Revelation (17 page)

At some time the two soldiers finished their work and followed the Prince out of the dim glade. To me, drifting in and out of hellish sense, the beating seemed to go on without end. The thought drifted through my murky perceptions that if the Yvor Lukash did not come to rescue me, then I would go down in history as the greatest fool ever to draw breath. I had no assurance that the presence I’d felt in the forest was that of the outlaw priest, though I believed it so. And I had no assurance that he would fall for my crude deception, though there had clearly been no artifice in the Derzhi warrior’s hand. If ripped flesh and moaning misery bore sufficient testimony, then perhaps the outlaw leader would accept my story. For the immediate moment, I, too, believed I was going to die, hanging from a tree with my shredded body consumed in a fog of pain.

My head was too muddled to concern itself much with what story I might tell if anyone came. I scarcely had wit enough to pull together an enchantment to shear the binding ropes. Once that was done, I collapsed in an ignominious heap on the prickling carpet of pine needles. One more thing I had to do, quickly, before anyone came. Scarcely able to breathe for the agony of movement, I worked my hand underneath my chest and pulled the leather packet from my breeches, with the vague intent to bury the thing. But once it was in my hand, I had to stop and rest.

Deep in the gully to the side of the path a stream gurgled contentedly, unaware of the mortal doings alongside it. Astonishing how such a pleasant sound can so quickly become a torment. My mouth was ash. My throat parched. All memory of deception and larger purpose crumbled in the craving for water. Steeling myself for the unpleasant consequences of my excursion, I began to creep on my belly across the path toward the sloping gully. After no more than ten paces I stopped and buried my face in my arms, trembling, unable to move another finger’s breadth. The fire in my back had me ready to scream, and I had no idea where I had dropped the packet . . . the paper with Aleksander’s seal . . . my freedom. Another few mezzits progress and my head hung awkwardly over the edge of the gully, but I did not have the strength or the will to pull back. I was desperate for water.

Just then a tin cup filled with water appeared under my nose, and somewhere beyond the roaring in my ears I heard a quiet voice speaking in the soft accent of rural Manganar. “Might this be what you’re after?”

 

 

 

“You’re not taking him with us?”

“What else do you suggest?”

“Kill him. He’s but another Derzhi assassin come to clean us out. There was a whole troop of them. What else do you need?”

“More than that. He’s got a number of questions to answer, and I would say he’s had something of a falling out with his friends, if friends they were. Despite what you’d have me believe, thinking and listening are often as useful as bloodshed. Get a horse up here.”

“You’re a damned fool, Blaise.”

“It would be a dull day indeed if you didn’t tell me that at least once.”

These pleasantries were going on across my back. The hands that had given me the sip of blessed water had also shifted me just far enough that my head was level, resting on a folded cloak. I felt like my body had been ground between two millstones. But at least I could hear.

A burst of enchantment from behind me came near splitting my head. Being facedown I could not see how the doubting man departed. The solid beat of hooves had me fooled into thinking there was a horse already in the glade. But the hoofbeats were too light . . . and it was some other kind of beast I smelled. Goat, perhaps. I was very confused and considered passing out for a while.

But indeed the cup appeared in front of my nose again to dissuade me. “So how did you manage to find me? Don’t say you followed me from Vayapol. I know better.”

Clearly, there was no use in pretense. I raised my head slightly and allowed him to tip the cool liquid into my mouth. “Thank you,” I said. “How ever do you manage to conjure a mask for so long? I’ve never known an Ezzarian who could hold his face changed for more than a quarter of an hour.”

He laughed, full throated, rich. A pleasant laugh. “So we are to play games, are we? Spar a bit. Question for question.” I wanted to see his face, but could not muster the nerve to twist my head, fearing it might fall off. “I’ll tell you this much. I am not an Ezzarian.”

“But you look—”

“Oh, we share common ancestors, no question. But I’m not one of you. I’ve never lived in Ezzaria, neither before nor after the Derzhi had their way with it. I think we are very different.”

