"He tortured one hundred and fifty helpless women and five equally helpless men to death. He was quite prepared to do the same to all the rest of the cult. How does even a Werist justify that?"
"Please let's not bicker," the girl said. "Orlad, what do you want to do? If you try to go home tomorrow as you have been ordered, then Leorth will kill you. Will you set out for Nardalborg tonight and hope to be safe there, or will you seek out another life?"
"There is no other life. You are not going to marry Horoldson?"
She screwed up her face in exaggerated disgust. "I hope not."
"I almost broke his neck this morning until I found out who he was." Orlad wished he had; then the satrap would have had good reason to kill him and he wouldn't feel this terrible sense of betrayal. "How did you escape from the dungeons?" Looking down at the unlined face, the shiny hair, he realized how little he knew about women. Musky had been a lot older than this alleged sister of his.
"I had help." She smiled at the artist beside her.
More treason! Yet Orlad could not imagine that bovine lump letting a songbird out of its cage, let alone rescuing a prisoner from the satrap's palace.
He said, "So what will you do now? You and your brother? You are going to sneak over the Edge to Florengia and steal back our city? Two against the Fist?"
She flushed at his mockery. The artist was ignoring both of them, scowling at the seer as if he disliked her as much as Orlad did.
"I don't know," the girl admitted. "The most urgent problem is yours, Orlad. What can you do? If Mist can find you safe refuge, is that what you want?"
What sort of a name was Mist? Who were all these people that he must trust them before his liege lord? "Witness, what is your interest in me? Why warn me of this supposed plot?"
She set her spindle going yet again. "Our blessing includes more than just seeing, Flankleader. We are interested in you because you have potential to transform the world. I do not prophesy that you will do so, I merely affirm that you may have the opportunity, just as a sharp sword has power to kill but may never see battle. We call it 'seasoning' or 'flavor.' All of you are seasoners and so was Dantio, although four in one family is unprecedented. So if fame is your ambition, you may well succeed. At the moment, Orlando, you are also important, which is not the same thing. Importance is not uncommon and usually short-lived. A paid assassin may seem important, but the person who paid him is more likely to have flavor. Because you are currently important, you were visible to my sight this morning before you even reached King's Grass, far outside my normal range. Your coming mattered!"
Orlad did not feel important. "Why are you betraying the satrap's plans to me? Tell me why he should want to kill me?"
"Because he is insane. Because he and all the children of Hrag are evil. Tell me why you support them, why you want to fight for Stralg against your own people."
"I want to fight against false Werists," he shouted. "Traitors who broke their oaths! Extrinsics have nothing to fear if they stay out of our road and do as they are told."
"How will you distinguish the oath-breakers?" the seer asked. "A few dozen Florengian youths swore loyalty and then reneged, led by Marno Cavotti, but they are almost all dead now. They trained many sixty-sixty others to succeed them and those men are as true to the vows they made as you want to be to yours. How will you—"
Red anger propelled Orlad one step forward. The girl jumped up and squealed, "No!" Even the artist lurched to his feet, as if mere bulk could stop a Hero.
"Killing me will solve nothing," the seer said, but her voice was squeaky. She had stopped spinning at last
"I will fight the Florengians because I am true to the Fist!" If they would just let him, just trust him!
"Why?" the seer asked. "Stralg has murdered and pillaged and shattered your homeland. Do you know why? You know what started the war?"
"What does it matter? If they had submitted to the rule of the Heroes as they should, they would not have been hurt."
"Tell him, Bena."
"Tell him what?" the artist growled, still frowning.
"Tell him why Stralg invaded the Florengian Face."
Muscleman shrugged. "Because he had too many men. In his struggle to conquer Vigaelia he'd built the cult up too big. With no one left to fight, they'd just start fighting one another. So he took half of them over the Edge to get them killed off."
Orlad laughed. "He told you this, I suppose?"
"He told his sister-in-law," Benard said absently. "She told me." He turned to stare again at the seer.
"Don't believe you."
No one answered. Somehow the mood of the room had changed.
"Stop that!" the Witness shouted, raising her distaff threateningly.
"Stop what?" Benard took a step toward her, looking puzzled.
"Stop it!" she shrieked.
"I know you!"
"No you don't! How could you?" She tried to strike at him with her distaff.
Parrying the blow easily, he reached out and ripped away her veil.
forty
BENARD CELEBRE
had sensed something wrong about Witness Mist when they first met in the Bull Concourse in Kosord. The feeling had returned this morning, even stronger, when they met again here in Tryfors. It had been growing on him all day. At last he sent a prayer to Anziel that She let him see through the veil, and he had discovered a maddeningly familiar face. So he unmasked her...
Him.
He thought for a heart-stopping moment that he was face-to-face with holy Eriander—Eriander as he had shown Her in Ingeld's mural and Hiddi's idol. The coloring was wrong, of course, and the ghastly cropped ears; he had caught the straight nose, the wavy hair, and the pointed chin very well. But the real horror was the hideous de-sexing mutilation.
"I thought you were dead!" He had modeled the god as a youth of indeterminate sex, but the features were those of his older brother—who should not look like that now, nor sound like that, either. "Oh, Dantio, Dantio! What did they do to you? And what have I just done to you?"
Heartsick, Benard grabbed the Witness in both arms and hugged him as tight as he could. Dantio gasped, tried to break loose, then submitted to the inevitable, hard-put even to breathe in a grip so ferocious.
"How very touching!" said the Werist. "What exactly is that?"
"Don't you sneer, you stupid thug!" Fabia yelled. "Dantio? Really?"
Benard let go and stared at him. Dantio nodded. His eyes were tight shut, his mouth twisted in a rictus of pain. He spun around and hid his face against the wall.
Benard thought, Brute, callous brute! How could I have been so insanely cruel?
It seemed an age before the seer spoke, in a whisper choked with emotion. "Yes, really. You can guess what they did to me, Benard."
Beardless, sexless features, treble voice. Benard glanced at his other brother, the brute killer, and thought, I was the lucky one.
Dantio said, "There are other eunuchs in the... in the cult... We don't make them, but we take them in."
Fabia went to put her arms around him. "I thought you witnessed that Dantio died?"
"I did," the seer told the plaster. "I was going to tell you, truly I was. I wanted to get this all settled first."
Shamefaced, Benard scooped up the veil he had dropped, offered it. Dantio took it without looking around and covered his head again.
"I do think," Orlad sneered, "my duty requires me to warn my liege lord that the Celebre hostages are loose and dangerous. They may even gang up on him! An artist, a girl, and a gelding! He will be terrified."
Fists clenched, Benard strode over. "Shut your foul face!"