Dhiammara

15 Ketr and Hostage

Maya was awakened by the sound of voices and many footsteps passing by Licia’s shelter. “What’s happening?” she asked drowsily.

“It’s the laborers,” the lacemaker told her. “They’re home for the night.”

“What?” Slowly, the warrior’s sleep-fuddled wits returned to her. Scrambling to her feet, she peered out of the shelter to see a ragged trickle of weary workers trailing past her door. As Maya scanned the passing faces, a small, familiar figure caught her eye. For a moment she could not believe it.

“Parric?” Filling her lungs, she summoned the battleground bellow that Forral had taught her. “PARRIC!”

Down the street, there was a stir among the crowd. “Get out of the bloody way, will you?” Maya grinned as she heard that familiar testy voice. “Gods blast you to perdition, let me through!” Then two burly laborers went staggering, one to either side, and the short, wiry form of the Cavalrymaster came bursting through between them.

Parric stopped dead when he saw her, his face blank with shock. Then without a word he ran to Maya, and caught her up in an embrace that almost broke her ribs. They stood there for a long time, without speaking, too deep in the emotions of their reunion for speech.

The Cavalrymaster shared a dormitory cavern with two dozen other laborers, so for privacy they retired to Licia’s shelter. The lacemaker was very good about it. “If we can’t help one another now and then it’s a poor lookout. Why, we’d be no better than those steel-eyed cold-blooded bastards who call themselves our masters.”

Maya shook her head reprovingly. “Licia, to look at you a person would never imagine that you knew such language.”

The lacemaker blushed, and gave a sheepish shrug. “Well as a matter of fact I didn’t. Back in Nexis I was just an old maid—prim, proper, and plain—before I wound up here and started mixing with these reprobate warriors.”

“Anyway, being stuck here with these whoreson Phaerie would make anybody swear,” Parric added in support.

Since it was the hour of the evening when the food would be handed out, Licia offered, with kindly tact, to leave them alone for a time while she went to fetch the rations for all three of them. Parric told the warrior of Vannor’s insane behavior, and the disastrous campaign with the Phaerie that had followed, then Maya quickly sketched the details of all that had happened since she had left Nexis so very long ago, to take D’arvan to the Vale. She then brought him up to the present with the tale of her reemergence with Aurian through the gate in Time, and the abduction of herself and D’arvan by the Forest Lord.

When she had finished, Parric gave a long, low whistle. “You spent all that time as a unicorn? It beggars belief!”

“Well, that’s what happened,” Maya assured him. “And now, I’m just wondering what Hellorin will have in store for D’arvan and myself this time.” As she spoke, she fingered the chain around her neck. “Anyway,” she added in a brisker tone, “that’s my story. What I still don’t understand is, what happened to you and Vannor? What in Chathak’s name possessed the fool to make war on the bloody Phaerie?”

Parric shook his head. “I could never fathom it. Truly Maya, you could hardly even call it an attack. They just waited until we’d worn ourselves out tramping all the way up here, then threw some kind of magical field around us and mopped us up from the air. That was when Sangra died. She—she was trying to rally the younger troops—to stop them running and get them into some kind of defensive position. . . .” His face creased with the memory of old pain. “She wouldn’t stop fighting. In the end, they hacked her to pieces.”

Maya’s stomach heaved and her heart clenched with pain at the thought of Sangra’s cruel end.

Parric swallowed hard, dashing his hand across his eyes. “You know, old Vannor always had sense. He used to be a good man—a man I liked and respected. I knew him as well as anyone when we were with the rebels, and for the life of me, I can’t imagine why he’d be so stupid as to attack the Phaerie. He must have known what the cost would be in human lives and even if he didn’t, there were plenty of folk to tell him—me included, not to mention Dulsina, and you know how much influence she always had with him. Not this time, though. The whole business eventually drove them apart, in fact. It was as though . . .” He shrugged. “You’ll probably think I’m daft, Maya, but at that time it seemed as though he wasn’t himself anymore—the old Vannor had disappeared completely. It was just like talking to a stranger—and a nasty piece of work at that.”

Parric sighed, and shook his head. “Well, he won his way in the end. To tell you the truth, everyone was a bit afraid of him by then. You got the feeling he’d be capable of anything—anything at all. It was as though that poison had somehow addled his wits....”

“What poison?” Maya asked sharply. “Someone tried to poison Vannor?”

