The Book of Taltos (37 page)

I discovered I was very thirsty and said so. He handed me a flask which turned out to contain odd-tasting water. He tapped his drum again. I lay back against the tree and rested, my ears straining for sounds of pursuit. After a while he put a kettle on the fire, and a bit after that we had a rather bland soup that was probably good for me. As we drank it, I said, “My name is Vlad.”

“Aibynn,” he said. “How did you come to be injured?”

“Some of your compatriots don’t take to strangers. Provincialism. There’s no help for it.”

He gave me a look I couldn’t interpret, then he grinned. “We don’t often see anyone from the mainland here, especially dwarfs.”

Dwarfs? “Special circumstances,” I said. “Couldn’t be prevented. Why did you help me?”

“I’ve never seen anyone with a tame jhereg before.”

“Tame?”

“Shut up, Loiosh.”

To Aibynn I said, “I’m glad you were here, anyway.”

He nodded. “It’s a good place to work. You aren’t bothered much—what’s that?”

I sighed. “Sounds like someone’s coming,” I said.

He looked at me, his face blank. Then he said, “Do you think you can climb a tree?”

I licked my lips. “Maybe.”

“You won’t leave a trail that way.”

“If they see a trail leading here, and not away, won’t they ask questions?”

“Probably.”

“Well?”

“I’ll answer them.”

I studied him.
“What do you think, Loiosh?”

“Sounds like the best chance we’re going to get.”

“Yeah.”

I could, indeed, climb a tree. It hurt a lot, but other than that it wasn’t difficult. I stopped when I heard sounds from below, and Loiosh gave me a warning simultaneously. I couldn’t see the ground, which gave me good reason to hope they couldn’t see me. There was no breeze, and the smoke from the fire was coming up into my face. As long as it didn’t get strong enough to make me cough, that would also help keep me hidden.

“Good day be with you,” said someone male, with a voice like a grayswan in heat.

“And you,” said Aibynn. I could hear them very well. Then I could hear drumming.

“Excuse me—” said grayswan.

“What have you done?” asked Aibynn.

“I mean, for disturbing you.”

“Ah. You haven’t disturbed me.”

More drumming. I wanted to laugh but held it in.

“We are looking for a stranger. A dwarf.”

The drumming stopped. “Try the mainland.”

Grayswan made a sound I couldn’t interpret, and there were mutterings I couldn’t make out from his companions. Then someone else, a woman whose voice was as low as a musk owl’s call, said, “We are tracking him. How long have you been here?”

“All my life,” said Aibynn with a touch of sadness.

“Today, you idiot!” said grayswan.

“At least,” agreed my friend.

Someone else, a man with a voice that sounded like a man’s voice, said, “His tracks lead to this spot. Have you seen him?”

“I might have missed him,” said Aibynn. “I’m tuning my drum, you see, and it requires concentration.”

Grayswan demanded, “You mean he could have walked right by you? Cril and Sandy, look around. See if you can find any tracks leaving.” There came the sound of feet moving near the base of the tree. I remained very still, not even waving the smoke away from my face; it wasn’t very thick, anyway.

Aibynn said, “This part of preparing the drum is very difficult. I must—”

Musk owl said, “You’re Aibynn of Lowporch, aren’t you?”

“Why, yes.”

“I heard you drum at the Winter Festival. You’re very good.”

“Thank you.”

“That’s a new drum you’re making?”

Grayswan: “We don’t have time to—”

Aibynn: “Why, yes. This is the shell of the sweetclam. The head is made from the skin of a nyth, as big a one as you can find. The beater is made from the jawbone, wrapped in nythskin and cloth. To prepare the head, you make a fire of langwood, and season the fire with rednut shells, drownweeds, clove, dreamgrass, silkbuds, the roots of the trapvine—”

Another voice, a man’s I hadn’t heard before, said, “Nothing. He must be around here somewhere.”

Aibynn said, “This one is almost done. I’m just tuning it. You can also change the pitch when you play it. This knob, you see, I hold in my left hand, and when I turn it this way the head becomes tighter and the tone rises. This way lowers the pitch.” He demonstrated.

“I see,” said musk owl.

