Danielle coughed. “Come to see the fights?"
It had not been Cloire’s habit to do so.
"No." Again, Cloire shook herself,
then
frowned. "No, I came here to tell you that I've
been unable to come into contact with Vistrot. We'll stick around for a few
days just to be sure, but I think he's been Scoured."
Danielle nodded. Of course she knew that since
Vistrot was actually the Scourer, he couldn't have been ... unless Amelia had
killed him, or he'd killed himself.
"Anyway,” Cloire went on, “I see no reason
why you should continue to be our prisoner. At one point I wanted you dead, but
I don't need that anymore." She smiled. "I conquered you just the
same, didn't I?"
Danielle remembered the music disc and said
nothing.
"I hereby set you free,” Cloire said.
“Loirot, say good-bye to your little prisoner."
"But ..." Loirot only now seemed to be
coming out of his shock. A shock quickly replaced by a new one.
"Save it," Cloire ordered,
then
pulled something out of a pocket, something small and
shiny.
A key.
With a sinking feeling
deep in her guts, Danielle knew what it was.
"This is your reward for playing by the rules,”
Cloire said. “It'll open Malcolm's room. Do with him what you will."
*
*
*
The
Dark Lord looked down from the tallest of his battlements, letting his eyes
trace the dramatic skyline of his home. The stars were bright overhead, very
white against the black sky, although they could only be seen here and there
through the dense clouds which shot through the sky as swiftly as if they were
being driven forward by the very whips of Hell. The same wind caressed his dark
hair and long flowing cape, which he only wore on special occasions; he hoped
that this would not be one of them.
Sarnova watched the sky and the falling snow and
the jagged steeples of the Carpathians,
then
turned
his gaze upward toward the tip of the mountain. On this side, it was nearly
shear, and in this face the Castle was embedded. At the mountain’s tip glowed a
red point, and that was as it should be. It meant that power had not been cut
to the outpost up there—an outpost whose sole function was to alert him in the
event that an enemy force was ascending the opposite side of the mountain. If
that red light switched off it meant that the force was already here.
As Sarnova saw it, his primary job was to keep
that light shining strong, a job complicated by the treachery of his
subordinates.
Oh, he was very aware of their secret meetings.
Although—well, he had not caught them in time.
Things had
gone too far, and now the only hope he allowed himself was that things were
already being seen to. That was his greatest fear, as well, for if something
seemed too good to be true, it probably was.
He turned his gaze upon his castle’s courtyards
and towers.
Two main courtyards, the north and the south.
One for assembly and one for recreation.
There was the main courtyard, the head of which
was the lowest tower on the castle. It was on the balcony of that white tower,
one fateful day not too long ago, that he had looked down upon all the dwellers
of the castle—all assembled in that courtyard at his order—and announced that
they were now at war. The next few days had been grim, as many of his weaker
subjects fled the castle—some recruited by Subaire and her Half.
Soon hundreds of others had flocked to his side,
eagerly joining his army and signing on to battle his enemies. Some, of course,
had been spies. For others, the fair-weather followers, betrayal hadn't entered
their minds until he started to lose. Even now the thought made him livid, but
he could not surrender control, not now with four guards on the battlement with
him. Poise was important, especially when things were going so sour.
Far below, on one of the catwalks, Ambassador
Mauchlery approached. Four guards flanked him, too, although these guards were
not simply to protect, but to prevent their charge from escaping. The very
sight of them made Sarnova's fist ball up until it shook. When the trembling
reached his elbow, he took a deep breath and went back to watching the skyline.
In time, the Ambassador disappeared into the
tower and began ascending the stairs.
Sarnova appraised the shadows of the chamber,
where a large and expensive missile launcher had been pushed back from the
large window. The machine was intended to protect his castle from airborne
assaults. In the old days, boiling water would have sufficed.
Maybe some rock-throwers or archers for good measure.
Back
then, castles had been efficient structures insofar as safety was concerned.
Nowadays, one should have an underground bunker
of some sort. Of course, he had one of these, too, though it wasn't very
scientific, just a tunnel into the deepest part of the mountain, but that was
only protection for him, and he was a man very concerned about the well-being
of his subjects; old age had mellowed him. The question was how to fit a castle
so far underground that it could resist nuclear attack. That was his greatest
fear.
Hopefully Subaire and her followers would not
use such tactics; they wanted the Castle whole, as well as the subjects at his
command. As for himself, they wanted him dead only if he couldn't be persuaded
to see their point of view.
Which he couldn't.
The thing that troubled him most at the moment,
though, was the reason the missile launcher had been pushed back from the window
in the first place: to clear the area before the window in case a summary execution
of his oldest friend proved necessary. It was for this event that Roche Sarnova
had donned his ceremonial cape, hoping even as he did so that it wouldn't be
required.
It all hinged on what the Ambassador had to say for
himself.
A few wrong words and he would be positioned at the edge of the
window (where the launcher had heretofore been placed), then flung out the
window into the abyss, where he would plummet until he was obliterated against
the ice-encrusted chasm floor. If that didn't kill him, nothing would.
Sarnova’s ears pricked at footsteps from below.
The Ambassador and his escorts stepped into the chamber, moved a few yards
toward their Lord and stopped at an appropriate distance.
"Good evening, Ambassador," Sarnova
said.
Mauchlery nodded. "I hope so, Roche."
The Dark Lord said nothing, contemplating the
familiarity with which his old friend spoke. It was unnerving at a time like
this.
