“The noble Tarin has not been heard from in many months. How come you lot to know of him?” The senior of the two guards was trying to watch all three of the foreigners simultaneously. For the time being, he ignored the big cat that was snoozing prominently on the pavement.
Simna was forced to defer back to his companion. Noting that his spear was not as long as the sentry’s pike, Ehomba once again retold the tale of how he had found Tarin Beckwith and many of his countrymen washed up on the beach below the village of the Naumkib, and of how the young nobleman had expired in his arms. Fully alert now, the guards listened intently, wholly absorbed in the story.
When Ehomba had concluded his tale, the second guard spoke up. “I knew young Beckwith. Not well—I am far below his station—but there were several occasions on which he joined the palace guard on maneuvers. He was a fine person, a true gentleman, who never put on airs and enjoyed a good bawdy joke or a pint of lager. Everyone in Laconda and Laconda North had hoped . . .” The younger man was unable to continue. Evidently the Count’s son had been not just liked, but loved, by the populace.
“I am sorry,” Ehomba commiserated simply. “There was nothing I could do for him. He was a victim of this warlock who calls himself Hymneth the Possessed.”
“Abductor of the fair Themaryl, the Visioness, the greatest glory of the Lacondas.” The senior guard sounded wistful. “I never saw her myself, but I’ve spoken with others who had the privilege. They say that her grace and beauty eclipsed that of the sun itself.” His tone darkened. “If what you say is true, then because of this evil magician the Lacondas have lost both her and the noble Tarin.” The echo of hastening footsteps made him turn.
A dozen palace sentinels were arriving on the run, led by the two who had formerly been helping to guard the front gate. Badly out of breath, one of these performed an odd salute that the senior among the staff returned with a stiff snap of one hand.
“The Count wishes to see these travelers immediately, without delay!” The messenger gasped for air. “They are to be brought to the main dining chamber, where they will be received by the Count and the Countess themselves!” He looked over at the two men and their odd companions with new respect.
Frowning uncertainly, the senior guard hesitated. “What about the big cat?”
Sucking wind, the messenger nodded sharply. “It is to be conducted to the dining chamber as well. The palace adviser said clearly to bring all four of them.”
“As they wish.” Turning back to Ehomba, the senior guard smiled encouragingly. “Don’t be intimidated by the palace, or by any representatives of the court you find yourselves introduced to. They’re a pretty inoffensive bunch. Laconda North is a very serene country. As for the Count, he’s been known to bluster a lot, but not to bully. The fact that he wishes to see you himself is a good sign.”
“We’re not intimidated by anything.” Simna swept grandly past the guard station. “We’ve fought Corruption and Chlengguu, crossed the Hrugars and the Aboqua, brought down pieces of the sky on our enemies, and made the weather dance to our songs. Mere men we do not fear.”
The guard forced himself not to laugh. “Just speak soft and true and you will get along well with the Count. He is not fond of braggarts.”
“Hoy,” declared Simna as he marched importantly down between the double line of soldiers that had formed up to escort them into the palace, “I don’t brag. I only tell the truth. Honest ibn Sind, they call me.”
As Ehomba passed the friendly, encouraging sentry, he whispered to him in passing. “Please understand, it is not that my friend is being boastful. He talks like this all the time.”
The parade ground seemed endless as they crossed it under the watchful eyes of the heavily armed escort, but eventually they reached the shade of the nearest building. From there they were ushered inside and down halls decorated with fine tapestries and paintings. Floating fish were everywhere, their movements constrained by fine netting or transparent glass walls. Exotic tropicals in every color and shape and size were employed in the palace as living decorations. Certainly their iridescent, brilliant colors were as attractive as any of the magnificent but static artworks that dominated the walls.
Eventually they reached a high-ceilinged chamber dominated by a U-shaped table large enough to seat a hundred people. At the far end a dozen anxious figures awaited their arrival. Dazzling tropicals swam freely through the air, unconstrained by netting or other barriers. As the room was devoid of windows, there was no need to place internal restrictions on their movement.