Grayswan said, “Look, this dwarf has killed four of the King’s guards, and we have every reason to think he—”

Aibynn continued demonstrating. The sound produced by the drum was a single smooth pulse, out of which rhythms began to emerge. I noticed an odd, sweet smell drifting up to me, probably from the treatment he had given the drumhead. The pulsing became more and more complex, and I began to hear beats within it, and I became more aware of the variations in tone. The sweet smell grew stronger. As he played, he said, “You have to play the drum for a few hours after it’s seasoned, to allow the head to work into the shell.” His voice wove in and out of the pulses, the rhythms, sometimes riding high above them, sometimes supporting them from beneath, and I wondered idly if it was changing pitch and tone or if the drum was, and were those voices mixed in with it? “Then the straps must be moistened with an emulsion made from the sap of a teardrop elm . . . they will respond to long pulses and slow pulses . . . so the rhythm emerges from the drum itself . . . the Lecuda calls the dance, or the spell, which is really the same . . . some of the oldest drums sound the best because the shell itself begins to absorb the sound, so after many years . . . the last time I tried one of those, I had borrowed a drum . . . .”

Loiosh said,
“Boss, did he say dreamgrass? Boss?”

Then I felt like lying down, then I was falling, and felt like I was passing right through the branches without touching them. I heard someone say, “Look!” but I don’t remember hitting the ground.

Handling Interrogation

T
O A
D
ZURLORD
,
CIVILIZED
means adhering to proper customs of dueling. To a Dragonlord, civilized means conforming to all the social niceties of mass mayhem. To a Yendi, civilized means making sure no one ever knows exactly what you’re up to. In the land of my ancestors, civilized means never drinking a red wine at more than fifty-five or less than fifty degrees. The islands had their own notions of civilization, and I decided I liked them.

“We’re civilized here, Jhereg,” said my interrogator, beneath brows you could have planted maize in. “We do not beat or torture our prisoners.”

Of all the responses that sprang to mind, I decided the quick nod would be safest. His mouth twitched, and I wondered if I’d get to know him well enough to know what that indicated.

“On the other hand,” he continued, “you can probably expect to be executed.”

On reflection, his brows weren’t all that bushy; they just seemed that way because of his high, hairless forehead. He looked more like an Athyra than anything else, and acted a bit like one, too: cold, intellectual, and distant. “Executed for what?” I said.

He ignored this. We both knew for what, and if I didn’t want to admit it, that was my concern. He said, “I am assuming that you are either a paid
assassin or are fanatically loyal to some person, entity, or cause. It is possible that if you cooperate with us by revealing all of the circumstances which led you to take this action, you may live. Unlikely, but possible.” He spoke a lot like Morrolan, a friend of mine you’ll meet later.

I started in on another protestation of innocence but he gestured me to silence. “Think it over,” he said, and stood up slowly. “We can give you some time to think, but not a great deal. I’ll be back.” He left me alone again.

Of what shall I tell you now? Time, place, or circumstance? Time, then. I’d been there three days, during which I’d been attended by various persons concerned about my health, and this was the first day I’d been able to walk the six or so steps to the slop bucket in the corner without leaning on the walls all the way. That was about the most I could do, but I was proud of it.

I could tell day from night because I could almost see the outside through a narrow window about eight feet up the brick wall. There were thick horizontal bars across the window, which I suspected had been added after the place was built—perhaps very recently, like three days ago. I noted it as a possible weakness. I didn’t think the room had been originally designed to hold prisoners, but it worked. The door was very thick and, from what I could hear before it was opened, had an iron bar across it on the outside. There was a cot that was longer than it had to be, made of something soft that rustled in my ears whenever I moved. I had been given a tan-colored shapeless robe of some animal skin. I didn’t know if it was their custom to remove clothing from prisoners, or if they had found so many weapons in my clothing that they’d deduced—correctly—that they’d never be able to find them all. I was also barefoot, which I’ve never liked, even as a kid.

I got two meals a day. The first I’m still blurry on. The second was a fish stew that was completely flavorless except for too much salt. The next was some sort of mush that tasted better than it looked, but only a little. The one after that was a squid dish that a good cook could have done fine things with. The latest one, the remains of which were on a wooden plate on the floor next to me, involved boiled vegetables and a bit of fish with a loaf of coarse, dark bread. The bread was actually pretty good.

