Matt froze for a moment; then his eyes narrowed, and he changed a line of verse for the worse.
"He was my prisoner, as you know." The duke watched her face carefully for signs of reaction to the past tense. "He was a brave, though stupid, man—he withstood all my tortures and would not cede his lands to me. Now he is dead."
Yverne stared in horror.
"It is hard, I know," the duke said gently, fairly oozing sympathy. "Let the tears fall; grief must be vented."
It was; the tears flowed, though Yverne squeezed her eyes shut and bit her lip to stifle the sobs.
"Let it loose, let it loose," the duke soothed. "None here will blame you for wailing with remorse."
Remorse! For what?
"Oh, my father! My poor father!" Yverne gasped.
"Aye, aye, 'tis hard, 'tis hard," the duke commiserated. "Yet you must know, poor lass..."
Finally, the wail cut loose and wrenched into sobbing. The duke, tense as a tent rope, kept murmuring inanities, patting his captive's bound hand, completely ignoring the fact that it was he who had caused her misery.
The strategy seemed to be working. As her sobs slackened, his murmurs turned to advice. "You are but a weak woman, damsel, and a young one at that. Nay, surely you are not schooled and hardened to the governing of a dukedom. 'Twill be a burden on you, a horrible burden. You will bend under it, you will break. The administering of justice alone will torment you. Can you truly order a murderer hanged, and sleep well o'night?"
Yverne wailed.
"Let her be!" Fadecourt barked. "Can you not allow her to be alone in her misery?"
The duke looked up at him, eyes narrowed, and nodded to a torturer. A hand slapped a wad of cloth over Fadecourt's mouth and nose; another set the glowing iron to his upper arm. The cyclops' body bucked, but he stifled his scream.
Yverne, still weeping and faced away from Fadecourt, had not even noticed.
"Nay, certes you cannot take up the weight of such a task," the duke soothed. "Poor lass, I shall aid you! Only cede your lands to me, and I shall govern them for you, well and wisely!"
"Never!" Yverne's voice was raw with tears.
The duke's eyes sparked, but he said, " 'Never' is a great expanse of time, damsel. Your people suffer, even now, from the ravages of war. Can they wait your leisure to take up their governance?"
"Be mindful," Sir Guy said in a low voice that nonetheless seemed to fill the chamber, "mindful that he may lie. Your father may still be alive, damsel, yet so badly hurted as not to be able to govern. It may be your regency you cede to him, not—"
"Be still!" the duke snapped, and daggers stabbed Sir Guy's chest muscles. His jaw clenched against a howl of pain, and a beefy hand covered his lips.
But his words had done their work. Hope glowed in Yverne's eyes, and she said, "Never, vile duke! Torture me as you will, I shall never yield my father's poor peasants and rich lands unto your cruelty! Far better that I should suffer for them!"
"Then be assured that you will!" Bruitfort bellowed in sudden rage. "Your father truly is dead! He died at these hands, mine own, wielding the instruments of agony—but the fool refused to cede his lands! The same fate awaits you!"
Pale and trembling with rage, Yverne snapped, "I can do no less than to follow the example of so worthy a sire!"
"Then you shall have the opportunity!" the duke thundered. But he calmed just as quickly as he had flared, the anticipation of depraved pleasures filling his face with unholy glee. "The power you deny me, I shall rip from you! If I cannot have the fullness of power from your lands and people, I shall have it by debasing and corrupting you! Aye, ceding your people to me would have been the ultimate abasement—but I shall do nearly as well, by ripping your virginity from you and grinding you down by pain and degradation, till you beg me to have my will, if only I will lessen your agony!" Spittle drooled from the corner of his mouth again. "I shall break your soul and drink its strength with mine! Yet we shall begin this feast of torture with the hors d'oeuvre of the knight's pain; you shall join me in watching as I ply him with agony so exquisite that he, even he, shall regale me with his screams!"
Sir Guy threw off the hand that gagged him with a mighty heave and cried, "Even if he should wring wailing from me, damsel, pay it no heed!" Then the torturer backhanded him across the mouth, and it was Yverne who cried out, "Foul villain! Do you think to ruin a man so goodly?"
"Easily," the duke sneered. "Think you his God will save him? Nay, for He only works through human agents, and I can best any of those! If you wish to free him from the throes of excruciation, you may cry out, at any moment, that you cede your lands to me. Yet be assured that if you truly summon the fortitude to remain silent until the Black Knight is dead, you will take his place on the rack!"
Matt couldn't take it any longer. He thought with all the energy he could,
Yverne's bonds broke, and she leaped off the pallet, filled with sudden vigor, even as Sir Guy and Fadecourt sprang up, leaping upon the torturers and wrenching instruments from them, then striking them down.
The duke shouted something in a corrupted form of Latin that Matt couldn't quite make out; it had something to do with laying low his enemies and binding them fast. Fadecourt, Sir Guy, and Yverne fainted dead away, and as Matt felt the dark tide pressing in, he recited inside his head,
For good measure, he repeated in English:
But the unspoken verse was much weaker than those spoken aloud. The dark tide did lessen, and Matt struggled against it long enough to hear the duke say, "Bind the knight again—and throw the cyclops and the trickster into our most foul dungeon cell, bound and gagged. We shall have our pleasure of them, when we are done with the maiden. Go, begone!"
"The wizard wakes!" a voice cried behind Matt.
Bruitfort spun, swinging a truncheon. It cracked down on Matt's skull, and the dark tide bore him away.
CHAPTER 22
About Fates
Matt landed hard, but Fadecourt bounced—partly because his head landed on Matt's belly. Matt said, "Oof!" and Fadecourt bellowed, "You loathsome villains!" as he leaped to his feet. "Nay, unbind mine hands, and I shall—"
The door slammed shut, laughter echoed away, and they were left in the dark.
"Toadies!" Fadecourt raged. "Vile excuses for humanity! Nay, do not tell me, I know—they but did as they were bid, and would have been made to suffer an they had not."
Matt gargled something through his gag.
"Yet an 'twere no more than that, they would not have grinned like japing apes, nor have taken such pleasure in so cruelly hurling us within! So do not tell me of their goodness."