The murk cleared enough for me to see something gleaming. I blinked, focused, and saw shining, pale-yellow teeth curving upward in a grin. I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head-and immediately regretted it; pain wreathed my brain in fire. I groaned, clutching my poor fevered pate and squeezing my eyes shut.
Something nudged my shoulder, none too gently. "Look up, Wizard! Ere I cut your lids from your eyes!"
There was a certain gloating quality to the words, one that made me think the speaker would just love an excuse to carry out her threat. I gritted my teeth and forced my eyes open. The murk, mercilessly, had fled, forcing me to see the smile in context-and the context was pretty repulsive. In fact, it was Suettay's face.
I winced and turned away, hoping for a better alternative. There was an alternative, all right, but whether it was better or not was decidedly moot. We were in a dank stone chamber, filled with wicked-looking instruments that I vaguely recognized - an iron maiden; thumbscrews; and, beside me, several racks. on one lay Frisson, bound hand and foot - and beside him, Gilbert, who was awake but groggy, and sitting up. Gruesome was missing. Oddly, I felt a spurt of relief - at least one of us had escaped the ambush. Then anxiety reawakened in the wake of the thought, and I hoped the troll wouldn't be so fanatically loyal as to try to rescue us. After all, what could he do?
On the other hand, I was a bit more anxious about Angelique. In fact, she was my prime worry, because she was here, too-in the flesh! Although now that I looked at it, the body's chest was still, none of the gashes were bleeding, and it was deathly pale. Deathly ...
Suettay had put her corpse in with us.
Outrage hit me. How dare Suettay save Angelique's mortal clay like a trophy?
Or was it for some other purpose?
Suddenly, I remembered what the witch-queen had said about preserving Angelique's body, and why. I found myself really hoping my favorite ghost wasn't in that room with us - but I was very much afraid she was, and in some condition I couldn't detect.
No way around it - I decided I'd have to recognize that we were in real, genuine, bona ride predicament, and no matter how ugly it was, I was going to have to face it. I turned back to Suettay. The queen saw my resignation and laughed, a sound like a truck trying to roll with a broken hearing. I sighted and reevaluated her when you got right down to it, the queen was a very ordinary-looking fat woman, if you didn't count the cruel glint in her eye or the gloating, eager smile on her glistening lips.
A scream scoured the air. I turned frantically to my companionsand was hugely relieved to see that none of them had made the noise.
It did, however, jerk Frisson rudely back to consciousness, staring about in instant panic. Suettay laughed again. I turned to look at her and was amazed to see that the queen wasn't looking back. In fact, she was looking off to my right with rapt fascination, nodding slowly and grunting. "Good, good. Again, again! " Sure enough, the scream split the air once more, and Suettay's eyes glistened like a connoisseur regarding a Picasso - or, I revised it, like a voyeur watching a pornographic movie. I turned to follow Suettay's gaze, puzzled.
I turned away again, as quickly as I could. I could tell from the sounds that my companions had made the same mistake.
Suettay, apparently, watched torture for fun.
Fortunately, the victim wasn't anybody I knew. I wondered if the poor man had done anything to deserve torture, or if Suettay's soldiers had just grabbed the nearest passerby.
The queen turned toward me, grinning from ear to ear. "Do you not find this pastime amusing, Wizard?" She said the last two words with so much sarcasm that they might have cracked under the load. But I was in no condition to notice; I was fighting a rising gorge.
"Uh, no thanks, Your Majesty - that's more like my idea of work." The torturer giggled as he turned some minuscule device, and the prisoner screamed again.
Suettay's face reddened on the instant, engorging with rage. "Do you think yourself so much better than me, then? Torturer!" She waved at the official. "Release the prisoner! We will save the rest of his agony for a time of proper leisure!" Then, to two apprentices standing by in leather loincloths and black masks, "Seize this churl and lay him on the table!"
In the middle of the apprentices' giggles and my friends' cries of outrage, all I could think, as they unstrapped me and hustled me over to the table, was that at least I'd spared the poor peasant some pain.
"Fight, Wizard Saul!" Gilbert shouted. "Do not let them doom you without a struggle!"
But I didn't have any time to fight - I was too busy thinking up verses.
The torturers slapped me down on the table. Very effective - it knocked the breath out of me long enough for them to put the shackles on. Then the main torturer advanced, grinning over a glowing branding iron. I tried to forget it was for me and started to mutter, but the torturer nodded at an apprentice, who stabbed the ball of my thumb with a fat pin. I yelped, the verse going completely out of my mind. But it reminded me of another one:
The shackles sprang loose with a clatter, and I bounded up, stiffarming the torturer as I passed. "Sorry, but I don't really have time today, I have an appointment with-"
Gilbert and trisson shouted approval, but the queen stared, appalled; whatever she'd been expecting from me, that hadn't been it.
Her face darkened then, and she barked, "Seize him!" Two guards jumped me and slammed me back down on the table. Suettay gave a curt nod toward the rest of the captives, and other guards backhanded them both across the mouths. Frisson reeled back down, and Gilbert recoiled.
Anger filled me, for which I was thankful. I glared at the queen, who laughed with vindictive pleasure as the torturer came back with the heated iron, its glow dulled to a sullen red. He moved it slowly toward my forehead, his gloating grin growing again. I stared at the horrid, glowing pentacle, as fascinated as I was horrified, trying for the life of me to think of a verse - and I did.
The iron star cooled amazingly, its glow dimming to blackness as it neared. The torturer cried out - was that fear, or just disappointment? - but Suettay's hands moved in some odd pattern while she snarled something with a heavy meter in a tongue I didn't know, and the star glowed into brightness again - not just red, but white-hot. The torturer's grin grew back with it, and I just had time to realize that Suettay had been expecting some sort of cooling spell, before the heat of the iron seared my whole face, then passed beyond my sight, and pain, bright liquid pain, worse than any I had ever known, shot outward from the center of my forehead, drowning out all other sensations - my friends' shouts of horror, Suettay's victorious crowing, my own scream. Gradually, the pain diminished until the things I saw could register again, though my whole head was sill wrapped in agony, and my whole spirit quailed in total, abject, gibbering fear. I could hear Suettay soothing, "Softly, softly. Pain on pain will yield no gain; he will not feel the pins, while he's curled in agony from the iron." Good advice, and I realized the smart thing would be to keep screaming and pretending I was delirious - but I saw Angelique's bruised corpse; Gilbert, a bruise darkening on his cheek; and Frisson, crumpled against his rack, blood trickling from the hand cupped over his mouth. There was no room for anger now; my whole being was filled with fear, horrible fear that the torturer would do that again, and I whimpered, "Please ... please . . ."