“We tried, my lady.” His stubbled hair and beard were wet. “The rain… We could not pick up her scent at all.”
“And the Ucrist, Wigson? I suppose he’s gone, too? Did you send someone to look?”
Nod.
“I expect he bribed his guards,” she said. “The Witnesses will get the truth out of them.”
“The jail guards have disappeared.” The flankleader obviously wished he could.
“The Witnesses will locate them, and him,” Saltaja said confidently. Even if they had moved out of range already, the seers should be able to tell Therek which way they had gone.
She should not have expected the public jail to hold the richest man in all Vigaelia. Horth Wigson was important only as surety for Fabia’s good behavior. He could have bought his way out even if he had to pay his jailers enough to let them flee the satrap’s anger and make new lives somewhere else. It would have been cheaper to have them permanently silenced, but that was not Wigson’s style. Clever people don’t need to break laws, he said-they can bend them. But even he could not bribe Werists.
Saltaja headed for the door. “Lock this bunch of imbeciles in here until I have spoken with the satrap.”
Suddenly the air reeked of murder and mutiny. Saltaja Hragsdor might be the satrap’s sister, the bloodlord’s sister, a reputed chthonian, but no woman gave orders to Heroes of Weru!
Except she. The six remained inside, the two outside reluctantly joined them, and Ern slid the huge bronze bolts. He looked around, astonished, sweat shining on his forehead.
“How long will it hold them?” she asked.
He shrugged helplessly. “Until they decide to rip out the bars or tear up the floorboards, my lady. Battleformed, some of them could get out between the bars, given time. You can’t imprison Werists!”
“Then we must bring this scum to justice quickly. They are a disgrace to your cult. Stay here, let no one in, no one out. Brarag, go and find the satrap. Tell him to come to my room. At once!”
Warrior Brarag flinched at the thought of giving orders to the Vulture, but he could not refuse. He saluted and ran off.
Alone, Saltaja stalked back toward her dreary room, thinking furiously. What god was meddling? Anziel? Thanks to the Mother’s sending she knew that Benard Celebre was here in Tryfors, instead of tidily rotting in a pauper’s grave in Kosord. The boy was a scatterbrained dreamer, but he was a Hand of Anziel. He was certainly not capable of springing his sister from that cell, but his goddess was, if She chose to answer Her devotee’s prayers.
What of the other brother, the Hero? No, the only god who would answer a prayer from him would be Weru, and this was certainly not Weru’s work. Young Orlad was due to die right about now, murdered so that Therek could gloat over a dead Florengian.
Last night’s dream had not been trivial; it had been a very important warning, perhaps even a hint that Fabia Celebre was now in favor and Saltaja Hragsdor was not. Of course the girl’s sacrifice of Perag Hrothgatson would have raised her in Mother Xaran’s esteem, but if the girl thought she could outbid Saltaja Hragsdor in offerings to the Old One, she had another think coming.
At that point in her journey, the Queen of Shadows stopped to open a creaky little door in a cobwebby alcove and peer out at a small enclosure, a neglected jungle surrounded by blank stone walls. This weed patch was known as the herb garden, and no doubt some long-ago queen of Tryfors had nurtured herbs there as a time-out from her royal duty of breeding princes, but the moment Saltaja had first seen it, years ago, she had known it to be accursed ground, dedicated to the Old One. In today’s gloom and drizzle it seemed more baleful than ever.
Yes, it must be done there.
Back at her room, Saltaja found clothes all over the floor and Guitha sitting staring at the wall because she had been given no specific orders to tidy up. She would not even eat now unless told to do so. Saltaja was still hitting her when Brarag arrived, panting as if he had run all the way up the tower and back.
“Hostleader… not presently in the… palace, my lady… drove off in his chariot, short while ago.”
She almost blurted out a curse but caught herself in time-her curses worked better than most people’s. Obviously Therek had gone to the hill because in this weather he could not watch Orlad’s murder from his tower. Death and corruption! Was that a trap?
“ Bring me Huntleader Fellard! Now! Right away! Tell him it’s urgent.”
Huntleader Fellard Lokison, commander of Fist’s Own Hunt, was young to be so senior, even nowadays, when Stralg had stripped the Face of older Werists. He was also an arrogant fool. Yesterday he had deliberately snubbed Saltaja, leaving her standing on the beach when he drove away in his chariot with Fabia. To insult his hostleader’s sister like that would have been stupid even if the rumors of Saltaja being a Chosen were unfounded. Since they were not, he was about to pay dearly for his folly.
He strode in, offering Saltaja a mocking smile and a devil-may-care nod instead of a bow. He was tall and lean, typical Werist arrogance sparkling in typically Vigaelian blue eyes. With chiseled jaw clean-shaven and scalp gold-stubbled, he would have been winsome had his face not been marred by four vertical claw scars that had left his mouth twisted. Saltaja, perversely, found this model of beauty marred quite appealing. He folded his arms and watched with no visible alarm as she advanced to meet him, bare feet on stone floor.
“My lady? You asked to see me?”
“Good of you to come, my lord. Flankleader, wait outside, please. Allow no one in.” Guitha was still there, but she would notice nothing. “I need your help, Huntleader.” The moment she came within range, Saltaja immobilized him.
“You will obey me,” she said, taking a grip on his arm.
No response, except eyes rolling in sudden terror.
“You will obey me!” She was pushing power into solid muscle and meeting equally solid resistance. A most determined young man! But she had no time for pity. “In the name of holy Xaran, I command you!”
The shock of hearing that forbidden name collapsed Fellard’s resistance like a bubble. Mumble: “I will… obey you.”
Better! “Kneel!”
Werists knelt to no one, not even to holy Weru Himself. Horrified to find himself obeying, Fellard sank slowly, like some forest giant toppling, but his knees struck the flagstones with a crack that made Saltaja wince. He stared up at her, eyes stretched wide, face white and slick with sweat.
She peered into his mind. It was hard to make out anything through the surging waves of terror, but she could not entrance him yet, not until she had found her way around. Fear… the source of fear… and the object of it, which must be she. This was probably his pain center
… she jabbed and he responded with a gasp of agony. Anger?… a twist there and she had him shivering like a horse in fly season. And that must be his sex? Yes, a touch or two there and he moaned with delight.
Now she could put him into a trance and inspect the rest of his mind. Very tidy and precise it was, with motivations ranked like the onyx pillars of Jat-Nogul. She poked the most dominant.
“Speak! Who do you see?”
He gasped a few times, then began babbling, “Weru, god, Hero, Weru, warbeast…”
That was himself, his identity. She left it and tried another.
“Vulture… m-my lord?…”
Therek. She tried the one she thought represented herself.
“The hag…”
Hag, was it? He was going to pay for that. She tried another.
“Puss? Oh, Puss… love…”
Huntleader Fellard was a busy man. She discovered no less than four women in his life, with Puss the current favorite. There were three children, too, which she did not try to relate to mothers. Also parents and a couple of siblings or childhood friends. Those had all faded to background, dead or far away. She ripped them out, ignoring his whimpers of pain. Then the lovers, all four of them-snap, break, cut away. Therek she left, but much decreased. Her own identity she inflated enormously, tying it to fear and sex and his own self-image. This was far more brutal than the simple Dominance she had used on Ern and Brarag. When the conversion was finished, she was the only person left in Huntleader Fellard’s life. He would be devoted to her, obsessed by her. There! She released him, and he crumpled to the floor, gasping and weeping.
She tottered over to a chair. She was shaking too, head throbbing. “Come here!”
