mordred's body ... That thought left a cold, empty spot in her chest.
"Now, the two women." Halbert circled Nimue and Romola, stroked his chin and pursed his lips. "And, once again, the question of who was sent to the King. How best to discover that? Your thoughts, Bayard?"
"The witch," Bayard recommended. "She's the one who knows."
The wizard smiled. "That is why I would say the dark-haired beauty. She doesn't know the name of the messenger, so if she dies ... no loss."
Bayard shrugged, indifferent.
Dolph, in the large cage, stretched his hand out to his wife, but couldn't quite reach. "Romola."
"Oh, no maudlin displays, please," the wizard said. "Not from you, anyway. Only from someone who knows something. Sir Bayard, what do you recommend? Metal-tipped whips, hot brands, the knives?"
"Hmmm," Bayard said. "Still, there is no need to mark up her body right away, is there? Some of us may go in for that sort of thing but others get their pleasure"—he smiled—"different ways. Eh, Sylvanus?" He nudged one of the guards. This got a favorable reaction from all of them. "I see no reason not to please everyone."