The far end of the table had been set with fine china and silver. Platters had hastily been piled high with the best the palace’s kitchens had to offer. Simna’s mouth began to water, and Ahlitah licked his lips at the sight of so much meat, even if it had been badly damaged by treatment with fire.
A tall, elegant man with a slightly hooked nose and thinning blond hair that was gray only at the temples rose to greet them, unable to wait for the travelers to make the long walk from the main doorway to the far end of the table. Much to Simna’s chagrin, he ignored the swordsman and halted directly in front of Ehomba. His voice was very deep and resonant for one so slim.
“They told me you were dressed like barbarians, but I find your costume in its own way as courtly as my own. As for its imperfections of appearance, and yours, they are excused by the difficulties and distance you have had to deal with in your long journey here.” Stepping aside, he gestured expansively at the table. “Welcome! Welcome to Laconda North. Rest, eat, drink—and tell me what you know of my son. My only son.”
While the two humans were seated close to the head of the table, room was made for Ahlitah and Hunkapa at the far opposite end. Neither the shaggy mountain dweller nor the big cat felt in the least left out of the ensuing conversation. The litah had no interest in the yapping discourse of humans, and Hunkapa Aub would not have been able to follow it clearly anyway.
The food was wonderfully filling and the wine excellent. Trembling servitors even prevailed upon the cat to try a little of the latter, stammering that it was traditional and to refuse to do so would be to insult the hospitality of the house of Beckwith. Ahlitah magnanimously consented to lap up a bowl of the dark purple fluid. The attendants had less difficulty persuading Hunkapa to do likewise.
At the head of the table Ehomba and Simna displayed a deportment more refined than their attire as they enjoyed the best meal they had partaken of in many a day. Ehomba had always been a relaxed eater, and Simna revealed a surprising knowledge of manners more suited to cultivated surroundings than he had hitherto exhibited in their travels together.
“Not much point in trying to use a napkin when there’s none to be had,” he explained in response to the herdsman’s murmured compliment. “Same goes for utensils. Fingers or forks, I’m equally at home with either of ’em.” He sipped wine from a silver chalice with the grace and delicacy of a pit bull crocheting lace.
Seated next to the Count was a woman only slightly younger than himself who had spent much of the meal sobbing softly into a succession of silk handkerchiefs as everyone listened closely to Ehomba’s story. When he at last came to the end of the tale of how he had encountered her son, she rose and excused herself from the table.
“My wife,” Bewaryn Beckwith explained. “She has done little else these past months save pray for our son’s safe return.”
“I am sorry I had to be the one to bring you such bad news.” Ehomba fingered his nearly empty chalice, gazing at the bas-reliefs on the metal of men pulling fish from the canals and from the sky of Laconda with entirely different kinds of nets. He was suddenly very tired. No doubt the good food and congenial surroundings combined with the exertions expended in crossing the Hrugars were merging within his system to make him sleepy.
“He died as bravely as any man could wish, thinking not of himself or his own wounds but of those being suffered by others. His last words were for the woman.”
“The Visioness.”
Beckwith’s long fingers were curled tightly around his own golden drinking container. “To have suffered two such losses in one year is more than any people should be asked to bear. My son”—he swallowed tightly—“my son was as loved by the people of Laconda North as Themaryl was by our cousins to the south. The shock of their disappearance is only now beginning to fade from the body politic.”
“I have told you of my intention to try and restore the Visioness to her people in accordance with your son’s dying wish. I am sorry there is nothing I can do about him. After his death he was”—the herdsman hesitated, reflecting briefly on how customs differed widely in other lands—“he was given the same treatment my people would have accorded any noble person in his situation.” Ehomba rubbed at his eyes. It would be most impolite to fall asleep at so accommodating a table. Someone like the empathetic Beckwith might understand, but they could not count on that.