"I presume you know why I summoned you.”
"At the secret meeting last night, you must
have had a mole."
"Yes. You ..." Roche cleared his
throat and began again. "You plotted to overthrow me."
The Ambassador opened his mouth. When nothing
came out, he closed it and reconsidered. He didn't seem to know what to say.
Neither did
Sarnova,
and he'd had longer to think
about it.
The wind made the only noise, though this at
least was a roar. Snow drifted in through the glass-less window and struck the
floor, throwing up little drops of water where other flakes had recently
melted.
"Why?" asked Sarnova. "Why did
you do it?"
Mauchlery’s voice was quiet.
"To
save you, my friend."
"Explain."
The Ambassador sighed. "I knew that some of
the officers were holding secret meetings, so I placed a few moles myself and
discovered, not to my surprise, that they were discussing the situation as if
the war was already lost.
Or nearly so.
They thought
the only solution was to replace you, at least temporarily. They lacked
direction, though, and I was approached twice by them; they were subtle, but it
was clear they wished me to lead them, to give them strength. At first I
pretended ignorance, as if they were being too subtle."
He smiled then, as if to show that this was a
joke. Tentatively, Sarnova returned the gesture. He so wanted to believe. Therein
was the danger.
Mauchlery continued: "Then it occurred to
me that if I
was
their leader, I could control them. It was clear to me
that sooner or later they would've gone through with it, with or without me.
They might've bungled it. You could've gotten hurt. Either way, they would've
deposed you and surrendered to Subaire. I couldn't let that happen. So I
summoned them all together, knowing you would've probably planted a mole
yourself, and told them that I was taking over their operations." He
paused, as if considering his words carefully, or maybe it was only to show his
triumph. "They were relieved," he said. "I outlined a plan to
depose you without you getting hurt and told them to gather support from their
own subordinates."
"Why?"
"So that there
would be no confusion in the ranks.
I didn't want the younglings throwing a coup of
their own. I wanted organization, and I wanted to lead it. After the mass recruiting,
I would've been the silent leader of the rebels, and I could've stalled them
for as long as I wanted. I knew it was risky, I knew you would probably find
out about it, but it was the only thing I knew to do. As the old saying goes,
The
surest way to prevent a house from being built is to be
the carpenter that builds it." He stopped, looked Sarnova in the eye.
"Do you see, Roche? Do you see why I had to do it?"
Sarnova let out a breath.
Francois had said everything he'd wanted to
hear, and that was the problem. It was too perfect. Of course, that's the way
it would've been, and that's the way it had all gone down according to Roche
Sarnova’s moles. The question was what the Ambassador had really intended. Had
he been doing it all for Sarnova's benefit, or for his own? The crux of it was
that Mauchlery had never wanted any position of leadership, not in all the
millennia the Dark Lord had known him; it was just not in his nature. And
Sarnova had, over the centuries, come to trust in that nature ... which might
have been the mistake. Then again, maybe all this treachery was just making him
see fangs in every shadow.
"Very well," he said, indicating that
his decision had been made. He would now announce the verdict.
Mauchlery waited, silent.
"I believe you," said the Dark Lord.
Visibly, the tension drained from the
Ambassador's face. After a few moments, he smiled. The smile was genuine, if a
touch
nervous,
though it was clear the encounter had
taxed him. Even as he observed this in Mauchlery, Sarnova felt the same in
himself
.
"You had me scared there for a
minute," Francois said, his eyes glancing at the window.
Sarnova smiled, stepped forward and embraced his
friend. "You scared me, too," he said into his ear.
"But you understand," Francois
demanded, pushing Sarnova away just far enough so that they could look into
each other's eyes. "Blackie, it's not enough that you believe me. You must
understand why I did what I did."
The Dark Lord squeezed his friend's shoulder.
"I understand. And I thank you for it. If you hadn't stepped in, I
probably would've been overthrown within a week or so."
"Good," Mauchlery said, and it was
apparently all he could say at the moment, his throat being constricted as it
was. Sarnova noticed that he refrained from blinking so that the lens of water
over his eyes would not break.
Sarnova ran his hand through Francois' golden
hair with one hand and patted him on the cheek with the other.
"Come on, Ambassador. Let us go have a
drink."
*
*
*
Alone,
Danielle wandered the castle, thinking. At first she wanted to seek out Harry
or Sophia for guidance, but this would be a mistake, she knew. He was the angel
on her shoulder and Sophia the devil. Since they would only cancel each other
out, their advice was useless, which left Danielle in the position of having to
decide what to do herself. As it should be, she supposed.
Revenge or forgiveness, revenge or forgiveness …
In the end her judgment was surprisingly easy to
arrive at. Having made up her mind, she descended into the catacombs.
Into the dungeon.
At the entrance to the dungeon, guards blocked
the way, but she flashed her key and they let her through without comment, although
she thought she saw
them
stifling grins. They knew the
situation, then, at least as best they could.
Let them laugh
. She was beyond caring.
After exploring the prisoners' tunnels for some
time, she came upon the door that led into Malcolm's room. It was metal, and
she remembered that most of these rooms were designed to hold immortals. The
prisoners would be drained of as much blood as they could afford to lose and
thrown into one of these cells to whither away, too weak to escape through the
walls or even open the door with their mindthrust—though this last was a talent
few of them would have in any quantity. Few possessed the telekinetic strength
of Ruegger.