“Enough,” said Voord’s voice from the door. “Finish with him.”
The woman Giorl glanced over her shoulder as if to ensure the identity of the speaker, then nodded. “As you command,” she said, and extinguished what life remained with a single incision underneath where her Subject’s right ear had been. “The rest of you, clean up,” she said to her assistants, stripping off her stained gloves and dropping them into a waiting hand. “My lord, if you no longer need me I’d like to go home. Until she regains her strength I want to be close to my daughter.”
Aldric and Kyrin gaped at one another across the room as this ultimate obscenity sank in. That the woman should do this was bad enough, but that she should then wash off the blood and slime and go home to a child with the smell of someone’s excised guts still warm in her nostrils…
“All right, Giorl. And thank you for coming here at such short notice.” Voord gave her a perfunctory salute. “How is the child, anyway?”
“Improving. Whoever did the surgery lacked finesse, but I’d have thanked a pork-butcher for doing it then, just so long as it was done. Good day, my lord.”
“Just one last thing, Giorl…”
She hesitated, watching him, waiting for whatever was in his mind this time. Voord moved aside so that the exit was clear and inclined his head a little, manners as polite as any Jouvaine courtier.
“The rest of this is all for me. Don’t come back until you’re called—do you understand me?”
Giorl glanced at her recent and most definitely captive audience, then back at Voord, Her face was devoid of all expression. “My lord, as always, my understanding of your wishes is quite perfect.” She bowed, brushed past him and was gone.
Voord watched her go, appreciating the delicacy of her snub, then gestured with both hands so that the four Bodyguard troopers behind him came into the interrogation room. “Take them out of those chairs,” he said, “and put them back to bed.” He was immediately conscious of the effect his choice of words was having on the two prisoners, and augmented it with a slow, lecherous smile at Kyrin as he reached out to cup her chin in the claw of his left hand. She spat at him, then flinched in anticipation of a slap as the hand jerked back from her face. Instead Voord merely patted her cheek in light reproof of unladylike behavior, although Kyrin would have preferred the slap; there was something dreadfully promissory about this uncharacteristic gentleness, and she had seen what had been done to Kathur—an employee rather than an enemy—for far less reason.
“This is between you and me, Voord,” said Aldric, trying to keep his voice quiet and reasoned while at the same time struggling uselessly against the buckled straps that held him down. “Let her go. She has nothing to do with either of us.”
“Oh, but she does. You love her. When I hurt her, I’ll hurt you, and when she’s been all used up, why then I’ll still have you. I am the master here—time you both began to learn it.”
“Then you’d best learn this as well.” Kyrin and Voord both recognized the terrible calmness with which Aldric spoke, but only Voord was truly pleased to hear it. “The whole of this world isn’t big enough to hide in. There’ll be nowhere far enough for you to run.”
“Fine, stirring words, Aldric Talvalin—but slightly misplaced, considering your present position. Get them into their cell.”
The guards carried out his command with all the swift economy of movement that comes with long practice. Both Aldric and Kyrin gained the negligible satisfaction of landing a few telling blows with fists and feet, but against men wearing half-armor and heavy leathers it was mostly wasted effort. The order executed, all four soldiers saluted and left the cell without needing to be dismissed. There was a distinct impression that Voord had told them in advance that he was to be left alone, which to Kyrin’s mind meant only one thing. The bed beneath her felt more like a torture-rack with every passing second, and as she stared at Voord like a rabbit confronted by a weasel it took all her force of will not to be sick.
“Well now,” said Voord, folding his arms and leaning back against the door, “this
is
cozy.”
Aldric, flung unceremoniously face-downward on his pallet and chained that way by the one guardsman who had taken knuckles in the face rather than on the helmet, said something venomous that was muffled by the crumpled bedding and then coughed as dust caught at his throat.
