'You— he who is called Richard Blade— you are wanted by the Queen at once. No tricks, now, or you will be slain on the instant.'
A ladder was lowered into the oubliette and armed men swarmed down it. They wore the same loose breeches and cross-gaitering of the Albs, but their mailed coats were longer and heavier and their helmets flatter. The helmets bore the blazon of a unicorn instead of the Albian dragon.
None of them had a left ear.
They unchained Blade and pushed him to the ladder. Sylvo set up a squalling. 'I lack water here. And food! Will you let a man starve and thirst? The place is also lousy and you have rats— in all as stinking a dungeon as I have ever seen.'
Some of the men laughed. One walked over to Sylvo and kicked him into silence. 'I'll wot,' the man said, 'that you know whereof you speak and have known many prisons. Now shut that ugly mouth or you die before the time set.'
Blade was prodded up the ladder. None of the men approached him too closely. As he went through the trapdoor he heard Sylvo call after him.
'Be of cheer, master, and remember that you are a wizard.'
The castle called Craghead was vast. Blade was conducted down endless long corridors floored with rushes, ill lit by torches in sconces. They ascended score after score of stairs, the stone hollowed by centuries of wear, and crossed bristling battlements where Blade caught the tang of salt and heard the sullen mutter of surf far below in the mist. It was dark, without stars or moon, and the roiling bank of mist below was like cloud seen from above.
They came to a round, tall thrusting tower, the pinnacle of Craghead. Then more stairs and Blade was pushed into a chamber and a great ironbound door slammed behind him. He heard a heavy bar fall. He was alone.
And yet not alone. He sensed it from the first. He made no sign that he suspected a watcher as he strolled about the chamber, his mien calm and his handsome face impassive. If Queen Beata wished to play cat and mouse it was all right with him. He was thinking now, planning again, and he judged it a good omen that he and Sylvo had not been immediately executed.
The chamber, really a series of rooms with connecting doors, was furnished sumptuously. He had seen nothing like it in Alb. There were skins on the flagstoned floor— one of a bear that must have stood ten feet tall when alive— and flat couches covered with hide. He saw no windows. The rooms were warm enough, and the stone floors warmest of all. He guessed at thermal ducts that were heated from below.
In a corner was a large table laden with cold meats and white bread— another thing he had not seen in Alb— and bronze and pewter vessels containing beer and wine. Blade ate, but was careful not to drink. He was going to need all his wits about him.
He covertly examined the wall hangings, of pale leather richly worked with golden thread, mostly in cabals that he did not understand. There was one large and central hanging depicting a unicorn and, as he watched in seeming unconcern, he saw the flicker of an eye. The watcher! He had no doubt it was Queen Beata.
Blade, his mouth full, and with a joint of meat in his right hand, bowed extravagantly to the unicorn. 'I thank you for the food, good queen. It is excellent and I am hungry. Might I request that some be sent to my man now languishing in your dungeon?'
The eye glittered. Then came a muffled laugh, and a voice as husky and deep as many a man's.
'I have heard true of you, Blade. An upstart rogue of great impudence. Neither did Alwyth lie about your face and figure— both are as fair as she wrote. Tell me, Blade, are you the man you look to be? For I warn you fairly, your life depends on it.'
There was a chill beneath the huskiness that sent the prickles up his spine again. He did not know the manner of it, but grasped the substance— he was on trial again.
With another bow he answered, 'If I am a rogue, your Majesty, at least I am a modest one. As to being a man— I lay claim to that also. How much a man I cannot say until I know the hazards I face.'
Again the muffled laugh. 'You mince words like a Dru! I do not like that. But in other aspects you please me and you shall have a chance to prove yourself. I shall put you to the sweetest ordeal of all, Blade, and if you win I may be persuaded to spare your life.'
He did not bow again. Hands on hips, he stared straight at the unicorn. 'And that of my man, Queen? And the Princess Taleen shall go free to her father?'
Silence. Then, in a voice as cold as the mist enshrouding the battlements: 'You try too far, Blade! A little impudence is like salt, I relish it, but you dare to bargain with me? So soon— as though you had rights here!'
He had begun with boldness and with boldness he must continue. He stared at the flickering eye and answered in a voice as cold as her own. 'I only ask, my queen. A man is no man who does not seek to aid his friends.'
'Enough! You will be prepared for my coming. I advise you to spend some of that time in learning how to leash your tongue.'
The eye vanished.
There was a rippling of leather as a door opened behind another wall hanging and four maidens came into the room. They wore only gauzy pants, cut full and falling to the knee, and secured by a single amber button. Their hair was cut short, in mannish style, and each lacked a left breast. Where the breast had been each carried a saucer-shaped red scar. The sanguinary badge of Beata's service. Blade marveled that the men and women would serve such a cruel mistress, and for an instant his memory flickered into life and he could remember another place, another world, in which such things were not tolerated. And yet that world, as much as he could recall of it, had been bad enough. Then the mists closed in again and memory vanished.
The maidens were all young and fair, discounting the mammary scars, and they went about their tasks with efficiency and absolute silence. They did not look directly at Blade, nor converse among themselves. He guessed at the reason for this and, while the others stared in stricken horror, he gently seized a shapely blonde girl and pried her mouth open. Her tongue had been cut out.
They filled a large bronze tub with foamy warm water and bathed him. He was dried on towels of fine linen, perfumed with chypre and dressed in saffron-dyed linen breeches and a long tunic. He was given soft leather sandals that laced to his knees. His beard was combed out and his thick dark hair combed into place.
