“Oh, I dunno. Those foreign places is all the same to me. By Kuerden the Merciless! The stories! The army chased after ’em for three full days. The loot! If’n I had both my eyes and a sound leg I’d a bin there, believe me, with my sack stuffed with gold and jewels — ah! It don’t bear thinking of.”
It certainly didn’t bear thinking of. But I had to think. And there was more.
“The Queen — may Havil bless ’er! — is going to be crowned Empress! That’ll be a sight! Ruathytu’ll go mad. The procession will take all day to pass, an’ I’m going to see it, right from the top of the Hanitchik.” He chewed. “Well, that’s my right, ain’t it?”
“Yes,” I said. “Was it only the Pandaheem? Any other. .?”
“Oh, you’ve heard the tales, too, have you? Yes, they say there was an army out of Vallia. Rasts of Vallians! May Hanitcha harrow ’em to hell!” He chuckled and spat. “All smashed up. Tumbled back to a place they call Jholaix — they’re hiding out there now. All we’ve gotta do is go in and finish ’em.” He spat again. “I’ve heard of Jholaix, not that I’ve ever bin able to afford to drink of it, never not once in my whole life.”
Thus spoke Nath the Keys, my jailer and an enemy, yet just an ordinary man. One of the most telling indictments of the gul Chaadur had been that he had pretended to be a Horter. The official torturing was scheduled for three days away.
I could delay no longer. Rees and Chido, and the others who had known me in Ruathytu as the Amak of Paline Valley, must be called on. Hamun ham Farthytu must be used as an alias. I should not have delayed so long. The remnants of the armies of the countries of Pandahem, and my army of Vallia and Djanduin, were penned up in the extreme northeastern corner of Pandahem, in Jholaix. One final battle would destroy them utterly and put the whole island into the power of Hamal. My place was with my army.
Having reached that decision I called for Nath the Keys and he was there already at the cell door, swinging his lamp and jangling his keys.
“Stop your bawling, Chaadur! Your time has come, there’s no sense in kicking against it, lad. You did a foul murder and now you must pay the price.” Soldiers with iron chains stood with Nath the Keys.
“But,” I said stupidly, “there are three days.”
“Naw. Naw, lad. The Kov’s in a hurry, like. It’s now.”
They dragged me out and I fought, so they wrapped the iron chains around me and knocked me out. When I came to I was chained up to the stake in a small courtyard of the Hanitchik with an assembled party of gloating nobles and Horters, with the guards. . and with the black-and red-robed tormentors. Kov Ornol ham Feoste was in a jovial mood. He had brought a group of friends. He called out, “I have chosen well for you, Chaadur, murderer!”
They had gagged me so I couldn’t yell back. I glared in murderous fury on this miserable Kov, but I could not break the chains.
The fires banked red in their braziers, the hot irons glowing. The tongs, the knives, the scalpels, the screws, all were at hand. The Kov sat back on the front chair, upholstered in green brocade, and he lounged in fine style to enjoy the spectacle. Those with him, sitting on chairs placed in the spots reserved for them, perked up at the prospect of a bur or so of pleasure. I looked at them as the chief torturer advanced, holding a tiny knife. He wore a black hood and his eyes glittered at me from the holes cut in that ominously black material.
I looked at the assembled nobles and Horters of Hamal and I considered once more that the country was evil, that this glittering, decadent city of Ruathytu was evil, and that the greatest evil of all was Queen Thyllis herself. There were one or two men there I had seen during my days in Ruathytu; but not one I had known well enough to imagine he would recognize me as the Amak of Paline Valley. My position was such that I would joy in being recognized as someone — anyone — other than Chaadur, the condemned murdering gul.
My wish was so rapidly fulfilled I wondered if the Everoinye or the Savanti had a hand in it. But, apart from what I suspected they might have been doing lately, the Star Lords and the mortal but superhuman men and women of Aphrasoe left me strictly to my own devices on Kregen. They would let me be tortured and killed if they had no immediate need of my services.
