“What is your decision, Prime Minister?” she pressed.
He was certain of one thing only. If he chose to pursue Iridia’s course of action, questions of ethics were pointless. If he failed, questions of ethics would be the least of his problems. And if he succeeded, such questions would be whispered in private, because he would then have become the most powerful figure in the Four Lands. Not even the Druids would dare to challenge his authority.
It should have been an easy decision. Where power and influence were at stake, he had never hesitated in making his choice. Yet he hesitated here. Something felt wrong about this, perhaps a consequence he had not considered or a possibility he had overlooked. But whatever it was, it was definitely there, nagging at him. He could feel it deep inside where such things could not be ignored.
“Prime Minister?”
He gave the doubt another few seconds, and then he dismissed it. There was never gain without risk, and risk always raised doubts. He knew his own mind well enough to embrace what he must do. Without Grianne Ohmsford to worry about, he could afford to take chances he might not otherwise take. The loss of a few thousand lives was not worrying enough to deter him. There was more at stake than lives.
“We will fly to Arborlon,” he said.
Dawn broke in a flare of brightness as the sun crested the rim of the hills and began to lift into the sky. The Elves were settled in, most hidden from view behind hummocks and rocks and in the shadows of the defiles, ranks formed and weapons at the ready. Already, they could hear the sound of the Federation army marching to the attack, the pounding of boots and the thumping of spears and swords against shields steady and rhythmic and unnerving. Flashes of light reflected off the flat surfaces of blades as the Federation soldiers wound through the cut and began the long, twisting trek across the flats to where their quarry waited.
Pied, standing with his Home Guard, scanned his ranks for movement and found none. The Elves had disappeared as only the Elves could. They would not be spied out by the Federation until it was too late. He wished he had the services of cavalry to ride at the Federation flanks, but foot soldiers would have to do. He wished he had the use of catapults and fire launchers, but slings and arrows would have to do. He would be outnumbered, perhaps by as much as five to one. He lacked practical experience commanding on a battlefield; he was Captain of the Home Guard, not a Commander of the Elven army. He was the highest-ranking officer present, and he had never been in a battle of such size.
There’s a first time for everything, the old saying went. He just wished there wasn’t so much at stake.
He looked down the ranks of those closest and found Drumundoon standing almost next to him, tall and gangly and looking oddly out of place in his battle gear. Drum wasn’t meant to fight on the line; he was meant to serve behind it. Yet there was determination in his young face, and when he caught Pied looking at him, he winked.
Reason enough to believe in him, Pied thought. Reason enough to believe in them all.
He tightened his grip on his sword and settled deeper into the shadows.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Grianne Ohmsford lay with her face pressed against the stone floor of her cell, her eyes closed. She was trying to escape, even though there was nowhere to run. Torchlight from the hallway beyond intruded on the darkness in which she wished to hide. Low voices and the soft shuffling of boots nudged her out of her hiding places. Water dripped and the earth rumbled deep within its core, reminders of where she was. Like hungry predators from the black holes into which she had tried to banish them, memories emerged and made her skin crawl.
But it was the mewling cries of the Furies, triggers to a mix of horror and madness from which there was no escape, that chased her down and found her out no matter how far inside herself she retreated. She cringed from them, drawing up into a ball, becoming as small and still as possible, willing herself to disappear. But nothing helped. She had used her magic to become one of them, and she could not change back again. She mewled with them. She hissed and snarled with them. She spit with poisonous intent. She flexed her claws and drew back her muzzle. She rose to greet them, responding to their summoning, a response she loathed but could not prevent.
She squeezed her eyes so tightly shut they hurt. She would have cried had there been tears to do so. Her world was a room six feet by ten feet, but it might as well have been the size of a coffin.
They had returned her to her cell from the arena in the same way they had brought her, in a cage and in chains, Goblins and demonwolves surrounding her, Hobstull directing them. Back through the crowds and the blasted countryside. Back through the gloom and mist. Time had stopped, and her sense of herself and her place had disappeared. She was a captured beast. She was a lifetime removed from her role as Ard Rhys, and the Druids and Paranor were a dim memory. All the way back, she fought to regain her identity, but the rolling and the jouncing seemed only to exacerbate her confusion. It was easier to disappear into the role she had adopted than to try to follow the threads that might lead her out. It was simpler to embrace the primal creature she had awakened than to cast it aside.
They stripped and bathed her on her return, and she did not try to stop them. She stood naked and exposed and uncaring, gone so deep inside herself that she felt nothing of what they did to her. Cat sounds issued from her lips and her fingers flexed, but she did not see the way her captors drew back. She did not see them at all. She did not know they were there.
I am lost, she thought at one point. I am destroyed, and I have done it to myself.
Time passed, but little seemed to change. Guards came and went, the light dimmed and brightened as torches sputtered and were replaced, food was delivered and taken away uneaten, and the demons that haunted her kept edging closer. She wanted to break their spell, to banish them along with the hissing and mewling of her Fury memories, but she could not gather together the will to do so.
One time only did she sleep. She did not know for how long, only that she did, and that when her dreams took the shape of her memories, she woke screaming.
