'Everything!'
Everyone was laughing now, enjoying the show. In their laughter, Safar knew he'd found acceptance.
Palimak, however, wasn't satisfied. He stamped his little foot.
'You're not answering!' he shouted. 'Who wants to go?
'Who wants to go to Syrapis?'
Part Two
CHAPTER TEN
The man's face was a bloody mask. 'Please, master, please,' he moaned, 'we din't know no better, honest to th' gods we din't!'
Luka flicked a talon, making a greater mess of the man's face. 'What a slimy little human you are,' he said. 'Everyone knows that Safar Timura is a desperate criminal, so why bother lying?' He flicked again and the man's shrieks echoed across the gloom that was the royal tent. 'Even if I believed you, it wouldn't save your life. Your continued existence isn't at stake here, you filthy thing. Only how much pain you can bear before I send you on your miserable way.'
Iraj shifted in his throne. Although Luka prided himself on his interrogation techniques, with lots of blood and moaning for entertainment, the king was clearly bored. As a shape changer some concentration was required to retain one form or another-whether human, or giant wolf. Iraj's concentration was visibly shattered by the proceedings; his body parts kept shifting back and forth from animal to human. Hand became claw, face grew a snarling muzzle, then crunched back again.
'Please, master!' the victim begged.
Iraj made a wolf snout. 'Please, master, please!' he mocked, his voice a perfect imitation of the tortured villager's. His human face returned. 'What a sniveling lot of fools I have for subjects. Always begging, never giving.'
He turned to Fari, who sat to his left in a lower and smaller throne. 'Tell my scribes,' he said, 'that in my next decree the phrase 'Merciful Master' is to be removed from my signature titles. King of Kings, Most Exalted Emperor of Esmir, Lion of the Plains, etc., etc., and all the others should be quite sufficient.'
'Noted, Your Highness,' the old demon wizard said. 'All will be done as you say. And in that spirit, I propose that we examine your other titles more closely as well. For phrases like 'Peaceful Protector,' and
'His Benevolence,' which would also be suspect.'
Iraj agreed. 'Peace, mercy, and benevolence are out,' he said. 'My subjects need to have a clear idea of who I am. That's the key to good leadership. And I blame you and Luka and Kalasariz for not reminding me of this.'
Fari bowed, beating his breast to show his own quick acceptance of guilt. 'It's as you say, Majesty,' he said. 'There's been too much talk of peace and mercy of late and we ought to end it.'
Iraj was calmed and became fully human in appearance. 'Exactly, Fari, exactly!' he said. 'And by the gods it's undermining my kingdom and I won't put up with it any longer.'
He gestured, his hand transforming into a claw to indicate the grisly scene before him. Besides the man Luka was tormenting, there were five others chained to stakes. All of the townspeople were horribly maimed, with only their soft moans and the quivering of their tortured flesh to show they were still alive.
'This a perfect illustration of my point,' Iraj said. 'They all begged for mercy, screaming and farting at every little poke Luka gave them … and what do we get for our pains?' Another wide gesture, paw becoming a hand again. 'Nothing but a great deal of wasted time because we are unsure of their respect for me.
'I tell you, Fari, we're losing far too many taxpayers to get at the truth! If I learned anything from Safar, it was that! I mean, genocide is all very well for an ordinary king recapturing an ordinary kingdom. But if you want to be truly great, you must pay a mind to the royal treasury.'
Fari bobbed his big scaly head with the ease of one who had tended to the moods of many kings. 'I agree entirely, Majesty,' he said. 'All your wishes will be put into force immediately.'
'That's good, Fari,' Iraj said. 'We don't want to give out too much hope, you know. Another thing I learned from Safar is that hope is a coin more precious than any metal, including gold. So let's give out hope sparingly, if you please. Let's make it count.'
Across the tented room, Luka did something to the prisoner again and the sound of his pain rasped against the scab of Iraj's boredom.
'Enough!' he shouted. 'Enough! This exercise is making no progress whatsoever … No matter what we do, the fellow's only going to repeat what the others said.'
'As always, your Majesty,' Lord Fari replied, 'your instincts are on target. This is the township's mayor, after all. And I don't know why Prince Luka left him for last. In my experience the post requires a good deal of moral cowardice, so the truth and pulled fingernails will out, as they say.'
He made a lazy wave at the mayor, who was gibbering protests and squirming against his restraints as Luka delicately cut his flesh away. 'In the end he'll confess to the same thing as the others. He'll claim that Lord Timura and his ragtag army of villagers arrived one day and forced the town to sell him food and supplies. He'll say they had no choice but to comply. And that he is as surprised as we are that Lord Timura insisted on payment.'
Fari hefted a small sack of gold in his talons. 'Our friend paid quite handsomely too.'
'So what's the point in listening to this fellow's whining, then?' Iraj demanded. He raised his voice so Luka could hear. 'Kill him and be done with it!'
The prince shrugged, cut the mayor's throat, then ambled back to his seat on Iraj's right, wiping his talons on a rag as he went and dropping it to the ground. Luka had no doubt that his work had been discussed by the king and his old rival, Fari. So he automatically protested.
'I understand your impatience, Majesty,' he said, 'but we should have probed deeper. After all, we still don't know where Lord Timura went when he left this township. We don't even know which direction he took.'
He rattled his talons on the arm of his chair. 'One thousand people, gone, vanished. Or at least that's what these fools told us.' He indicated the chained forms. 'Someone had to have seen what happened,'
he said. 'A thousand people just don't disappear. There's no wizard in the world who could do such a thing.'
'Whatever the explanation, my prince,' Fari said, 'this is hardly the first time Lord Timura has accomplished the trick. When we showed up in Kyrania with the army, all we found was a smoking ruin.
The homes and fields were burned, so there was nothing for our soldiers to scavenge. And all the people had vanished.'
Iraj glowered at the memory, wolf jaws grinding in frustration. 'Where could they have gone?' he growled. 'They were there two days before.'
Fari shrugged. 'That remains a mystery-as Your Majesty is well aware. Our trackers found the northern trail they took through the mountains from Kyrania. But once into the desert they lost it in a warren of rifts and barren canyons so complicated only a devil god could have been the creator.'
He indicated the map board posted near their thrones. All the major cities, Naadan and Caspan included, were clearly marked. As were all the known roads and byways. However, unlike the special maps Safar had received from Coralean, none of the secret caravan tracks were shown. From the point of view of Iraj and cohorts, there was nothing but an impassable wilderness in those areas.
'Not only our trackers, but all my wizards have been confounded ever since,' Fari continued. 'We've been hunting Lord Timura for
