Fester ran circles around the chair with two lengths of thick rope.
'Untie me this minute, you miserable dirt-eaters!' Flint flung himself from side to side, sending the chair pitching and making the gully dwarves who clung to him hoot with glee. But the chair did not break, the Aghar did not lose their grips, and Flint remained tied up.
Arms behind his back, Nomscul leaned toward Flint and smiled right into the hill dwarf's scowling face. 'Queen not running away,' he said. Perian stood at the far corner of the room, relatively ignored by the Aghar since she offered no resistance. Her arms were crossed and her hazel eyes re garded Flint expectantly, a small smile about her lips.
'Promise to be king, and we cut you loose,' Nomscul of fered affably in a singsong voice.
Flint hung his head over the arm of the chair and spat on the ground. 'Me? King of the gully dwarves? I'd sooner drown!'
Chapter 12
Pitrick's twisted foot ailed him mightily; he had been on it far too long today, without the benefit of numbing goldroot salve. The day's events had piled up unexpectedly, leaving him with no time to perform a preventative spell or even to think to use his teleportation ring.
Dragging the clubbed foot behind him even more than usual, the adviser to Thane Realgar was relieved to see the iron door to his apartments, with its gleaming brass hinges and its embossed image of a huge, leering face, looming ahead in the dim torchlight. He hated all torchlight — hated the policy of low-burning flares on all of the public roads and levels in Theiwar City. Through meditation and height ened magic, he was able to see even better without it than most derro. On impulse, he mumbled a single word,
'shival!' and waved his arm impatiently. For as far as he could see — more than one hundred feet — torches were in stantly extinguished, trailing smoke and hissing.
Pitrick's eyes quickly adjusted to the comfortable total darkness. His soft, callus-free, blue-white hand came upon the multifaceted diamond doorknob and, as always, its cool, perfect surface gave him a feeling of tremendous secu rity. A magical blast of lightning struck dead anyone but himself or of his choice who touched the knob. Pitrick had many enemies in Theiwar City and in the neighboring clans who would pay great sums to bring about the savant's de mise. A number of them had already died hideous deaths at that very juncture.
But even those fond memories could not lift his foul mood. He stepped into his lightless antechamber and bel lowed for his harrnservant.
'Legaer? Damn you, why aren't you waiting at the door for me?' The hunchback shifted his weight to his good foot and counted the seconds before his servant's shadow scur ried up to him.
Pitrick backhanded Legaer's face, the points of his tele port ring leaving a bloody trail on the other mountain dwarf's already scarred cheek. 'Five seconds delay! I must think of a punishment for such a lazy servant!' Pitrick paused to peer closely at Legaer. 'I thought I told you to keep that veil on — it makes me sick to see your deformed face!' The savant wrenched his cape off and tossed it at the servant. 'You are lucky to have such a tolerant master, for no one else would suffer your hideous presence!' Pitrick stormed past the dwarf and into his apartment.
Legaer had Pitrick to thank for his repulsiveness. Re cruited shortly after the untimely suicide of Pitrick's twenty third harrnservant, Legaer had felt honored to be asked to serve as important a person as the thane's savant. It was no coincidence that Pitrick always chose as his new servant the most physically appealing of the forgeworkers. Pitrick kept them prisoner in his apartments, using them as slaves and subjects in his magical experiments. If his experiments did not succeed in 'accidentally' destroying their appearance, eventually they would be killed or maimed as punishment for some misdeed. They never lasted long; Pitrick grew bored with them once he'd broken their spirit.
'Fetch me a mug of mulled mushale,' he ordered the cowed servant who dogged his heels. 'And it had better be exactly room temperature this time, or you know the pen alty!' Legaer bolted into the darkness. Pitrick made a men tal note to think of a new torture, since there was little left to destroy of Legaer's face, and his ears had already been sliced from his head.
Pitrick threw himself onto a stone bench before the unlit hearth in the center of the main chamber. In the peace and total darkness, he began to relax.
He loved his home. It came as near to meeting his high standards as anything in his life ever had, though it had not been without cost. Two decades before, when he had come into 'power, he had chosen the location of its construction for its seclusion — the third level had not been so popular then — and for the charcoal-gray hue of the granite in that part of Thorbardin. For five years a crew of fifty craftsharrn had chipped and carved the granite to Pitrick's exact specifi cations; a sleeping chamber, a small galley, an antechamber leading into the main room, and several steps above that an efficient study and laboratory. All furniture — the circular hearth, his bed, the benches in the central chamber, the desk and chair in the study, even the support pillars — were pains takingly carved from the bedrock left intact, so there were no lines or joints to mar the fluidity of the space.
Another crew of fifty had spent ten years working their fingers to the bone, sanding and polishing every inch of granite so that it looked like marble and felt like glass.
Pitrick reminded himself that there was one occasion where he liked light: when the hearth was lit for heat, the orange-yellow flames sent eerie shadows dancing across every shiny surface in his home. Pitrick snapped his fingers and flames instantly licked at the charcoal in the hearth; he kept the blaze just low enough to cast phantom shapes on the walls.
Legaer crept in at last with the mulled drink, his head bent as he held the mushale out to his master. Pitrick snatched it from his servant's hands and then dismissed him with a wave. He was not in a mood to enjoy terrifying the pathetic dwarf today.
Pitrick absently sipped the tepid brew made from distilled balick mushrooms, waiting for its slight hallucinogenic af fects to begin. The hunchback believed mushale heightened his senses and allowed him to focus beyond petty distrac tions and achieve a level of true meditation. Legaer had to be summoned to bring three mugs of the tasteless brew be fore Pitrick reached the ethereal state that just one usually accomplished.
Pitrick reflected on the possible reasons for this. He knew that it had little to do with his physical exhaustion. If any thing, he should require less in his weakened condition. No, he realized, the cause was depression. The spark had some how gone out of his life, his quest for power suddenly seemed less vital. With a start, he pinpointed the cause.
He had been goaded into pushing Perian Cyprium into the Beast Pit. Everyone else — including the thane, it seemed — bent his will to Pitrick's own so easily. He had clawed his way from his lowly heritage in the bowels of
Theiwar City to the exalted position of the thane's adviser.
No one had ever liked him, but he was feared and respected for his power, and he found fear and power to be the best tools. Except on Perian.
She alone had resisted him, had, in a sense, bested him.
The hunchback had tried everything he could think of to conquer her — physical abuse, magic, blackmail. But the frawl soldier was stronger than he, and she told him repeat edly that she would rather die than suffer his touch. She was heavily resistant to magic, perhaps because of her Hylar blood; to have her by sorcery would have been a shallow victory anyway.
He had been certain she would succumb to his threats to reveal her half-derro heritage to the thane, for she cherished her position as captain of the guard. But she had called Pit rick's bluff time and again; she sensed her value to him, and knew that he would not seek her banishment from the clan, because it would take her from his grasp. The secret of her power over him only fanned the flames of his desire to mas ter her.
Pitrick had never doubted he would win her, nor realized how much he had lived only for that day. The derro's mushale-laden mind was overcome by an unfamiliar sensa tion. He had heard others speak of it as regret. He had never lamented a single action in his life, but he was astounded to admit to himself that he actually
