you'll find him at the Eagle. They were both in on it. We stole the bard. We stole the papers. An'vory had them last. He was supposed to share out the money to all. I've not had my share yet, get it off him when you catch him.''Descriptions,' said Jarl crisply.
'Well,' said Drake, 'An'vory, he's simple. Enough hair on his head to mop a floor. But a bit missing up topside – maybe someone scalped him or something. Black beard, great pouches under his eyes and such.'
Drake gave a workable description of Atsimo Andranovory, whom he had first met on the docks of Cam the day after his sixteenth birthday. He had more trouble describing Erhed, who was so insignificant that even his best friends would have been hard put to decently describe him to a stranger. But he did his best.
Thodric Jarl was so pleased with this information that he quite forgot to interrogate Drake about the whereabouts of Rolf Thelemite, the oath-breaker. Instead, he had Drake thrown into solitary confinement, and went off to organize a raid. That very evening, Jarl and a dozen of his men raided the Eagle in Jone, capturing Andranovory and Erhed.
Jarl and his party bound their captives hand and foot, put them into sacks, threw the sacks onto a cart, then started the return journey from Jone to Santrim. They had got almost as far as Kesh when they were ambushed by members of the criminal fraternity.
Thodric Jarl was good at what he did. He had almost, won his little war when ninety soldiers from Kesh surrounded the scene of combat and arrested everyone in sight, including two whores who had stopped to watch the fun and a debt collector who had been trying to go about his lawful business. Interrogations proceeded.
Meanwhile, Drake, alone in his cell, thought things through. Why had Selzirk executed the three ambassadors sent by King Tor? Well – it was entirely possible Selzirk had done no such thing. Drake's only knowledge of the executions came from a sucker-fool encountered dockside in Jone. Drake had swallowed his story without hesitation – but it had quite possibly been a fabrication.
Anyway, JarPs response had been a good indication of how things stood, surely. Being associated with Tor was hardly certain death. Particularly since the association was ancient. So he could breathe a little easier. So what now?
The next day, Drake, to his great surprise, was taken from his place of confinement to have an audience with the Kingmaker Farfalla and with Plovey of the Regency.
'It was wrong of my son to arrest you,' said Farfalla, with a glance at Plovey.'Very wrong,' said the Regency official gravely.
T thought as much!' said Drake. 'Right, I'll get a lawyer! There'll be writs and damages and compensations and such. Unless your son wants to settle out of court, perhaps. Very cheap, ma'am – I'll settle for half my own weight in gold.''Not so fast!' said Plovey.
'Oh, it won't be fast, law is slow, yes, but we'll get there in the end.'
'There are other matters to be cleared up first,' said Plovey.
'Yes,' said Farfalla. 'Before anything else is attended to, you must tell us what you know about the death- stone.'
'That's easily done,' said Drake. 'For I know nothing about any death-stone. Now, about my lawyer-'
'Young man,' said Plovey, cutting across his enthusiasm, 'we know that you know about the weapon your master Morgan Hearst was in search of. There's other things we want to know about, too. The secret underground way between the far north and the Araconch Waters. And other things. The madness of the magic stones, for one.'
'Magic stones?' said Drake. 'Is it fairy tales you're after? Man, I could tell you a famous fairy tale, yes. With elves in it, aye, and a friendly dwarf with a red nose, and a talking rabbit, and-''The truth!' said Plovey. 'That's what we want!'
'Then the truth is that I know nothing of this Heist or Hest or whatever his name was, nothing of his magic stones or balls or cats' eyes or whatever they were, and nothing of any underground way, excepting one which lies in Penvash, which I'll be happy enough to tell for you.'
'We want no story-stories about Penvash. Only the truth!'
'Man, there are great truths about Penvash. Listen – there's a Door up there. It goes from place to place, just a single step to take you a thousand leagues or more. Man, with that, you people could conquer the world.'
'No more of your foolery!' said Plovey. 'The truth! About Hearst! The stone! The madness! The dragons! The way! The wars!'
'This,' said Farfalla, in a quiet yet determined voice, 'is important to us.''But I've told you-'
'Take him to the Deep,' said Plovey, grimly. 'Leave him there until he's ready to tell the truth.'
Guards threw Drake into the Deep, a cell awash with sewage and swarming with pythogenic vermin. He was in there scarcely long enough to scream his surrender. Then he began to sing, oh yes, sweetly as anything. All the tavern-talk he'd heard from Andranovory and others came out of him as slick as vomit.
'. . . then Alish smashed Erhed on the head with a rock. Ah, brutal ugly it was! Alish wanted to kill him off for dragon-meat. When? Aagh, the day after Poxquill was killed by the basilisk. How? Man, it breathed on him. Or else looked him eye-to-eye. Kills either way, yes. An ugly little brute of a thing, scarce as long as my forearm. But Hearst killed it from behind, so we ate that, and Poxquill too . . .'
At first his interrogators seemed to believe everything. For, as Drake was swiftly learning, human beings are very credulous creatures, with no reservoirs of disbelief worth mentioning. But, after he had been singing sweetly for ten days and a half, Plovey came to visit him:
'Young man,' he said, 'you stand in danger of compromising your anatomy, if not your life. For the tale you have told us fails to match that told by Andranovory and others.'
'Man,' said Drake. 'I'll tell anything to please. What do you want to hear?'
'You already know the answer to that,' said Plovey. 'The truth!'
'Man,' said Drake. 'I'd tell the truth, but you'd never believe it. Why, it was the truth itself which made me champion liar of Selzirk, aye, champion of your city of filth and sewers. A truth I told about Doors and monster- fights and such, that's what did it.'
'I want the truth,' said Plovey. 'I'll get it from you dead or alive.'
'You'll not get much from me once I'm dead!' said Drake.
.'You'd be surprised,' said Plovey, 'of the powers of some of our thaumaturgists. Torturers, take him away!'
So Drake obliged with the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. As he had expected, it did him no good whatsoever.
'That won't do,' said his torturer, and sank a bodkin into Drake's testicles.Drake screamed.
'Plovey!' he screamed. 'Get Plovey of the Regency, I'll tell it to him, anything, anything.'
The torturer, who wanted the afternoon off so he could visit his grandmother (who was near enough to ninety, and feeling her age) arranged for Drake to have the interview he requested.Plovey manifested himself.
'What do you wish to discuss with me, dear boy?' asked Plovey.
'Proof!' said Drake. 'The proof of poison. Read my story, man, it's all written down there, scribes and all have been hacking away at it for days. The story tells you I suffer no harm from poison. I'll take poison as the proof of it.'
'What poison would you have us give you?' asked Plovey gently.
'Why, anything that's lethal! Arsenic, strychnine, ratsbane, hemlock, cyanide or worse. Or you could set snakes to bite me, aye, or scorpions, or wild dogs foaming at the mouth, whatever you want. It's proof, proof, man, proof by Investigation, that's what you'd be doing, Investigating me, yes.'
'Darling one,' said Plovey, stroking Drake's hand. 'Do you think to escape us so easily? I don't want you dead. Not till I've had the truth from you.'
'But,' said Drake, desperately, 'you can risk my death, surely. You said you had magic people and such who could get the truth from me even if I were dead.'
'Oh yes, oh yes,' said Plovey. 'So I do, indeed. But the work of thaumaturgists is slow, and the expense is appalling. No, my dear young friend – no poison.'
'But I don't want it to kill myself!' wailed Drake. 'I want it to prove my story!'Plovey soothed Drake's sweating brow.
'Darling boy,' said Plovey, 'you'll never come within a thousand years of poison. Not while I've got anything to do with it.''But you must let me prove my story!'