“Oh, I forgot you didn’t know about that. Someone did—we still don’t know who it was, but they bloody nearly succeeded....”

Maya listened, appalled, as Parric told her of the attempt on Vannor’s life, and the earthquake that had followed soon afterward. “So that’s what caused all the damage,” she murmured. “I thought it must have been the Phaerie.”

“Oh, the Phaerie caused enough, by all accounts,” the Cavalrymaster retorted bitterly. “Our attack on them—if you can even call it that—seemed to stir them up good and proper.”

“It certainly did.” Licia’s voice came from the open doorway. She walked across to the table and put down the food she was carrying, then turned to face the others, her expression bleak as the memories crowded round her. “They swept down on Nexis that night like the wrath of all the Gods,” she said quietly.

“No one was expecting it, and what chance did we have, with all our best warriors already away? They took men and women both—the only limit to their depredations seemed to be the number of folk they could carry off.”

Her fingers clenched tightly around the edge of the table behind her. “The ones who were taken were lucky—for every one they seized, three more were killed, in the streets or in their beds. Ah, it was easier for me than for some folk. I had no family at least, to mourn. ... I saw them trample little children beneath the hooves of their great horses, with no more thought or remorse than you or I would have in swatting a fly. People were screaming, buildings were burning . ..” She shook her head. “It was too dreadful to describe. They broke into Lord Vannor’s mansion, by all accounts, and took him too—though we never see him, he’s imprisoned somewhere else, up in the citadel.”

Licia’s voice grew hard. “Just as well for him—I think if he was sent down here, the folk would tear him limb from limb. I only hope he had a chance to see what I saw, as they bore him off. If there’s any justice in this world, it should haunt him for the rest of his days—” Her words broke off as a shadow darkened the doorway of the shelter. Some half-dozen Phaerie guards stood there, tall, grim, and forbidding. To Maya’s astonishment, one of them was holding a bundle of clothing. “You two.” One of them indicated Parric and Maya. “You are summoned. Come with us.”

“Dear Gods have mercy!” D’arvan exclaimed. “What have you done to him?”

“I? Nothing.” Drawing his sword, Hellorin gently prodded the figure that knelt motionless on the floor. Vannor swayed at the jab of the blade, but otherwise did not move, nor did his expression change in the slightest—a pity, D’arvan thought, for beneath the wild tangle of long grey hair and long white beard there was something deeply unnerving about the way the prisoner’s face was contorted in a soundless scream of agony.

“How long has he been like this?” the Mage demanded.

Hellorin shrugged. “Ever since we brought him here—slightly more than a year now, I would say. The night we captured him he shrieked abuse at us and cursed us with the direst of dooms—we locked him up when we returned, and in the morning, when the guard came to fetch him, he was exactly as you see him now.—It takes two slaves to feed him, wash him, and see to his other needs, and there he stays: uncommunicative, unchanging, lost in some private torment.”

“Why did you bother keeping him alive?” D’arvan asked.

Hellorin shrugged. “I was curious. Something about that attack on us did not sit right with me. Unless Mortals have changed in some fundamental way in our absence, which I doubt, there seemed no sense to this man’s actions. Only someone with powers close to our own would even consider making war upon the Phaerie—only someone with the sheer arrogance and ambition of a Mage, in fact.” Suddenly the Forest Lord swung round, piercing D’arvan with a sharp, shrewd gaze. “Are you sure this Mortal is all that he seems?”

D’arvan struggled to conceal his shock. “Aurian told me that Miathan could control another’s mind from a great distance,” he admitted, “but that was with the victim’s full consent, apparently. From what I know of Vannor, he would never submit to such an intrusion.”

“Who knows what these Mortals will or will not do?” Hellorin replied with distaste. “Maya, in all justice, seems sharp-witted enough—from mixing so much with the Magefolk, I’ve no doubt—but I fear that owing to your attachment to her, you give the rest of the flock too much credit for intelligence. Do you really believe that a strong-minded Mage might not control a mere Mortal at will?”

“Well, I couldn’t,” D’arvan said firmly. “But then I never wanted to. Besides, if Vannor had been under the control of a Mage, why wouldn’t they try to force him to escape from here, or even use him to spy on you?”

“That’s what I was hoping you would find out.”

“Me?” gasped the Mage. “What can I do?”

