Then the guard was opening a door, ushering him into a large room faced with maps and charts. A soldier stood at the window beyond the wide, paper-cluttered desk, back to him, shoulders sprouting a veritable fringe of red ribbon. The guard came to attention, snapped the heel of his pike against the floor and held it at ready. “General Uskenda. Sergeant Borril reporting with the Tibran prisoner as ordered.”
The gray-haired general turned around. Stone staggered and would have fallen except for the guard catching his arm. The
commander
of Adaran forces was also a woman. How could this be? The defenses should have fallen the first day. Everyone knew women had no war skills, no war sense. Of course, they had won through magic, not in a fair fight. That had to explain it.
“So.” Uskenda walked toward him, around him, as if conducting an inspection. “You are the one who lived.”
Stone stared straight ahead, refusing to speak to any woman who did not know a woman’s place.
“What is your name?”
He remained silent.
The general sighed and moved away a few paces, clasping her hands behind her back. “You would do well to answer of your own will.”
Stone’s eyes flickered toward the guard. He let his contempt show. Nothing they could do would change his mind.
“Oh, I know physical persuasion will do no good.” Uskenda lifted a sheet of paper, perused it briefly. “That’s why we rarely use it. We have no need. Corporal!”
The door behind Stone opened and a man spoke. “Yes, General?”
“Tell the naitan I have need of her.”
“Yes, General.” The door closed again.
Naitan
. The word Adarans used to name their witches. Cold rushed from Stone’s heart into his outermost parts, and the hair along his spine rose.
“Do you understand me?” Uskenda leaned against the desk. She somehow looked like a warrior with her stern face and close-cropped gray hair, despite her femaleness. How was it possible? “I think you do. I think you understand every word I say.”
The guard came to clashing attention again and spoke when Uskenda looked his way. “General, the prisoner speaks perfect Adaran.”
“Thank you, Sergeant.” She crossed her arms and studied Stone. “How did you come to learn it?”
How indeed?
And when? Stone had picked up a word or two of the local language in the week after landing, but no more than that. He hadn’t realized he
was
speaking Adaran until this moment. His mind had been too filled with…what? Grief? Must have been. His thoughts were so fogged by grief that he scarcely knew how much time had passed since his capture. That was likely how he’d learned the language without realizing it, listening to his captors.
“What is wrong with his head, Sergeant?”
“General. The prisoner injured himself by striking his head against the wall, General.”
She tapped a forefinger against her mouth. “And why did you do that? I wonder.” She studied Stone a moment longer, then moved behind the desk and sat in the high-backed chair. “Ah well, no matter. We will know soon enough.”
They waited. Stone and the guard stared straight ahead. General Uskenda reviewed papers on her desk. The door opened once more and the general looked up.
“Ah, good.” She smiled. “Thank you for your promptness, naitan. Please, come in.”
Uskenda came forward to greet a tall, slender woman. The naitan was dressed in a pale blue robe open over a tunic and trousers much the same color as those Stone wore, but of an even finer quality. Her brown hair fell past her shoulders in a froth of curls. She looked much like any woman found in any women’s quarters. Until she turned her eyes on him. They were the same blue as his own. Stone shuddered, suddenly understanding how uncanny they seemed to others.
“I will allow you one more chance to give your own answers,” the general said to Stone. “The naitan holds North magic. She is Ukiny’s far-speaker, speaking mind to mind with others of her gift. Do you understand what I am saying?”
Stone tried to hold his gaze steady, to focus only on the window in the far wall, but his eyes rolled toward the blue-eyed witch again before he could jerk them away.
“She can touch minds. There is a kind of North magic that can reach into your mind and see what is there. You do not have to say anything at all. A naitan can simply take what we wish to know from you.” Uskenda pursed her lips. “Of course, sometimes it isn’t easy to find what we are looking for. Who knows what havoc might be worked upon your mind?”
In his peripheral vision, Stone could see the witch looking most unhappy. Did the process perhaps cause her discomfort too?
“General, I don’t—” the witch broke off when the general raised a hand.
