“Maybe. If he were clever enough.”
“Uh-huh. And even if I made it, how am I going to get back? How am I going to get messages out? The only way I have is via the palace and the Master of the Dead himself. Considering that, even if I were a spy, I wouldn’t exactly be much of a threat, now would I?”
“Could be,” she admitted. “But maybe not. We have one spy in custody right now from up around that area where you said you came from. He fell into the hands of the gnomes and is quite mad. The few who get away from the gnomes are always mad. Usually we have to bribe them to get people back at all; this one went so crazy the gnomes actually begged us to take him.”
“You’re sure he was a spy?”
“What else could he be? He’s too crazy now even to make enough sense to create a story, but there’s no other reason for coming here—unless your story is true, or unless he was someone who heard that there were only women on rear picket duty and thought he was going to have a field day.”
His eyebrows rose. “There are only women here?”
“Women and slaves to do the drudge work, and by law the slaves are all eunuchs. Why? You getting any ideas?”
“Nothing personal, but not along those lines,” he assured her, trying to sound both safe and not insulting. “When the, Master of the Dead personally orders you to do something, you don’t really think about much else.”
“Maybe,” she responded a bit suspiciously.
“I’d like to see that prisoner, though,” he told her. “I’ll leave my sword and stuff here. I just want to see what sort of person would come up here unauthorized. Having done a fair amount of spying in the south, I might have come across somebody that nervy.”
She shrugged. “All he does is sit and sing this bizarre chant in some alien tongue. You can see him, but no tricks. All of us are experts with bow arid crossbow and some of us are fine swordswomen. Not to mention that we have our own means of magical protections and can have the forces of true Darkness down on this place like a shot.”
“I’m not the enemy, damn it!” He unbuckled his sword and left it on her desk, then followed her back. “Besides, if you have anybody who can read the signatures of spells, have them check my slave. One of her spells is from the Master of the Dead himself.”
There was a small back area to the cabin, and she took a large set of keys on a master ring from a safe, then unlocked the rear door. Inside was a narrow outer area just wide enough to stand and not be grabbed by anybody inside, then a small single cell with thick bars.
Inside a small figure sat, stripped naked so that even if he could break out he’d freeze before getting very far. He was sitting on the bunk staring up at the ceiling in the semi-gloom and singing softly.
The man on the bunk looked over and saw Joe, and his eyes brightened. For a moment, Joe was afraid that his cover would be blown, but instead the little man yelled, “Skipper! YouVe come at last to rescue me! Take me back to the island, please*. Otherwise the cannibals will eat me!”
His beard and hair were long and unkempt, and his eyes were wild and distant, but Macore was still clearly recognizable.
Joe ignored the little thief. “What will you do with him?”
“Standing instructions. Anyone who comes here as a spy, after his value for information and interrogation is done, is to be enslaved by spell, castrated, and fitted with a nose ring. As you can plainly see, he’s of no interrogation value in any event now.”
“You can do that here?”
She nodded. “We are not merely a military unit, we are a coven. We would have done it during the last three days of the full moon but we’re short one right now. We can handle the rest of it, but that insulation spell is tricky. Complicated spells are best done during Black Sabbaths, and so he’s got a few more days until Sergeant Murrah returns from presiding over the Serpent Goddess Virgin Sacrifice and Bake Sale at Magash.”
He gulped. “Uh, yeah.”
“Do you know him?”
He nodded. “I do, and he’s no spy. He was as mad as this long ago. He probably had some strange-looking gadgets as well, if the gnomes didn’t take and destroy them.”
“No, they gave those back, too. We sent them on to the palace by courier, not knowing what they might be, but they looked to me like sophisticated spying gear of some foreign manufacture.”
Yeah, Taiwan, most likely, he thought. Aloud he said, “He worked for no government or master. At one time he was the greatest thief in all Husaquahr. Apparently one day he stole those things and looked into them and went mad. He’s been wandering all over since, but this is the last place I thought he’d be.”
“Skipper! You’ve got to spring your little buddy!” Macore cried plaintively.
They walked back outside, leaving Macore to scream about being deserted, and shut the door.
“Thank the Demon Rastoroth for that door!” the security woman muttered. “At least it keeps his ran tings in there!”
Joe scratched his chin through his beard and thought a moment. “You know, I might be able to use him.”
“Sorry—the regulations are absolute,” she told him. “If you stick around until we do the slave conversion, fine. Not otherwise.”
“I don’t want to delay all that long, but, what would be the harm? Consider—I’m heading toward the palace, not away from it. If he got away, he’d freeze or die on the ice. But I’m betting that somewhere in that scrambled brain of his is still the greatest thief in Husaquahr, the man who actually burglarized the Lamp of Lakash from the vaults of the enemy sorcerer Ruddygore himself.”
“Really? He did that?”
Joe nodded. “Uh-huh. I’m pretty sure he could walk out of there any time he wanted to, only without warm clothes and provisions, he’s stuck. If he had them, though, he’d head straight for his obsession, which is that gear you sent. If we told him it was in the palace, I’d wager he could make it there.”
“So? I thought the idea was to see if you could make it.”
He nodded. “But I’m on my own initiative as to how. If I set this little fellow out, and follow him, then if he makes it, /make it. And what is his reward if he does? He’s sent right back here, and by that time your thirteenth member will have returned. If he doesn’t, well, case closed.”
“So? And what sort of route do you plan to take for this?”
He shrugged. “To go around is to invite tripping alarms.
You’re not here to guard the castle; you’re here to prevent anyone from going in a straight line toward it, across the pan of the map marked ‘deadly and forbidden.’ If there is a weak spot in the palace defenses, it’s from that direction.”
“And with good reason!” she responded. “You can’t see it, but we can. What looks like plain ice is a seething cauldron of the strongest and most complex sorcery imaginable. And it’s coming from who knows how far beneath the ice? Imagine what might lie down there? No one wants to liberate that.”
He didn’t like the sound of it, but it was pretty much as he suspected. “Has anyone to your knowledge tried to cross it while you’ve been here?”
“No, but I’ve seen some of the results of the few who got back out. Whoever or whatever is imprisoned there is powerful beyond our imagination, and was frozen and trapped there by powers even greater.”
“I’ve heard the legends. A fierce battle frozen in progress.”
“That’s right. We draw additional power for our coven from it, but we try and reject it. You can feel it coming, trying to seize control. Even our demon master appears to fear and respect it. It is why we do nothing in the Arts unless we are complete.”