“Yes,” said Wad.
“The boys don’t speak to me or anyone but their mother and each other. The younger one doesn’t speak even to them. The mother speaks to me now and then. I haven’t pressed them. I think something terrible has happened to them.”
“It has,” said Wad.
“He saved us,” murmured Anonoei.
“Yes,” said Wad. “I did. But before we can proceed any further, I have to make sure you understand everything that I did, and why I did it. Only then is there a chance that we can work together to try to undo some portion of my crimes.”
Anonoei looked up then. “Your crimes?”
“I know you remember me,” said Wad. “I know you saw me spying on you from the rafters, back when you were King Prayard’s mistress and lay with him in the castle where another woman was the queen.”
“That was you,” she said.
“You winked at me,” said Wad.
“You saw us, and you said nothing, though I knew not and know not why. But I winked at you, to show you that I knew you were there, and that I, too, would say nothing. That’s why I recognized you when you snatched us out of our prison cells when the soldiers were trying to kill us. When you brought us to the snow, I thought I knew you, but I couldn’t think when or how we met. I thought you were a strange kitchen boy. But you were really a great mage, a gatemage, all along.”
“I was, though at the time I barely knew it myself,” said Wad.
“A gatemage,” whispered Eko. “But living in a tree.”
“That’s one story,” said Wad to Eko. “But I’m here to tell another. About how some men came to murder Queen Bexoi and I, appointing myself as her protector, warned her and saved her life. I showed her then the kind of mage I was, and she showed me the kind of mage she was.”
“Bexoi?” said Anonoei with contempt. “A Sparrowfriend!”
“That was her disguise. She’s a Firemaster at least, if not a Lightrider. And she has the power to make a self-clant so perfect that not only could it speak in her voice, but also when the assassin stabbed it, it bled, and the blood spilled onto the sheets.”
Anonoei touched her fingers to her lips.
“No one knew but me. I saw it with my own eyes. I was proud that she trusted me. I became her lover. She bore my son and pretended it was Prayard’s.”
“The baby was yours?” said Anonoei. “So Prayard didn’t lie when he told me that he never put his seed in her.” She looked away.
“He was faithful to you,” said Wad. “And you joined in plotting against him and against the Queen. I know you were guilty of that, and you know what the penalty would have been, had you been caught.”
“Never against him,” she said. “And I was part of no plot. They told me to pack for a journey, for myself and my sons.”
“You knew what it meant.”
She did not disagree.
“Bexoi wanted me to get you out of the way. I loved her and I did her bidding. But I also distrusted her even then, and so I didn’t kill you. What I did was worse. I took you and your two dangerous sons, and I put you in the mouths of old slag tunnels in the face of the cliff, and I made gates that caught you if you fell and put you back at the top of the cave, so you lived in constant torment, always about to fall, never able to end your captivity by leaping from the cell. That was my idea, my plan. That was how I saved you alive. How I punished you and your innocent sons, because you posed a threat to the woman I loved, and to my son that she was bearing.”
“That’s a poor excuse,” said Eko boldly.
“It’s no excuse at all,” said Wad, turning to the girl. “It was a monstrous crime against the three of them, and I did it. I thought of it and I carried it out and no one knew that they were there except for me. I stole food and gave it to them. As time went on the food grew better and I made their imprisonment more bearable. When the Queen learned that they were still alive and demanded that I kill them, I disobeyed her. There are a few things in my favor.”
Wad turned back to Anonoei. “But nothing makes up for the evil that I did. I tormented you and your sons. Whatever terrors and dark visions inhabit their minds, I caused.”
Wad looked at the boys, for his eye caught some motion. It was the younger one, Enopp. He had broken his gaze at Wad and was now looking at his brother and then his mother. His face showed some animation for the first time. But Eluik remained dead-eyed, his gaze still riveted on Wad.
“Whomever you blamed and whomever you hated there in your prison cells, and whomever you feared, I was your captor, your jailer, your torturer. What does it matter that I despised myself for what I had done to you? I continued to do it.
“So let me give you some consolation. Queen Bexoi got the King to sleep with her. You were gone, and so were your sons. He believed that my boy was his own, and now he came to love the Queen, and he wanted to give her a baby. So he begot a child upon her. And then she didn’t need my little bastard anymore.
“My son, whom she called Oath and I called Trick, was now a danger to Prayard’s true son. He was also the only person that I loved, once I understood that Bexoi had used me, had never loved me. So she murdered my boy and tried to murder me. On the day I released you from the cells where I had kept you, that was when she killed my son.
“If she had killed me as she meant to, I couldn’t have saved you, and you’d be dead as well. But I escaped from her, and I rescued you. But don’t imagine that I had repented of my crimes against you. I meant to let you out someday, and I tried to make your imprisonment more bearable, but I was not about to let you go. It was Bexoi’s monstrous murder of her own child, of our child, and her open try at killing me that finally made me let you go.
“You see that I don’t pretty up my actions. Bexoi is a monster, but so am I. If I’m better than her it’s only because I kept you alive and didn’t murder you right out. But is that really better? Weren’t you just the prey that the spider binds up and hides away to devour another day? I kept you as a tool to use against her, when the time came.”
Wad fell silent. Eko looked at him in a kind of fascinated horror. He doubted that the boys understood, though the younger one at least seemed interested. Anonoei, though … she understood all.
“This is that time,” she said. “The time to use us as tools against her.”
“No,” said Wad. “You’re far too weak, and so am I. I was once the greatest gatemage that the worlds had ever known, but now there is a greater one than I. He took all but a few of my gates. I am no match for Bexoi now, and you are most certainly no match for her. I came here to set you free of me, since I’m no use to anyone. I came here to tell you the truth so you would know your enemies. So you would hate the right people, when it was time to hate. Prayard had no hand in what happened to you. He searched for you and he grieved for you, but you were beyond his finding, and when he came to love Bexoi it was only in the firm belief that you were dead.”
Anonoei shook her head and laughed bitterly. “Foolish boy-or are you older than you look? Don’t you know that Bexoi was not the only one to hide her magery? Like you, I am a mage, but of a kind forbidden.”
Wad had to think for a moment, because if she had been a gatemage, she could have gotten herself and her sons out of prison any time she wanted.
“A manmage,” he said.
“Not a great mage by any means,” she said. “But yes, I realized my power when I came of age. When I could flatter people into doing anything I wanted. I began to realize that once I owned them, they were mine. I owned Prayard. Do you understand me? He didn’t fall in love with me. I decided to own him and I did.”
Wad thought for a moment and then he laughed. “Well, it doesn’t make any of my actions better than they were, but it’s nice to know that I’m a monster among monsters. These boys, then-the sons of two mages and not just one.”