“Well, that’s what happened,” Maya assured him. “And now, I’m just wondering what Hellorin will have in store for D’arvan and myself this time.” As she spoke, she fingered the chain around her neck. “Anyway,” she added in a brisker tone, “that’s my story. What I still don’t understand is, what happened to you and Vannor? What in Chathak’s name possessed the fool to make war on the bloody Phaerie?”
Parric shook his head. “I could never fathom it. Truly Maya, you could hardly even call it an attack. They just waited until we’d worn ourselves out tramping all the way up here, then threw some kind of magical field around us and mopped us up from the air. That was when Sangra died. She—she was trying to rally the younger troops—to stop them running and get them into some kind of defensive position. . . .” His face creased with the memory of old pain. “She wouldn’t stop fighting. In the end, they hacked her to pieces.”
Maya’s stomach heaved and her heart clenched with pain at the thought of Sangra’s cruel end.
Parric swallowed hard, dashing his hand across his eyes. “You know, old Vannor always had sense. He used to be a good man—a man I liked and respected. I knew him as well as anyone when we were with the rebels, and for the life of me, I can’t imagine why he’d be so stupid as to attack the Phaerie. He must have known what the cost would be in human lives and even if he didn’t, there were plenty of folk to tell him—me included, not to mention Dulsina, and you know how much influence she always had with him. Not this time, though. The whole business eventually drove them apart, in fact. It was as though . . .” He shrugged. “You’ll probably think I’m daft, Maya, but at that time it seemed as though he wasn’t himself anymore—the old Vannor had disappeared completely. It was just like talking to a stranger—and a nasty piece of work at that.”
Parric sighed, and shook his head. “Well, he won his way in the end. To tell you the truth, everyone was a bit afraid of him by then. You got the feeling he’d be capable of anything—anything at all. It was as though that poison had somehow addled his wits....”
“What poison?” Maya asked sharply. “Someone tried to poison Vannor?”
“Oh, I forgot you didn’t know about that. Someone did—we still don’t know who it was, but they bloody nearly succeeded....”
Maya listened, appalled, as Parric told her of the attempt on Vannor’s life, and the earthquake that had followed soon afterward. “So that’s what caused all the damage,” she murmured. “I thought it must have been the Phaerie.”
“Oh, the Phaerie caused enough, by all accounts,” the Cavalrymaster retorted bitterly. “Our attack on them—if you can even call it that—seemed to stir them up good and proper.”
“It certainly did.” Licia’s voice came from the open doorway. She walked across to the table and put down the food she was carrying, then turned to face the others, her expression bleak as the memories crowded round her. “They swept down on Nexis that night like the wrath of all the Gods,” she said quietly.
“No one was expecting it, and what chance did we have, with all our best warriors already away? They took men and women both—the only limit to their depredations seemed to be the number of folk they could carry off.”
Her fingers clenched tightly around the edge of the table behind her. “The ones who were taken were lucky—for every one they seized, three more were killed, in the streets or in their beds. Ah, it was easier for me than for some folk. I had no family at least, to mourn. ... I saw them trample little children beneath the hooves of their great horses, with no more thought or remorse than you or I would have in swatting a fly. People were screaming, buildings were burning . ..” She shook her head. “It was too dreadful to describe. They broke into Lord Vannor’s mansion, by all accounts, and took him too—though we never see him, he’s imprisoned somewhere else, up in the citadel.”
Licia’s voice grew hard. “Just as well for him—I think if he was sent down here, the folk would tear him limb from limb. I only hope he had a chance to see what I saw, as they bore him off. If there’s any justice in this world, it should haunt him for the rest of his days—” Her words broke off as a shadow darkened the doorway of the shelter. Some half-dozen Phaerie guards stood there, tall, grim, and forbidding. To Maya’s astonishment, one of them was holding a bundle of clothing. “You two.” One of them indicated Parric and Maya. “You are summoned. Come with us.”
“Dear Gods have mercy!” D’arvan exclaimed. “What have you done to him?”
“I? Nothing.” Drawing his sword, Hellorin gently prodded the figure that knelt motionless on the floor. Vannor swayed at the jab of the blade, but otherwise did not move, nor did his expression change in the slightest—a pity, D’arvan thought, for beneath the wild tangle of long grey hair and long white beard there was something deeply unnerving about the way the prisoner’s face was contorted in a soundless scream of agony.
“How long has he been like this?” the Mage demanded.
Hellorin shrugged. “Ever since we brought him here—slightly more than a year now, I would say. The night we captured him he shrieked abuse at us and cursed us with the direst of dooms—we locked him up when we returned, and in the morning, when the guard came to fetch him, he was exactly as you see him now.—It takes two slaves to feed him, wash him, and see to his other needs, and there he stays: uncommunicative, unchanging, lost in some private torment.”
“Why did you bother keeping him alive?” D’arvan asked.
Hellorin shrugged. “I was curious. Something about that attack on us did not sit right with me. Unless Mortals have changed in some fundamental way in our absence, which I doubt, there seemed no sense to this man’s actions. Only someone with powers close to our own would even consider making war upon the Phaerie—only someone with the sheer arrogance and ambition of a Mage, in fact.” Suddenly the Forest Lord swung round, piercing D’arvan with a sharp, shrewd gaze. “Are you sure this Mortal is all that he seems?”
D’arvan struggled to conceal his shock. “Aurian told me that Miathan could control another’s mind from a great distance,” he admitted, “but that was with the victim’s full consent, apparently. From what I know of Vannor, he would never submit to such an intrusion.”
“Who knows what these Mortals will or will not do?” Hellorin replied with distaste. “Maya, in all justice, seems sharp-witted enough—from mixing so much with the Magefolk, I’ve no doubt—but I fear that owing to your attachment to her, you give the rest of the flock too much credit for intelligence. Do you really believe that a strong-minded Mage might not control a mere Mortal at will?”
“Well, I couldn’t,” D’arvan said firmly. “But then I never wanted to. Besides, if Vannor had been under the control of a Mage, why wouldn’t they try to force him to escape from here, or even use him to spy on you?”
“That’s what I was hoping you would find out.”
“Me?” gasped the Mage. “What can I do?”
“Oh come,” Hellorin said impatiently. “Mortals are a completely alien species to us Phaerie. You, with your Magefolk ancestry, are that much closer. You could probe his mind, D’arvan, and discover what I could not. As a condition of your cooperation, you asked me to release Vannor. Well, before I do, I want to be certain his mind is unaffected by any trace of Magefolk meddling—if indeed he has any mind left at all. But I will not set him free to plot against me further....”
The Forest Lord was interrupted by a respectful tapping on the door. “Ah—I expect your other Mortals have arrived. Enter,” he added, in a louder voice.
“Get your bloody hands off me!” D’arvan heard Maya’s voice before he saw her.—Then the door burst open and she came hurtling into the room, wearing nothing but an ill-fitting man’s shirt that hung down below her knees. Parric followed her, similarly attired and glowering blackly.