Nolieti said nothing for a moment, his broad, dark face moving as though he was chewing on his tongue.
'Get this Drezen witch out of here,' he said eventually to Unoure, and then turned away to stamp on the brazier's foot-bellows. The brazier hissed and glowed yellow, showering sparks up into its sooty chimney. Nolieti glanced at the dead man in the cage-chair. 'Then take this bastard to the acid bath,' he barked.
We were at the door when the chief torturer, still working the foot-bellows with a regular, thrusting stroke, called out, 'Doctor?'
She turned to look at hire as Unoure opened the door and fished the black blindfold from his apron. 'Yes, chief torturer?' she said.
He looked round at us, smiling as he continued to fire the brazier. 'You'll be here again, Drezen woman,' he said softly to her. His eyes glittered in the yellow brazier light. 'And next time you won't be able to walk out.'
The Doctor held his gaze for a good while, until she looked down and shrugged. 'Or you will appear in my surgery,' she told him, looking up. 'And may be assured of my best attention.'
The chief torturer turned away and spat into the brazier, his foot stamping on the bellows and breathing life into that instrument of death as we were ushered out of the low door by the assistant Unoure.
Two hundred heartbeats later we were met at the tall iron doors which led into the rest of the palace by a footman of the royal chamber.
'It's my back again, Vosill,' the King said, turning on to his front on the wide, canopied bed while the Doctor rolled up first her own sleeves and then the King's tunic top and shift. And we were in the principal bed-chamber of King Quience's private apartments, deep within the innermost quadrangle of Efernze, the winter palace of Haspide, capital of Haspidus!
This has become such a regular haunt of mine, indeed such a regular place of work, that I confess I am inclined to forget that I am honoured indeed to be present. When I stop to consider the matter though, I think, Great Gods, I — an orphan of a disgraced family — am in the presence of our beloved King! And regularly, and intimately!
At such moments, Master, I thank you in my soul with all the vigour that is mine to command, for I know that it was only your kindness, wisdom and compassion that put me in such an exalted position and entrusted me with such an important mission. Be assured that I shall continue to try with all my might to be worthy of that trust, and fulfil that task.
Wiester, the King's chamberlain, had let us into the apartments. 'Will that be all, sir?' he asked, bending and hunching over as well as his ample frame would allow.
'Yes. That's all for now. Go.'
The Doctor sat on the side of the King's bed and kneaded his shoulders and back with her strong, capable fingers. She had me hold a small jar of rich-smelling unguent which she dipped her fingers into every now and again, spreading the ointment across the King's broad, hairy back and working it into his pale gold skin with her fingers and palms.
As I sat there, with the Doctor's medicine bag open at my side, I noticed that the jar of brown gel which she had used to treat the wretch in the hidden chamber was still lying opened on one of the bag's ingeniously fashioned internal shelves. I went to stick my own finger into the jar. The Doctor saw what I was doing and quickly took hold of my hand and pulled it away from the jar and said quietly, 'I wouldn't, Oelph, if I were you. Just put the top back on carefully.'
'What's that, Vosill?' the King asked.
'Nothing, sir,' the Doctor said, replacing her hands on the King's back and leaning forward on to him.
'Ouch,' the King said.
'Mostly muscular tension,' the Doctor said softly, flicking her head so that her hair, which had partly fallen across her face, was sent spilling back over her shoulder.
'My father never had to suffer so,' the King said morosely into his gold-threaded pillow, his voice made deeper by the thickness and weight of fabric and feathers.
The Doctor smiled quickly at me. 'What, sir,' she said. 'You mean he never had to suffer my clumsy ministrations?'
'No,' the King said, groaning. 'You know what I mean, Vosill. This back. He never had to suffer this back. Or my leg cramps, or my headaches, or my constipation, or any of these aches and pains.' He was silent a moment as the Doctor pushed and pressed at his skin. 'Father never had to suffer anything. He never-'
'— had a day's illness in his life,' the Doctor said, in chorus with the King.
The King laughed. The Doctor smiled at me again. I held the jar of ointment, inexpressibly happy for just that moment, until the King sighed and said, 'Ah, such sweet torture, Vosill.'
Whereupon the Doctor paused in her rocking, kneading motion, and a look of bitterness, even contempt, passed briefly over her face.
2. THE BODYGUARD
This is the story of the man known as DeWar, who was principal bodyguard to General UrLeyn, Prime Protector of the Tassasen Protectorate, for the years 1218 to 1221, Imperial. Most of my tale takes place in the palace of Vorifyr, in Crough, the ancient capital city of Tassasen, during that fateful year of 1221.
I have chosen to tell the story after the fashion of the Jeritic fabulists, that is in the form of a Closed Chronicle, in which — if one is inclined to believe such information of consequence — one has to guess. the identity of the person telling the tale. My motive in doing so is to present the reader with a chance to choose whether to believe or disbelieve what I have to say about the events of that time — the broad facts of which are of course well known, even notorious, throughout the civilised world purely on the evidence of whether the story 'rings true' for them or not, and without the prejudice which might result from knowing the identity of the narrator closing the mind of the reader to the truth I wish to present.
And it is time the truth was finally told. I have read, I think, all the various accounts of what happened in Tassasen during that momentous time, and the most significant difference between those reports seems to be the degree to which they depart most outrageously from what actually happened. There was one travesty of a version in particular which determined me to tell the true story of the time. It took the form of a play and claimed to tell my own tale, yet its ending could scarcely have been wider of the mark. The reader need only accept that I am who I am for its nonsensicality to be obvious.
I say this is DeWar's story, and yet I freely admit that it is not the whole of his story. It is only part, and arguably only a small part, measured solely in years. There was a part before, too, but history allows only the haziest notion of what that earlier past was like.
So, this is the truth as I experienced it, or as it was told to me by those I trusted.
Truth, I have learned, differs for everybody. Just as no two people ever see a rainbow in exactly the same place — and yet both most certainly see it, while the person seemingly standing right underneath it does not see it at all — so truth is a question of where one stands, and the direction one is looking in at the time.
Of course, the reader may choose to differ from me in this belief, and is welcome to do so.
'DeWar? Is that you?' The Prime Protector, First General and Grand Aedile of the Protectorate of Tassasen, General UrLeyn, shaded his eyes from the glare of a fan-shaped plaster-and-gem window above the hall's polished jet floor. It was midday, with Xamis and Seigen both shining brightly in a clear sky outside.
'Sir,' DeWar said, stepping from the shadows at the edge of the room, where the maps were kept in a great wooden lattice. He bowed to the Protector and set a map on the table in front of him. 'I think this is the map you might need.'
DeWar: a tall, muscular man in early middle-age, darkhaired, dark-skinned and dark-browed, with deep, hooded eyes and a watchful, brooding look about him that quite suited his profession, which he once described as assassinating assassins. He seemed both relaxed and yet tensed, like an animal perpetually hunkered back ready to pounce, yet perfectly capable of remaining in that coiled position for as long as it might take for its prey to come into range and let drop its guard.
He was dressed, as ever, in black. His boots, hose, tunic and short jacket were all as dark as an eclipse-
