Fool's Quest (55 page)

“Now. We are going to have a conversation. It can be friendly, or it can be very painful. I want you to tell me everything you know about the pale folk. I want to know all about the day you invaded my home. Most of all, I want to know about the woman and the girl that you took from my home.”

He cursed me again, but not in a very inventive way. When I wearied of it, I scooped a great handful of snow and pushed it into his face. He sputtered and shouted, and I added more until he grew silent. I sat back on my heels. He shook his head and dislodged some of it. Some had melted and was running down his wet red cheeks. “That doesn't look comfortable. Would you like to talk to me now?” He lifted his head and shoulders as if he would sit up. I pushed him back down and shook my head at him. “No. Stay as you are. Tell me what you know.”

“When my men return, they will cut you to ribbons. Slowly.”

I shook my head. I spoke Chalcedean. “They won't return. Half lie dead in that camp. The one you have left can't hear or see you. Any that fled have run into the Buck troops by now. Or if they made it to Salter's Deep, they found that the ship has been moved. Would you like to live? Tell me about the captives you took from my home.”

I stood up. I set the point of Verity's sword in the soft spot just below his sternum. I leaned on it, not hard enough to make it penetrate the fur and wool he wore but hard enough to hurt. He kicked his feet wildly and yelled a bit. Then, abruptly, he went limp in the snow and glared at me. He folded his lips stubbornly.

I was unimpressed. “If you won't talk to me, you're useless. I'll finish you now, and go after Hogen.”

The crow cawed loudly overhead and then suddenly swooped down to perch on my shoulder. She cocked her head and stared down at my captive with one bright black eye. “Red snow!” she rejoiced.

I smiled and tipped my head toward her. “I think she may be hungry. Shall we give her a finger to start with?”

Motley sidled closer to my head. “Eye! Eye! Eye!” she suggested rapturously.

I tried not to show how unnerving that was for me. I had not taken my weight off the sword. The tip of it was slowly and inexorably nudging its way through the layers of clothing that protected him. I watched the corners of his eyes and the set of his mouth. I saw him swallow, and in the instant before he tried to roll out from under it, I kicked him as hard as I could just where his ribs ended in the softness of his belly. The sword sank through clothing and into flesh. I did not let it go too deep. “Don't.” My word was a pleasant warning.

I leaned over him, Verity's sword still in his wound, and made a suggestion. “Now. Start at the very beginning. Tell me how you were hired and for what. As long as you are talking, I won't hurt you. When you stop talking, I will hurt you. A lot. Begin.”

I watched his eyes. His glance darted once to the camp. Once to the crow. He had nothing. He licked his chapped lips and spoke slowly. I knew he was trying to gain time for himself. I had no objections.

“It began with a message. Almost a year ago. A pale messenger came to me. We were surprised. We could not decide how he knew where to find our camp. But he had found us. He came with an offer of a great deal of gold if I would perform a service for people who called themselves the Servants. They were from a distant country. I asked how these faraway people had heard of me, and he told me that I had figured in many prophecies in their religion. He said they had seen my future, and over and over they had seen that if I did as they willed, not only did great good come to them, but I achieved the power that I had rightfully earned. In their prophecies I was a figure of change. If I did what they asked, I would change the future of the world.”

He paused. Obviously, he had been flattered by such claims and perhaps expected that I would be impressed. He waited. I stared at him. Perhaps I jiggled the sword a tiny bit.

He grunted breathlessly. I smiled at him and he resumed. “He assured me that helping them with their task would put me on the path to glory and power. The path. They spoke so often of ‘the path.' He came with funds, asking me to bring a picked force of men and come with him to a port in the Pirate Isles. There he had an army of soothsayers and visionaries, ones who could guide us to success because they could foretell what would be our best tactic. They could pick ‘the one path of many' that would best lead us to success. And he hinted then that they had with them a very special person, one who could make it impossible for us to be seen or tracked.”

I heard the sounds of a hatchet working on firewood. The lad had finally found a tool. The crow had moved to perch in a tree over my captive. She cawed at him derisively.