He was rummaging around in a leather bag that sat on the ground just beyond my nose. I wasn’t sure I liked my vulnerable position—facedown, back exposed to whatever an immensely powerful sorcerer wanted to do with it—but I had left myself little choice in the matter. He stood up and set off into the gully, light on his feet as he slipped and slid down the steep sloping land. In moments he was back, and I almost came off the ground when he laid an ice-cold wet cloth on my back. Then he had the audacity to start dabbing at the wounds. Clearly he was not experienced with a slave’s lot in life. His effort was kind, but exceedingly clumsy.

“Sorry,” he said, as I fought to muffle my moaning curses. “Such injuries heal better when they’re clean. But then you look as if you’ve had enough of them to know that. Wounds of all kinds . . .” His finger traced the outline of the crossed circle on my shoulder. “This was certainly not your first lashing.”

“No.”

The forest was alive with sounds of afternoon. Two jays argued from a tree just over us. Tree limbs creaked in a warm, rising wind. Beetles and hoppers clicked and scraped about their business amid the pine needles and grass. My rescuer squeezed out the cloth, the red-tinted water dribbling into the grass, then he pressed it tightly against my right shoulder blade, where warm rivulets of blood were rolling down my side. Not Ezzarian ways at all . . . touching another man’s blood without purification . . . leaving wounds open to the air . . . no jasnyr smoke to keep demons away. The man spoke to me again, but I had begun to shiver and my vision blur, and no matter how I tried, I could not keep my eyelids open. A mantle of numbness fell over me, muffling his voice and the forest sounds, muting the howling protests from my flesh and bone. For a brief moment it occurred to me that I had no idea what had become of Fiona. Good riddance. This was one place she didn’t want to follow. From behind me came a soft whisper that I believed said, “. . . sleep . . . ,” but I couldn’t be sure, because I did just that.

 

The next hours were a jumble. Every once in a while I was jolted awake. It was dark, and I was sure that some demon-beast had at last had its way with me and was throwing me into the abyss. I dreamed I was burning in a dragon’s fire, and another time that I had been slathered with acid venom from a monstrous snake. For a long time I was convinced that I was hung by my feet in the web of a giant spider, and I couldn’t breathe because my stomach had fallen into my throat and my lungs were squeezed by the tight ropes of spider’s silk.

“Easy, my friend.” Strong hands held my wrists until I was lost again in realms of numb terror. Fading voices. “I would not live in this one’s dreams for all the Emperor’s gold.”

“Holy stars, Blaise, keep him asleep. He almost took off my head when I put him on the horse. I think I’ve lost a tooth.”

 

At last my eyes came open and stayed that way, though I had not yet regained any feeling beyond a general throbbing that pulsed in rhythm with my heart. It was enough to remind me that I didn’t really want to come completely awake. So I drifted on the boundaries of sleep, noting in the disinterested way of sleepers that I was under a beamed roof, stretched out on a thin pallet that lay on a dirt floor. What I could see of the room by the light of a single candle was not impressive: a crude, soot-grimed fire pit beneath a hole in the roof, a jumble of animal skins, gnawed bones, muddy boots, battered pots, and unpromising bags of wheat and oats spilling their contents into the dirt where a mouse was boldly helping itself to the provender. The candle stub was perched on an upended ale cask. The flat taste of blood was in my mouth, and a spiderweb was stuck to my face, tickling my nose and threatening to make me sneeze. A disastrous prospect. I closed my eyes, trying to wish away the thought.

A threadbare blanket had been laid over me, and about the time I had convinced myself that I really could ignore all and go back to sleep in order to avoid waking up to the results of fifty lashes, someone tried to uncover me. The blanket stuck to my right shoulder blade and took a fair amount of skin and scab with it. I jumped. The sudden movement brought back reality with a rush, and it took several moments of rigorous discipline before I could hear someone speaking.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry. Don’t mean to hurt. Just checking as the good Blaise told me. ‘See the bleeding stopped and that no fever comes.’ That’s what he told me, and I’ve done it just right. No fever. No hurting. You won’t tell him as I’ve hurt you. The cloth was sticky. That’s all. Don’t mean to hurt.”

