Ordrune looked back at Egil and shook his head and smiled. "Too late, I'm afraid, Captain Egil." Then he turned and smashed the hammer down on Klaen's shackled hand, the iron maul splintering bones as blood flew wide. "No!" shouted Egil, but his cry was lost under Klaen's shrieks of agony, the screams slapping and echoing 'round the chamber. And from behind the iron door came a snarling wail, and the door thudded, the beams rattling, as something monstrous slammed against it from within.
Laughing, Ordrune moved to the other side of Klaen, and once more showed the heavy hammer to the shrieking man, the maul now stained with blood, bits of flesh clinging to the dull spikes. Klaen's screams rang out hoarsely and again he struggled, and Egil shouted "No!" but Ordrune merely smiled and shattered the other hand. As the iron door thudded and rattled, Klaen's shrieks climbed in pitch, and then stopped altogether. He had fainted, and only moans leaked from his lips.
"Fear not, Captain Egil," said Ordrune as he moved toward a table, "for this"-he took up an ampoule-"will revive him, and then we, you and I, shall start on his feet."
Egil wept and pled and lost all the food he had eaten, as Ordrune slowly destroyed Klaen, breaking bones with the iron meat-hammer, working inward from the extremities, the young man shrieking in agony, Ordrune's vials keeping him awake and aware. And all the while something behind the iron door roared and smashed at it from within, as if some enormous caged monster were being driven mad with blood lust.
And when Klaen finally was dead, his broken body was carried by lackeys from the room, and moments later there came the grisly sound of something eating something behind the barred iron door.
If the top of the tower was the vile heart of the holt then the bottom of the tower was its foul soul, for over the next forty days, Egil witnessed the destruction of his entire crew: Bram, Argi, Ragnar, the others, all the young men who had followed him. By fire and knife and caustic potion, by rending and crushing and slow bleeding, by evisceration and impalement and other penetrations they died. One by one. One each day. Always with Egil now forcibly bathed and groomed and dressed and sitting before an extravagant meal.
And though Egil begged and groveled and told everything he knew, and confessed to all his transgressions and peccadilloes and misdeeds and vices, and beseeched Ordrune to spare the crew and kill him instead, Ordrune merely laughed… and the laughter did not cease.
Finally there was only Egil left.
They stood once more in the top of the tower, did Egil and Ordrune: Egil again shackled to the floor, Ordrune smiling at him from across the width of the room-but strangely, Ordrune was now more youthful than when last he and Egil had met here.
Egil shifted, his chains rattling, and he growled, "What are you waiting for, Wizard? Why don't you just kill me and get it over with?"
"Oh no, Captain Egil, would I waste all I have striven to teach you? Instead I intend to set you free, now that you have learned. Was that not a fine game we played… our pleasure enhanced by the power we gained? But wait, what is this? I see you are disappointed. Perhaps you believe the better lesson I promised you, the better lesson I gave you, will fade, will be forgotten." Ordrune laughed and stroked his now-younger cheeks and hairless chin. "Fear not, Captain Egil, you will never forget for as long as I live"-again Ordrune laughed-"and Mages live forever."
"Not if I have a say in it," gritted Egil. "There will come a day when I'll see you in the black fathoms below."
"Well, my lad, you are welcome to try, can you find this place, this tower. Yet even though free, I think you will be incapable of coming again to my fortress. I will see to that."
Ordrune turned to the table beside him and took up a vial, then looking at Egil he said, "Resist not, Captain Egil, for you cannot prevail."
Egil found himself wandering along the shores of Gelen. How he had gotten there, he did not know. There were gaps in his mind-thoughts, memories, experiences taken away by Ordrune. He did, however, remember setting forth from Morkfjord in the Sjoloper, but not where he had sailed. He remembered each and every man of the crew he had named his Hawks and the gleams in their eyes as they had joined his venture, but he remembered no raids, no plunder, no booty, nothing to live up to the promise of riches and fame that had drawn the young men to him. And he remembered boarding a certain ship to capture its wealth, but neither its kind nor the waters wherein he and the Hawks had slipped alongside. He remembered the Wizardholt and all he had seen therein, but not its whereabouts. And he remembered Ordrune, vile Ordrune, and the crew the Wizard had slaughtered… and the manner of their deaths. Of this he could not forget, for Ordrune had cursed him, and each and every night, he relived the hideous slaughter of one of the men, a different man each night, and always he woke up screaming.
Ill dreams, indeed.
He finally took berth on a merchanter out of the port of Arbor in Gelen, and he worked his way from ship to ship until he came to Fjordland. And when he rowed into Morkfjord on a midsummer's day, four years had elapsed since he and the forty Hawks had set sail for glory and gold.
Yet none came home but him.
CHAPTER 34
Arin reached up to gently brush away Egil's tears as his tale came to an end. But he turned his head aside and wiped the heel of his hand across his cheek.
Arin sighed but said nought.
"In Ryodo," said Aiko, setting aside her sword, "we would have mounted a voyage of retribution."
Huskily, Egil cleared his throat. "Just as would we."
Arin frowned. "But thy memories of where thou had sailed were gone."
Egil nodded.
"Your father knew where you were bound," declared Aiko.
"My father died of the fever but a scant week after we left."
Arin reached out. "I am sorry, Egil."
Egil took her hand. "So am I… So am I."
"What of the map?" asked Aiko. "Do you yet have it?"
Egil shook his head.
"Then the sailor you bought it from, does he-"
"No," interjected Egil. "I spent time in Havnstad searching for him, with no success. Some there thought he had died. Others said he sailed away and was never seen again. Still others placed him in the deep forests inland."
They sat without speaking for long moments, the only sound that of someone in the yard below saddling a horse. Aiko stood and stepped to the window and observed the stable boy taking one of their mounts out for its daily round of exercise. As he rode away, she turned and said, "Mayhap the Mages in Black Mountain can restore your memory just as they did Dara Arin's."
Arin's eyes widened. "Aye. Either there or in Rwn."
Egil looked from one to the other, then said, "They would have to know how to lift a curse."
The following day, with Healer Thar present, Arin again removed Egil's bandages and, after examination, said, "The herbs have done their work. The wound is mending well. We can forgo the swathing."
"Shall I remove the gut?" asked Thar.
"Aye."
In a trice, all the fine stitches were nipped and extracted, Thar working his way down the ruddy scar running from forehead to cheek. When he was finished-"Where is my patch?" asked Egil, fumbling 'round on the bed.
"Here," said Arin, taking the crimson leather from a pocket, the tiny golden image of Aden's Hammer centered upon the eye piece.
Egil called for a mirror, and as Aiko held it steady, he tied the band 'round his head. He looked at his reflection and said, "Now I am truly Egil One-Eye."
The next day Arin pronounced Egil fit to begin walking, and on that same day Egil moved out of the Blackstein Lodge and into the sod-roofed, stone house he had inherited from his father. A sevenday passed, with Arin and Thar monitoring his progress and treating Egil's scar with herbal ointments, and Arin and Aiko walking with him as he regained his strength, each day the Ryodoan choosing more and more difficult paths as they trekked across the slopes.