“And you believed that?”

He looked at me almost defiantly. “It was true. They showed us when we traveled to the Pirate Isles. He made one of my men forget where the door to the room was. He made another forget his own name. They put food on the table, hid it from us, and then revealed it again. We were amazed. They had a ship and a crew there. They gave us the gold they had promised us just for coming to speak with them. They promised that if we helped them find the Unexpected Son, they would give us more gold, much more.” He scowled darkly.

“Only one part I disliked. The one who bargained with us in the Pirate Isles was a woman. We had not expected that. The messenger they sent first was a man. Then when we were shown the man who could do the magic, he was a soft and pudgy creature, one who quivered and cowered at the woman's commands. This made no sense to us. Why would a man of such power not do as he wished in the world?”

I wondered that myself but did not speak.

“I am cold,” he said into my silence. “As you said, I am old. And I have not eaten since yesterday.”

“It's a hard world. Imagine being a child torn open by a rapist. I have as much mercy for you as you had for her.”

“I did nothing to a child!”

“You allowed it to happen. You were the commander.”

“It was not my doing. Have you ever been in battle? A thousand things happen at once.”

“It was not a battle. It was a raid against an unguarded home. And you stole a little girl. My child. And a woman who was under my protection.”

“Heh. You blame me when you were the one who failed to protect them.”

“That's true.” I eased the sword a finger's breadth deeper into his chest, and he shrieked out loud. “I don't like to be reminded of that,” I told him. “Why don't you go on with your story? About how proud Chalcedean soldiers sold themselves like whores for gold to be the servants of a woman and a soft man?”

He said nothing, and I turned the sword slightly in his chest. He made a sound as if he would vomit.

“I am not just any commander, not just any man!” He drew breath, and I eased the sword slightly from its burrow. Blood welled. He bent his head to see it and began to pant. “I am Ellik. I was second only to the Duke of Chalced when he sat his throne. He promised me that I would follow him in ruling Chalced. I was to be Duke Ellik of Chalced. Then the damned dragons came. And his whore of a daughter, she who was given to me by her father, turned against her own people and proclaimed herself duchess! She squats on my rightful throne! And that is why I sell my sword. So I can regain what is rightfully mine! That is what they saw, those pale prophets and soothsayers! It
will
come to pass.”

“You are boring me.” I squatted next to him, put my sword aside, and took out my knife. I held it up and studied it. Long and sharp. I caught the winter light on the blade and tilted it so it traveled. “So. The woman and the child.”

He panted for a time. I made a gesture with my knife and he shook his head wildly. He gasped in air and spoke in short bursts. “We came on a ship. We hid with our weapons as her crew brought her into port. We thought there would be questions … at the docks, tariffs and … demands. But there was nothing. It was as if we were not there at all. The soft man led us … and we trooped off the ship and … off-loaded the horses and … rode off through the town. And not a head turned toward us. We were like ghosts. Even when we all began to laugh … and even to shout at the people on the street. No one saw us.”

For an instant his eyes rolled up, showing too much white. Had I gone too far? The blood from the sword-hole seeped and darkened his shirt. He gave another gasp and looked at me.

“She told us where to go. The boy kept us hidden. We soon chafed with it. We stole the sleighs and the teams. The pale folk knew exactly where to find them. We passed through towns unseen: fat, rich towns. So much we could have done—taken. But that woman, always saying no. And no. And no. And each time, to my men, I said no. And they obeyed. But they thought less of me. And less. And I felt … odd.”

He paused and for a time he was silent, breathing noisily through his nose. “I'm cold,” he said again.

“Talk.”

“We could have taken anything. Could have gone to Buckkeep. Taken the crown off your king's head if that boy had been ours to rule. We could have gone back to Chalced and walked in and killed that whore who squats on my throne. If the boy favored us over her. My men knew that. We spoke of it. But I could not do it. We just did as she told us. So we went to that place, that big house.” He moved his eyes without shifting his head to look up at me. “It was your home, wasn't it? Your holding?” He licked his lips, and for a moment avarice shone in his eyes. “It was rich. Fat for the taking. We left so much. Good horses. The brandy kegs. ‘Take only the son,' she said. And we obeyed like slaves. We took the boy and his maidservant and turned back toward our ship. Moving through your land like sneaking cowards.”