The Straken Lord did not reappear. Hobstull stayed away. She did not know what they intended, but the longer she was left alone, the more certain she became that they had lost interest in her entirely. There was no use for such as her, for a woman who was willing to take the form of a monster, to assume the persona of a raver. There was no place, even in the world of demons, for something that lacked any moral center or recognizable purpose. She saw herself as they did, a damaged and conflicted creature, a chameleon that could not distinguish between reality and fantasy, able to be either or both, but unable to tell the difference.
She felt herself sliding over the edge of sanity. It was happening gradually, just a few inches at a time, but there was no mistaking it. Each day, she felt her Ard Rhys self fall just a little farther away and her Fury self close about her just a little bit tighter. It grew easier to embrace the latter and reject the former. It grew more attractive to see herself as inhuman. If she was no better than one of the Furies, her life became less complicated. The madness seemed to ease and the conflict to diminish. As a Fury, she did not have to worry about where she was or how she had gotten there. She did not need to concern herself with the increasingly fuzzy distinctions between different worlds and lives. As a Fury, the world flattened and smoothed, and there was only killing and food and the lure of life with her cat kind.
She began seeing herself as an imprisoned animal. She began making cat sounds all the time, finding comfort in the soft mewling. She flexed her fingers and arched her back. She bit her cheek and tasted her own blood.
But she did not rise or eat. She did not move from where she lay. She refused to come out of the dark refuge of her delusions. She stayed safe and protected in her mind.
Then, as if from a dream, she heard someone calling to her. At first she thought she must have imagined it. No one would call to her, not here or anywhere else. No one would want to have anything to do with so
meone as terrible as she was.
But she heard the voice again, hushed and insistent. She heard it speak her name. Surprised, she stirred from her self-induced lethargy to listen for it, and heard it again.
“Grianne of the trees! Can you hear me? Why do you make those cat noises? Do you dream? Wake up!”
Her mind sharpened and her concentration coalesced, until the words became distinct and the voice recognizable. She knew the one who called to her, remembered him from another time and place. She felt the pull of that familiarity, as if she were coming back from a long journey to someone she had left behind.
“Wake up, Straken! Stop squirming! What is wrong with you? Don’t you hear me?”
Her breathing quickened, and a bit of the sluggishness fell away. She knew that voice. She knew it well. Something about it gave her fresh energy and a sense of renewed possibility. She tried to speak, choked on words that wouldn’t come, and made unintelligible sounds instead.
“What are you doing, little cat thing? Have I wasted my time coming here? Are you not able to speak? Look at me!”
She did so, opening her eyes for the first time in days, breaking the crust of tears that had dried and sealed her lids, squinting against the unfamiliar brightness, reaching up to rub away the sleep and confusion. She stirred slowly, raised herself on one elbow, and looked toward the light that spilled from the hallway into her cell.
A Goblin sentry stood pressed against the cell bars, peering in at her. The torchlight cast his shadow across her like a shroud. She stared in confusion, feeling the lethargy and hopelessness return almost at once. This was no one. She was deceived. Her head lowered once more, and her eyes began to close.
“No! What are you doing? Straken! It’s me!”
She looked up in time to see the Goblin pushing back the hood of his cloak to reveal his face. She peered at it out of a fog of exhaustion and uncertainty, watched it take shape, and struggled to make sense of what she was seeing.
“Weka Dart,” she whispered.
She stared at him, not quite believing he was actually there. She had all but forgotten about the little Ulk Bog. Once he had abandoned her and she had fallen into the hands of the Straken Lord, she had not expected ever to see him again. That he was standing there was almost incomprehensible.
“You should have listened to me!” he hissed. “didn’t I tell you? didn’t I warn you not to go on without me?”
His sharp features were scrunched into a knot, giving him the look of a demented beast. His hair was standing straight out from his head and neck, bristling and stiff. His sharp teeth flashed from behind his lips as he tried to smile and failed, and his fingers knotted on the bars.
Her mind cleared a bit further, and she pushed back against the urge to mewl and spit. “How did you find me?”
He stared at her as if she were mad. “You still don’t know anything, do you? What kind of Straken are you?”
She shook her head. “The worst kind.”
“You certainly look it.” Weka Dart laughed. “I found you by paying attention to the world around me, something you seem to have failed to master. But this isn’t your world, is it? This isn’t even remotely like it. So maybe you aren’t to blame for anything more than bad judgment.”
He was telling her something, but she couldn’t make sense of it. “Was it good judgment that brought you here, then?”
The Ulk Bog spit. “I am not sure what it was. I heard in my travels what had happened to you, and I admit that I thought it best to leave you to your fate. But then chance and inspiration intervened, so here I am.”
“Chance and inspiration?”
“I was crossing the Pashanon on my way to Huka Flats, the route I had chosen for myself and advised you to take as well. As I traveled, word reached me of your capture. Such things do not go unreported in this land, and I keep my eyes and ears open. It was easy enough to determine what had happened to you. The difficulty was in deciding what I should do about it.”