Voord stared at him. “I don’t know why you want me to go to Hell, Aldric; this is Hell enough. Except that all of it’s for you. I can’t begin to explain how long I’ve waited to offer you just this sort of hospitality. And I can’t begin to explain how much of a thorn you’ve been in my flesh these past years. First Duergar—” —Aldric choked on another cough and stared in disbelief—”then the Geruaths, and finally Princess Marevna. Oh yes, I was involved in all of those, and every time you blundered in and ruined subtle plans you sometimes didn’t even know existed. I could forgive a little if you were a true opponent—but not when your interference was driven by nothing more than your pretty personal motives! Father of Fires, that a stratagem three years in the making should come to nothing because of some sword-swinging Alban lout who hadn’t the grace to be killed with the rest of his clan of bloody barbarians!”
Voord’s voice had risen almost to a yell, but stopped just short of it as he shook his head and pulled himself back under control. There were flecks of spittle on his lips, and his face was red. “But then, I can attend to that unfinished business at my own pace now,” he said more quitely, panting slightly. “And in my own fashion. Slowly… slowly and with imagination.”
He looked briefly at Kyrin, caught her staring at the gilt wires twisted through the flesh above his eye and below his chin, and straightened up so that the metal strands glinted in the light of the lanterns. “You wonder about these?” he said in response to a question no one had dared to utter. “Another memento. Your lover is very good at causing pain. Even I could learn from him—and he will learn from me.” He walked over to one side of Aldric’s bed and stood there for a long while, staring. Then he reached down with his crippled hand and stroked it slowly and gently down the entire length of Aldric’s spine.
His free hand pressed against the back of Aldric’s head, pushing his face down into the pillows for a long and choking moment before releasing him to gasp for air. “The learning starts now.” Voord spoke with an Alban accent which had not been there before, a careful, deliberate simulation of someone else’s voice from long ago and far away. He could as easily have handed over one or both of them to Giorl the torturer, but his subtle mind with its fondness for equally subtle stratagems had seized on this as being far more effective.
The
Woydach
gazed at him through hooded, unreadable eyes, and though nothing could be taken from Voord’s still features, the manner in which he now spoke was enough to set Aldric’s skin crawling as the more brutal threat had been unable to do. It was too… He crushed the memory at once, but still wasn’t quick enough.
It was too familiar…
“Yes, indeed,” said Voord, and smiled. “Welcome to your nightmare.”
It was over. Voord was gone, the cell door slammed shut and locked behind him, but not so soon that the laughter from outside hadn’t drifted in. All that remained was pain, and shame, and the feeling of being unclean.
And the tears on Kyrin’s face that said how much she understood…
“
Why
did you do it? Why not just give both of them to the torturer?” Tagen was intrigued by what he had watched through the spy-hole in the cell’s outer door, so much so that just this once he had set aside all the respect he had for Voord and gone straight to the point with his questions.
Voord sipped at another cup of the brandy-and-poppy tincture, no longer caring about the taste. His exertions of the morning had strained several of the wired wounds, so that the flesh had been cut like cheese and several wires were beginning to unravel. There was another session with Giorl in the offing, and while he didn’t relish the prospect he no longer cared very much. Not when he felt so pleased with himself. Voord was glowing.
“Talvalin was expecting torture, his woman was expecting rape. What I did was the only thing neither was prepared for; neither had their defenses ready.” Voord’s eyes widened and he clapped one hand to his side, holding it there and whimpering. An ooze of fluid darkened the fabric of his shirt, and the sharp ends of a length of wire poked through the weave in the middle of the stain. When the spasm passed, he drained his cup at a draught and refilled it from the green glass bottle on the table. “And it was a private horror of his own. Oh, there were all the other fears, of loss and pain and death—both his own and the woman’s, which is worth bearing in mind— but this was special. It might have been a pleasant memory of his youth for him to look back on”—Voord grinned viciously and raised his cup in a mocking toast— “except that someone he thought he knew took it and him and turned the whole thing foul. And now neither of them know what to expect from me, except that it will always be far worse than anything they can imagine. I think that Talvalin will be more than ready to take any chance we give him…”
Tagen muttered something under his breath, still far from happy with this death wish of Voord’s even though the reasoning behind it was plain enough even to him. “Then what about the woman, sir?” he asked. “Will she be left until… until afterward?”