“Oh come,” Hellorin said impatiently. “Mortals are a completely alien species to us Phaerie. You, with your Magefolk ancestry, are that much closer. You could probe his mind, D’arvan, and discover what I could not. As a condition of your cooperation, you asked me to release Vannor. Well, before I do, I want to be certain his mind is unaffected by any trace of Magefolk meddling—if indeed he has any mind left at all. But I will not set him free to plot against me further....”

The Forest Lord was interrupted by a respectful tapping on the door. “Ah—I expect your other Mortals have arrived. Enter,” he added, in a louder voice.

“Get your bloody hands off me!” D’arvan heard Maya’s voice before he saw her.—Then the door burst open and she came hurtling into the room, wearing nothing but an ill-fitting man’s shirt that hung down below her knees. Parric followed her, similarly attired and glowering blackly.

Maya rounded on Hellorin like a tigress. “You treacherous snake,” she spat.

“You slimy son of a pox-ridden harlot! To think I once called you father.”

Hellorin smiled at her. “Maya, you are a pure delight. You never change.”

“And neither do you,” Maya growled. “You were a heartless, murdering butcher then and you’re still one now.” Seeing her hands clench into fists, D’arvan stepped up quickly and put an arm around her shoulders before she could do something stupid in her rage.

“It’s always nice to be appreciated.” Hellorin made her a mocking bow, and headed for the door. “D’arvan—I leave it to you to explain the bargain you made. My presence seems to be upsetting your Mortals.” With that he was gone.

“Your Mortals?” Maya turned to D’arvan, a dangerous glint in her eye; then, just as abruptly, she hugged him. “Thank the Gods you’re all right,” she muttered into his shoulder. “When they brought us up here I didn’t know what to expect.”

“We still don’t know what to expect.” Parric, ashen-faced, was looking down at Vannor. “What in the name of perdition have they done to him?”

D’arvan sighed. This wasn’t going to be easy. “According to Hellorin, the Phaerie haven’t done anything to him. They found him like that the morning after they captured him.”

“Rubbish!” Parric snapped. “No one gets a face like that for no reason.”

Maya walked to Vannor’s side, and laid a tentative hand on his shoulder, beneath the bird’s-nest mane of shaggy grey hair. “Vannor?” Frowning, she touched his face, but he showed not the slightest flicker of reaction.

“Listen to me—both of you.” D’arvan took command. “Never mind Vannor for a minute, we’ll talk about him presently. Sit down and have some wine. We have to talk, the three of us.” He took a deep breath, wondering how he could break the news to his beloved. “There’s no gentle way to tell you this,” he said at last. “Hellorin demands that I stay here, and take up my duties as his son.”

“What?” Maya shouted. “But you can’t! What about Aurian?”

“I have no choice, my love,” the Mage told her flatly. “Already, the other slaves must have told you the significance of that chain you wear. My father is using you as a hostage for my cooperation. If I don’t obey him, he’ll kill you.”

For a long moment, a variety of emotions chased across Maya’s face: shock, indignation, and rage being paramount. Then, as the horrified silence stretched out between the three of them, D’arvan saw her brows knot together in thought. She looked up at him. “If Hellorin kills me,” she said slowly, “then he’ll no longer have any hold on you. You can go back and help Aurian.”

The Mage could read the other thought in her mind, the one she had not spoken aloud, as clearly as if it were written on her face. And if I kill myself, D’arvan will be free. Striving not to panic, knowing that his next words would decide the matter and desperate to convince her, he reached out and took her hands in his own. “Maya,” he said gently, “try not to be hasty. Just listen with an open mind to what I have to say. . . . I’ve spent a long and wearisome day wrangling with my father over this matter. He’s more stubborn than the most mule-headed Mage, but I finally managed to wring some concessions from him—so long as the two of us consent to stay.”

“This had better be good,” Maya growled.

“It’s better than nothing—which was what he originally offered me.” D’arvan squeezed her hands tightly. “I wanted him to liberate the Nexians, but he refused outright. He will, however, release Parric and Vannor to go back and help Aurian ... if I can manage to free Vannor from his evil trance, that is.”

“Is that all?” Maya bristled. “I can’t say I’m very impressed so far, with your father’s magnanimity.”

D’arvan, however, looked across at Parric and saw his eyes burning with a fierce, joyous, desperate light. Too proud to plead, too levelheaded to influence the discussion with an emotional appeal, the Cavalrymaster was rigid with the effort to keep silent—but his heart was in his eyes.