Still, the need for rest had become overpowering. Looking to his left, he saw that Simna was similarly exhausted. The swordsman was shaking his head and yawning like a man who—well, like a man who had just crossed a goodly portion of the world to get to this point.
As he started to rise preparatory to excusing himself and his companions, Ehomba found that his chair seemed to have acquired the weight and inertia of solid iron. With a determined effort he pushed it back and straightened. Finding himself a little shaky, he put a hand on the table to steady himself.
“I—I am sorry, sir. You must excuse me and my friends. We have been long on the road and have traveled an extreme distance. As a consequence we are very tired.” Eyelids like lead threatened to shut down without his approval and he struggled to keep them open. “Is there somewhere we can rest?”
“Hoy, bruther!” Next to him, a sluggish Simna struggled to stand up. Failing, he slumped back in his seat. “There’s more at work here than fatigue. Gwoleth knows—Gwoleth knows that . . .” His eyes closed. A second or so later they fluttered open. “Gwoleth be crammed and damned—I should know. As many taverns as I have been in, as many situations . . .” His voice trailed away into incomprehensible mumbling. As Ehomba fought to keep his own eyes focused and alert, the swordsman’s head slumped forward on his chest.
Intending to call out to the black litah, he tried to turn, only to find that his body would no longer obey his commands. Tottering in place, he succeeded in resuming his seat. He wanted to apologize to their host, intending to explain further their inexcusable breach of manners, but he found that he was so tired that his mouth and lips no longer worked in concert. An irresistibly lugubrious shade was being drawn down over his eyes, shutting out the light and dragging consciousness down with it. Dimly, he heard someone speaking to the Count.
“That’s done it, sir. Fine work. You have them now.”
That voice, what remained of Ehomba’s cognitive facilities pondered—where have we heard that voice before? As awareness slipped painlessly away, he thought he smelled something burning. It too brought back a faint flicker of a memory.
“Murderer!” That accusation was spat in Bewaryn Beckwith’s sonorous tone. But whom was he accusing of murder? Someone new who had entered the room?
A hand was on his shoulder, shaking him. In the light, downy haze that had inexorably engulfed him, he hardly felt it. “Murder my son and then brazenly seek my help and hospitality, will you? You’ll pay for it, savage. You’ll pay for it long and slow and painfully!” As he delivered this pledge the Count’s voice was trembling with anger.
Me, Ehomba thought distantly. He is accusing me of killing his son. What an absurd, what a grotesque sentiment. If only he could talk, Ehomba would quickly disabuse their host of the feckless fantasy. But his mouth still refused to form words. Where would the Count get such a bizarre notion, anyway?
The other voice came again. It was blunt and the words it rendered terse and to the point.
“Kill them quickly or slowly, sir, it matters not to me. But as we earlier concurred, I claim the sleeping cat for myself and, if you are agreeable, that big ugly brute lying next to it as well.”
“Take them if you will.” Barely controlled fury now underlay every clipped syllable of the Count’s speech. “It is the one who did the actual killing I want. I suppose I’ll detain his supporter as well. A man should have company while under torture.”
“If you say so, sir. And now, if you’ll pardon me, I need to direct the laying of nets on my property.”
As the light of wakefulness shrank to a last, intermittent point, Ehomba finally recognized the second voice. It was one he had never expected to hear again, and its presence boded no better for their prospects than did the Count of Laconda North’s threatening words.
Haramos bin Grue.
XXI
When consciousness returned it was accompanied by a pounding at the back of the head that would not go away. Wincing, Ehomba fought to keep his eyes open. With every effort his vision grew a little clearer, a little sharper. That did not mean he much liked what he saw.
