"I don't understand."
"Don't worry about it. Most people don't, but the Monks of the Long Death do, and there came a day when I was fortunate enough to stumble across one of their hidden enclaves and gain admission as a novice."
The legionnaire blanched. "You're one of those madmen?"
"It depends on your point of view. After a decade or two, paladins descended on the monastery and slaughtered my brothers and sisters. Only I escaped, and afterward, I didn't feel the need to search for another such stronghold. I'd already learned what I'd hoped to, and the rigors and abstentions of the ascetic life had begun to wear on me.
"According to the rules of the order, I'm an apostate, and if they ever realize it, they'll likely try to kill me. But though I no longer hold a place in the hierarchy, I still adhere to the teachings. I still believe that while all deaths are desirable, some are better than others. The really good ones take a form appropriate to the victim's life and come to him in the proper season. I believe it's both a duty and the highest form of art to arrange such passings as opportunity allows.
"That's why I permitted younger, healthier, more successful men to pass by and accosted you instead. It's why I hope to give you a fighter's death."
"What are you talking about? It's not my 'season' to die!"
"Are you sure? Isn't it plain your best days are past? Doesn't your leg ache constantly? Don't you feel old age working its claws into you? Aren't you disappointed with the way your life has turned out? Why not let it go then? The priests and philosophers assure us that something better waits beyond."
"Shut up! You can't talk me into wanting to die."
"I'm not trying. Not exactly. I told you, I want you to go down fighting. I just don't want you to be afraid."
"I'm not! Or at least I won't be if you keep your promise and give back my sword."
"I will. I'll return your blades and fight you empty-handed."
"Ask your cursed questions, then, and I'll answer honestly. Why shouldn't I, when you'll never have a chance to repeat what I say to Dmitra Flass or anybody else?"
"Thank you." The inquisition didn't take long. At the end, though Malark had learned a good deal he hadn't comprehended before, he still wasn't sure why it was truly important, but he realized he'd come to share his mistress's suspicion that it was.
Now, however, was not the time to ponder the matter. He needed to focus on the duel to come. He backed up until the sword and dagger lay between the legionnaire and himself.
"Pick them up," he said.
The soldier sprang forward, crouched, and grabbed the weapons without taking his eyes off Malark. He then scuttled backward as he drew the blades, making it more difficult for his adversary to spring and prevent him had he cared to do so, and opening enough distance to use a sword to best effect.
Malark noticed the limp was no longer apparent. Evidently excitement, or the single-minded focus of a veteran combatant, masked the pain, and when the bigger man came on guard, his stance was as impeccable as a woodcut in a manual of arms.
Given his level of skill, he deserved to be a drill instructor at the very least. Malark wondered whether it was a defect in his character or simple bad luck that had kept him in the ranks. He'd never know, of course, for the time for inquiry was past.
The legionnaire sidled left, hugging the wall on that side. He obviously remembered how Malark had shifted past him before and was positioning himself in such a way that, if his adversary attempted such a maneuver again, he could only dart in one direction. That would make it easier to defend against the move.
Then the warrior edged forward. Malark stood and waited. As soon as the distance was to the legionnaire's liking, when a sword stroke would span it but not a punch or a kick, he cut at Malark's head.
Or rather, he appeared to. He executed the feint with all the necessary aggression, yet even so, Malark perceived that a false attack was all it was. He couldn't have said exactly how. Over the centuries, he'd simply developed an instinct for such things.
He lifted an arm as if to block the cut, in reality to convince the legionnaire his trick was working. The blade spun low to chop at his flank.
Malark shifted inside the arc of the blow, a move that robbed the stroke of much of its force. When he swept his arm down to defend, the forte of the blade connected with his forearm but failed to shear through the sturdy leather bracer hidden under his sleeve.
At the same moment, he stiffened his other hand and drove his fingertips into the hard bulge of cartilage at the front of the warrior's throat. The legionnaire reeled backward. Malark took up the distance and hit him again, this time with a chop to the side of the neck. Bone cracked and, his head flopping, the soldier collapsed.
Malark regarded the body with the same mix of satisfaction and wistful envy he usually felt at such moments. Then he closed the legionnaire's eyes and walked away.
North of the Surag River, the road threaded its way up the narrow strip of land between Lake Thaylambar to the west and the Surague Escarpment, the cliffs at the base of the Sunrise Mountains, to the east. The land was wilder, heath interspersed with stands of pine and dotted with crumbling ruined towers, and sparsely settled. The slaves and their keepers marched an entire morning without seeing anyone, and when someone finally did appear, it was just a lone goatherd, who, wary of strangers, immediately scurried into a thicket. Even tax stations, the ubiquitous fortresses built to collect tolls and help preserve order throughout the realm, were few and far between.
Tammith had never before ventured farther than a day's walk from Bezantur, but she'd heard that the northern half of Thay was almost all alike, empty, undeveloped land where even freemen found it difficult to eke out a living. How much more difficult, then, must it be to endure as a slave, particularly one accustomed to the teeming cities of the south?
Thus she understood why so many of her fellow thralls grew more sullen and despondent with each unwilling step they took, and why Yuldra, the girl she'd sought to comfort just before the Red Wizards came and bought the lot of them, kept sniffling and knuckling her reddened eyes. In her heart, Tammith felt just as dismayed and demoralized as they did.
But she also believed that if one surrendered to such emotions, they would only grow stronger, so she squeezed Yuldra's shoulder and said, "Come on, don't cry. It's not so bad."
Yuldra's face twisted. "It is."
"This country is strange to me, too, but I'm sure they have towns somewhere in the north, and remember, the men who bought us are Red Wizards. You don't think they live in a tent out in the wilderness, do you?"
"You don't know that they're taking us where they live," the adolescent retorted, "because they haven't said. I've had other masters, and they weren't so close-mouthed. I'm scared we're going somewhere horrible."
"I'm sure that isn't so." In reality, of course, Tammith had no way of being certain of any such thing, but it seemed the right thing to say. "Let's not allow our imaginings to get the best of us. Let's play another game."
Yuldra sighed. "All right."
The next phase of their journey began soon after, when they finally left the northernmost reaches of Lake Thaylambar behind, and rolling plains opened before them. To Tammith's surprise, the procession then left the road where, though she eventually spotted signs that others had passed this way before them, there was no actual trail of any sort.
Nor did there appear to be anything ahead but rolling grassland, and beyond that, visible as a blurry line on the horizon, High Thay, the mountainous tharch that jutted upward from the central plateau as it in turn rose abruptly from the lowlands. From what she understood, many a Red Wizard maintained a private citadel or estate among the peaks, no doubt with hordes of slaves to do his bidding, but her sense of geography, hazy though it was, suggested the procession wasn't heading there. If it was, the warlocks had taken about the most circuitous route imaginable.