“Mostly.” Voord’s eyes were a little glazed as the drug and the brandy began working their brief effect. The respite would be short—it always was, and had been growing shorter with each passing dose. Giorl had warned him that the poppy-syrup liquor was known to be addictive, but for any one of several reasons Voord felt he had no need to worry about that risk. He shook his head to clear away the mists that threatened to fill it completely, and looked back at Tagen. “Mostly, but not altogether. You and your four men go down to the cell and move our two guests back into the interrogation room.” Tagen got up, eager to begin, and Voord rapped the table for attention. “You will not, I emphasize
not
, harm either of them just yet.”
“But sir, you said—”
“Move them. Nothing else… yet. But you can make it plain to both that she’ll be next. When I give you permission, you and the others can do whatever takes your fancy—but only when I allow it. And I don’t want her killed, or disfigured, or permanently maimed, otherwise escaping will lose its appeal for both of them and Talvalin won’t try as hard as he might do when there’s everything still to gain. Do you understand what I mean?”
“Yes, sir. I think so, sir.”
“Then go do it—and remember, only threats and promises until I say otherwise. Dismissed.”
“Sir!”
Voord watched as Tagen hurried off, wondering what the big man would say if he knew that his Commander was even now considering which of the Bodyguard troops were least efficient and most expendable. After Tagen’s squad had done to Kyrin whatever it was their unpleasantly fertile minds could conjure up, Voord’s plan was that Aldric alone be moved back to the cell— by two guards of sufficient clumsiness for his savage efforts to break free to have a better-than-ever chance of success. And after that…
Voord had seen the Alban in action before, and knew well enough that once loose and with a weapon—any weapon—in his hand, he was more than a match for any but the most capable swordsman in the Guard. Neither of the soldiers that Voord had in mind was anything like good enough. There was another matter needing some attention in the little private room near the interrogation chamber; the room with the spell-circle set into its floor. And after that, it would be only a matter of waiting for his release to come through the door.
He swallowed more of the pain-easing drink as the effect of the last mouthful began to fade and the lines of fire began once more to mark out his wounds, and thought of how good it would be to end the hurting once and for all. He would welcome oblivion as any other man would welcome recovery from sickness, smile at the Alban as he swung his sword, open his arms to embrace the descending blade. And then Voord thought of the way that Aldric had looked at him, and despite his eagerness to die he shivered…
“Aldric… ?” Kyrin spoke the name for what had to be the hundredth time, and again heard no response other than the too-quick, too-shallow rhythm of his breathing. He hadn’t moved since Voord finished with him and went out, not even to rearrange his clothing because with hands shackled at shoulder-height and ankles secured to either upright of the cheap little bed, there was no way in which he could have reached. All that he could do, and all that he had done, was to lie still to avoid the pain of moving and stare at the wall with an unreadable expression burning behind the eyes which blinked too slowly.
Oh my love
, thought Kyrin,
oh my dear one, I wish that you would say something. Anything. Not just lie there and watch it all inside your mind, over and over and over again.
She began to speak, very softly, not calling his name anymore but telling one of the old stories of her people as she might have done to a child awakened frightened in the night. Kyrin didn’t know what good it would do, whether he was hearing what she said—or even whether she was doing it not for his benefit but for her own, to take her mind away from the time when the door would open and it would be her turn.
“Long, long ago and far, far away in the frozen Northlands, there was a hunter who went out one day to hunt, and as he wandered near to the shores of the cold Northern Sea he heard a crying and went to see what made the sound. And there among the rocks and the grinding bergs that surged up and down on the icy swell, he found the cub of a white bear and the bear’s mother dead and drowned beside it. So the hunter thought at first to kill it, but it cried so sorely that his heart was touched and instead he took the little furry creature home to be a pet and a companion if it lived…”
She spun the tale out and out, weaving into it shreds and threads of other stories so that it grew more fantastic and seemed to take on a life of its own. That had always been the way with the old tales, so that a traveling storyteller could spin an entire evening’s entertainment— thus ensuring his bed and board for the night—from a single original idea. But unlike the storytellers back home in Valhol she was not to be allowed to finish without interruption, because she was only three-quarters through the tale when the cell door clanged open and Tagen’s squad of guards came in.