“Naitan, does this sort of magic do all that I have said?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“And,”
Uskenda interrupted, “does it not on occasion leave those who are mind-searched…altered?”
“Yes, it might, but I—”
“Do not bother to explain the techniques. This Tibran would not understand. His kind have no magic. Is this not true, Tibran?”
Stone tightened his jaw and stiffened his spine yet again. He feared no man. Nor did he fear any woman. Any ordinary woman. But this witch and her magic…how could he not fear a thing that could go crashing about in his thoughts, shredding them to bits, stealing away whatever seemed interesting?
Long moments slid away while Uskenda watched Stone and Stone watched the far wall.
“Shall we start again, warrior?” The general’s gentle voice reminded him of ease, of soft comfort in women’s quarters. “What is your name? A simple thing, your name.”
Simple, yes. But the first word spoken, the first truth told would change everything. Would the gods forgive him for failing to punish this woman’s sacrilege? Would they count his blasphemy against him for following her orders? The warrior god was a harsh one, demanding much and forgiving little. But surely he would understand about the magic.
Uskenda sighed. “Naitan—”
“Stone.” The sound of his own voice startled him. “Stone, Warrior vo’Tsekrish.”
Uskenda came to attention and saluted him. “Warrior.” She nodded at the witch. “I believe we will not be needing your services after all, naitan. But please hold yourself in readiness in case our Tibran friend changes his mind.”
The witch smiled, bowed and left the room. Stone sagged in relief, but only for a second.
“Stone, Warrior vo’Tsekrish.” Uskenda paced the floor before him. “You are a long way from home, are you not?”
“Yes, General.” He hoped all his answers would be so guilt free, but the hope was small.
“How
did
you learn our language, warrior?”
“I…do not know. I—after the assault, when I was taken prisoner, the soldiers spoke to me, and I understood.”
“This was after the—” She checked a paper on her desk. “After the dark scythe, the magic, was it not?”
“Yes, General.”
“You were captured in the breach?”
“Yes, General.”
“And you never advanced into the city. Is that correct?”
“No, General.”
Her head came up and she stared. “No?”
“Fox—my partner and I were in the First and Finest, those leading the assault. We took the breach, held it for the next wave, then advanced into the city.” Talking about the past, things that had already happened would surely hurt nothing.
“How far into the city?” She spread a map on the desk, obviously expecting him to come look. Stone spared a glance for his guard who grunted and prodded him forward with the pike.
Uskenda indicated the position of the breach and the high-spired temple with its colored windows. Stone pointed to a street a quarter of the way between, his shackles rattling. “Here.”
“Are you sure?” She held his gaze, the light gray of her eyes almost as unsettling as the blue of the witch’s. “Every other Tibran within the city walls was found dead.”
Stone studied the map again, letting the shivers take him. He was among witches now. He had to live with the fear. “It might have been here.” He pointed at a place a few streets to the south. “My memory isn’t good, not for those minutes—but I know we were inside the city.”
“Then how is it you were found in the breach? Alive?”
He met her gaze, held it, willed her to believe him. He did not want her to call the witch back when he was telling the truth. “I do not know. I remember the world coming to an end. And then I remember waking up in the breach. Nothing else.”
They stared eye into eye for a long moment more, until Uskenda broke contact, looking down again at the map. The guard crashing to attention startled both of them. “General,” he rapped out.
“What is it, Sergeant?”
“There is a mark on his neck.”
The general’s eyes widened and her eyes flicked from one man to the other. “What kind of mark? Show me.”
The guard seized Stone by the scruff of his neck, forcing him to his knees, shoving his head forward. He raked the pigtail out of the way. Uskenda’s gasp as she touched a finger lightly to the nape of Stone’s neck sent a thrill of terror shooting through him yet again. What was this mark? What did it mean?
The guard released Stone’s head, but held him on his knees with a foot on the chain connecting wrist shackles to leg irons. Uskenda shuffled through the papers on her desk. She found the one for which she searched and scanned it quickly.
“You say this man has been behaving strangely?” she asked the guard.