Twice now, I had tried small spells to heal myself, but nothing had happened.
This was very odd. It was one thing if they had means to cut off my access to the Orb, but witchcraft is a matter of skill and one’s innate psychic energy; I didn’t see any way to cut someone off from that.

On the other hand, I remembered Loiosh commenting that people around here seemed to be psionically invisible to him, which also wasn’t normal, and might be related. I had also tried a few times to reach Morrolan and Sethra, but got nowhere; I wasn’t certain if that was a matter of distance or something else.

Loiosh hadn’t been in touch with me the entire time. I very much wanted to know if he was all right. I had the feeling that if anything had happened to him I’d know, but I’d never been out of touch with him for this long before.

To take my mind off this, I went over the conversation I’d just had with the something-or-other of the Royal Guard. His remarks about them maybe letting me live could be discounted—I’d killed four of their citizens plus the King. But he might have been telling the truth about his definition of “civilized.” Good news, if true; the last time I’d tried to hold up under torture I hadn’t done so well.

But the real puzzler was one of his first remarks. He’d walked in and stared down at me, given his title, and said, “We are holding you for the assassination of His Majesty King Haro Olithorvold. We want you to tell us why you killed him, for whom, where you came from—”

I interrupted him with as credible an expression of innocent outrage as I could manage. He shook his head and said, “Don’t try to deny it. Your accomplice has admitted his part in it.”

I said, “Oh. Well, that’s different, then. If you’ve got my accomplice, what can I do? I confess to—what was it you said I did? And who was my accomplice?”

That was when he’d started in on being civilized, and now, lying there aching and worried about Loiosh, I wondered many things about my “accomplice.” It was obvious who they meant—the drummer I’d stumbled over, so to speak, in the woods. When I’d become conscious again, and had figured out that I’d been knocked out by the smoke (he’d mentioned dreamgrass, after all), I’d assumed he’d done it deliberately. Now, though, I wondered.

It was still possible he had, but they simply didn’t believe him. Or it could
have been an accident, and he was just what he appeared to be. Or they could be playing some sort of deep game that hadn’t made itself apparent yet.

Not that any of this mattered, since I couldn’t do anything about any of the possibilities, but I was curious. I wasn’t worried. They would most likely spend at least a day or two trying to get me to tell them who had hired me before they killed me. I considered telling them the truth, just to watch bushy-brows’ face, but it would have been pointless. Besides, in my business you don’t give out that information; it’s part of the job.

But in a day or two I could regain my strength and attempt to escape. If I failed, they’d kill me. It was nothing to be worried about. Scared spitless, yes, but not worried.

I did not want to die, you see. I’d died before and hadn’t liked it, and this time, if it happened, there’d be no chance for revivification. I’d heard stories of escapes from imprisonment, but, looking around, I just didn’t see any way to manage it, and, damn it all, it hadn’t been such a bad life. I’d worked my way up from nothing to something and I wanted to see how things came out. I wanted to be around to watch for a while longer. I wanted to leave some changes behind me, to make things a bit different before I went on my way.

Different? Maybe even better, though that had never been high on my list before. Maybe, if I got out of this, I’d do that. Are you listening, Verra? Can you hear me? They’ve got me trapped and scared, so maybe it doesn’t mean anything, but it would be nice if, before I died, I could think to myself that the world was a little better in some way for my having been here. Is that crazy, Demon Goddess? Is this what happened to Cawti, is this why I hardly recognize my wife anymore? I don’t know how I’ll feel if I get out of this, but I want to find out. Help me, Goddess. Get me out of here. Save my life.

But she’d said I couldn’t reach her from here, so I would have to save myself, and that just didn’t look likely.

I’d been thinking and dozing and hurting and recovering and sweating for a few more hours when another meal arrived—this time some dumplings with a sauce that meat had been waved at, accompanied by seaweed and more of the bread. I was going to have to escape soon for yet another reason: If I got tired of the bread, I’d have nothing to live for.