"But," I asked, "what of the dream of Ar, that dream of which you spoke, that dream that you believed it right to bring about?"
"Yes?" said Marlenus.
"Is that a right dream?" I asked.
"It is a right dream," he said.
"And yet," I said, "your sword has not yet found the strength to bring it into being."
Marlenus looked at me thoughtfully, then laughed. "By the Priest-Kings," he said, "I think I have lost the exchange."
I shrugged, somewhat incongruously in the chains; it hurt.
"But," went on Marlenus, "if what you say is true, how shall we separate the right dreams from the wrong dreams?"
It seemed to me a difficult question.
"I will tell you," laughed Marlenus. He slapped the blade fondly. "With this!"
The Ubar then rose and sheathed his sword. As if this were a signal, some of his tarnsmen entered the cave and seized me.
"Impale him," said Marlenus.
The tarnsmen began to unlock the shackles, that I might be impaled freely on the lance, perhaps so that my struggles might provide a more interesting spectacle to the onlookers.
I felt numb, even my back, which presumably would have been a riot of pain if I had not felt myself near death.
"Your daughter, Talena, is alive," I said to Marlenus. He had not asked and did riot now appear to have much interest in the matter. Still, if he was human at all, I assumed this remote, kingly, dream-obsessed man would want to know.
"She would have brought a thousand tarns," said Marlenus. "Proceed with the impalement."
The tarnsmen grasped my arms more securely. Two others removed the tharlarion lance from its crevice and brought it forward. It would be forced into my body, and I would then be lifted, with it, into place.
"She's your daughter," I said to Marlenus. "She's alive."
"Did she submit to you?" asked Marlenus.
"Yes," I said.
"Then she valued her life more than my honor."
Suddenly my feeling of numbness, of incapacity, departed as if in a lightning flash of fury. "Damn your honor!" I shouted. "Damn your precious stinking honor!"
Without realizing what I was doing, I had shaken the two restraining tarnsmen from my arms as if they had been children, and I rushed on Marlenus and struck him violently in the face with my fist, causing him to reel backward, his face contorted with astonishment and pain. I turned just in time to knock the impaling lance aside as, carried by two men, it plunged toward my back. I seized it, twisting it, and, using it like a bar held by the men, leaped into the air, kicking at them. I heard two screams of pain and found that I held the lance. Some five or six tarnsmen ran toward the wide opening of the shallow cave, but I rushed forward, holding the lance parallel to my body, striking them with almost superhuman strength and forcing them over the ledge near the mouth of the cave. Their screams mingled with shouts of rage as the other tarnsmen rushed forward to capture me.
One tarnsman leveled a crossbow, and in that instant I hurled the lance and he toppled backward, the shaft of the weapon protruding from his chest, the bolt from his crossbow ricocheting from the rock above my head with a flash of sparks. One of the men I had kicked lay writhing at my feet. I seized the sword from his scabbard. I engaged and dropped the first of the tarnsmen to reach me and wounded the second, but was pressed back toward the rear of the cave. I was doomed, but resolved to die well.
As I fought, I could hear the lion laughter of Marlenus behind me, as what had been a simple impalement turned into a fight of the sort after his own heart. As I found a moment's respite, I spun to face him, hoping to have it out with the Ubar himself, but as I did so, the shackles that I had worn struck me forcibly in the face and throat, thrown like a bolo by Marlenus. I choked, and shook my head to clear the blood from my eyes, and in that instant was seized by three or four of the Ubar's tarnsmen.
"Well done, young warrior," acclaimed Marlenus. "I thought I would see if you would die like a slave." He addressed his men, pointing to me. "What say you?" he laughed. "Has this warrior not earned his right to the tarn death?"
"He has indeed," said one of the tarnsmen, who held a wadded lump of tunic over his slashed rib cage.
I was dragged outside, and binding fiber was fastened to my wrists and ankles. The loose ends of the fiber were then attached by broad leather straps to two tarns, one of them my own sable giant.
"You will be torn to pieces," said Marlenus. "Not pleasant, but better than impalement."
I was fastened securely. A tarnsman mounted one tarn; another tarnsman mounted the other tare.
"I'm not dead yet," I said. It was a stupid thing to say, but I felt that it was not yet my time to die.
Marlenus did not deride me. "You it was who stole the Home Stone of Ar," he said. "You have luck."
"No man can escape the tare death," said one of the men.
The warriors of the Ubar moved back, to give the tarns room.
Marlenus himself knelt in the darkness to check the knots in the binding fiber, tightening them carefully. As he checked the knots at my wrists, he spoke to me.
"Do you wish me to kill you now?" he asked softly. "The tare death is an ugly death." His hand, shielded from his men by his body, was on my throat. I felt it could have crushed it easily.
"Why this kindness?" I asked.
"For the sake of a girl," he said.
"But why?" I asked.
"For the love she has for you," he said.
"Your daughter hates me," I said.
"She agreed to be the mate of Pa-Kur, the Assassin," he said, "in order that you might have one small chance of life, on the Frame of Humiliation."
"How do you know this?" I asked.
"It is common knowledge in the camp of Pa-Kur," replied Marlenus. I could sense him smiling in the darkness. "I myself, as one of the Afflicted, learned it from Mintar, of the Merchant Caste. Merchants must keep their friends on both sides of the fence, for who knows if Marlenus may not once more sit upon the throne of Ar?"
I must have uttered a sound of joy, for Marlenus quickly placed his hand over my mouth.
He asked no more if he should kill me, but rose to his feet and walked away, under the snapping wing of one of the tarns, and waved farewell. "Good-bye, Warrior," he called.
With a sickening lurch and sharp jolt of pain the two tarnsmen brought their birds into the air. For a moment I swung between the birds, and then, perhaps a hundred feet in the air, the tarnsmen, at a prearranged signal — a sharp blast of a tarn whistle from the ground turned their birds in opposite directions. The sudden wrenching pain seemed to rip my body. I think I inadvertently screamed. The birds were pulling against one another, stabilized in their flight, each trying to pull away from the other. Now and again there would be a moment's giddy respite from the pain as one or the other of the birds failed to keep the ropes taut. I could hear the curses of the tarnsmen above me and saw once or twice the flash of the striking tarn-goad. Then the birds would throw their weight again on the ropes, bringing another flashing wrench of agony.
Then, suddenly, there was a ripping sound as one of the wrist ropes broke. Without thinking, but responding blindly, with a surge of joy, I seized the other wrist rope and tried to force it over the wrist. When the bird drew again, there was a sharp pain as flesh was torn from my hand, but the rope darted off into the darkness, and I was swinging by my ankles from the other ropes. It might take a moment for the tarnsmen to realize what had happened. The first guess would be that my body had torn in two, and the darkness would conceal the truth for a moment, until the tarnsman himself would try the ropes, to test the weight of their burden.