“He beats his head on the wall and claws at the stones. You see the bandages. His hands are much worse than his forehead.”
“Does he know he is doing this?”
The guard shrugged. “Who can say? All Tibrans are barmy, you ask me.”
“Are you aware?” Uskenda asked Stone. “When you do these things?”
He didn’t want to answer. But more, he didn’t want magic mucking through his mind, making things worse than they already were. “No.”
Uskenda touched the back of his head and he bent it obediently forward. She moved the pigtail aside but made no attempt to touch him again. Then she released him and stepped back, her boot heels a brisk clap against the polished wooden floor. “Make ready to take the prisoner to Arikon.” Her orders snapped out with spine-chilling authority, the corporal appearing again to take them. “I wish I had seen him earlier so I might have sent him with Captain Varyl, but no matter. He will go on the next boat, at dawn tomorrow. Inform your captain. I want him escorted by an officer and a quarto of her best soldiers.”
Once more, the guard stiffened to attention. He hauled Stone to his feet and hustled him out of the building and back to his prison. What would befall him next in this cursed land?
Torchay spent the first day of the week’s journey upriver fighting sleep. Since the night his naitan had suddenly stopped breathing, he’d scarcely slept at all, dozing off and jerking awake seconds later, afraid it had happened again. It hadn’t, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t. The riverboat hadn’t enough room for him to keep moving and every time he stilled, sleep tried to claim him.
He studied the boat, hoping the mental activity would help. Typical of its class, the
Taolind Runner
was long and narrow with a shallow draft to keep it running when the water level dropped in late summer. The exposed wood of the decks gleamed with varnish, but the exterior hull had been stained inky black with tar before it was sealed and proofed by South magic. The single triangular sail was set well forward in the crew section, its lack of wear evidence of more South magic. A pair of North naitani wind-callers took turns keeping the blue-and-gold-striped sail filled, moving it briskly against the current.
All the magic that had gone into this boat gave evidence to the prosperity of the owner who captained the ship and served as one of the wind naitani. The four elegantly furnished passenger cabins near the ship’s stern attested to the same. On this leg of the journey, only two cabins were taken. Torchay would have expected some of the wealthier citizens of Ukiny to take advantage of the opportunity to escape the city, but the general had apparently forbidden it.
His head bobbled and he jerked his eyes open, blinking rapidly in an attempt to convince them to stay that way.
“Go ahead and sleep,” his captain said from the chair beside him under the blue-and-gold-striped awning stretched over the passenger area at the stern.
Confinement area, to speak truth. The crew did not want passengers wandering indiscriminately about the ship. Torchay had been sent politely but firmly back to the “passenger section” several times already. “I need to be alert, watch for threats.” He scanned the bank to either side, peering into the scattered trees for human shapes.
“You can’t be alert if you don’t get some sleep,” she said, sounding far too reasonable. “No one can function without sleep, and I know you’re not sleeping at night. Sleep now. I’ll watch.”
“It’s against regulations. My duty is to—”
“How can you do your duty if you’re asleep on your feet? We’ve been on this boat all day. We’re beyond the Tibran lines. There are no bandits or river pirates between Ukiny and Turysh. We took care of the last band ourselves two years ago, remember? Sleep. I’m tempted to sleep myself.”
He didn’t want to admit it, but she was right. He needed to sleep. “We should go to the cabin.” They would have more protection there.
“It’s too hot. If you’re that worried about my breathing, ask Uskenda’s courier to keep an eye out.”
“Excellent thought.” He could tell by her expression when he stood that she hadn’t expected him to take her suggestion seriously and was none too pleased that he had. But he would take no chances with his naitan.
The courier, an amiable young man, seemed surprised and not a little nervous at Torchay’s approach. Those in bodyguard’s black often evoked that reaction. Still, the courier willingly agreed with a little puffing out of his chest to move his chair closer and keep watch.
Torchay stretched out on the long wooden chair, arranged the cushions behind his back, stuffed one under his head and closed his eyes. But now that he had the opportunity to sleep, it eluded him.