Sitting two places away from Kov Ornol, a man lounged in his chair. I recognized him as my gaze passed along the nobles. He wore a natty costume of blue, gray, and black stitched into a hexagonal pattern very like the hide of a chavonth. He looked a lot like a sleek, treacherous chavonth lounging back, this man I had rescued from the snows of the Mountains of the North at the behest of the Star Lords.
So I stared at him as the little knife in the leprously white hand of the torturer sliced toward my skin for the first cut. I was stripped naked. My body glistened with sweat. The gag choked me. I know my eyes must have held all that old powerful look of the devil as I gazed at Naghan Furtway, he who had once been the Kov of Falinur.
Now my comrade Seg Segutorio was the Kov of Falinur, and this Naghan Furtway a fugitive from Vallia, a man who must be riddled with anger and resentment. Once before he had unmasked and betrayed me, there at The Dragon’s Bones.
Would he recognize me again?
Naghan Furtway had once held enormous power as a Kov of Vallia. His passion for Jikaida had been inordinate; I had played him enough times in the Mountains of the North, waiting for him and his nephew Tyr Jenbar to regain their strength and for Genal the Ice to take his icy load down the mountains, to know he played as he lived, hard, ruthlessly, without mercy.
Yet he had raged at the cramphs of Havilfar for selling us defective airboats. Clearly his disgrace and flight had changed his mind. He was here in Ruathytu for no good purpose. He had become a renegade. The knife pricked my skin, slid, cut, and withdrew with a sparkle of my blood on the tip. This would take a long time.
I watched Naghan Furtway.
The knife cut again, cunningly, painfully.
Naghan Furtway stood up, drawing that chavonth-patterned cape back, resting his hand on the hilt of his rapier. The knife licked out and the pain stung. Soon that pain would coalesce from many tiny pains into an insupportable agony.
Kov Ornol looked up, frowning.
“Sit down, Horter Furtway. There is much to come.”
So they knew, here in Hamal, who Furtway was.
“I think not, Kov.”
“What in Havil’s name do you mean! As Malahak is my witness, Horter Furtway, this cramph of a Chaadur suffers torment to my orders before he dies.”
“I think not, Kov. This man’s name is not Chaadur.”
Kov Ornol spluttered. “That is what he says, the lying rast! You believe his story?”
“No. For I know him, aye, I know him well.”
“That is nothing to me. He murdered my wife and has been adjudged guilty. I will have what the law allows-”
“I have the ear of the Queen. I think she will not be pleased if you persist, Kov Ornol.”
That was threat enough to make any man think twice.
Between these two, the Kov and the ex-Kov, there was a great gulf. For all his bluster, cruelty, and evil, Kov Ornol ham Feoste was a mere blunderer, an oaf, compared with the refinement of cunning and calculation of purpose of Naghan Furtway. The sheer hardness of the man in the chavonth-patterned clothes blunted all Kov Ornol’s bluster.
“The Queen must be informed at once.” Furtway was looking at me much as a leem stares at a ponsho.
“If you persist, Kov Ornol, the Queen will order done to you what you do to this man.”
“You cannot speak to me like that! I am a Kov of Hamal! I know-”
“You know nothing, Kov. The situation between Hamal and Vallia is what concerns us here.”
“You are a Vallian disgraced and thrown out of your own country!” Ornol blustered on, very plum-colored of face, struggling to rise and confront Naghan Furtway.
“So I know what I am saying.”
The tormentor and his little knife withdrew, thankfully. He wasn’t going to commit himself until the argument was settled.
Ornol ham Feoste gestured with irritated anger at the torturer. “Get on with it! Take no notice of this fool of a man who thinks he is a Kov still! Cut him!”
“I will tell you, Kov Ornol, since you are bent on running headfirst into mortal danger. The Queen will want to