He puffed out his chest. “I will admit that at first I thought it best simply to go on. You had dismissed me, after all. What did it matter what became of you? You were rude to me. You insulted me. In the end, you ignored my good advice and brought disaster on yourself. I owed you nothing. No one could fault me if I chose to leave you to your fate.
“But then, I reconsidered. After all, it wasn’t your fault that you were a stranger to this country, one lacking in good judgment and common sense. You were to be pitied. I felt an obligation toward you. I thought it over and made up my mind. I would come find you. I would see how you were. If you were nice to me, I would decide whether you deserved a second chance.”
Even in her confused and debilitated state, of being not all of one thing or the other, she recognized that his words were lies. She could hear it in the way he spoke; she could see it in the rapid shifting of his eyes and body. As always, he was after something, but she had no idea what it was.
“How did you get down here?” she asked.
He gave a casual shrug. “I have my ways.”
“Ways that allow you to get past the demonwolves and the Goblins that serve the Straken Lord?”
He sniffed. “I am not without skills.”
She pulled herself into a sitting position and became aware for the first time in days how stiff and sore she was. She looked down at herself, first at the bruises and cuts on her arms and legs, then at the white shift she wore. She was much better dressed than when she had been taken to the arena. She glanced around. Her cell was cleaner, too.
Her focus narrowed sharply. Was she mistaken about the intentions of the Straken Lord? What was going on?
She looked at Weka Dart. “If you don’t stop lying to me and tell me the truth,” she said softly, “I might have to use my Straken magic on you, Ulk Bog.”
He grinned, showing all his sharp teeth. “That might be a little difficult, since you wear a conjure collar.”
He seemed to realize his mistake almost immediately, a change coming into his eyes and the self-satisfied look fading as his lips compressed in silent reprimand. “Conjure collars are not unknown to me,” he said quickly. “I’ve seen them before.”
In truth, she had forgotten about the collar until he reminded her of it, but he didn’t know that and she wasn’t about to tell him so. She held herself very still and continued to stare at him.
“I don’t know who you are or what you want, Weka Dart,” she said finally, “but you haven’t told me one word of truth since we met. This has all been a game for you, a game in which you seem to know all the rules while I know none. If you know what a conjure collar is, you know too much to be just a simple village creature traveling to a new part of the country. If you know how to bypass the Straken Lord’s guards, you have skills and knowledge that suggest you are something more than you pretend. I have had enough of you. Either tell me the truth or leave me here to rot.”
She held up one finger as he started to speak. “Be careful. If you are about to tell me another lie, think twice. I don’t have much left to call my own, but I do have my sense of what is true and what isn’t. You don’t want to try to take that from me.”
The Ulk Bog stared at her. Wary eyes studied her uncertainly; deep creases etched his wizened face.
He shook his head. “I don’t know how much I should tell you,” he said finally.
She sighed. “Why not tell me everything? What possible difference can it make now?”
“More than you think. Difference enough that I must consider carefully. You are right about me. You are right about my story. But you are in a stronger position than you believe. You have something I want. All I have to offer in exchange is the truth—and perhaps a way out of here. I can give you the one for the other. But I am afraid you will refuse me when you hear what I have to say. I am afraid you will hate me.”
He spoke with such sincerity that for the first time since she had met him she was inclined to believe what he said. She did not understand how
all that could be, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was that he had said he might be able to help her escape. At that point, she would do anything; make any bargain, agree to any conditions to gain her freedom. Because if she remained where she was, she knew she was lost.
But she couldn’t let him know that. She couldn’t let him see her desperation. Giving Weka Dart that sort of power over her was too dangerous. He would take advantage of her as quickly as Tael Riverine had.
She took a deep breath. “Listen to me. You came here with the intention of trading or you wouldn’t have come here at all. My word is good, Weka Dart. I keep my promises. So I will give you one now. If you tell me the truth about yourself, I will tell you if I can forgive you for your lies. Then you can decide if you still think it’s worth it to try to trade what you want for my freedom.”
She hauled herself to her feet and with some effort stumbled over to where he stood. “What’s it to be, little Ulk Bog? A bargain or a good-bye? I don’t really care anymore.”
He stared at her some more, his yellow eyes flicking left and right, up and down, scanning the whole of her face, but never settling on any one part. She could see a glimmer of doubt and fear mirrored there. But she could also see hope.
He nodded. “Very well, Grianne of the many promises. I will tell you, even though I think all Strakens lie.” He spit again and shook his head. “I know who you are and where you come from. I always did. I know because I was Catcher for Tael Riverine before Hobstull was. I would be Catcher still if the Straken Lord hadn’t decided I had lost my skills. He was wrong, but there is no arguing with a Straken. So he replaced me. But not before he humiliated me in ways I will never discuss, so don’t ask it of me.”
He swallowed hard. “He took me in when I was driven from my tribe for eating my young. He cared nothing for any of that, only for what I could do for him. He recognized my skills and offered me a place at Kraal Reach as his Catcher. He knew that I would accept, that I had to because I could not survive alone and unprotected in the world of the Jarka Ruus. He gave me what I needed, but then he took everything back when he cast me out. So I vowed that I would take everything from him in turn.”