“There’s more,” D’arvan told Maya hastily. “Again, I wanted Hellorin to let the Xandim return to human form—but there was no chance of that. Frankly, he’d rather lose the Nexians.

He said, however, that he would agree to disenchant Chiamh and Schiannath, and let them return with Parric.”

“My, how generous,” Maya said bitterly. “And dare I ask what your father wants in return for these great favors? Am I to remain a slave for the rest of my life? There’s something you’re not telling me—I know it.”

“Well, he says he’ll remove your chain eventually”—D’arvan prudently stepped back out of striking range—“as soon as we produce a son together.”

“He what?” Unexpectedly, Maya burst out laughing, but D’arvan could sense that her control was very close to the edge. “Why?” she demanded. “What in the name of perdition does an immortal, all-powerful magical being want with a bloody heir?”

“He wants to extend his realm.”

Maya’s laughter ceased abruptly.

“Hellorin wants the Phaerie to rule the entire northern continent,” D’arvan went on into the ensuing silence. “He wants scions of his own blood to wield power in his name in various regions—that way he feels he’ll have better control over the fractious Mortals.”

Narrow-eyed, Parric looked at the Mage with suspicion and undisguised hostility. “And just where do you fit into this grand scheme?” he asked coldly.

D’arvan sighed. He had been dreading this moment. “He wants me to rule Nexis,” he answered quietly.

Parric kicked the wall of the shelter as hard as he dared with his bare toes.

“That traitor! That thrice-damned backstabbing chickenhearted turncoat! I might have known we couldn’t trust a bloody Mage!”

“For the last time, Parric—will you shut up?” Maya snarled. “If you hadn’t created such an uproar and brought the guards down on us, you fool, we’d have had a chance to discuss it with him.”

“What’s to discuss? At heart he’s nothing but another power-hungry tyrant—just like the rest of his ilk.”

“Like Aurian, you mean?” For a moment Maya actually thought he would strike her. She had never seen such rage on Parric’s face. But though she had felt equally betrayed by D’arvan when he had broken the news to her, she now felt a perverse need to defend her lover in the face of Parric’s virulent attack.—Controlling himself with difficulty, the Cavalrymaster turned away in disgust.

“How can you stand there and say that?” he asked in tones of biting contempt.

“Unlike your precious Phaerie stud, I never saw Aurian try to enslave an entire race.”

“It wasn’t his idea!” Maya shouted. “You heard what he said—Hellorin will enslave us anyway! D’arvan was trying to give us a chance....” Her voice trailed away into silence as she was struck by the inadvertent truth of her own words.

Licia, an unwilling spectator to the quarrel, seized the moment. “Parric, I want you to leave, please. Now. You can continue your discussion later, when tempers have cooled.”

“Gladly. I’ve had enough of listening to this Phaerie-loving garbage in any case.” With one last venomous glare at Maya, Parric stamped out of the shelter, muttering imprecations and pushing his way roughly through the knot of curious bystanders who had gathered near the door.

Maya stood like a statue in the center of the room, one hand lifted to her lips, her eyes turned inward, blind to her surroundings. “D’arvan is our only chance,” she murmured softly. “Our one slim chance to beat Hellorin at his own game . . .” So deep in thought was she that she barely noticed when the lacemaker tiptoed out.

“Please ... I must see Lord D’arvan.” Maya tried to conceal her annoyance as the guards at the gate looked down their noses at her. Try to look respectful, at least—for your own sake, she told herself. She had by no means forgotten the blow they had given her earlier.

“Ah, Lord D’arvan’s little lapdog,” the female guard sneered. “Mortal, you seem to have forgotten your place. You may be assured that when Lord D’arvan wants to see you, he will send for you.”

“But...”

“You dare dispute with me, Mortal?” The guard’s eyes glinted with anger. She made a complex gesture—and the warrior suddenly found herself lapped around from head to foot in the clinging briars of a thorny rose. Instantly, the supple green vines tightened around her body, cutting painfully into her limbs and constricting her breathing. As the tendrils tightened further, the long, sharp thorns drove deep into her flesh.

Maya fell writhing to the cavern floor, driving the manifold claws of the rose still deeper beneath her skin. Choking for breath as she was, she could not even scream. Already there was a high-pitched buzzing in her ears and her vision had faded to glittering black. ...

