"You won't need to kill me," Michael finally replied. "I've been here since graduation. This's my country now. You're my people. I am what I am. I'm sorry you don't see it. And you can't help thinking whatever you do. But I'm home, sir."
Ragnarson peered into Trebilcock's pale, pale eyes and believed. "Good. Then I've got a job for you."
"Sir?" For the first time since he had met Michael, Bragi saw emotion. And thought he understood. Michael was a rich man's son. What had he ever been able to do for himself or others?
"It's simple. Do what you do. Eyes and ears. Hanging around. Only more of it. Gjerdrum says you're always prowling anyway." Ragnarson stared toward the sunrise. "Michael, I can't trust anybody anymore. I hate it...."
Ahring came out. "The horses are ready. I had some things thrown together for you."
"Thank you, Jarl. Michael?"
"Sir?"
"Good luck."
Ragnarson left the pale young man in deep thought. "Jarl, I've changed my mind. You know what's happening with me and the Queen?"
"I've heard enough."
"Yeah. Well. There's not much point my hiding it now. But don't quote me. Understand?"
"Of course."
"Does it suggest any problems?"
"A thousand. What scares me is what might happen if she doesn't make it. Your witch-man friend sounded.... They say she had trouble with the first one."
"Yeah. Here's what I want. All capital troops but the Vorgrebergers and Queen's Own confined to barracks starting tomorrow, before what's happening leaks. And right now have Colonel Oryon report to me ready to travel. I'll keep one serpent in my pocket by taking him along. Oh. Put the provinces on alert. Militia on standby. Border guards to maximum readiness. Valther can drop hints about an intelligence coup. It'll distract questions about the confinement to barracks. Got it?"
"It's done."
It was well past dawn before three men and a boy rode eastward.
EIGHT: The Prisoner
The pain never ended.
The whispers, the gentle evils in his ears, went on and on and on.
He was stubborn. So damned stubborn that yielding in order to gain surcease never occurred to him.
He didn't know where he was. He didn't know who had captured him. He didn't know why. Pain was the extent of his knowledge. The man in black, the man in the mask, was his only clue. They wouldn't tell him a thing. They just asked. If they spoke at all.
At first they had questioned him about Bragi and Haroun. He had told them nothing. He couldn't have. He didn't know anything. They had been separated too long.
He wakened. Sounds....
The Man in the Mask had returned.
"Woe!" Mocker muttered, slumping lower against floor and wall. It would be rough this time. They hadn't visited for weeks.
But there were just four of them this round. He was thankful for little favors.
Each bore a torch. Mocker watched with hooded eyes as the assistants placed theirs in sconces beyond his reach, one on each wall. The Man in the Mask fixed his above the door.
Mask closed the door. Of course. Not because Mocker might escape. He didn't order it locked from without. He simply closed it so his prisoner wouldn't get the idea there was a world beyond that slab of iron.
Mocker's world was twelve by twelve by twelve, black stone, without windows. Furniture? Chains.
There were no sanitary facilities.
Having to endure his own wastes was good-for his captors' designs.
The most distressing thing was the Mask's silence. Invariably he just stood before the door, statuelike, while his assistants demonstrated their pain-mastery.
This time they had given him too long to recover, and hadn't brought enough muscle.
He exploded.
He tripped the nearest, drove stiffened fingers into the man's throat. He screamed, "Hai!" in bloodthirsty exultation. Cartilage gave way. He made a claw, yanked with all his remaining strength.
One was dead. But three were left.
He hoped they would get mad enough to kill him.
Death was all he had to live for.
He scrambled away, bounced up, threw a foot at the crotch of the Man in the Mask.
The others stopped him. They were no off-the-street amateurs. They put him down and took him apart.
There had been so much pain, so often, that he didn't care. It had gone on so long that he no longer feared it. Only two things mattered anymore. Hurting back, and getting them to kill him.
They didn't get mad. They never did, though this was the worst he had done them. They remained pure business.
Once they had beaten him, they rolled him onto his belly and bound his wrists behind him. Then they pulled his elbows together. He groaned, writhed, sank his teeth into a bare ankle.
The blood taste was pure pleasure.
He tasted his own when a boot smashed into his mouth. He wouldn't learn. Resistance just meant more pain.
They attached a rope at his elbows and hoisted him.
It was an old torture, primitive and passive. When first Mocker had arrived he had been fifty pounds overweight. His weight had yanked his shoulder bones from their sockets.
After he had screamed awhile, and had lost consciousness, someone would doctor him so they could hoist him up again.
Back then there had been no night whispers, just the pain, and the unending effort to break him.
Why?
For whose benefit?
What would the program be this time? Five or ten days on the hook? Or straight to the point for once?
One thing was certain. There would be nothing to eat for a while. Food was strictly for convalescents.
When he was fed at all he got pumpkin soup. Two bowls a day.
One week they had given him cabbage soup. But that petty change had been enough to revive his morale. So it was pumpkin soup or nothing.
The remnants of his most recent meal splashed the floor. Bile befilthed his mouth. He spat.
"Day will come," he promised in a whisper. "Is in balance of eternity, on great mandala. Reverse of fortunes will come."
His torturers spun him. Around and around and around, till he was drunk with dizziness and pain. Then they hoisted him to the ceiling, brought him down in a series of jerks. He heaved again, but there was nothing left in his stomach.
One of them washed his mouth.
This time was different, he realized. Radically different. This was new.
He paid attention.
The Man in the Mask moved.
He peered into Mocker's eyes, pulling each lid back as would a physician. Mocker saw eyes as dark as his own behind slits from which the jewels had been removed. No. Wait. This mask wasn't the one he usually saw. Instead of traceries of black on gold, this bore traceries of gold on black. A different man? He didn't think so. The feeling was the same.
There was no emotion, no mercy in those eyes. They were the eyes of a technician, the bored eyes of a peasant halfway through a day's hoeing midway through planting season.
That mask, though.... The changes were slight, yet, somehow, the alienness was gone. He began searching the burning attic of his mind.
The mask, the black robes, and the hands forever encased in the most finely wrought gauntlets he had ever seen, those were things he knew....
Tervola. Shinsan. He remembered them so well he was sure this wasn't a genuine Tervola.
Trickery was the way he would have programmed this had their roles been reversed.
That mask.... He remembered it now. He had seen it at Baxendala. It had lain abandoned on the battlefield after O Shing had begun his retreat. Gold lines on black, ruby fangs, thecat-gargoyle. That one, Mist had said, belonged to a man called Chin, one of the chieftains of the Tervola.
They had assumed, then, that Chin had perished.
Maybe he hadn't, though the eye-crystals had been removed from the mask....
"Chin. Old friend to rescue," Mocker gasped, straining for a sarcastic smile.
The man's only response was a slight hesitation before he said, "There will be more pain, fat one. Forever, if need be. I can wait. Or you can listen. And learn."