The dining room with its fine table settings and liveried servants was gone. The travelers had been moved to some kind of reception room, larger but more sparsely furnished. The paintings on the walls were not of reassuring domestic scenes but instead depicted a procession of Lacondan counts and their consorts. There were also landscapes and images of pastoral life, well rendered and patriotically infused. Exquisite tropical fish, those inexplicable living ornaments of Laconda, drifted and swam through the air of the reception hall. Lining the walls, alert and heavily armed blue-clad soldiers stood like silent sculptures.
At one end of the room a double throne of becoming modesty rested on a raised dais. Heavily embroidered banners formed a suitably impressive backdrop to the royal seat while providing some of the opulent trappings of office the chairs themselves lacked. One seat was empty, the other held a brooding Bewaryn Beckwith. Standing next to him was a squat, pug shape from whose thick lips protruding a lightly smoking cigar. No look of triumph scored the merchant’s round face. Satisfaction, perhaps. With bin Grue it was only business as usual.
When he noticed the herdsman staring at him, he grunted around the tobacco. “Nobody gets the best of Haramos bin Grue. You should’ve let me have the cat.”
Alongside the herdsman Simna ibn Sind was coming slowly awake. As he returned to the world of cognizance, he became aware of the strong cords binding his arms behind his back.
“Hoy, what’s this?” Blinking, he focused not on the pensive nobleman but on the stubby shape standing next to him. “It’s the pig-man!” Futilely, he began to fight against his fetters. “Let me free for a minute. No, half a minute! You don’t even have to give me a sword!”
While his friend raged, Ehomba saw that a metal net now secured the glowering black litah behind him. A second similar mesh had been used to bind up Hunkapa Aub while he slept. Whatever drug had been slipped into their wine had done its work efficiently and with admirable subtlety. No wonder the Count’s servants had insisted that Ahlitah and Hunkapa partake of the specially treated libation.
Their gear lay piled nearby, his pack and weapons atop Simna’s. These might as well have been left on the other side of the Hrugars. He was bound so tightly he could barely move his fingers, let alone his arms and legs. No doubt bin Grue had made sure of that. But he was not sorry for himself. He had faced death many times before. His only regret was that he would not be able to tell Mirhanja and the children good-bye, and that they would never know what had happened to him. Also, it was more than a little discouraging to realize that they were going to die for a lie.
If there was anything more depressing than his own situation, it was the pitiful plight of Hunkapa Aub. The big, easygoing beast was sitting hunched over and silent with his head hung down toward his feet, exactly as Ehomba had first seen him penned back in Netherbrae. After all he had been through, and after having his freedom restored, he was once again destined for life in a cage, to be tormented and jeered at by thoughtless, fac
eless, uncaring humans. Ehomba was glad he could see only the solid, imposing back and not the creature’s countenance.
“What have you to say before I pronounce sentence?”
Turning away from his friends and ignoring Simna’s unbounded ranting, Ehomba tried to meet Count Bewaryn Beckwith’s stare with as much sincere probity as he could muster. “The individual standing next to you does not deserve to share your presence. He is Haramos bin Grue, a false merchant of Lybondai.”
“I know who he is,” the Count replied curtly. With one hand he brushed aside a dozen amethyst anthias who were swimming across his line of vision. Fins twitching, they skittered silently out of his way. “He came all the way from the far south to warn me of your coming, and to tell me the truth of what happened to my son.”
“The truth is he knows only what I told his employee, an old man with no more scruples than himself.” Ehomba tried to shift his position and found that he could move his backside and bound legs in concert, but had no chance of standing up. Speaking from a seated position weakened his words, he knew, if only psychologically. “He has twisted and distorted it for his own ends. Every time he opens his mouth, he feeds you bullshit.”
“Not only a murderer and a liar, but coarse.” Using only his lips, bin Grue manipulated the smoking cigar from one side of his mouth to the other.
“Hear my friend, great Count!” Evincing impressive reserves of energy, Simna continued to fight futilely with the ropes that bound him even as he spoke. “He tells the truth. And if you don’t release us, doom will befall you. My friend is a great and powerful wizard!”