He blinked. His face was getting paler. I found I didn't care.

“Then I knew. She was using the boy on me. Clouding my mind. To make me weak. To enslave me! So I waited. And we planned. There were times when my mind was clear, when the boy was using his magic on others. So I waited until the magic-boy was away from her and me. I knew it would happen. And while he was with them, not thinking of controlling me, I confronted that woman. I put her in her place, and I took her magic-boy from her. It was easy. I told my men what to say to him, and he believed us. The next day, we tested him. We raided the town, in broad daylight, with no challenge from the inhabitants. We simply told Vindeliar it was what the woman wished him to do. To enjoy himself for that one day. To take whatever he wanted in the town, to eat whatever he wished. He asked us if it were his true path now. We told him it was. It was so easy. He was foolish, almost simple. He believed us.”

He coughed. “It could have been so good. If not for that stupid woman. That stupid woman. She had the real prize. That boy that could cloud minds. But she didn't use him as she could have. She wanted … your son.”

I didn't correct him. “What became of the captives? The woman you took, and the child?”

“Disrespectful little rat. I knocked him down. Ugly little bastard. Those staring eyes. All his fault that it fell apart.”

It took everything I had not to shove my knife in his eye. “Did you hurt him?”

“Knocked him down. That was all. Should have done more. No one speaks … to me … like that.”

He took a sudden gasping breath. His lips were going dusky.

“What happened to him?”

He laughed. “I don't know. That night it all went wrong. That damned Hogen. Whining and sniffling for a woman like some table-fed lapdog. So I gave him one. One he deserved. She screamed a lot. Someone brought the magic-boy over. He stared. We asked if he'd like a turn. Then that woman. Dwalia. She came running over, shouting that we had no honor. That we were not men at all.” He rolled his eyes toward me. “I could stomach her no longer. Two of my men seized her, for she came at me with her claws out. And I had to laugh at her, held between them, struggling, those plump breasts and that round belly jiggling like a pudding. I told her that I thought we could prove to her we were men. We began to strip her. And it all … went bad. The fear. I think it was the boy. He was more tightly bound to her than we thought. He swamped us with his own fear. Fear everyone felt. The pale folk were screaming. They scattered like rabbits. That Dwalia. Shouting at them. Shouting at her magic-boy. Telling him to forget everything we'd promised him, to forget me and return to the path.”

He turned his whole head to look at me. His graying hair had come free of his wool cap to hang in wet locks around his face. “My men forgot me. I stood and shouted my orders, but they ran past me as if I didn't exist. They released Dwalia. Perhaps they could not see her anymore. She called to the magic-boy and he went to her like a whipped dog.”

He shook his head against the snow that pillowed it. “No one heard me. A man crashed into me, picked himself up, and kept on running. The men chased the pale folk. They were like mad things. The horses broke loose. Then … then my men began fighting one another. I shouted my orders. But they did not obey me. They did not hear me. Or see me. I had to watch. My men, my chosen warriors, brothers-in-arms for more than four years … They killed one another. Some of them. Some ran. The boy drove them mad. He made me invisible to them. Maybe Dwalia and the boy didn't realize that I was the only thing keeping my men in check. Without me … Dwalia fled and left the others to their fate. That's what I think.”

“The woman and the child you took from my home. What did they do? Did the pale folk keep them?” He smiled at me. I set the edge of my blade to his throat. “Tell me what you know.”

“What I know … what I know very well …” He fixed his eyes on mine. His voice had fallen to a whisper. I leaned closer to hear him. “I know how to die like a warrior.” And he surged suddenly up against my blade, as if to cut his own throat. I pulled my knife clear of him and sheathed it.

“No,” I told him pleasantly. “You don't die yet. And you don't die like a warrior.” I stood and turned my back on him, leaving him trussed like a hog awaiting slaughter.