She brought up the horses, too, and Bektis laid spells around them: Tir thought Ingold's method of keeping horses from running away or being stolen was more efficient, but didn't say so. He noticed Bektis slipped the bright-flashing handgear of crystals on to execute the guarding-spell, and to make the fire, too, and wondered a little about it because Rudy had told him that those kinds of spells didn't take much magic.
When the light turned red-gold and the shadows grew long, Bektis walked to where the slope sank away toward the grassy prairie, the gems still on his hand, and shaded his eyes to gaze to the south. "Ah," he said, pleased. "At last."
I have to be brave, Tir told himself, watching the line of riders, the swaying dark tops of tall wagons, the double file of men with weapons glittering in the harsh dry fading light. I have to be brave.
It was an army, bigger than the biggest band of outlaws Tir had ever seen. They were all men-unlike the Guards and the bandit troops Tir had heard about-and they were mostly black-skinned, some with white hair, some with black, some bald as eggs as the Akulae had been.
Tir remembered Rudy's description of the black-skinned prince who had offered to marry his mother, back when the lands of the Alketch still had an emperor.
Remembered, too, the name of the Alketch general with a silver hook where his right hand should have been. He had betrayed the armies of daylight when they went against the Dark Ones in their Nests, pulled his men out of the fighting so that he could have his own army strong, left the men of the Keep to be killed. There were a lot of orphans in the Keep whose fathers and mothers had died there in the holocaust of fire and shadow.
The man in the long white cloak who dismounted his horse and walked up the hill to meet Bektis had such a hook, though that was not the most fearful thing about him. He had yellow eyes that did not care whether you lived or died.
"My Lord Vair." Bektis' voice had a caressing note, as if Vair were the most important person in the entire world, and he made the formal salaam that mostly only the Keep Lords made. "You have the boy?" A voice like rocks rubbing over each other. (I have to be brave) "We have him safe and sound, illustrious Lord. I behold within my scrying crystal that your forces surround the Keep of Dare."
This was a shock to Tir, another cold drench of panic. "It is well done." Lord Vair gestured impatiently. "Were you followed?" "Only as far as the crest of the pass, my Lord. The wizard Ingold not being at the Keep, they sent another of the Keep mages after me. I slew him with the lightning of my hands and buried the pass under a blizzard of snow." The final sunlight leaped and sparkled from his flourishing hand.
"Daily since then have I scried the pass. The spells I laid on it still hold strong."
"And Ingold?" His words came out like slaps in the face. His speech, though recognizably the words of the Wathe, had a different intonation, the sounds bent and changed and the accents differently placed.
"He is in Gae still."
Tir's heart sank, but he bit back tears. Those cold wolf eyes cut over toward him, measuring him as they measured all things and, as they found all things, finding him wanting.
"Demon-fornicating son of Evil. And the wench?"
"I am here, Vair na-Chandros of the Southern Realms." Hethya stepped forward, drawing herself tall.
"Anios ithbach amrdmmas a teyelsan, 'The ignorant speak easily of that which they do not under stand.' "
The sonorous words flowed from her tongue like the magic speech of wizards, and her face seemed to grow longer and thinner, a different set to the mouth than Hethya's broad grin, the hazel eyes unsparkling, cold as a priestess'. "The girl Hethya, Uranwe's Daughter, is here with me also, but I am here, I, Oale Niu; here in this place where I stood three thousand years ago, and I will not be slighted."
The men who had come up behind Lord Vair murmured among themselves, and one or two bowed their heads.
After a moment Lord Vair inclined his, just slightly, as well. "I meant no disrespect, Lady," he said. "And indeed I apologize for the clumsiness of my tongue. The apparatus you instructed us in worked well, as you see."
He signed toward the men gathered around the wagons at the foot of the slope. It was a little difficult for Tir at first because all were strangers to him, bald and without facial hair of any kind, and he was not used to the sight of so many black faces, but he realized that many of them had the same features, like the Akulae.
A word came to his mind unbidden, from the dark hollow of memory: tethyn. They were called tethyn.
And there was something awful about them-or about it-something that made him feel sick inside, something he didn't want to know.
"I trust that the other apparatus will function as well."
"How many things function as once they did, with the passage of years?" She looked him coldly up and down and spoke in the voice of Oale Niu, strange coming from Hethya's lush mouth. "Not men, certainly, nor the bodies of men. But the machines we built in the ancient days are wrought of power and adamant," she went on, as if she did not see Lord Vair's face cloud with anger. "They will do as they were made to do, my Lord. Be sure of it."
On these words she turned her back on him and strode serenely off into the woods, swallowed up by the shadows of the trees, leaving Tir alone.
Vair flicked his left hand-Tir noticed already that he kept his hooks low at his side or hidden within his sleeve or the folds of his white woolen cloak. "Set the camp. Nargois, Bektis..."
The sorcerer stepped closer, as did another man, tall like Lord Vair, extravagantly mustachioed and cloaked like him in white, his clothing adorned with ribbons and jewels of rank. "Let's see the brat."
Tir wanted to shrink back and conceal himself behind the tree but knew it wouldn't do any good.
Besides, it wasn't brave. When Vair, Nargois, and Bektis were halfway across the clearing to him he was swept by a wave of dread that this awful lord would know all about Akula's knife hidden in his boot.
He looked away, trying to breathe, and the next moment Lord Vair's iron fingers in their white leather glove had his chin in a grip like a machine, forcing his head up.
For a moment Tir looked into those honey eyes and saw in them worse things than he'd ever known in his life.
Then, very deliberately, Vair released his chin and struck him across the face, hard enough to knock him down. Tir fell, crying out with shock and pain, and the silver hooks flickered out of their concealment, catching Tir's sleeve and ripping the flesh of his shoulder underneath as they pulled him to his feet again.
Vair slapped him twice more, Tir sobbing but too terrified to cry. The hooks pulled him to his feet again and then jerked free of his sleeve, Vair's left hand grabbing his collar while the hooks on their ivory stump whipped around and slashed across his face, opening the flesh from temple to cheekbone in a single vicious swipe.
Tir screamed in pain, and Vair shook him, his head jerking back and forth, his breath strangled in the twist of his collar and his neck half broken by the man's strength. Then Vair caught the hooks in his face again, less than a finger-breadth from the corner of his eye.
"Listen to me, little boy," said that cold grating voice, and Tir, weeping in terror and feeling as if he were going to faint or wet himself, stared up into those vulpine eyes. "Do you know how easy it would be for me to pull half the flesh off your face? So that it flaps back and forth like a pancake?"
He shook him, only a gentle wobble this time, but horrible as a blow. "Or to dig out one of your eyes?
You'll only need one for the job you're going to do for me. Nod your head."
Blank with fear, Tir nodded, and felt the metal pull in his flesh. With a movement of his wrist Vair freed the hooks and shoved Tir facedown on the grass.
With his hands still tied behind him, he couldn't break his fall. His face felt as if it had puffed up to the size of his head, the air like cold metal against the pouring heat of his blood. He lay crying, not daring to look up or move or breathe. Something shoved at his chin, hard.