I twisted my head just a little to see a woman kneeling at my side, rocking back and forth and chewing on her knuckles as she looked at my back and mumbled her apologies. Her gray-streaked black hair hung lank and greasy over her face, and she wore a shapeless dress of brown sacking. She reached out a bony hand and passed it through the air above my back. I flinched, but my own movement was the only thing that caused me any discomfort. The woman’s hand never touched me. Rather it—or something—left my back tingling as if on the verge of waking. But its sensations grew dull, for which I was very grateful.

“I know you didn’t mean to hurt me,” I said. “Thank you for helping.”

She turned her face to me and brushed her hair aside. She was perhaps fifty years old, and at one time she had been a classic Ezzarian beauty. Her bones were fine, her eyes large and set wide apart, her full lips and arched nose balanced and well proportioned. But her skin was mottled and dirty, her cheeks hollow, her mouth slack, and her eyes . . . Oh, gods in the starry heavens . . . her eyes were dark and angled . . . Ezzarian eyes . . . but thoroughly mad and, far worse, flecked with the ice-blue coloring of long, deep-rooted demon-possession.

“I’ve done it right, then? I told Blaise I could still do it. Others don’t trust me. Only Blaise.”

I tried to shrink away from her, but only then did I realize that my hands and feet were bound and that I could move no better than if a millstone sat in the middle of my back.
Don’t panic. The woman is mad, but she’s said she’s commanded not to hurt you.
The well-reasoned words did little to soothe my terror. I was neither a Searcher who could send a call for help back to Ezzaria, nor a Comforter who could bridge the distance from victim to Aife with enchantment. And I had no Aife to open the poor woman’s soul. All I could do was invoke every enchantment I carried that might throw up some kind of protective barrier between us.

“A fine lad Blaise. Done right by us. Takes care of us. We’ll never want, he says. Others would have throwed us away. Killed us like in the old days. Not him.” She stroked my head. Her touch was gentle and soothing. Maybe I’d been wrong about what I’d seen, for the room was very dim.

I was parched, and the dry tickle in my throat had me nervous. “Have you . . . could I have water?” I rasped.

The woman was rocking again, and jerked her head around as if she had forgotten I was there. “Water . . . aye. I’ve got it.”

“Please. If I could have some . . .”

“Give him a drink, Saetha, and loose his hands. He’s awake now and won’t harm you. Will you?” The question was directed at me. The questioner was the priest . . . outlaw . . . sorcerer . . . whatever he was.

I shook my head. “I won’t hurt anyone.”

The woman nodded and bent her head over the knotted rope that I had not managed to loosen despite my best attempts. Somehow as she removed it, she also removed my immobility, and though my feet were still bound, I was able to wriggle up to my knees and creak to sitting. I did not lean back on the log wall. The most immediate discomfort of the fifty lashes was still muted from the enchantment—the woman’s enchantment, it seemed—but the stiffness and bruising caused by such a deep-rooted offense to the human body remained.

The woman brought me a cracked clay mug filled with clean water. As I took it, I looked at her with my Warden’s sight. She was rank with demon. “Thank you,” I whispered, averting my gaze. I gave my situation a moment’s consideration, then closed my eyes and drank the water. As I had discovered when I was a slave, thirst is very powerful.

The young man folded his legs under him and sat gracefully on the dirt floor, tossing his long black hair over his shoulder. He took a similar cup from Saetha’s hand, and smiled at her. “You’ve done well, Saetha. He mends nicely.”

The woman smiled shyly. “You trusted me. I tried to do my best.”

“As you always do. Now, go tell Farrol where I am in case he needs me. I want to visit with our guest for a while.”

The woman left the dirty little cottage. I could get a better view sitting up. The cottage was no more than fifteen paces square and filled with all manner of unidentifiable litter. It smelled of rotted meat, cold, dirty hearth, and unwashed clothing. Every crevice was alive with insects; I needed a horse’s tail to keep away the flies.

“You should stay away from that woman,” I said quietly. “Do you have any idea what’s wrong with her?”

“She won’t harm you.”

“But she’s—”

“I won’t discuss her with you. Now, if you will give me your bond not to run, I’ll take off the rest of the ropes, and we’ll go outside. Likely it would do you good to stretch a bit.”

“You don’t need my bond. You have my son.” I dearly wanted to get away from the demon.