“Curse you, let her go!”

The roar was so loud, so angry, that it penetrated even as far as the deep, dark pit into which Maya was falling. She heard a fierce sizzling sound then a loud crack, like the sound of a spitting spark, followed by a cry of pain.—Abruptly, the strangling briars and their piercing thorns were gone, and Maya took a deep draft of sweet, sweet air. With a clang, the gate swung open, and as her vision began to clear she saw D’arvan kneeling over her, his eyes diamond-bright with rage and glittering with unshed tears.

As the Mage scooped her into his arms and bore her from the slave cavern, Maya saw that the female guard lay crumpled against the wall, her face disfigured by a blistered brand as though she had been lashed by a fiery whip.

“Never again,” D’arvan snarled. “Never, ever again! He raised his voice. “Hear me, you Phaerie,” he grated. “If any one of you ever hurts this woman again—if you so much as look at her harshly, I will slowly burn the flesh from every inch of your vile bones. I am the son of the Forest Lord—you know that I can do this. And for your own sakes, you had best believe that I will.”

Maya wanted to tell him how very glad she was to see him, but as yet, she lacked the breath.

When he laid her on the couch in the tower room, Maya gasped in pain as her abraded flesh touched the silken fabric. Her pale skin was mottled with bruises, and each labored breath scraped harshly in her throat. Though D’arvan was no expert at healing, the Lady Eilin had taught him the techniques to suppress pain, stop the bleeding, and seal the flesh of simple wounds. It was not enough, however, to overcome his guilt. As the tension of pain began to smooth itself from Maya’s face, he leapt to his feet and started to pace back and forth across the tower room, unable to face the condemnation that would soon appear in her eyes. “I wouldn’t blame you for hating me,” he told her wretchedly. “It’s all my fault. I should never have let them take you back.”

“Don’t talk so daft, love—we don’t have time for that.”

D’arvan spun, an astonished exclamation on his lips, to see Maya holding out a hand to him, an expression of fond exasperation on her face. “Come here and sit down,” she told him in a hoarse, scratchy voice. “On second thought, bring me a drink—then sit down.”

“Now,” she said, when he had obeyed her, “let’s get this out of the way once and for all. It’s not your fault your father treats his slaves this way, and it wasn’t your fault that we were taken back to the cavern—it was because that hothead Parric went and lost his temper.”

“I should have come for you sooner. ...”

“D’arvan, shut up. It’s done now—and at least that guard will think twice in future about mistreating Mortals.” Her eyes glinted with malicious glee. “I liked what you did to her face, by the way—I hope it teaches her a lesson.”

She squeezed his hand tightly. “Anyway, listen. I’ve been thinking ...”

D’arvan felt a frisson of unease at her words, like a finger of ice trailed down his spine. He knew Maya well, and he could tell from her brisk, businesslike tone that he wasn’t going to like this in the least. He looked down into her beloved face, wishing he could stem the flow of what she was about to say, and knowing already that it would be impossible, and unwise.—Already, Maya was speaking. “. . . Am I right in believing that it takes Phaerie magic to make the Xandim horses fly?”

Surprised by the direction her thoughts were taking, D’arvan nodded. “The magic is in the horses and the Phaerie both. Only together can they fly.”

Maya bit her lip and looked away from him, staring out of the window as though fascinated by the reflections of the lamp-lit room against a black background of midnight sky. “Then you can do it,” she said at last.

“Do what?”

Maya gripped his fingers tightly, her face aglow with urgency. “D’arvan, go back to Hellorin and renegotiate. You must return to Aurian, and take Chiamh and Schiannath with you. Flying steeds may give Aurian the edge she lacks.”

“Woman, have you lost your mind?” D’arvan exploded. “Were you not listening when I explained? Hellorin wants me to stay and rule Nexis. I’m his heir, as he calls it—his only son. He’ll never let me escape him again!”

“He will if I stay behind as hostage for your return,” Maya argued stubbornly.—D’arvan scowled at her, both angry and alarmed. “Maya, if you think for one minute that I would be so careless of you as to risk another repetition of what happened tonight...”

Maya’s eyes sparkled with mischief. “But I’ve thought of a way for Hellorin to keep his heir and insure my own safety. No one would dare hurt me, D’arvan—not if I carried your child.”